Therapeutic Foods Aimed at High-Pressure Japanese

As antidotes to Japan’s high-pressure, hard-drinking and insomniac urban life, companies here are preparing to market “medical foods,” a cross between pharmaceuticals and health foods.

Industry officials and analysts say the products have great potential.

“The next consumer priority will be healthiness,” a report from one major securities house said. “We believe that therapeutic foods will serve as a barometer to determine market leaders in the next decade.”

Most medical foods will look like ordinary food or drink, fortified with active substances. Some may be in pill form but unlike most medicines they are designed to ward off, not cure, illness.

The products may not hit the market until next year, but they should be a smash with salaried male office workers wanting to rectify the ravages of their hard-drinking, workaholic life styles, the analysts predicted.

“I think this will be a big market in the long term partly because the Japanese have a long history of eating food and expecting healthy results--like Chinese herbal medicine,” said Mitsuo Ohmi, analyst at Barclays de Zoete Wedd in Tokyo.

“Medical foods will probably be very popular with salary men at first,” said an analyst at UBS Phillips and Drew International.

“After that, I am not so sure.”