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Last year, the focus was on teens. This year, our inestimable experts, Dr. Keith-Thomas Ayoob (clinical professor emeritus of the Department of Pediatrics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, NYC) and Jill Litwin (founder and CEO of Peas of Mind LLC, award-winning makers of foods for little ones) swing their attention to the other side of the playground and take a look at babies and infants, the 0-2 age group, in "Building Better Babies."

Welcome to 2018. I don’t know about you, but I’m looking forward to this shiny new year. We closed 2017 with a whole-issue peek into our crystal ball, hopefully helping processors get a jump on the food, beverage, and ingredient trends for the next 365 days and beyond.

The growing backlash against negative ingredient messages seems to have reached a tipping point, with processors proudly touting meat (including half a dozen pork rind products!), full-fat dairy, butter, and other ingredients once perceived of as unhealthy. In fact, some companies even are using “whole milk” and “full-fat” as positive marketing tools.

There now are 10 times as many bariatric surgeries performed annually (about 200,000) as occurred 20 years ago.

I’m writing this fresh from the annual Institute of Food Technologists (www.ift.org) conference and expo in Chicago. If you didn’t attend, as a source of food science and ingredient trends in the trillion-dollar world of food product development and manufacturing, it can’t be beat. Kudos to the legions of IFT support staff, lead staff, and admin who made it happen!

A formulator could almost bet on success of a product with any colorful and exotic fruit – especially the red, blue, and purple ones – that came loaded with powerful phytochemicals and nutrients like antioxidants, polyphenols, and anthocyanins.

In addition to a 2016 Retail Trends overview, this issue also brings you Prepared Foods’ annual round-up of trending nutraceutical ingredients for foods and beverages. The timing couldn’t be better: Not only is March is National Nutrition Month but this year’s report also follows the 2016 release of the 2015 USDA Dietary Guidelines.