Better for YouIngredientsFunctional New Products

Natural Products Expo West 2025 Review with Kerry Hughes

By David Feder , RDN, Executive Editor–Technical, Kerry Hughes

The Prepared Foods network’s Executive Editor–Technical David Feder interviews ethnobotanist and regular contributor to Prepared Foods Kerry Hughes. Hughes, principal of EthnoPharm, is a longtime contributor to Prepared Foods, and founder of the EBI Network, a network of high-impact suppliers and market partners working to bring verified and certified new plants and plant products to market through off-the-shelf sustainability and branding solutions.

She discusses the trending foods, beverages, and ingredients—especially those using botanicals and other natural functional ingredients—that she spied at the 2025 Natural Products Expo West in Anaheim, California. Products and ingredients she highlights are: Hot Honey and other infused honey/honey-containing foods and beverages; black sesame, including a black sesame butter spread and a black sesame ice cream.

Not just focusing on botanicals or better-for-you products, Hughes also was intrigued by a new take on jerky, crispy beef jerky from Vaquero Bandido. She also praised one of several non-alcoholic versions of the classic negroni cocktail, in this case “Noot,” which she fairly disclosed her involvement in the development of it. An overall health trend she noted was “condition specific” uses of nutraceuticals such as creatine, represented in numerous products targeting muscle loss and other complications of aging and tying into the trend of foods and beverages for persons on GLP-1.

To check out these and Hughes’ other sightings at the Nat Expo West ’25 show above, or listen to the audio version, below.

Natural Products Expo West 2025 Review with Kerry Hughes

Kerry Hughes discusses the trending foods, beverages, and ingredients—especially those using botanicals and other natural functional ingredients—that she spied at the 2025 Natural Products Expo West

Listen to more from The Prepared Foods podcasts.

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David Feder, RDN, has been a food, nutrition and health journalist for 26 years. In spite of an academic background that began with psychology and biblical archaeology, David cut his teeth as a celebrated chef in Texas during the 1970s and 1980s, helping pioneer haute-health & fusion cuisines in high-end restaurants and hotels. In the 1990s he became a registered dietitian while completing research and coursework toward a Ph.D. in nutrition biochemistry at the University of Texas at Austin. Along the way he taught food science and nutrition while practicing as a nutrition counselor.

Kerry Hughes, MS, principal for EthnoPharm, is an ethnobotanist, herbalist, and author with a 20-year record of success in natural product development. EthnoPharm specializes in global natural product development and education, innovative product formulation, and nexus-of-market opportunity identification. Hughes is driven by a "tenacious fascination with the potential health-enhancing role plants can play." With a focus on ethnobotanical discovery and strategic innovation, Hughes and EthnoPharm continue to expand the boundaries of new natural product development, catalyze applied phyto-product breakthroughs, and bring to market new, efficacious, and profitable products that not only heal people but help protect the threatened global biodiversity.