Kerry: Weight management and targeted nutrition key 2025 trends

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Kerry says 2025 will focus on weight management, healthy aging, and personalized nutrition. (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Kerry Health and Nutrition Institute has released its 2025 trends forecast, highlighting key areas shaping food, beverage, and supplement innovation.

The report highlights weight management, healthy aging, personalized nutrition, microbiome health, and advancements in AI and sustainable food production.

While many of these trends have been gaining traction in recent years, Kerry Health and Nutrition suggests that 2025 will bring these categories to the forefront.

Weight management and satiety

With the rise of GLP-1 receptor agonist (GLP-1 RA) drugs, obesity management has transformed, highlighting dietary habits.

While the GLP-1 RAs were originally developed to manage type 2 diabetes, clinical trials have found that they can reduce weight by 5-15% within a year through injections, with oral formulations showing promising early results, leading them to gain popularity across broader demographics.

However as GLP-1 RAs significantly reduce caloric intake, there is a necessity for nutrient-dense diets to prevent deficiencies affecting energy, metabolism, immunity, and musculoskeletal health.

Kerry says this offers innovation opportunities to include compact, nutrient-rich foods with taste modulation to improve acceptance. This will also lead to opportunities for brands to produce satiety-boosting foods with protein and fiber.

Healthy aging and longevity

Kerry highlights several areas of healthy aging that will drive interest in a range of supplements, as science and data countries emphasize enhancing the quality of extended years rather than just prolonging life.

Interest in muscle health will be a driver for the intake of quality protein, vitamin D, calcium, magnesium, and omega-3 fatty acids.

For joint health, consumers will be looking at glucosamine, chondroitin, and omega-3s to maintain joint flexibility and reduce inflammation.

Cognitive health will continue to drive interest in omega-3 fatty acids, as well as polyphenols, antioxidants, and B vitamins (B6, B12, folate).

For immune health, vitamins A, C, D, E, zinc, and selenium will continue to be popular because of their ability to fortify the immune system.

The Kerry report also notes that attention on cellular aging will only continue to increase, as nutritional strategies now target cellular mechanisms like senescence, telomere attrition, inflammation, epigenetic changes, autophagy, and mitochondrial dysfunction, aiming to slow molecular aging processes.

It also forecasts that personalized aging will continue to gain traction, as new data reveals that organs age at different rates, which highlights the potential for tailored nutrition to address unique aging patterns.

Targeted nutrition

The growing trend toward personalized nutrition is transforming health, driven by scientific advancements and data-driven insights.

Wearable health tech integrates real-time insights into dynamic nutrition plans, continuously aligning with the growing demand for customization. This shift promises more effective outcomes by embracing each individual’s unique health profile.

According to the report, next year will see targeted nutrition addressing specific needs for joint, bone, gut, cognitive, and heart health, alongside sports performance.

Ingredients like collagen peptides, omega-3s, postbiotics, and adaptogens are expected to offer tailored support, as well as the use of nootropics for brain health and bioactive peptides for heart function.

Affordable test kits and digital health trackers will also continue to empower consumers to analyze their biological data, while AI algorithms use genetic, microbiome, and lifestyle information to craft precise dietary and supplement recommendations.

Microbiome modulation

With the microbiome revolutionizing the understanding of gut health, its far-reaching influence on immunity, mental well-being, and overall health will continue to grow in 2025.

Emerging research highlights the microbiome’s role in areas like skin and metabolic health, while innovation in postbiotics is offering gut health benefits without the challenges of live microbes.

Furthermore, the gut-brain axis underscores how gut-derived neurotransmitters and metabolites affect neurological health, opening doors to personalized nutrition strategies powered by AI and machine learning to restore balance and optimize the microbiome’s potential.