Food and health are big business! Just ask any of the 67,000 attendees and 3,200 exhibitors who took over the Anaheim, California convention center and surrounding hotels for the 41st Natural Products Expo West.
Held the first week in March, the event offered a vast array of information about the future state of our food and personal care products provided by both small, health-centric innovators and profit-driven international conglomerates.
The Expo highlights the crucial choices consumers make with every dollar spent and every bite taken. It also shapes not only our health, but the future health of the planet.
Takeaways
To give you an idea of what The 100 Year LifestyleⓇ team experienced, the Expo is the largest natural, organic, and healthy lifestyle products trade show on the West Coast, and a key food and wellness event both in the US and internationally. This is clear as you walk the isles, listening to the variety of different languages spoken by not only exhibitors but attendees, everyone from grocery store buyers to social media influencers. Regardless of demographics, food is something we all have in common.
The Expo offered many possible takeaways, depending on your focus, but here is some of what we found interesting. First, a lot of people truly care about nutritional values, health, and wellbeing of people and planet. They put their money where their mouth is. There were many start-up and slightly more established companies that were sourcing organic or regeneratively grown ingredients for their products and using healthy cooking and packaging processes to bring those products to consumers.
Unfortunately, mixed into this group, whether you were walking the aisles of the designated Organic Exhibit Hall or the conventionally grown food hall, were businesses that appeared to be in it for the sales. Thus, they were less focused on the quality of their ingredients or packaging. In a way, it was kind of like walking the isles of your local grocery store.
Trends
Trends were evident. Among them mushroom-based foods and products, low sugar hydration drinks, supplements focused on everything from brain health to women’s health, functional teas and coffees, and upcycled foods and products. (Upcycling is the process of using materials that are part of the waste of other products, such as pulp in juice making being used in baked goods or chips or fruit leather. Upcycled foods utilize that “waste material,” which often contains valuable nutrients and fiber, in the making of other types of foods.)
Perhaps the most exciting trend is the move from Organic to Regenerative Organic, a term and practice pioneered by Regenerative International. Many other organizations have joined the movement, such as The Regenerators, and Regenerative Organic CertificationⓇ to name a few. They use organic as a baseline standard, then go beyond to include a collection of practices that focus on regenerating soil health and the full farm ecosystem. The nutritional value of our food supply is determined by the microbiome of the soil, the people who steward that soil, and the farming practices used.
Creating Change
With all of the new and exciting things happening in the food and wellness industry, a number of the larger producers continue to avoid using organic ingredients like the plague. That said, The 100 Year LifestyleⓇ left the Natural Products Expo West with a greater awareness that the change we want to see on our plates, today and in the future, starts with us putting our money where our mouth is.
Here are just a few questions to ponder: Why are more beverage (and soda) companies starting up despite what we know about sugary drinks? No matter how healthy you make a chip, it’s still a chip, right? Why is there such a focus on snacks and not on whole foods? And why is toxic, pesticide contaminated food still just called “food” while food without toxins needs to be specially labeled as “organic”? Shouldn’t it be the other way around?
Consumer Call to Action
The answer to all of these questions involves us, the consumers. Companies, even with the highest of intentions, start businesses to sell products to make money. Every time we buy chips or soda (even “healthy” versions) we are giving the green light to companies to capture our consumer dollars with new and different versions of these same products. Each time we don’t buy organic, we give traditional farmers a reason to keep using pesticides. Every time we buy food with zero nutritional value and loaded with chemicals, GMOs, damaged oils, sugar, salt or all of the above, we won’t come close to Making America Healthy Again.
Unfortunately, there is a straight line between what we eat today and what our food future will look like tomorrow.
Start Here, Start Now
So, if you want healthier food choices when it comes to conscious consumption, start by making sure you know how to read a food label. For example, there are lots of fancy words for sugar that appear on your labels. And in some cases, companies use organic sugars to greenwash the products with words like “natural” or “healthy.” Don’t let fancy labels full of hype fool you. Educate yourself.
Think about the amount of packaged food you buy for your family versus the amount of whole, fresh foods or foods without labels. An organically grown carrot doesn’t need a label. If you’ve got a lot of processed, packaged food in your pantry, organic or not, you might be saving some time and possibly even money now, but at what future cost to your health? Again, organic sugar is still sugar.
Lastly, think about every dollar you spend as a vote. It signals companies watching your buying habits, and there are a lot of them, what you are willing to settle for. Make those choices with your ideal 100 Year LifestyleⓇ in mind. If a product, no matter what it is, doesn’t contribute to your long-term health, don’t buy it. By not buying into ill-health, you’ll be telling the marketplace to improve their standard. We’re living on an abundant planet full of creative people. Anything is possible and none of us should settle for less than the best.
Here’s the Why
Curious as to why The 100 Year LifestyleⓇ attended the Natural Products Expo West? Because food is an integral part of your healthy lifestyle—and we’ve expanded our business umbrella in acknowledgement of that fact.
The 100 Year LifestyleⓇ now not only includes great healthcare professionals but other businesses raising the bar in their industry to help you live at 100% for 100 years or more. We know how important it is for every lifestyle choice you make supports your long-term goals for yourself and your loved ones. Those choices are not always easy. We can’t always do the research to know what’s going on with companies and products that catch our eye and make it into our homes. But when you see The 100 Year LifestyleⓇ seal of approval on a website or packaging, you can breathe easy knowing that’s a good choice to make. Click here to learn more about our seal and see if your business qualifies to come under The 100 Year LifestyleⓇ umbrella.
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