Top Diet Trends of 2022 & 2023
Plenity
Plenity is a medical device that is meant to help people lose weight. The device is a small, pill-sized implant that is inserted into the stomach. Once in place, the device is meant to help the body feel full after eating small amounts of food.
Factor Meals
Factor Meals are pre-packaged, portion-controlled meals that are designed to help with weight loss or meal planning. The meals are low in carbs and calories, and they are high in protein and fiber.
Solid Starts
Solid Starts is a content platform on how to introduce real food to babies - a trend that's called baby-led weaning. The site has helpful guides and a large food database of appropriate food for babies at certain ages. It also has an app that helps parents introduce real food to babies.
Dirty Bulk
Dirty Bulk is a type of bodybuilding where the goal is to gain as much muscle mass as possible. The diet and training routine is focused on eating a lot of calories and lifting heavy weights.
Body Recomposition
Body recomposition is the process of losing fat while gaining muscle. It is often considered to be the Holy Grail of fitness, as it allows people to achieve the lean, muscular look without having to diet or exercise excessively.
Gut Health Diet
Gut health diet is a diet that is designed to improve gut health. The diet focuses on eating nutrient-rich foods that support gut health, such as fiber-rich fruits and vegetables, fermented foods, and omega-3-rich foods.
Optavia Diet
The Optavia Diet is a weight-loss program that is based on the principle of calorie cycling. The program encourages participants to eat five small meals a day, with each meal consisting of a protein, a carbohydrate, and a healthy fat.
WeFast
WeFast is a social media platform and community that is dedicated to helping people achieve their health and fitness goals. The platform provides a community of support, resources, and accountability to help people stay on track.
Weight Gain Syrup
Weight Gain Syrup is a syrup that is meant to be consumed to help with weight gain by increasing the body’s calorie intake.
High Alkaline
A high alkaline diet is a type of diet that is typically high in fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, and low in processed foods and animal products. The diet is said to help balance the body's pH levels and improve overall health.
Low Histamine
Low histamine diets are diets that are designed to minimize the amount of histamine that is consumed. Histamine is a compound that is found in many foods and is responsible for many of the symptoms associated with food allergies and intolerances.
Gut Cleanse
A gut cleanse is a detoxification process that aims to cleanse the digestive system. The goal is to remove toxins and waste from the gut in order to improve overall health. There are many different methods for performing a gut cleanse, including dietary changes, supplements, and detox teas.
Anti Inflammatory Diet
An anti-inflammatory diet is a diet that is meant to help reduce inflammation throughout the body. The diet is typically high in fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, and low in saturated fat and sugar.
Insulin Resistance Diet
An insulin resistance diet is a diet that is designed to help those with insulin resistance to lose weight and improve their health. The diet is low in carbs and high in healthy fats, and is meant to help the body to better use insulin.
PCOS Friendly
PCOS Friendly is an adjective used to describe products, diets, or lifestyles that are considered to be beneficial for women who have been diagnosed with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS). PCOS is a hormonal disorder that can cause infertility, weight gain, and other health problems.
Lean Bulk
Lean bulk is a weightlifting and nutrition strategy that aims to increase muscle mass while minimizing body fat. The goal is to achieve a “lean” look, as opposed to the more traditional “bulky” look. The strategy focuses on eating a high-protein diet and lifting heavy weights.
Kidney Friendly
Kidney Friendly is an adjective that is used to describe foods or drinks that are low in phosphorus and potassium. These nutrients are commonly found in foods that are high in protein and are harmful to people with kidney disease.
GF DF
GF DF is a food label abbreviation indicating food that is gluten-free and dairy-free. The labels are becoming more common as people become more aware of food allergies and sensitivities.
Diabetic Friendly
A diabetic-friendly diet is one that is low in sugar and carbohydrates, and high in protein and healthy fats. The goal of a diabetic-friendly diet is to stabilize blood sugar levels and promote weight loss.
