‘Tis the season again. No, I don’t mean the holidays — rather annual trends season, when market research firms and experts predict what will be hot in the coming year. For pet food, considering some of these trends lists for human foods often offers insights.
Innova Market Insights and Euromonitor International recently released their top human food trends for 2025. Here are some that could also appear in pet food next year or at least provide some clues for what may be coming a little farther down the road.
Ingredients and beyond: Focus on quality
Innova’s top choice for 2025, this trend (like many others) is a continuation from past years, only with some differences and nuances. For example, Lu Ann Williams, Innova’s global insights director, said 2024 was about consumers wanting to find the “star” ingredient; for 2025, they really want to home in on ingredient quality.
Quality is one of those ambiguous concepts that can have different meanings for different people. Perhaps that’s what prompted Innova to ask consumers in 11 countries (Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Spain, U.K., U.S.) what the term means to them. Averages of their responses showed aspects including price, freshness, health benefits, nutritional content, shelf life and safety resonating the most, with naturalness and brands at lower levels.
Williams stressed that “quality” also means a balance of all these factors for consumers. If you look over past trends, “you see health and wellness in this, you see clean label in this,” she said during a recent webinar. “It’s not just one simple thing; consumers are really looking holistically at all these factors.”
Personalized nutrition in information culture
“Precision wellness” is Innova’s number two trend, building on the personalized nutrition one from years past. Yet, our “current information culture,” as Williams put it, raises the bar by challenging food companies to meet targeted nutritional needs. These include balanced, age-specific, gender-specific (there’s a significant focus on women’s needs/products now), lifestyle-based, condition-specific or performance nutrition. As we know, many of these also apply to pet food.
Human food and beverage products addressing those needs are available all over the world, not just the West. “Nearly 60% of consumers say they are proactive about their health, with over half planning their nutrition intake based on health issues,” wrote Missy Green on FoodIngredientsFirst.com from an interview with Williams. One example is with weight management, the top physical health concern for consumers globally. Accordingly, Innova has tracked 10% growth from 2023 to 2024 in food and beverage launches globally with weight management claims.
Euromonitor’s top trend for 2025, “healthspan plans,” echoes the wellness one for Innova. In Euromonitor’s case, it’s focusing on healthy aging via nutrition, vitamins and supplements, digital health and fitness trackers and other means.
Gut health: Flourish from within
Gut and digestive health is the top driver of functional human food purchases, making it also a top trend, Williams said, and her firm registered an 8% increase in gut/digestive health claims globally. The top ingredients in the category are fiber, vitamin D and probiotics; snacks with probiotics have seen 24% growth.
For pets, digestive health is the second biggest concern and priority for dog and cat owners, with 34% selecting it in a survey conducted by Kerry, an ingredients supplier. During a webinar, John Menton, Ph.D., senior director for business development-pet for Kerry, also cited Innova data showing a 22% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2019 to 2023 in pet food product launches with prebiotics or probiotics.
Rethinking plant-based foods
Despite plant-based foods being on the market — and on trend — for at least 10 years, everyone is “still figuring out” this category, Williams said, adding that it’s essentially still in its infancy.
“The intense buzz of plant-based alternatives has quieted, rerouting consumers’ natural interests to plants in real and recognizable form,” said text in the Innova webinar. Translation: Almost 25% of consumers globally hesitate to buy plant-based products they consider overly processed, Williams told Green in the interview. “Taste and texture expectations are not being met,” she said during the webinar.
In 2024, plant-based products being too processed and artificial was the fifth most cited barrier for people buying such products; Innova’s latest survey showed it has risen to number three. Still, the category is growing, especially for products that seem more natural, with 23% average annual increases from 2020 to 2024 in vegan/plant-based foods with a natural claim.
On the pet food side, NielsenIQ has tracked 1.8% year-over-year growth in products with plant-based protein and 7.8% CAGR over the past four years. These proteins now appear in 52% of pet foods on the market.
Sustainability: Climate adaptation
Though inflation has “really been a damper on this,” Williams said, sustainability still ranks as Innova’s number six trend for 2025, with 48% of global consumers saying they are very or extremely aware of the impact of climate change. They also seem to understand that climate disruption can drive price sensitivity in foods, ranking price changes as the aspect most affected by climate change.
Euromonitor also noted the inflation and price angle with one of its trends, “eco logical”; 40% of global consumers it surveyed in early 2024 said price was a top barrier to purchasing more sustainable products. Its report said that, in response, “consumers take a pragmatic approach to sustainable consumption, where green attributes are often seen as essential complementary benefits — not always the sole motivator.”
No matter consumer perceptions, companies and brands are providing more and more eco-friendly products. “The number of online SKUs with sustainability claims across 11 fast-moving consumer goods industries and 25 countries increased from 4 million” in 2022 to 5 million in 2024, the Euromonitor report read. And, sales increased in all 11 categories from 2020 to 2023, including in pet care, where sales reached about US$40 million in 2023.
AI in human food (and pet food)
Artificial intelligence (AI) is still a relatively new phenomenon yet growing quickly, as we are all aware. Food and beverage brands are starting to communicate how they’re using it to improve product safety, create new products, increase wellness and be more sustainable, Williams said. (Such usages are also happening in pet food; watch for an article in the December 2024 issue of Petfood Industry to learn more.)
Food and beverage launches with AI-related claims leaped 720% from 2023 to 2024, though from a very small base. Innova’s recent consumer survey found 25% are not aware of AI, yet 23% said they’re curious about it.
Euromonitor also named an AI-related trend for 2025. Despite calling it “AI ambivalent,” the company’s research showed 43% of consumers consider AI a trustworthy source of information; and they found shopping platforms incorporating generative AI delivered benefits such as more relevant product recommendations (named by 27%), enhanced personalized assistance (25%), improved chatbot interactions (24%), more relevant deals or promotions (24%) and summarized consumer review insights (22%).
“Increased adoption also raised skepticism as consumers and regulators pointed to flaws in output,” the Euromonitor report said. “But people aren’t turning their backs on this tech, rather, evaluating the pros and cons.”
