The Real Trends in Health & Wellness for 2017

It’s that time of year again—the time when our email inboxes and web browsers overflow with predictions about the key food trends for the coming year. Will 2017 be the year of sorghum? Will matcha take over the beverage market? Will people start swapping jackfruit for meat? 

While these trends represent exciting innovations in the food world, we don’t believe that they are the trends that will drive health & wellness in America next year. Instead, we encourage people to use this year-end period to take a step back and think about the big picture for 2017.

Americans Want to Be Healthier

A significant—and growing—percentage of Americans want to be healthier, lose weight, and feel better about their physical well being in 2017. So much so that in a recent survey, nearly half of Americans said that they are actively trying to lose weight. The number of Americans who use a gym has reached an all-time high—58 million people! This number has risen steadily since 2000, and we can expect this trend to continue.

Consumers Are Confused

We’ve written about the conflicting reports in the media that have created a cluttered space when it comes to health & wellness. Google any health-related topic and you’ll get dozens of conflicting opinions by self-proclaimed “experts.” People are confused about what to believe—and who to trust. 

Personal healthcare professionals are the most trusted source of health & wellness information, according to IFIC. As fake news, biased content, and questionably credentialed experts continue to proliferate online, consumers will turn to these trusted sources to cut through the clutter.

Trust and Credibility are Hard Won

Building trust and credibility is perhaps the most important “trend” for 2017. Americans have been skeptical of the media. Then came the presidential election, in which fake news garnered more attention on Facebook than the real news. 

While false claims are made by a very small percentage of brands, they have led 77% of consumers to believe that diet products aren’t as healthy as they claim to be. The uncertainty about who or what to trust online will make the role of face-to-face health professionals even more important in 2017.

Wishing you all health and prosperity in 2017!

A Battle Cry to My Dietitian Colleagues

I spent the first decade of my professional career working as an advertising executive. People loved giving me suggestions for future ads or asking why pharmaceutical commercials involved people running in fields while a soothing voiceover announced scary side effects. At no time did I ever encounter anyone actively trying to do my job.  When I decided to pursue becoming a dietitian, I noticed one shocking and disturbing fact: I was hustling for years going to school full-time, taking the proper route toward becoming a credentialed Registered Dietitian, yet there were people who had never taken a single nutrition course touting themselves as “Wellness Professionals” doling out nutrition advice all across cyberspace.  The hardest pill to swallow is that people actually listened to them!

These days, the letters after your name don’t seem to matter as much as the followers you have on social media.  Your “influence” now determines your level of expertise—or at least the media has decided this is the case, given the exposure celebrities and bloggers with large followings receive.  However, the recent IFIC Food & Health Survey reveals that 83% of Americans have little or no trust in advice given from celebrities about food and diet, and named Registered Dietitians as the most trusted source of nutrition information.  So why aren’t dietitians getting the exposure commensurate with this level of trust?

This, my dietitian colleagues, is where I ask a favor of all of you.  It is time we SPEAK UP and BE LOUDER about our knowledge and expertise.  From your immediate social circles, to the community, social media channels, and beyond.  It’s time we, the Registered Dietitian Nutritionists, become THE go-to nutrition experts.  Whether you blog, ‘gram, tweet, or counsel patients face-to-face every day, be the voice of sound science among the nonsensical clutter. Use your influence to empower consumers to make smarter choices when it comes to their health, and make sure they mention it was a Registered Dietitian who helped them.  

We must continue seeking allies and endorsements about our expertise from respected medical professionals in the media and elsewhere.  We need to continue partnering with manufactures and marketing companies to become influencers in the food/beverage/health industry and among consumers.  Dietitians are more than just nutritionists with higher education and clinical experience.  We are THE health and wellness experts, and it is time we make our influence known.  

Trust in Health Professionals Continues to Grow

The annual IFIC Food & Health Survey, released this month, is chock full of fascinating data on Americans’ relationship to food. The entire report is worth a read, but one finding that jumps out at us is that Americans trust dietitians/nutritionists and their own personal health professionals more than any other source. The IFIC survey has shown this to be the case for many years—trust in these professionals only continues to grow, while trust in bloggers and digital sources of information is falling. This is why we are so passionate about face-to-face interactions with influencers as a way for healthy brands to engage consumers.