I just got done at Expo West, the biggest natural food convention in the world, held at the Anaheim Convention Center. We had a great booth unveiling Primal Kitchen's new dipping sauces (to be released in the next couple months). You guys are gonna love them. Incredible flavor and texture.
I spent a few hours walking the floor. Wasn't able to cover everything because it's absolutely enormous. But I got a good sense for what's coming down the pipeline. There were positives and negatives. Every other booth seemed to be some variation of the following:
Adaptogens in everything: energy drinks, protein bars, gummies, electrolyte mixes, coffee
Mushrooms in everything: energy drinks, protein bars, gummies, electrolyte mixes, coffee. An attempt to build on the success of Four Sigmatic, which for my money still has the best mushroom products around.
Fake milks: there was "milk" made of corn, oats, mac nuts, pistachios, some strange groundnut. Oat milk was everywhere—far more common to get served an oat milk latte than a regular milk latte.
Fake meat: Most of the booths offering meat weren't using real meat. However I got the sense that people were really craving the real stuff, because they would crowd the hell out of the booths serving real meat.
Protein added to everything. Protein bars, protein waters, protein coffees, protein everything. They even had chips, crackers, and crisps made entirely of protein. Much of it was plant protein but there were also a ton of animal protein products using whey or milk protein. I think this is a pretty positive development. If you're going to snack, you should include some protein. Most people don't get enough.
Non-alcoholic mood altering beverages that purport to replace alcohol using herbs, botanicals, and extracts that elicit a noticeable effect on your state of mind. I'm honestly skeptical that any of these will have a powerful enough effect to replace alcohol. By the way, I think alcohol can be perfectly healthy if used responsibly.
Regenerative was a popular word and it seemed to be misused. The way I've always thought of a regenerative operation is that it "regenerates" the soil, rebuilds the land, and restores fertility to the ecosystem. It adds more than it takes, usually in the form of grass-fed cattle returning fertility to the land in the form of manure. The way some people seemed to be using it was anything vaguely "environmentally friendly." The term is getting diluted.
A lot of dog products.
All in all, it was an informative experience. There was a lot of innovation in the snack/treats/sweets/prepared drinks categories, but very few in the realm of actual real food. That's just how it is, though. Food is food. It's hard to improve on it. You can only make it easier and more convenient to eat it (which is what we try to do with Primal Kitchen). Let me know what you think of these trends on Instagram. 