High Protein Breakfast
A high protein breakfast is a breakfast that is high in protein. Protein is said to be beneficial in keeping the body feeling full and satisfied throughout the day. There are many different high protein breakfast options, including eggs, yogurt, and oatmeal.
Gainful Protein
Gainful protein is a fitness food startup that makes protein powder, both for weight gain and for weight loss.
Low Fodmap
Low FODMAP is a diet that is meant to help those with digestive issues. The diet eliminates foods that are high in FODMAPs (Fermentable Oligosaccharides, Disaccharides, Monosaccharides, and Polyols), which are said to cause stomach discomfort.
Volume Eating
Volume eating is a technique where a person eats a large amount of food in a short period of time in order to feel full. The technique is said to be beneficial in weight loss and preventing overeating.
Trend Highlight – The Rise of Plenity
One reason Plenity is one of the fastest-growing weight loss aids is that even though it looks like a pill, the company behind it was able to get it classified as a medical device rather than a drug.
The FDA approval process for medical devices allows approval in cases where a device shows equivalent functionality to an existing treatment, which is a much cheaper and faster approach than the oftentimes billion-dollar investment of a full clinical trial.
Plenity is a diet pill that helps users feel full. It got approved because it was submitted to the FDA as having the same function as gastric bypass surgery, in which part of a person’s stomach is closed off, or removed to make the actual stomach smaller.
Plenity's active ingredients, cellulose and citric acid, expand in the stomach and make patients feel full earlier. So in a sense, this regulatory decision is not as strange as it looks: gastric bypass and Plenity both help people lose weight by giving them less room for food.
The surgical weight loss industry generates $6 billion each year in revenue, but the potential market is larger—many people either don't want to spend money on surgery or worry that it's too drastic. Part of this market size is because obesity has been rising for decades, both in the US and abroad. Obesity is not only a problem on its own, but contributes to other health complications too like heart disease, diabetes, and injuries from falls.
Plenity is part of an accidental arms race: food and entertainment companies make money from a high-calorie, sedentary lifestyle, and there’s less revenue in promoting moderation. This has been part of why the average weight has drifted up over time, and Plenity is one of many companies trying to tackle this problem as it gets more acute. Like blue light glasses, which help people feel better about their screen time instead of actually reducing how much of it they get, Plenity lets people keep eating until they’re completely full, and just changes when that is.
Trend Highlight – The Weight Gain Opportunity
There’s a supply and demand mismatch—and thus a market opportunity—in the business of helping people reach their ideal weight; but not with weight loss. In fact, Google queries for "how to lose weight" overshadow those for “how to gain weight” by only to 6:1. However, the weight loss industry is far more than 6x more competitive and saturated than the weight gain industry: in fact, there are almost 3,000% more apps for losing weight than gaining it.
Companies like Noom, with 45 million users, have been able to build up a large following by helping users lose weight. The company uses an effective signup flow which encourages users to set a deadline, such as a wedding they’ll be attending or even just “summer”, which helps the app not only tune the weight loss program, but also the email drip campaigns. Noom’s focus though, is exclusively on losing weight—even if users sign up and express the intention to add a few pounds of muscle, the signup workflow uses copy about weight loss.
The weight-gaining market is not only more ripe for opportunity but also more fragmented than the weight-loss market. Some customers are trying to add muscle mass, and look for products like whey protein. Others want to add weight more generally, and they increasingly turn to appetite-stimulating supplements or weight-gain syrups.
Some of these products are carb- and vitamin-rich meal shakes that just add extra calories to diets, but some of them include medications that are used off-label to stimulate appetite. These weight-gaining shakes have health risks, and are often marketed illegally.
Media attention often drives new diet trends. When celebrities were mediated through magazines, TV, and movies, they tended to be thinner, but many popular influencers have a different body type—one popular weight gainer brand, "slim thicc," is named after the body type exemplified by Kim Kardashian, Nicki Minaj, and other celebrities. With more diverse celebrity body types, there's a wider dispersion in diet products that allow people to achieve them.
