“The top concerns — bloating, magnesium deficiency, high blood pressure — tell us the purchase journey now starts with a symptom, not a product,” Alyssa Williams Atkinson, food, beverage and wellness category insights manager at Spate, told NutraIngredients.
Interest in high blood pressure rose 423.5% year over year, while magnesium deficiency increased 133.9% and bloating climbed 83.6%, based on Spate’s analysis of 900 billion search signals, 600 million TikTok posts, and 100 million Instagram posts.
“The consumer journey has fundamentally shifted...consumers aren’t opening TikTok looking for a brand, they’re looking for answers to something that feels off,” she added.
Custom probiotics lead growth
According to the 2026 Supplement Report, custom probiotics recorded the fastest growth in the dataset, rising more than 2,300% year over year.
This number really stood out, Atkinson said. “It’s not shocking in isolation — personalization has been a growing theme across wellness for a while — but seeing that kind of growth really solidifies something important: consumers are becoming genuinely sophisticated about supplements.”
Consumer behavior reflects these findings. “They’re not just grabbing a generic multivitamin off the shelf anymore...they’re searching ingredients, understanding their specific concerns, and actively seeking out products tailored to their individual biology,” she said.
Established categories continue to scale while emerging categories remain open
Spate’s data also confirmed that probiotics and gut health remain among the largest and most consistent drivers of engagement across platforms, with steady year-over-year gains.
These findings came in almost exactly as expected, Atkinson said. “What continues to validate the data is how consistently these concerns show up across all three platforms...consumers aren’t just scrolling past this content; they’re actively searching for answers.”
Electrolyte supplements also grew 54.4% year over year, pointing to broader daily use beyond sports-focused positioning.
Conversely, several smaller segments are expanding quickly without clear leaders. According to the report, peptide therapy increased 399.2% year over year, while GLP-1 supplements rose 374.4%.
“The fastest-growing trends are still largely unclaimed,” said Atkinson, and these category search surges all have no established brand leader yet.
Format shapes performance
Meanwhile, performance gaps are widening within categories built on similar ingredients. Spate’s data shows that apple cider vinegar products reached 37.8M in popularity for Goli, compared to 1.4M for Bragg, while Liquid I.V. led electrolytes at 29.9M versus 6.1M for Gatorade.
“Format is outperforming ingredients as a differentiator,” Atkinson said. While the same ingredient can appear in a variety of differently positioned products, that same ingredient can deliver very different outcomes depending on how the product fits into a consumer’s routine, she added.
Therefore, moving forward through 2026, brands that can “speak to specificity, whether through product customization, targeted formulations, or even just more precise messaging around individual concerns, are going to be the ones that break through”, she said.
