Nutritional Outlook’s 2020 Best of the Industry Award Winners
In Nutritional Outlook’s 2020 Best of the Industry Awards, we recognize individuals, groups, and companies whose initiatives today are helping to shape, for the better, the state of the dietary supplement and natural products industry.
When Nutritional Outlook’s editors, with input from our editorial advisory board, surveyed the landscape of natural products industry excellence in 2020, four leaders stood out for achievements that not only elevated their own businesses but that will likely positively and significantly influence the natural product, dietary supplement, and food and beverage industries in the years ahead.
Our industry leader this year is Ocean Spray, who after petitioning FDA for a cranberry health claim in 2017 finally saw the fruits of its labor realized when in July of this year, FDA indicated that it will exercise enforcement discretion for a qualified health claim linking select cranberry products with a reduced risk of recurrent urinary tract infections. This new qualified health claim will not only benefit Ocean Spray and the rest of the cranberry market but will also be a valuable touchstone for cranberry consumers, new and old, searching for validated health support.
Our winner in the retail brand/product category is CV Sciences, who in 2020 set the stage for how a hemp-derived-CBD company can not only position itself for mainstream success but also charter a new course outside of the CBD category itself—an important path that CBD companies may need to head down as the CBD market becomes increasingly crowded.
In the supplier category, we are awarding Gencor for the headway it’s made in carving out its own stake in the palmitoylethanolamide (PEA) market. Armed with heavy investment in research and development, and putting the full weight of scientific substantiation behind its own branded ingredient, the company will play a leading role in raising the credibility of PEA and drawing industry and consumer attention to PEA, an ingredient with so many promising benefits across the health and wellness spectrum.
Finally, our service provider of the year is Alkemist Labs, who is not only standing tall among larger labs but who in the past year also exemplified its ingenuity and forward-thinking with a consumer-friendly certificate of analysis that will ultimately raise the level of transparency along the supply chain, all the way down to the consumer. The need for best-in-class quality control and transparency has never been higher in this industry, and Alkemist is playing a leading role in showing the industry one way to achieve it.
I hope you will congratulate me in saluting all four of this year’s winners. We hope you’ll agree with us that these companies not only represent excellence but the pursuit of a better path forward for the natural products industry.
Jennifer Grebow
Editor-in-Chief
2020 Award Winners:
Nutritional Outlook’s 2022 Best of the Industry Award Winners
December 8th 2022In Nutritional Outlook’s 2022 Best of the Industry Awards, we recognize individuals, groups, and companies whose initiatives today are helping to shape, for the better, the state of the dietary supplement and natural products industry.
