Complete Food Category

Phil: When we talk about trends, food trends are important. They keep on evolving, they keep on getting better. And then the latest food trend as it relates to health and nutrition is called the Complete Food category. Tell us what that means and what it's about, and should we really care? 

Sally: Yeah. Well, this is an interesting concept that we've seen going on for a while. You know, we've talked about, soylent, which is the drink that replaces meals that's been around for a while. There's one right now called Huel that is doing this. And the idea is that you have one food that offers you all of the nutrients you need. This is popular in the sports nutrition industry. It is expected to continue to grow quite a bit into 2028. I find this trend really hard to wrap my mind around because I think ultimately people want to eat and taste food. And when we are looking at replacing our meals with a shake, a drink that gives us all of the nutrients, I don't think that that's necessarily sustainable for people. You know, even if they're trying to lose weight, they're trying to get more vitamins, you know, eventually they're just gonna wanna eat some real food. 

Phil: Yeah. And also, let's not forget about the whole social experience where, you know, you're sitting around the dining room table with your family, you're talking, hopefully people are not on their iPhones texting. And what you're really doing is you're using a meal as a way to, you know, generate conversation and relationships and things like that. And versus just having a shake, you know, chugging it down in like 10 seconds and getting on. You know, we've know for years and this goes back to the 1950s, that people were always looking to get all of our nutrients as easily as possible so that we could live forever, but we forget about this social aspect of food. And, you know, I think that's a shame that we're doing that.