Seven wellness trends to watch in 2016

Some have called it a wellness revolution, others a right pain in the backside. Whatever you think of the current obsession with all things natural and healthy, one thing is certain – it’s not going anywhere.

In 2015, we had wearable fitness, farm-to-table, bean-to-bar, green juicing, kale and avocado with everything and mindfulness everywhere. In 2016, we face more jacked-up versions of all that (get ready for kale skincare and mindful decorating), plus a host of all-new health trends promising to make us feel better and live longer. Indeed, in this month’s global food and drink trend report for 2016 from market research company Mintel, eight out of the 12 trends identified related to health and wellbeing. “Consumer demands for natural and less processed food and drinks are forcing companies to remove artificial ingredients,” the report said, declaring “artificial” to be “public enemy No.1”.

Here are the health trends to watch in 2016.

Exercise: Fitness Prozac

New feminist icon Lena Dunham, star of the hit series Girls and force behind the new women’s chat website lennyletter.com recently gushed about how much she loved her regular trips to A-list trainer Tracy Anderson’s New York studio. Dunham’s objective was not weight loss, she said, but alleviating anxiety. “To those struggling with anxiety, OCD, depression, I know it’s mad annoying when people tell you to exercise, and it took me 16 medicated years to listen. I’m glad I did. It’s ain’t about the ass, it’s about the brain.”

Get ready for a host of new fitness classes and books piggy-backing on the trend, kicking off with The Feelgood Plan: Happier, Healthier and Slimmer in 15 Minutes a Day by Dalton Wong – Jennifer Lawrence’s trainer – and health journalist Kate Faithfull-Williams (Ebury, £14.99; published January 7).

Nutrition: The carb comeback

Rice, oats and even – whisper it… – bread are back on the menu as we get smart on carbs and learn to distinguish the types that provide nutrients and lasting energy and those that make us fat. One study of 5,000 consumers released in November found that 1 in 2 could now distinguish between a “good” and “bad” carb. Seven out of ten Europeans, meanwhile, had tried to limited their intake of sugar (a bad carb, for the record) and 60 per cent linked wholegrains, fibre and complex carbohydrates (good carbs) with sustained energy.

Body Fuel, a new book by ex-US forces operative Mark Lauren (Vermilion, £12.99; published January 21), separates carbs into “slow-fuel” (that’s vegetables, fruits, wholegrain rice, oats, pasta, etc) and “fast-fuel” (sugars, processed and refined foods) and puts both of them back on the menu, albeit in controlled amounts. Plus, just as you finally learned how to pronounce quinoa, a family of new supergrains is introduced, including farro, amaranth and kamut, thanks to a new book, Power Grains (Ryland, Peters & Small, £9.99; published February 11).

Technology: Get fit – get rewards

A swathe of start-ups are now applying the Air Miles concept to fitness and health. Free app Earth Miles links with fitness tracking devices such as Jawbone Up and FitBit or step apps such as Strava, RunKeeper, Moves and Map My Run and allows you to earn discounts and offers depending on how active you are. The premise? It converts the distance you walk, run or bike into “Earthmiles” – points that translate into free classes and discounts on healthy products.

Meanwhile, Running Heroes, originally from France and now launched in the UK, has partnered with brands such as Reebok, Adidas, Nike and Holiday Inn to provide people with rewards for how much and often they run.

Eating: Go 'veggan’

In 2012, when vegan Ellen DeGeneres came out about eating eggs, the vegan community came down on her with a tonne of tofu-fuelled rage. But there are no hard and fast rules on veganism any more, and a growing number of people who call themselves vegans now choose to eat eggs – if they know they’re cruelty-free. “I like the philosophy and health benefits of veganism, but I like to add extra protein into my diet, so I choose organic free-range eggs,” says nutritionist Rick Hay, himself a veggan – a vegan who eats eggs. “Vegans might think I’m selfish, but I see lots of people choosing this route as they want the health benefits of veganism but like the taste and extra protein of eggs. For many, it is a stepping stone towards being a pure vegan.”

Indeed, not-quite-veganism is everywhere. We’ve had flexivegans who eat animal-free part-time, and pegans who cross a paleo diet with veganism. Most recently, the vegan-curious are those thinking of making the transition during, for example, Veganuary, a campaign to get people eating vegan for January which launched in 2014 and last year had 12,800 participants. In her new book The New Vegan (Kyle Books, £14.99; published December 31), Aine Carlin – Peta’s most stylish vegan of 2015 – aims at those thinking of making the transition with luscious supermarket-friendly recipes and satisfying dishes that resemble real food, such as black bean taquitos with enchilada sauce and blueberry cream pie.

Medicine: Stool banking

Our guts are home to gardens of bacteria, the balance of which is essential to good health. The idea behind poo transplants – also called faecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) – is to extract healthy bacteria from the faecal matter of a healthy individual and transplant it to repopulate another not-so-healthy person’s intestinal garden. Companies such as Openbiome in the US and the Taymount Clinic in the UK offer FMT treatments using donated poo, sometimes fresh, sometimes stored and frozen in their stool banks. While FMT has been proven effective in treating Clostridium Difficile (C.Diff), the antibiotic-resistant intestinal infection – and despite anecdotal evidence and minor studies suggesting it might help treat other gastrointestinal conditions such as Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis – the evidence isn’t yet conclusive.

Diets: Souping – the new juicing

In 2015, New Yorkers queued for miles at bone broth bar Brodo to replace their caffeine fix with a new savoury steaming liquid that was on everyone’s lips. At home, healthy chef super-bloggers Jasmine and Melissa Hemsley made it a staple in their cooking repertoire, while The Brighton Bone Broth Company began offering home delivery. In 2016, green juice fasts and detoxes are set to be replaced with cleanses and diets that use healthy soups – thick, runny, chunky or smooth – as a weight-loss tool.

In their new book The Soup Cleanse (Quercus, £14.99; published December 31), Angela Blatteis and Vivienne Vella, the founders of Soupure, bring you one-, three- and five-day soup detoxes on which you can lose weight and feel nourished and satisfied. Meanwhile, beautiful new cookbook Skinny Soups by Kathryn Bruton (Kyle Books, £14.99; published January 7) brings you 80 delicious soup recipes, each under 300 calories (and most between 150 and 200).

Drinks: Kombucha – the new coconut water

Fermented foods are the big news of 2016 as it becomes clear that our gut bacteria – being increasingly recognised as key to health – could benefit if we add fermented foods, such as sauerkraut, kefir (fermented milk) and miso paste, to our diets. Indeed, Kombucha (pronounced kom-boo-ka), a sparkling drink made by fermenting black or green tea with bacteria and yeast is fast-replacing coconut water – in California, at least – as the drink of the moment with A-listers Amanda Seyfried and Jake Gyllenhaal spotted holding store-bought bottles of the stuff in Hollywood.

But be warned: it’s an acquired taste, a bit like a flat cava (sans alcohol). The best we have tried is Go! Kombucha (£1.99, from realfoods.co.uk). You can find recipes to make your own – and a huge array of fermented foods that are easier to make than they sound – in Cultured Food For Health by Donna Schwenk (£12.99, Hay House; out now). Also look out for probiotic skincare: Mychelle Dermaceuticals Deep Repair Cream (£24; mychelle.com) is made with Kombucha, which they claim is “the Champagne of life”.

Anna Magee is editor of healthista.com