Trends of Natural Products Expo West 2015

 

It’s been a little over a month since the Natural Products Expo West occurred at the Anaheim Convention Center, but if you’ve read any of Edible Skinny’s past coverage of the world's largest natural, organic and healthy products event you’ll know that it takes that long for us to recover and start reporting on the event! 

And if you look at the numbers of the 35th you can see why: this year the event grew to over 71,000 industry members attending, 2,7000 exhibiting companies, and 634 first-time exhibitors.  Really, it’s like a tidal wave hit Whole Foods and brought it to Anaheim!

The Expo can be many different things to many different people, but for me it’s about seeing where the world of innovative natural eating is flowing.   What’s going to end up in everyday vernacular and where will people be spending their money (because if someone told us we’d be spending $11 on a single serving of juice 10 years ago we’d have thought they were more than a little cray cray…)

Overall trends that Kelly and I noticed during our time at Expo West were that:

• Everyone is making Turmeric tea!

• Gluten free has evolved to specifics.

• Chia is everywhere!  Everywhere!  And in everything!

• Non-dairy is finding its personality. 

As we did last year we’ll be submitting our Best of the Fest list throughout the next few weeks (and remember this is out of 2,700 choices!)?   So keep your eye out for that tidal wave of Whole Foods items!  

Hope life is delicious!