According to Innova Market Insights, a trend anticipated to continue through 2020 in the food ingredients market is that of new ingredients seeking positive reputations that consumers are familiar with. To put it simply, people want novelty, but not something that is completely unknown.
 
This has been the case with prebiotics, an ingredient that had been pushed to the background for many years before it became a key ingredient that consumers sought out due to widely held beliefs and studies on the long-held and newly-discovered benefits of high-fiber diets.
 
Innova reports a 20% global growth for food and beverage launches with prebiotics in 2018 compared to 2017, with another rise of over 13% in 2019. Prebiotics can be found in food and drinks that are newly launched, such as oat cereals in the U.S. and U.K., soft drinks in Australia, and confectionary in China.
 
CBD has also been shaking things up as a relative newcomer in the few years that it has been made legally available. Consumers are becoming more familiar with the benefits attributed to CBD, giving companies the potential to be the ‘hot new thing’ in 2020. Its most popular uses include pain relief, reducing anxiety/stress, and promoting relaxation. This has led to new product launches such as mood-lifting chocolate, relaxation tea, sleep aid gummies, and nootropic bars.
 
Most consumers appear open to accepting cannabis and CBD as an ingredient, and the figure of 59% globally rises to 71% in the U.S. and 85% in India. New product development was slow to start in 2017, before picking up in 2018, and then growing exponentially in 2019. This remains concentrated in North America and Western Europe where 97% of the total products are accounted for.
 
Ashwagandha is another ingredient that has low awareness, but is beginning to grow exponentially. It is a flagship herb in traditional ayurvedic medicine, and has a wide variety of claimed benefits, though stress and anxiety reduction appear to be the best known. However, it’s most often launched with claims promoting energy and alertness. Supplements and sports nutrition products have been making the most headway with Ashwagandha, seeing the most success in the U.S.