Vitafoods Europe in Barcelona was overwhelming – in the best way, but also in a way that should make wellness brands pause.

Sector shows are useful because they compress a whole market into a few halls. What usually sits across retail aisles, ecommerce pages, social feeds and practitioner recommendations suddenly appears in one place. Every trend is intensified. Every format is competing for attention. Every claim feels louder.

This year, I was struck by two things: the sheer number of ways we are now being invited to consume wellness, and how easy it has become to build a wellness product.

Both are exciting. Both are also warning signals.

Capsules and tablets are now only part of the picture. At Vitafoods, there were gummies, liquid-filled gummies, powders, sachets, shots, sprays, strips, melts, bars, functional drinks, fortified snacks, collagen waters, functional chocolate and formats that blur the line between supplement, food and experience.

Then you add the need states: gut health, women’s health, men’s health, brain health, skin health, sleep, stress, mood, immunity, energy, menopause, metabolic health, weight management, GLP-1 support, beauty from within, longevity and healthy ageing.

Then come the ingredient stories: magnesium, collagen, creatine, fibre, protein, ashwagandha, vitamin D, probiotics, prebiotics, postbiotics, peptides, electrolytes, CoQ10, taurine, theanine, mushrooms, curcumin, omega-3, berberine and NAD precursors.

By the time you add dosage, price, brand, private label, subscription and social influence, it is not hard to see why consumers are confused.

The category is full of innovation, but it is also becoming much harder to navigate.

One Euromonitor insight at the show really crystallised this for me: consumers still want health, but they are exhausted by claims.

More than half of new SKUs launched in 2025 carried a health or functional claim. At the same time, fewer consumers are closely reading nutrition labels than in previous years.

That tension matters. The industry is putting more health language into the market at exactly the moment consumers have less appetite to decode it. The issue is not that health has stopped mattering. It clearly still does. The issue is that health has become harder to choose.

When everything is “science-backed”, “advanced”, “complete”, “high strength”, “clean”, “natural”, “clinically inspired” or “functional”, the language starts to collapse in on itself. If every product supports energy, mood, immunity, gut health, beauty and longevity, the consumer is not reassured. They are simply left to work harder.

And in consumer health, that work often happens in an emotionally charged moment. People are not buying wellness in a vacuum. They are buying in moments of anxiety, ambition, fatigue, hope, insecurity or a desire to take control.

That changes the job of brand.

We have seen this clearly in previous work with partnering with Boots. A shopper can walk in with real intent,  perhaps looking for vitamin D, magnesium or vitamin C – and still lose confidence at shelf.

Once they are faced with dosage, format, combined ingredients, own label, branded options, high strength, vegan, sugar-free, gummies, tablets, sachets and effervescents, the certainty starts to disappear.

The consumer came in wanting to act. The shelf made them hesitate.

That hesitation is a commercial problem. Sometimes they buy the wrong product. Sometimes they default to price. Sometimes they leave with nothing.

Choice is only empowering when people know how to choose.

The other thing Vitafoods made very clear is what sits behind so many of the brands that eventually arrive on shelf: the ingredient houses, manufacturers, formulation specialists, white-label platforms, delivery formats, clinical claims, flavour systems and ready-to-go concepts.

For a founder or brand team, that can feel incredibly reassuring. You can meet a supplier, explore a formulation, select a format, discuss flavour, add a claim, understand the MOQ and suddenly the journey feels possible. The product is almost there. The trend is there. The category is growing. The supplier has done this before.

All that is left is to add the brand.

But that is exactly where the watchout begins.

When formulation, format and claims are increasingly accessible to everyone, they stop being the source of true differentiation. They become the starting point. The real work is in deciding what should exist, why it should exist and why anyone should choose it over the growing number of alternatives.

This is where I think the conversation needs to move. Vitafoods makes it easy to find the supplier, build the formulation, access the research, add the claims and explore the technology. But there seemed to be far less focus on the harder question: what makes a brand truly different?

The world may well have room for another collagen brand, magnesium gummy, GLP-1 support bar, creatine format or longevity blend. But only if that brand has a clear role in someone’s life, captures the consumer’s imagination and owns a meaningful lifestyle territory. Without that, it is simply another product in an already crowded space.

The bigger risk in wellness is not just weak science or overclaiming. It is sameness. When everyone has access to the same manufacturers, trend decks, ingredient stories and delivery formats, categories quickly fill with products that are technically different but emotionally interchangeable.

That is when brand becomes commercially critical. Not brand as decoration, or as a logo, colour palette and pack design added at the end, but brand as the strategic discipline that gives a product a reason to exist.

Too many wellness brands still treat brand as the wrapper. The formula is chosen, the format is selected, the supplier is appointed, the claim is added and the price is set. Then, once many of the most important decisions have already been made, someone asks for the brand.

By that point, the opportunity for real differentiation has often been narrowed. True distinctiveness has to start earlier. It should shape the proposition itself, influencing what gets made, what gets rejected and what the business chooses not to chase.

A format is not a strategy. A claim is not a positioning. An ingredient is not a brand. And a gummy, however convenient, is not a reason to believe.

Convenience only has value if the product still works. Science only has value if people understand why it matters. A trend only has commercial value if the brand can make it ownable.

This is where simplicity becomes a serious brand strategy. Simplicity is not the opposite of science; it is the translation of science into something people can actually use.

The best brands will still need credible ingredients, relevant mechanisms, appropriate dosage and evidence, but they will also need to answer more human questions. What is this for? Why does it matter to me? How does it fit into my life? What should I expect? And why should I choose this product over the one next to it?

Vitafoods showed me an industry full of energy, science and possibility. The wellness and longevity opportunity is clearly huge. Formats are evolving, consumer need states are expanding, the supply chain is sophisticated and the pace of innovation is impressive.

But possibility is not the same as permission.

Not everything that can be made should be launched. Not every trending ingredient belongs in your brand. Not every format improves the proposition.

The brands that win will not simply be the ones that get to market fastest with the newest ingredient or most convenient format. They will be the ones with the discipline to question the trend, challenge the formulation, reject weak claims, simplify complexity and build trust before hype.

Most importantly, they will be the ones that create a brand that stands for something bigger than the product format.

Because in a category where innovation is becoming easier to access, differentiation becomes harder to fake.

And that is where the real brand work begins.