Twenty years ago, functional beverages emerged with the introduction of RW Knudsen’s Simply Nutritious juices – a groundbreaking combination of the brand’s signature delicious fruit juice blends with vitamins, minerals and herbs previously relegated to capsules and tablets in a pill bottle, and formulated for use occasions and consumer need states.  Up to that point, the closest thing was vitamin C & calcium enriched orange juice.  Simply Nutritious was the convergence of an erstwhile concoction, based on the foresight of consumer desire for a nutritional boost without taking a pill.

Functional foods & beverages is a platform for a new generation of iterations using superfoods, botanicals, probiotics and other elements of nature, as consumer demand for consumption to be way more than calories, drives innovation (and essentially, for all things to have ‘functional benefit’, save for the indulgent dessert, but even that is changing at the edges).  And let’s give a nod to personalized nutrition thanks to personal/wearable technology and commercialization of blood tests that will put an end to governmental one-size-fits-all nutrition and dietary recommendations.  More on that later.

The mobility of food & beverage trends into personal care and household categories is thus a natural evolution of consumer lifestyle desires we’re familiar with: to incorporate and employ the ‘foods’ (read: ingredients) they eat to be the ‘foods’ they rely on for all aspects of their well-being – in body, on body, in home/surroundings.  This notion is not new, and in fact up until now, the cosmeceutical trend begun 15 years ago or so was the convergence of supplements and personal care.  

However, a new wave of foods, processes, scents, packaging, and forms are on the rise in personal care and household products - this time taken from food & beverage trends - that seem to signal the melting away of boundaries between ‘in body, on body, in home’.  Combined with personal nutrition and technology capabilities, nothing is off limits and everything is possible.  This is the beginnings of personal care & household product’s “functional beverage movement”:

• Superfood charged skincare
• Probiotic topical concoctions
• Microbiome friendly household cleaners
• Waste-based innovation
• Small batch crafted
• Sustainable packaging
• Refined scents
• And More….

Our Trend Watch: Personal Care & Household Product’s Functional Beverage Movement report highlights ways to freshen up for Spring and a starting point to think about how pervasive and boundless these trends have become.

Bag of chips or pretzels? That's so 20th century!  Form, frequency & content rule the trend line of snacks now.  Micro Eating Occasions now drive "snacking" and consumers are looking for nutrient dense and satisfying, familiar and innovative foods, all in a convenient form.

• Sprouted
• High Protein
• Refrigerated
• Waste-based
• Micro-Farmed Livestock-based
• Adventurous Flavors
• International Ingredients
• Watermelon juice as a binder

These are only some of the things we're seeing in snacks these days.  Our Trend Watch: Snacks Redefined report is bite-size yet satisfying, full of examples and insights.