Beauty Ingredient Map — Which Notifications Stalled, and Which Are Growing

Every figure below comes from the Consumer Affairs Agency “Foods with Function Claims” notification database, snapshot of 28 September 2026. Counts are by functional ingredient name, splitting multi-ingredient entries on their separators, so a notification carrying two ingredients is counted once for each. “Past twelve months” means a notification date on or after 1 October 2025.

1. “Beauty” is not one market

Rank the usual beauty ingredients by cumulative notifications and by new notifications in the past twelve months, and the two orders do not agree.

Functional ingredient name	Total	Active	Withdrawn	Past 12 mo.
Salmon nasal cartilage proteoglycan	195	146	49	34
Astaxanthin	259	140	119	31
N-acetylglucosamine	134	87	47	16
Rice-derived glucosylceramide	101	41	60	13
Bonito-derived elastin peptide	84	58	26	8
Pueraria flower isoflavone (as tectorigenins)	20	19	1	8
Undenatured type II collagen (as triple helix)	8	8	0	8
Salmon nasal cartilage type II collagen	17	16	1	7
Collagen peptide	68	51	17	7
Pineapple-derived glucosylceramide	103	54	49	4
Soy isoflavone	132	67	65	4
Konjac-derived glucosylceramide	31	16	15	0
Hyaluronic acid Na	78	13	65	1

Pineapple-derived glucosylceramide has 103 notifications; rice-derived has 101. Practically the same size. But the past twelve months are 4 and 13 — more than threefold apart. Read the cumulative column alone and both look like established choices; the supplier support and the pool of comparable notifications do not match that reading.

2. Withdrawal is not one thing — replacing a product and leaving the ingredient look identical

The withdrawal count on its own tells you nothing. Every product refresh produces a withdrawal and a new notification, so many withdrawals does not mean decline. The question is whether the companies that withdrew still hold an active notification for the same ingredient.

Ingredient	Companies that withdrew	Still holding an active notification	Share
Astaxanthin	63	25	39%
Soy isoflavone	40	10	25%
Rice-derived glucosylceramide	37	9	24%
Bonito-derived elastin peptide	21	3	14%
Hyaluronic acid Na	25	1	4%

Astaxanthin’s 119 withdrawals are churn: four in ten of those companies have put the ingredient back on the register under a new product. Hyaluronic acid Na’s 65 withdrawals are not. One company out of 25 came back, and against 78 cumulative notifications the past twelve months produced one. New entry has effectively stopped.

One qualification, because the number invites a wrong conclusion. This measures registration as a Food with Function Claims and nothing else. Hyaluronic acid is used widely in ordinary foods and in cosmetics; demand for the raw material has not disappeared. What the data says is that fewer companies are building new function claims on it — which matters if your product plan depends on a claim, because comparable notifications and supplier dossiers both get harder to assemble.

3. One word, four denominators

Ceramide is notified by origin, and the modal daily amount differs by origin. The table counts only entries where the figure for this specific ingredient could be identified — multi-ingredient notifications state several values in one field (“beta-carotene 24 mg, GABA 100 mg, konjac-derived glucosylceramide 600 µg”), and only the labelled one counts.

Notified name	Modal daily amount	Total
Pineapple-derived glucosylceramide	1.2 mg (79 of 79 identifiable)	103
Rice-derived glucosylceramide	1.8 mg (42) / 0.6 mg (22)	101
Konjac-derived glucosylceramide	0.6 mg (13) / 1.8 mg (8)	31
Glucosylceramide (no origin stated)	1.2 mg (14) / 0.6 mg (9)	27

If the notified name is “glucosylceramide”, what you must state is milligrams as glucosylceramide. The raw powder, however, is not glucosylceramide. Commercial specifications run at roughly 3% and above for konjac-derived, about 4% for pineapple-derived, and 6–10% and above for rice-derived.

The two numbers multiply. Konjac ceramide powder has a recommended intake of 20 mg a day at 3.0% or above: 20 mg × 3.0% = 0.6 mg, which is exactly the modal notified amount. The 0.6 mg you write in the notification is 20 mg on the purchase order. It is the same structure described for bilberry in notified in components, ordered as extract.

A specification that says “ceramide-containing extract” and stops there makes that multiplication impossible, and the number cannot be carried into a notification.

