Nutritional maternal health in the U.S. has high rates of nutrient deficiencies, leading to risks like anemia, preeclampsia, low birth weight and significantly higher maternal mortality rates.

The Council for Responsible Nutrition is ringing the alarm on two bills, one impacting pregnant women in California, the other, minors in New York.

Nielsen IQ recently released its The Next Frontier of Wellness Report. The leading global consumer intelligence company identified several trends shaping the industry.

Once dominated by a few established brands that relied on high-sugar, high-caffeine formulas for an energy boost, today’s energy drink market is larger, more fragmented and healthier than that of the early 2000s.

Demand for weight management supplements is on the rise, with the global market size estimated at over 33 billion currently and projected to reach over 71 billion by 2030, according to Grand View Research. The demand for natural and clinically-backed weight management supplements is largely driven by increasing obesity rates, growing health and wellness awareness and the demand for effective solutions.

Folate, also known as vitamin B9, is a vital nutrient that plays a pivotal role in cell growth and development. The CDC recommends all women capable of becoming pregnant take 400 micrograms of folic acid daily to prevent neural tube defects in a baby’s developing brain and spine. But what is folate’s role outside of pregnancy?

As awareness of gut health grows, so do more specific areas of the microbiome, such as gut-brain axis, the gut-skin axis and the gut-hormone axis. For women, this hormonal link is the estrobolome, which encompasses the bidirectional communication system between the gut and the endocrine system.

BioLongevity Labs is a health optimization company that focuses on peptides, bioregulators and small molecules. While much of the biohacking community knows about these compounds, general awareness is low, with only 3% of Americans familiar with therapeutic peptides, according to BioLongevity Labs Cofounder Hunter Williams.

Although a large majority of pregnant women in the United States use prenatal vitamins, not all are created equal—and most have not been studied in their final, finished form. In fact, women of ‘childbearing potential’ were banned from U.S. clinical studies until 1993.

Trends are always a hot topic, but what about reasoning behind those trends? What motivations, social dynamics and experiences shape our decisions when we purchase products like creatine or ashwagandha, for example?