Vegan steak, food upcycling and mushroom microbes: what we learned at the Super Bowl of healthy snacking
By Josh Heller
Published March 7 2025
"If you want to know what healthy snacks you'll be eating in the next few years, Anaheim Convention Center was the place to be last week, for Expo West, officially Natural Products Expo West.
Known as the Cannes Film Festival of natural nibbles, the SXSW of organic snacks, the Super Bowl of conscious Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG), Expo West is where global business gets done and the future of food is decided.
Over the four days — it started Tuesday and ended Friday — an estimated 65,000 people explored nearly 3,000 exhibitor booths. There was much to taste, from vegan cheeses to mini samosas to traditional chorizos to protein-dense waffles. It was hundreds of rows of tiny appetizers that don’t necessarily go together, but after you munch them all and the bites add up, you forget to eat lunch.
I came prepared by meeting up with my friend Bob Goldberg, a pioneer of the health food scene and co-founder of Follow Your Heart. Goldberg has been coming to this conference every year since the first one in 1981.
“When you’re on the floor, the trend of the moment seems to come out," he said, noting that in the past the zeitgeisty word had been “organic” or “gluten-free.”
This year, it seemed the word was “functional,” as in, he said, “it’s not just a food, it does something for you.” With a laugh and as befits someone who’s seen everything over the years, “some of it’s real, and some of it’s unmitigated bull——.”
Out on the floor I saw the phrase in action. There was a Sati Soda with flavors like Clarity Lemon-Lime that described themselves as a “functional organic beverage line.” Eclipse Foods launched a brand of non-dairy Bon-Bons that “mimicked milk’s creamy molecular structure and functionality using plants.” I also saw a line of “Functional Mushroom Gummies” from NOON, which they say are “neuroscience-backed for Focus, Chill and Sleep.”
Upcycling
I also spotted a word I hadn’t connected to food before — “upcycling”.
At one panel, UC Davis professor Ned Spang hit us with cold, hard facts: one third of the food we produce is not eaten, accounting for $1 trillion in economic value and causing 8% to 10% of overall greenhouse emissions.
One solution: upcycling food that would otherwise be wasted — not just the food we throw away, but also the leftover byproducts of processed food production, like spent grain from a brewery, fruit rinds, coffee grounds and potato pulp.
Spang is using data to keep track of these leftovers, so innovators can use this raw material creatively — to make all new upcycled products.
It seems to be working. Back on the convention center floor, I tried some upcycled products, like Uglies Kettle Sweet Potato Chips. They’re made from potatoes that have small imperfections or may just be the wrong size or shape. Either way, I wouldn’t even have known because they tasted great.
I also saw Chee-Hoo, a Hawaiian dairy-free frozen dessert bar that upcycles bananas, RIND Snacks, freeze-dried fruit that uses upcycled produce, and Huxley, an energy drink made from the superfruit cascara, the antioxidant rich outer husk of a coffee bean."
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Read full article here: https://laist.com/news/food/future-healthy-snacksÂ
