Centenarians in Japan now number more than 20,000, the government said this week. The Cabinet white paper also reported that the number of men aged over 65 has surpassed 10 million for the first time.
With nearly one in five people now over 65, a proportion set to rise to one in four by 2050, functional foods and nutraceuticals to boost quality of life and help prevent age-related disease are set to boom.
"Diet has definitely played a role in this longevity," noted nutraceuticals consultant Paul Yamaguchi. "But like any other country, the western culture has penetrated this market and we are also eating McDonald's and western-type foods."
"This means that we have many of the same [diet-related] problems and are seeing growing obesity and related disease."
A recent report by Paul Yamaguchi and Associates predicts that the Japanese nutraceutical market, currently worth around €18 billion, will more than double by 2012.
Japanese companies such as Morinaga and Kikkoman Foods still dominate the functional foods category, making the market highly competitive even for Western multinationals.
But there is an increasing trade in supplement ingredients manufactured by Western firms, according to Yamaguchi.
"There is more room for foreign ingredients and we are seeing a lot of tie-ups with Japanese companies."He added that his US-based consultancy has already had more enquiries about the Asian market than last year.
Some of Japan's most popular ingredients already include several at the top of the rankings in Europe and the US, such as echinacea, which doubled in sales during 2002 to $33.3 million. St John's Wort trebled in sales from $10.3 million to $33.1 million in 2003 and lutein is up 300 per cent to $25 million.
The market is also being opened up as the government changes the status of ingredients like glucosamine from drug to food. Since its entrance on the food market, glucosamine has tripled in sales to $58 million. CoQ10, approved for supplement use last year, is making sales of around $50 million while L-carnitine, also approved last year is now worth around $20 million.
There is also likely to further opportunity for new ingredients, as the government is currently approving around 10 new products for the food market each year, suggests Yamaguchi.
Other ingredients currently popular in the US and Europe, such as omega-3, Pycnogenol, stanol esters, folic acid, selenium and grape seed, are also starting to be recognised in Japan, according to Yamaguchi.