Looking forward: Innova Market Insights unveils the top five nutrition trends for 2025

The nutrition industry is evolving as consumer demand for personalized and natural multifunctional solutions continues to grow alongside calls for science-backed ingredients that meet men’s and women’s specific health and do so at a reasonable price point. To help navigate the changing nutrition market, Innova Market Insights presented its Top Nutrition Trends for 2025 in a recent webinar.

The webinar included exclusive research and data from Innova Market Insights which was presented by the company’s co-founder and Global Insights Director, Lu Ann Williams.

It also included a question and answer segment with an expert panel consisting of Williams, Edith Feskens, a professor of Global Nutrition at Wageningen University and Research and Judith van der Horst-Graat, the innovation lead for food food and health at Foodvalley.

Williams presented five leading trends. The trends are Nutrition Forward, Weight Management, Nutrition for All Budgets, Genderized Nutrition and Natural Well-Being.

Williams highlights that these trends are based on “brand new” research conducted by Innova Market Insights.

“We track new innovations in more than 90 countries around the world,” Williams explains. “We look at what’s happening in categories and at what's happening in product innovation.” Lu Ann Williams, co-founder and Global Insights Director of Innova Market Insights.

“Ingredients is a huge topic for us and flavors and packaging as well and the information presented today comes from this big database of all of these insights that we gather throughout the year.”

Nutrition Insight examines the fourth and fifth trends. More information about the top three trends, along with the presentations, the expert panel discussion and key innovation opportunities can be viewed on the on-demand webinar.

Focus on women-specific health needs

The demand for gender-specific ingredients is not new, however, much of the focus has been on men’s needs. Williams eyes a growing market for ingredients, supplements and nutraceuticals and applications that speak to women’s specific health needs as women seek out nutrition tailored to their specific dietary requirements and preferences.

This includes products that are tailored to the nutritional needs of women, especially considering different life stages and health conditions specific to women. Williams spotlights that 40% of female respondents report using vitamin and mineral supplements in relation to their hormonal cycles, with 37% in menopause or pre-menopause and 36% in a regular hormonal stage or using hormonal contraception.

“This is another one of those hot topics and I would say that, overall, there’s a lot of talk about empowering women and making sure that women are in positions of power and it’s starting to impact nutrition trends as well,” Williams underscores. “We asked consumers what were the most desirable food and beverage functions across for both genders and then when you look at what is over indexed for women, it was physical appearance and also hormonal imbalance.Edith Feskens, professor of Global Nutrition at Wageningen University and Research.

“If you went to the supply side this year or last year, you would have noticed how many booths there were focused on products for menopause, which was super interesting. That’s a new niche that is emerging out of this.”

Dr. Feskens notes that, within the Genderized Nutrition trend, she also sees menopause as a very important issue.

“From the health point of view, there is now a massive movement in the health sciences focusing on women — the neglected part of the population,” she reveals. “Not only for menopause but also for endometriosis, depression and anxiety.”

Naturally healthy nutrition

The final trend spotted for 2025 is Natural Well-Being. Innova Market Insights’ research reveals that consumers widely believe that natural foods provide the necessary nutrients for a balanced diet. Case in point, 70% of global consumers state that natural foods are sufficient for health and 62% assert that a diet consisting only of natural foods is the best way to maintain health.

Williams highlights that discussions around the importance of “kitchen cupboard ingredients” first caught her attention years ago, but the concept has stuck, as has the clean label trend. These trends emphasize not only the removal of unnatural substances but also the inclusion of natural ingredients, which consumers highly value.

Judith van der Horst-Graat, the innovation lead for food and health at Foodvalley.In one of the surveys the company conducted, freshness and natural ingredients were at the top of the list of what consumers consider important in healthy food and beverages. However, she finds another finding to be equally interesting.

“60% of consumers say choosing only natural foods is the best way to ensure a healthy diet —  that is really ambitious,” she spotlights. “I don’t think there’s that many people who could really stick to natural foods for the majority of their diet.”

“There are a lot of consumers who acknowledge that and so that becomes a challenge for the industry. How do you make that available to people that just can’t be eating fresh fruits and vegetables all day long? Are there other options to make these products available? And then again, when we ask consumers about ingredients they perceive as natural, consumers want to limit them less.”

Williams further points out that the ongoing debate between what is and isn’t natural on-package claims about what constitutes natural versus unnatural ingredients is affecting consumers and the market.

“There’s lots of claims on packages again, and lots of discussion around what is natural, what is not natural,” she notes. “It’s really interesting to me that when things like monk fruit just came out, we were told it was too expensive and it will never go mainstream, but now you see Kraft Heinz or launching products with monks with monk fruit as a sweetener.”

“So again, we’re starting to see a bit more scale developing around some of these ingredients because the consumer demand is just so there.”

Van der Horst-Graat adds that product reformulation is another option within this trend, though it may take time. 

“Consumers buy products mostly driven by taste and price, so with all the efforts that are ongoing to reformulate and renovate existing products and also the disruptive innovation of completely new products that will be launched to market — it’s important to realize that consumers are used to a certain taste or to a certain appearance of a product.”

“If we want to change products in the future, it always goes quite gradually and really, step-by-step, to not lose the consumers because companies want to sell their products and they want to keep their consumers,” she concludes.