The Nutrition Business Journal team spent the last week of September on the ground at Natural Products Expo East in Philadelphia, talking with companies, scouting new products and trends, and sharing our expertise in conference education.

Here are the team’s top takeaways from the event:

Bill Giebler, Content and Insights Director

Climate change continues to be a key concern for brands across categories and across the show floor, but how these brands choose to address climate issues is varied and hotly debated, from regenerative farming to precision fermentation and beyond. In the panel discussion "Technology Tension: Innovations Influencing Food, Farming & Nutrition," I spoke with a farmer, a dietary supplement industry leader and an alt-proteins expert about the opportunities, concerns and, indeed, the tension points around each technology. It’s a fascinating and complicated path to navigate for an industry with “natural” as its first name. The conversation is far from over.

Claire Morton, Senior Industry Analyst

Supporting good mental health and relieving stress have been top of mind in NBJ and across the industry since 2020, and this trend showed up in full force at Expo East. From a data perspective, consumers consistently rate mood, mental health, stress and anxiety as top health issues, and supplement sales growth has shown this demand, with 11.5% growth following the impressive 29.4% seen in 2020. Ashwagandha was a top ingredient seen not just in the supplement aisles, but expanding across many beverages and teas, and even appearing in cookie dough. Some adjacent trends pointed to consumer understanding of a more holistic view of mental health and anxiety, including a surge of non-alcoholic spirits and wine brands.

Rick Polito, Editor in Chief

Gen Z consumers are interested in health and supplements, and they love their gummies. In a fireside chat, Alana Andrews, the 18-year-old founder and CEO of diabetes-friendly sports-drink Swey, shared that her classmates at The Wharton School are taking supplements for general health with long-term goals in mind. She said Gen-Z demands transparency; they research the products they use while also turning their attention to their own habits, with smartwatches and other self-quantification technology. The interest in health is high, she said, but brands aren’t meeting that interest with marketing that resonates as authentic for her peers.

Erika Rommel, Industry Analyst

With the majority of consumers trying to navigate through post-COVID-19 lifestyle changes and what it means to be “generally healthy,” a number of new product launches target specific experiential conditions in addition to immunity. Generally, consumers would like to improve their general health since it’s important to building a strong immune system. General health, especially in the children’s category, saw 18.5% growth in 2021, which was among the highest in all categories. Many products exhibited at Expo East support children’s general health. Product labels are trying to catch the eye of the consumer. Targeting key trends across these experiential conditions while adding immunity benefits, brands can gain repeat consumers who want to manage their long term general health.