Happy New Year!!

Looking forward to the year ahead

Image Credit: Shutterstock.com/Evgeny Atamanenko

Happy 2023, everyone! As we look forward towards the new year, I wanted to pause and express how thankful I am for having you along in this journey. Throughout the last year, I have thoroughly enjoyed the conversations that I have had with many of you that were sparked from some of my posts. It brings me such joy and satisfaction to see that you are getting as much out of this as I am. I especially want to thank my paid subscribers: I spend hours researching and writing these posts, so your recognition of my efforts is certainly appreciated.

I have spent the last year discussing many different functional ingredients. Although there are still many ingredients that I have yet to cover, I want to start the new year by doing a slight pivot. If you have subscribed for a while, then you have probably read some of the “New Product Friday” segments. In these, I write short sentences on non-functional ingredients. Although these sentences are helpful to get an understanding of an ingredient, they certainly do not tell the whole story. Many ingredients have quite a bit of controversy behind them that is too difficult to explain in a few sentences. As such, I think it’s important to take the time to do deeper dives on some of these non-functional ingredients. All these ingredients are found in many different food and beverage products and it is important to know what you are putting into your body. Some ingredients have hidden benefits, while others may be potentially harmful in the long run. Just as functional ingredients have varying degrees of scientific evidence behind them, so do non-functional ingredients, too.

After all, we are what we eat!

Before I close out, I wanted to thank each and every one of my subscribers. I am so glad that you have found this column and I really appreciate you taking time out of day to read it. It is with your support and encouragement that I am ready to start writing for a new year. I look forward to what this year will hold and if you have any suggestions of topics, please feel free to comment or reach out. And do not forget to share this column with anyone you think would be interested!