10 Key Trends in Food, Nutrition & Health 2009

Each year at this time we set out the important trends that we believe will shape the business of food, nutrition and health in the next 12 months and beyond. These are the trends which we believe every company must take into account in developing a food and nutrition strategy.

Companies who subscribe to New Nutrition Business know that we provide the most insightful and most useful case studies and analyses of the business of food and health, based on our unique expertise.

Since 1995 we have focused solely on researching, analysing, explaining and forecasting the future of the nutrition business, conducting around 350 interviews a year with industry executives worldwide.

We strive to make our analysis and forecasting clear, incisive, indepth, wellinformed and practical.

The Ten Key Trends in Food, Nutrition & Health for 2009 are:

• Digestive health
• Feel the benefit
• Weight management
• Energy
• Naturally healthy
• Fruit: the future of functional foods
• Kids' nutrition
• Snacking
• Target the loyal niches
• Packaging and premiumisation

This year we've also added five MicroTrends secondary opportunities and challenges which are not essential but which are useful to understand,these are:

• Movement
• Omega3
• Skin and beauty
• Mood food
• Antioxidants Last year we identified mood food as a trend.

One year on we have to admit that it's looking more like a microtrend an important benefit area with a wealth of ingredient possibilities but one that has yet to find its feet and an area in which the "how to succeed" part has still to be figured out.

Antioxidants have also been downgraded to a microtrend, based on current developments in science and marketing. Similarly, skin and beauty has proven itself to be even more niche than we said it would be last year and it, too, can be found among the microtrends.

There's a big difference between a trend and a fad. Many of the forecasts made for functional foods and beverages made in recent years have proven to be wrong such as the booming market for cholesterollowering that we were promised or the claims that eye health would be big. What have emerged are some consistent, longterm trends, each of which presents opportunities for companies to carve out a place for themselves.