The supplement industry is complex with challenges and lots of trends to watch.

Nutrition Business Journal and SPINS’ presentation at 2025 Natural Products Expo West featured data highlighting shifts in consumer delivery format preferences, evolving sales channels and the conditions driving consumer demands. Overall, supplement industry growth in 2024 grew about 5.2% to reach $69.3 billion in industry sales, says Erika Craft, market research analyst, Nutrition Business Journal.

Bill Giebler, left, and Erika Craft present Nutrition Business Journal data on supplement sales, sales growth and best-selling categories. State of Supplements was one of many education sessions at Natural Products Expo West 2025 in Anaheim, California.

Consumers focus on preserving good health

Consumers are focusing on preventative health more than before, Craft says. It’s being done by looking at longevity and healthy aging, with consumers prioritizing their health span—the quality of life over quantity.

They are finding it with balanced health care solutions through a combination of conventional and natural medicine, Craft says.

Vitamins make up 27.5% of total industry sales, with a 2.7% growth rate.

Sports nutrition, the fourth largest category in supplement industry sales is experiencing the highest growth, with an 8.4% growth rate.

Related:State of Natural 2025: Consumer demand for protein drives growth of organic and natural products

That includes functional sports protein beverages and sports supplements, like creatine and BCAA. “It’s growing fast and it’s big,” says Bill Giebler, content and insights editor, Nutrition Business Journal. “We’re anticipating adding $3.86 billion to that market, between 2024 and 2028.”

The industry is seeing a transformation of health with wearables, from Apple watches to Fitbit, Craft says, now that 52% of consumers say they’re using a wearable, whether it’s occasionally or regularly.

“What’s different now is this consumer empowerment over their own data that they’re finding with these wearables,” Craft says.

Top categories consumers are tracking are walking/steps per day (58%), sleep quality (52%) and heart health (51%). Almost a third of general consumers are using it to guide and gauge their stress. “Gen Z is really over-indexing on all of the biohacking practices,” Craft says. “Sleep health, stress management, brain health, and using it as their daily mood.”

About 50% of general consumers surveyed said the data from their wearable device influences their dietary supplement purchases. “These are not already supplement users so I thought that that was pretty, pretty compelling,” Craft says.

Key ingredients to watch

Scott Dicker, director of market insights at SPINS, likes to watch products that are doing well in the natural channel that haven’t crossed over to conventional yet: colostrum, algae, glutathione and oregano.

“These are products that have at least 70% of their brick-and-mortar sales in the natural channel,” Dicker says. “These are the ones that have the potential to be that next explosive growth if they get mass market penetration.”

Scalable personalization health solutions

Jeffrey Bland—who holds a doctorate in chemistry from the University of Oregon and is known as the father of the functional medicine movement—says the medicinal and dietary supplement is stuck in the massification model, focused on public health and community studies with drugs being developed around population statistics.

That’s why there’s been problems with adverse drug reactions, Bland says, citing TNF-alpha blocking agents used for autoimmune diseases.

“People are not aware that the number to treat—to get positive outcomes from these drugs that cost $30,000 or $40,000 a year—is only about 30 of those 100 people have positive outcomes,” he says. “You might say, ‘How can you approve a drug that only works in 30% of the people for who are diagnosed?’ because those people that do respond, respond very well.”

That weighs the statistics enough to get over the minimal evidentiary support, he says. That’s a very different kind of healthcare than what people can get now, with wearable health technology that helps personalize, maximize and optimize their ability to function.

Now, in the age of Apple watches and Oura rings, consumers can use detailed information about their bodies to scale personalized medicine. The AI revolution will recast the data in ways a general consumer can use.

More consumers seeking nutrition as GLP-1 growth continues

Right now, 12% of the population is taking a GLP-1, says Jacqueline Jacques, naturopathic doctor and wellness industry expert. “That is the population, roughly of the state of California,” Jacques says. “That’s a lot of people.”

When a new generation of drugs come, likely in a year from now, and moves from an injection to an oral format, the usage of GLP-1 drugs might increase to 30% or 40% of the U.S. population, Jacques says. “We’re talking about close to half a population of the United States,” she says.

The success of GLP-1 drugs has led to the development of new products targeting various aspects of consumers’ weight loss journey, including nausea, muscle mass, hydration and bone health. That’s also increased the importance of multivitamins, protein, calcium and vitamin K for weight loss management as consumers look to fill in their nutrient gaps and mitigate any gut-health side effects.

Still, a significant minority of consumers, up to 40%, say they have no desire to take a GLP-1, says Noah Voreades, founder and managing director of GenBiome Consulting.

“That means we’re probably going to see more functional VMS, functional food and beverage companies developing supplements that help users along their journey,” Voreades says. “Or, for the ones that don’t want to take GLP-1s at all, offering them something that they can come close, in theory, or what they hope will mimic it.”

Purchase the State of Natural Market Insights for access to the recordings and slides from these 2025 Expo West presentations: The State of Natural and Organic, The State of Supplements and The State of Conscious Beauty. The package will be delivered between mid-March and September as assets become available. The package also includes two data-rich State of Natural Industry Snapshots and two Nutritional Capital Network Investment Trends Snapshots. To sign up for the $399 package, log in or create a free registration to NewHope.com, then click here to complete the purchase.