Settle two things on the specification sheet before you order: (1) is the glucosylceramide content given as a quantitative value with a test method — “contains” is not a value; and (2) is that content per gram of raw material, or per daily serving. Without both, you cannot compute the inclusion rate that reaches 1.2 mg.

4. Some “beauty” ingredients are notified for joints

Count the words that appear in the notified claim text and the catalogue category does not always match what the register is used for.

Ingredient	Frequent claim terms (count)
Salmon nasal cartilage proteoglycan	joint 165 · knee 77 · elasticity 55 / dryness 11
Bonito-derived elastin peptide	joint 28 · dryness 25 · moisture 24 · elasticity 24 · knee 23
Collagen peptide	elasticity 30 · joint 24 · moisture 17
Rice-derived glucosylceramide	dryness 87 · barrier function 56 · skin moisture 51
Astaxanthin	fatigue 128 · UV 118 · eye 92 · dryness 92
Hyaluronic acid Na	dryness 68 · skin moisture 62

Proteoglycan is usually introduced as a beauty ingredient. In the register its claims run 165 for joints against 11 for dryness. Elastin puts joints and knees alongside skin. Circulate either internally as “an ingredient with beauty demand” and the supporting notifications you can actually cite turn out to sit in a different indication.

Astaxanthin runs the other way: beauty (UV 118, dryness 92), eye function (92) and fatigue (128) all live in one ingredient. You are not forced to pick one claim — but the claim you notify changes the amount you need. The modes are 6 mg (67), 4 mg (57) and 9 mg (45), and they split along the same lines.

5. Two ingredient names are migrating

Undenatured type II collagen appears in the register under two names.

• “Undenatured type II collagen” — 54 cumulative, 16 active, 2 in the past twelve months (first in 2015)
• “Undenatured type II collagen (as triple helix)” — 8 cumulative, 8 active, 8 in the past twelve months (first in December 2025)

All eight of the second form are recent: new notifications are being filed under the parenthesised name. The parenthesis is a declaration of the denominator — milligrams measured as collagen that retains its triple-helix structure. The same shift is visible in pueraria flower isoflavone (as tectorigenins), first notified in June 2025, with 8 of its 20 entries in the past twelve months.

In practice this means that a specification written to the older name will need to be reissued against the newer basis. Asking at the quotation stage — “under which name, and measured as what, can you state the content?” — avoids the rework.

6. Five things to settle before ordering

1. Does the specification carry the exact notified name? Not “ceramide” but “glucosylceramide”; not “type II collagen” but “undenatured type II collagen (as triple helix)”.
2. Is the content a quantitative value with a test method? “Contains” or “formulated with” cannot support a notification.
3. What is the denominator? Per gram of raw material, or per daily serving. Confusing the two moves the inclusion rate by an order of magnitude.
4. Origin and allergen labelling. This varies by origin — see the table below.
5. Are comparable notifications still being filed? Look at the past twelve months. Where entry has stopped, both the evidence base and supplier support thin out.

Origin of the raw material	Allergen labelling status in Japan
Salmon nasal cartilage (proteoglycan, type II collagen)	“Salmon” is a recommended labelling item
Collagen peptide derived from gelatin	“Gelatin” is a recommended item
Porcine origin (placenta and similar)	“Pork” is a recommended item
Bonito-derived elastin peptide	Bonito is on neither the mandatory nor the recommended list
Fish-derived collagen	Depends on the species — salmon or mackerel are recommended, others are outside the lists
Rice, konjac, pineapple ceramide	All outside the lists (soy-derived material brings “soy”, a recommended item)

Recommended labelling is not mandatory, but — as with capsule shell material — a customer’s own labelling policy may require it. Treating “fish-derived” as a single category leads either to a label you did not need or to a missing one. Pin down the species and the part on the specification sheet. Note also that cashew nut was added to the mandatory list on 1 April 2026 and pistachio to the recommended list, with a two-year transition period.

FONTIA compiles, for an ingredient you are evaluating, the number of comparable notifications, the distribution of daily amounts, and the claim wording actually used. We also check whether a supplier’s content statement lines up with the notified name. Our catalogue carries hyaluronic acid, fish collagen, glucosamine and fermented N-acetylglucosamine; for origin and molecular weight see the collagen peptide guide.