A report by Datamonitor notes the sales of such functional products in the U.S. hit $18.9 billion in 2004, and annual sales growth has averaged 7.2% between 1999 and 2004. Other analyses come up with different totals, perhaps due in part to how they define the category.
In “FDA-approved Food Health Claims,” a report released in November of 2005, Mintel International makes a larger estimate of the total market for products with a healthful purpose: “The market size of the selected foods that can leverage the FDA labeling was $39.2 billion in 2005.” The total U.S. retail sales of these food items have increased 6% at current prices (a 6% decline at constant 2005 prices) from 2000 to 2005. Mintel believes that trend will continue through 2010, predicting a 12% increase at current prices, a 5% decline in constant prices over that time. A number of possible reasons are to blame for the constant price decline, but further complicating matters are the diet trends and fads of recent years, which have contributed to constant-dollar drops in most segments. It is worth noting that Mintel's report focuses only on products with FDA qualified health claims; any mention of health claims in the context of Mintel's report refers to FDA qualified claims.