Highlights
The 2025 nutrition trends for active adults include:
- Hydration with great taste
- Energy boosters
- Protein-packed snacks
- Micronutrients for holistic health
2025 Nutrition Trends for Active Adults: What They Are & Why They Matter
Active lifestyle consumers prioritize their health and wellness—seeking high quality hydration, energy, and nutrition solutions. See how the latest nutrition trends for active adults can inspire meaningful product innovation.
Who Is the Active Lifestyle Consumer?
The active lifestyle consumer prioritizes health and wellness in their daily life, focusing on staying physically active and maintaining a balanced diet. These consumers are highly informed, often leveraging online resources and apps to make educated decisions about nutrition and fitness.
Active lifestyle consumers span across age demographics, from Gen Z and Millennials adopting early wellness trends to active Boomers maintaining strength and mobility in later years. They all share a proactive approach to health, seeking foods and beverages to support their goals.
Convenience is essential, with portable and ready-to-consume options like bars and beverages fitting seamlessly into their busy lifestyles. Clean label and functional ingredients influence their purchasing decisions, and they are willing to invest in premium products that deliver both quality and function.
What Are the Top Nutrition Trends for Active Adults?
For brands seeking to understand the evolving needs of this highly influential consumer segment, here’s a look at the top 2025 nutrition trends for active adults.
1. Hydration with Great Taste
Hydration products are evolving far beyond traditional sports drinks to meet the diverse needs of active consumers, though great taste remains central. Electrolyte powders, nutrient-infused gels, and functional beverages offer a spectrum of hydration options, allowing consumers to choose the format that best fits their lifestyle.
Brands like Liquid I.V. have led the way by popularizing single-serve hydration powders packed with electrolytes, vitamins, and functional ingredients. The convenience of stick packs, a wide variety of flavors, and sugar-free options empower consumers to personalize their hydration routines, whether at the gym, while traveling, or during a busy day.
2. Energy Boosters
Also in demand are energy-boosting products, which active adults use for a range of reasons. Ingredients have expanded beyond caffeine, B vitamins, and amino acids to include natural caffeine sources (such as green tea extract, green coffee extract, guarana, and yerba mate) and functional botanicals (like ginseng, ashwagandha, rhodiola, and functional mushrooms).
Beverages are the go-to choice for a quick energy burst, with energy drinks, functional iced coffees, and pre-workout powders leading the pack. However, consumers are turning to sports and electrolyte drinks and high-protein, low-carb snacks for more sustained energy.
3. Protein-Packed Snacks
Protein snacks are one of the most significant nutrition trends for active adults as they offer the convenience, satiety, energy, and workout nutrition so valuable to active lifestyle consumers. Options such as protein bars, savory protein snacks, and RTD protein shakes make it easy to bring protein to work, school, or the gym.
Protein bars, in particular, are popular as pre- and post-workout snacks, supporting sustained energy and muscle recovery. Meal replacement is another use of protein snacks—helping consumers eat healthily when in a rush and to support weight management.
4. Micronutrients for Holistic Health
Active consumers understand the importance of holistic health, an approach that promotes mental and physical balance to achieve optimal wellbeing. Vitamins and minerals support this in many ways: B vitamins for energy, iron for stamina, and vitamins C and E to combat stress (including stress from intense physical activity).
Healthy snacks and beverages that provide a good or excellent source of essential micronutrients immediately stand out to active consumers as products that can support their overall wellbeing, which includes physical performance and mental clarity.
Choose Glanbia Nutritionals for Creating Foods and Beverages for Active Adults
Glanbia Nutritionals’ innovative, science-backed solutions for food and beverage manufacturers allow us to support your development of products for active adults. Our active and healthy lifestyle ingredients—from optimized proteins and bioactives to custom nutrient premixes—are designed to provide high level nutritional and functional benefits for healthy living.
Staying attuned to the nutrition trends for active adults is essential for food and beverage companies to meet evolving wellness needs, drive innovation, and deliver products that effectively support holistic health, energy, and performance.
Contact us to learn more about these consumers and how to meet their needs.
Frequently Asked Questions
Protein contains essential amino acids that our bodies need to support a variety of functions—from muscle building to energy production to immune response. While most people get the bulk of their protein from a healthy diet, some groups of people are interested in the benefits of higher protein intakes—and protein powder helps them achieve this.
A protein powder offers a quick and easy way to take in more protein than one can usually get from foods. This is because a protein powder has been processed from the original food into a concentrated source of protein. Athletes, active lifestyle consumers, and seniors are just a few examples of people looking for extra protein for muscle support, satiety, weight management, and more.
The Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) for an adult with minimum physical activity is 0.8 grams per kilogram of body weight. This means that someone with a low activity level who weighs 150 lbs. should be sure to consume at least 55 grams of protein each day to prevent a protein deficiency. This can be calculated by dividing your weight in lbs by 2.2 (to convert to kg) and multiplying by 0.8 grams: 150/2.2 x 0.8 = 55 grams).
However, certain groups of people have higher protein needs. For example, starting in their 40s to 50s, people need to increase their protein to 1-1.2 grams per kilogram to prevent age-related muscle loss (sarcopenia). People with very high activity levels (especially those who regularly lift weights or engage in endurance sports) may require 1.1-1.7 grams per kilogram. The USDA’s Dietary Guidelines for Americans suggest that 10%-35% of our calories should come from protein.
The essential micronutrients are the vitamins and minerals the body can’t make enough of, or at all, to support its essential functions. For humans, the essential water-soluble vitamins are vitamin B1 (thiamine), vitamin B2 (riboflavin), vitamin B3 (niacin), vitamin B5 (pantothenic acid), vitamin B6 (pyridoxine), vitamin B7 (biotin), vitamin B9 (folate), vitamin B12 (cobalamin), and vitamin C (ascorbic acid). The essential fat-soluble vitamins are vitamin A, vitamin D, vitamin E, and vitamin K.
The essential minerals are categorized as macrominerals or trace minerals, with the latter required by the body in only tiny amounts. The essential macrominerals are calcium, phosphorous, magnesium, sodium, chloride, potassium, and sulfur, while the essential trace minerals are iron, manganese, copper, zinc, iodine, and selenium.
Functional foods are foods that provide a health or wellness benefit beyond essential nutrients. While these can include foods and beverages that naturally contain beneficial ingredients (like MCTs in coconut, beta-glucan fiber in oats, and L-theanine in green tea), functional foods more commonly refer to products that have been fortified with functional ingredients.
Functional ingredients, also known as bioactive ingredients, include certain botanicals, fatty acids, amino acids, fruit and vegetable extracts, and mushrooms, as well as functional fibers and proteins. A sports drink with antioxidants, a cereal with probiotics, and a nutrition bar with turmeric are all examples of functional foods.
Many different nutrients support sports performance due to their roles in muscle building, endurance, or exercise recovery. High-quality protein is the most important nutrient for building, repairing, and maintaining muscle since it contains all the essential amino acids. One amino acid in particular, the branched-chain amino acid leucine, is known for activating the protein synthesis process.
Endurance athletes also need to consume adequate water and replenish their electrolytes, including potassium and magnesium, to prevent muscle cramps and fatigue. Like electrolytes, iron—which plays key roles in oxygen transport and energy metabolism—is also lost through perspiration. Iron requirements are often much higher for endurance athletes and those engaging in high-intensity exercise, making iron another important nutrient for optimal performance.
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