2025’s health trend: A quick summary
- Functional health ingredients are popular with consumers
- Protein and fibre are seeing widespread popularity
- Clean-label ingredients are also in demand
- Sectors such as plant-based are trying to use more clean-label ingredients as a response to consumer demand
- Investors are now prioritising health and functional ingredients
Health has always been a priority for consumers. Yet over the past year, we’ve seen health become an obsession.
The health trend has arrived in full force to many areas of food and beverage, transforming some industries and boosting others.
Fact and function
Functional health is prominent a vast array of sectors, from drinks (including alcoholic drinks) to snacks to even bread.
“The buzzwords on packaging have exploded. Not only functional terms, but words, rightly or wrongly from a nutritional standpoint, that lean into health conscious decisions for consumers,” says Ben Ebbrell, co-founder of food YouTube channel Sorted Food.
Certain nutrients and ingredients take centre stage, however. One of these is of course protein.
Protein has always been popular. The nutrient has been the driving force behind trends such as keto and paleo, and fitness enthusiasts love it.
But now, health claims in the protein realm have expanded considerably, with brands ever keen to ensure consumers know that their products are abundant in it.
Protein is “everywhere”, explains Ebbrell. It is being added to a multitude of foodstuffs including snacks and bars that might otherwise be considered ultra-processed, he says, while foods that have always been protein-abundant, such as nuts, “now have the buzzwords front and centre on their packaging”.
While overshadowed for a long time by protein, fibre is also growing a lot more popular, in part due to the online trend “fibremaxxing” which involves putting as much fibre as possible into meals. Health claims relating to fibre have also skyrocketed. The ingredient is well and truly having its day in the sun.
Gut health-focused foods, containing ingredients such as prebiotics and probiotics, are seeing significant popularity as well.
The market for global digestive health products has been valued at $116.92bn (€100bn), and the market for gut health foods and beverages like kefir, kimchi and kombucha is thriving.
Beyond these foods, many other functional ingredients have been in demand among consumers, including creatine, CBD, lion’s mane, nootropics and adaptogens.
Finally, as GLP-1 weight-loss drugs come on the scene, users are looking for nutrient-dense foods that can make up for the lower levels of food actually consumed.
So fresh and so clean label
Alongside functional health, consumers are also clamouring for clean label.
As they become increasingly sceptical about ultra-processed foods, clean-label and ‘natural’ ingredients become more popular.
This is seen in particular in the rise in prominence of scratch cooking. Data from global insights business Nielsen IQ suggests that consumers from the UK, for example, are gravitating towards scratch cooking in order to save money.
Desire for clean-label ingredients is also pushing the plant-based sector to change.
Major brands such as THIS, Quorn and Moving Mountains are emphasising clean-label ingredients in new products, which are moving away from direct meat imitations.
In the plant-based dairy sector, brands such as Rude Health are emphasising the importance of ingredients lists to ease consumer concerns about processing and nutritional content.
Sweeteners, too, are going out of fashion as consumers increasingly begin to distrust them.
This distrust is often based in the fact that they are “synthetic” and does not extend to sugar.
The times they are a-changin’
As the needs and expectations of consumers shift, their relationship with food and nutrition does as well. This is nowhere more clear than in the health trend. And as what consumers want changes, the food and beverage sector as a whole does too.
Health “has taken a key role in our narrative”, explains Mridul Pareek, an investor at venture capital fund ECBF.
“Healthy eating, clean label, GLP-1 accompaniments, healthy living, healthy ageing, supplements, protein drinks, protein bars, all that sort of stuff has become increasingly interesting”, adds Kim Anders Odhner, co-founder and managing partner at food-focused asset manager Unovis Asset Management.
In other words, health is now a central part of what investors are looking for from new companies.
While health has always been a priority for some consumers, the widespread nature of the current trend has already changed investor priorities, transformed industries such as plant-based and pushed manufacturers to emphasise health claims far more frequently.
The key question is, how significant can the change really be?
