With 2025 well underway, the time is right to focus on new paths and opportunities that are emerging or evolving within our industry. Everything from a transforming political regime to consumers’ shifting health priorities affects the natural product and nutraceutical industries. Botanical and berry ingredients cover such a broad range of benefits, so there is opportunity around every corner for innovation to meet the needs of consumers. Here are some key examples …

Natural Colors

Specialty brands have long prioritized keeping product labels all-natural, but the concept of weeding out synthetic ingredients, or any associated with negative health impacts, is now much more mainstream. This impacts many adjacent industries, including foods and beverages, dietary supplements, personal care products, and cosmetics.

For instance, the recent FDA ban on artificial color Red #3 is forcing companies to seek alternatives. The ban may open the floodgates to more artificial colors and other food-grade additives coming under increased scrutiny and falling by the wayside, as some substances are already banned in other countries worldwide. The new government administration has promised a renewed focus on identifying, investigating, and eliminating compounds from the market that might be associated with negative health impacts.

Manufacturers proactively starting the process of weeding out artificial colors in favor of clean(er) labels opens the door for ingredients that possess natural colorant properties. Darkly pigmented fruit and vegetable ingredients like berry extracts fit the bill nicely. In fact, nutraceutical berry extract ingredients could offer dual functionality: both health benefits as well as natural colorant properties, making them an attractive two-in-one option.

Adaptogens

Opportunities for ingredient popularity growth and innovation also result from societal and cultural shifts and trends. One truth is evident in today’s continuously-evolving modern society: we are stressed out!

According to the American Psychological Association’s latest Stress in America poll, we are a populace burdened by many pressing concerns, including politics, healthcare and the environment.¹ Our culture is generally one of long work weeks, side hustles, and women trying to do it all. While this ongoing angst promotes innovation, excellence, and productivity, it can also take its toll on our physical, mental, and emotional well-being.

Now, more than ever, consumers can benefit from adaptogens — an umbrella term for ingredients that are known to have calming qualities to ease our racing minds and exhausted bodies, and promote healthy sleep, manage stress, and restore balance.

One of the most well-known and well-respected botanicals with adaptogenic qualities is the popular ashwagandha. A recent meta-analysis showed that “ashwagandha treatment of at least 56- or 60-days results in a clinically relevant improvement of stress level and serum cortisol level of stressed healthy adults.”²

Other ingredients are being sought out for their adaptogenic qualities including lemon balm, valerian root, ginseng, rhodiola, and elderberry. These botanicals have centuries-old historical usage to counteract stress and anxiety, as well as modern research to support their stress-hormone-modulation or inflammation-modulating properties. Adaptogenic mushrooms like cordyceps and reishi continue to trend high with consumers as they seek out ways to incorporate healthy ingredients into their daily routines. (Mushroom coffee, anyone?)

Stress, fatigue, and unbalanced cortisol levels are not going away any time soon. More diverse and innovative products that contain or highlight botanical adaptogens present a great opportunity for growth in our industry.

Food as Medicine

The growing popularity of products like mushroom coffee, matcha lattes, kombucha beverages, collagen smoothies, and elderberry supplements is not just the result of clever viral social media marketing and influencers. It is an indicator that consumers —  especially those in younger generations — are continuing to recognize and prioritize health and wellness ingredients in the food, beverage, and supplement choices they make.

No one disagrees that healthcare is problematic. Treatments are typically time-consuming to pursue and almost always expensive to pay for, even with insurance. For savvy consumers, being healthy is “on trend,” as it helps to avoid the need for doctors, specialists and pricey pharmaceuticals to address health problems, especially those that may be remediated in other ways.

On both a micro-/macronutrient level, and on a “phytonutrient” (phytochemical) level, influencers have helped consumers seek lifestyles that pack in plenty of protein and fiber each day, or eat plant-based, antioxidant-rich foods for overall wellness and to ward off any premature aging.

Put another way, the longstanding notion of “we are what we eat” is reaching and resonating with a younger crowd. With that comes opportunities for incorporating health-promoting ingredients of all kinds into innovative foods, beverages, body care products, and supplements designed for the Millennial and Gen Z cohorts.

