4 health trends to watch in 2025

Holland & Barrett is really driving this ‘brain food’ trend. They’re launching a brain health tea which is an infusion of green tea, pennywort and rosemary, fortified with zinc. They also have a focus supplement blend containing ‘Brainberry®’, a natural aronia berry extract designed to enhance cognitive performance. There are also Brainberry® gummies and drinks now available on the market, so it’s something we can expect to hear a lot more about this year.

Check out our spotlight on brain health and brain-healthy foods to add to your diet.

Psychobiotics & the mouth microbiome

‘Psychobiotics’ is another brain health buzzword for 2025. Psychobiotics are probiotics that may confer mental health benefits when consumed, with fermented foods like kimchi and kefir thought to be good sources of these.

Having a healthy and balanced ‘mouth microbiome’ is also thought to be important to support brain health and immunity. Beetroot, green tea, crunchy vegetables like celery and carrots, and high-fibre wholegrains are all said to support your mouth microbiome. Biome-balancing chewing gum is one of the first products being developed in this area – such as the prebiotic nitrate chewing gum from Berkeley Life, designed to optimise your oral microbiome. There are also brands like Luvbiotics, who sell probiotic lozenges, and brands like Galinee, who sell oral microbiome-friendly toothpaste with prebiotics and xylitol.

The Ayurvedic-principled sattvic diet

This vegetarian diet, built on Ayurvedic principals and big with yoga enthusiasts, is set to go mainstream in 2025 thanks to its connection with holistic mental clarity and focus.

The sattvic diet has a focus on fresh fruit and vegetables, whole grains, nuts and seeds plus pure ghee – foods that are light on the stomach, easy to digest and nutrient-rich. What’s unique is that it also avoids foods that it considers to be overly stimulating to the digestive system – excessive spices, hot sauces, onions and garlic, sugary drinks and alcohol, fried foods and all processed foods. In this way, it’s seen to be naturally anti-inflammatory, gut balancing, body ‘healing’ and mind calming – being all about purity, vitality, lightness and freshness. See our expert guide to how Ayurveda can help healthy digestion.

Prajna by Mira Manek is a brilliant book to familiarise yourself with Ayurvedic principles and rituals more broadly. The Sattvic Diet by Jesse Danner explores the diet's philosophy and practices; and the Sattvic Food Cookbook by Octavia Harris features recipes including sattvic chia pudding and vegetable sambhar. Shayona in Neasden, London, offers up a delicious sattvic menu, as does Anandha Bhavan in Wembley, which serves up South Indian sattvic idlis, dosas and rice-lentil pancakes called uthappams. In central London, Govinda’s in Soho offers up ‘karma-free’ vegetarian food based broadly on sattvic cuisine.

There are also lots of sattvic nutritional wellness retreats popping up around the world: Woods at Sasan in Gujarat, India, is a sattvic-dedicated resort built around ideas of wholesomeness, mindful eating and staying in tune with the circadian rhythm of food. Glen Cruitten House in the Scottish highlands offers up yoga retreats with an organic sattvic diet that aims to leave guests feeling light, energised and balanced. Datu Wellness Retreats in Tuscany, close to Siena, has an emphasis on Ayurvedic eating, which aims to replenish energies with seasonal and locally sourced meals based on sattvic principles. And Prana Yoga with Orsi in Germany is offering a sattvic summer retreat, with the intention of increasing calmness in the body and mind, and vitality through ‘prana-energy’ containing foods.

Smartplants, the new hybrids, and gene-edited ‘super-healthy’ produce

Specially bred hybrid and GM plants are being developed in a big way in 2025 to improve the food supply chain, bring newness and also enhance the health benefits of fresh produce. Nutritionally denser fruit and vegetables is one of the hot topics for 2025. One example is ‘super-broccoli’, which was discovered growing wild on a Sicilian hillside. Though inedible when first found, it was brimming with natural health-boosting compounds – and has now been transformed in greenhouses into an edible bio-fortified super-broccoli called GRextra, which has five times more sulforaphane than normal broccoli. In Spain, scientists have also genetically engineered bright yellow ‘golden lettuce’, which has 30 times more nutrients than standard green lettuce. CRISPR gene editing has also been used recently to develop tomatoes fortified with vitamin D. Other designer veggies include radishes, peas and chard rich in iodine, being grown by Italian scientists.

Scientists at a company called Pairwise have gene-edited blackberries to eliminate the hard seeds, effectively making them seedless – and they’re working on cherries next! The blackberries are also sweet all year round and survive transit well, while the plants they grown on have no thorns and are low down, meaning wastage at picking is kept to a minimum. They're expected to be on the market in the coming years.

Sweet Garleek is a unique organic non-GMO hybrid from Row 7 Seed Co – a new allium that marries the sweetness of leeks with the mellow, savoury notes of garlic. The company also offers up seeds for a hybrid spinach lettuce, which marries the best of spinach and romaine, with tender, dark green leaves that beautiful as well as delicious. Its delfino cilantro is coriander that has been developed to have feathery fronds and a subtle, citrussy flavour, while its badger flame beet has all the vegetal sweetness of a standard beet without the earthiness.

Edener Seeds offers seeds for fruit including Himalayan bayberry (a fusion of strawberry and cherry in flavour), egg-sized jumbo royal grapes, vitamin-loaded kiwiberries, sweet and long banana strawberries, red-hearted kiwis, rare black diamond apples, rainbow figs, blood-red peach seeds and bright pink bliss blueberries that have double the sweetness of regular blueberries. Watermelon plums are another hybrid emerging from South Africa with green skins and red flesh, while lemon plums have a sunshine-yellow colour.