Just imagine the possibilities: high-antioxidant berry blends to elevate snack foods that are otherwise just guilty pleasures, or convenient adaptogen smoothie stick packs. Debittered fenugreek-infused baked goods to boost protein and fiber intake while lowering glycemic index. Black currant-based shots for esports athletes, or any of us who want to soothe screen-weary eyes. The list goes on.

Healthy Weight and Metabolism

Any timely examination of this category must logically start with considering the impact of consumers gaining access to GLP-1 agonist drugs. This key development has reignited interest in weight loss conversations, interventions, and supplements in a big way.

Due to exaggerations and over-promised results, and reports of undesirable side effects associated with many products, in the past, weight loss supplements almost became taboo. However, new clinical research continues to showcase the ability of certain botanical ingredients to influence body composition and metabolism.

These could find promise as adjuncts to other weight management drugs or therapies, or even after GLP-1 regimens when there is the desire to maintain a healthy weight and metabolism. Additionally, supplements that help to fill nutrient or phytonutrient gaps during weight loss regimens are important.

Also, pharmaceuticals are not for everyone, whether for medical contraindications or prohibitively high costs. The need continues to exist for natural and less invasive options.

There are several ingredients with promise in this area. Purple corn, known for its potent anthocyanin content, and specifically cyanidin-3-glucoside, has shown promise for preventing obesity as a result of high-fat diets in animal studies.³ There are also ongoing studies to further substantiate preliminary data around the ability of fenugreek seed extracts to reduce body fat and support a healthy body composition.⁴ Even elderberry has been getting some attention in the area of metabolic health.⁵

Conclusion

While this only highlights a few opportunities and directions that reflect our industry’s current state of affairs, there are many more honorable mentions. Antioxidants as a category remain as relevant as ever, as evidenced by the Surgeon General’s recommendation to label alcohol with a warning label about the cancer risks associated with free radical damage. Women’s health is also still maintaining a strong focus on product innovation, along with newfound prioritization in clinical research.

An identifiable through line in these categories is clear: the future of consumer health and wellness can be shaped by clean-label, health-boosting berry and botanical ingredients with long-standing histories of use, clinical substantiation, and convenient, reasonably cost-effective ingredient forms that are ready to use to bring new or improved products to market.

Now it is up to manufacturers and innovators to seize these opportunities, staying ahead of the curve to meet consumer demands and usher in the next generation of health-focused products.

References

1. https://www.apa.org/pubs/reports/stress-in-america/2024

2. Andrea Tóth-Mészáros, Gantsetseg Garmaa, Péter Hegyi, András Bánvölgyi, Bánk Fenyves, Péter Fehérvári, Andrea Harnos, Dorottya Gergő, Uyen Nguyen Do To, Dezső Csupor. 2023. The effect of adaptogenic plants on stress: A systematic review and meta-analysis, Journal of Functional Foods, Volume 108,105695. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1756464623002955

3. Hongyan Xu, Meihong Liu, Huimin Liu, Bailing Zhao, Mingzhu Zheng, Jingsheng Liu. 2021. Anthocyanins from purple corn ameliorated obesity in high fat diet-induced obese mice through activating hepatic AMPK. Journal of Functional Foods, Volume 84,104582. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1756464621002310

4. Deshpande PO, Bele V, Joshi K, Thakurdesai PA. Effects of low molecular weight galactomannans based standardized fenugreek seed extract in subjects with high fat mass: A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical study. J Appl Pharm Sci, 2020; 10(1):062–069. https://japsonline.com/abstract.php?article_id=3056&sts=2

5. Teets C, Ghanem N, Ma G, Minj J, Perkins-Veazie P, Johnson SA, Etter AJ, Carbonero FG, Solverson PM. A One-Week Elderberry Juice Intervention Augments the Fecal Microbiota and Suggests Improvement in Glucose Tolerance and Fat Oxidation in a Randomized Controlled Trial. Nutrients. 2024; 16(20):3555. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39458549/