Session Preview: Peptides, Pouches, and the Future of Active Nutrition

Ahead of Nutritional Outlook's second annual The Outlook on Active Nutrition, managing editor Sebastian Krawiec interviewed Ben Kane, co-owner and president of PricePlow and director of partnerships for the Future Nutrition Foundation, for a preview of what attendees can expect from this year's event.

Kane, who will moderate a session on peptides at the conference, digs into a contested topic: the blurry line between illegal gray-market injectable peptides and the many legal dietary peptide ingredients that have quietly existed for years. He unpacks how regulatory shifts — from FDA and HHS scrutiny to Eli Lilly's litigation against wellness clinics — are pushing peptides further into the mainstream health and longevity conversation, and why that matters for supplement brands navigating the category responsibly.

The conversation also turns to Kane's excitement for returning to New Jersey for this intimate yet high-impact summit, and looks ahead to another trend reshaping the space: functional pouches. Kane discusses the regulatory gray areas and why this new delivery format represents one of the most exciting frontiers in active nutrition today.

Learn more and register for the conference here.

Transcript

Sebastian Krawiec: Hi, everyone. I'm Sebastian Krawiec, managing editor of Nutritional Outlook. I am joined today by Ben Kane, who is the co-owner and president of PricePlow, as well as the director of partnerships for the Future Nutrition Foundation. Thanks so much for joining us today.

Ben Kane: Thanks for having me.

Krawiec: So, you're going to be a speaker at our upcoming The Outlook on Active Nutrition, which we really appreciate. So, I wanted to just take the opportunity to let you tell our audience and attendees a little bit about yourself and your company, PricePlow.

Kane: Sure. So, at PricePlow, we pride ourselves in being a premier media source for the overall dietary supplement, functional beverage, functional food industries. You know, the industries are growing and they're kind of like amoebas where they're moving into all sorts of different directions, but anywhere you find functional ingredients, dietary supplement ingredients, or, you know, functional foods and beverages, we try to cover it. We try to help be not only like bringing content to consumers, but also within the industry, within the brands, helping them navigate, helping them market their ingredients. We act both in front of the consumers and also behind the scenes with businesses. So, we not only create content, but we also consult on the back end to help with regulatory affairs, formulations, and kind of just like strategy when it comes to go-to-market strategy or product pipeline strategy. So, we have our fingers in a lot of different parts of the industry, and it's just kind of fun to kind of play around with some things that we are so passionate about, which is really like quality of products, innovation, and newness.

Krawiec: Right, so you're going to be moderating a session about peptides. Now, obviously, you know, the peptide craze right now is really revolving around these kind of gray-market injectable products that are, you know, basically illegal, but, so, what is the relevance to our industry? Where do we come in? What is this conversation kind of like What's the focus of this conversation you want to have here?

Kane: It's a really fun conversation because, like you said, we're kind of playing with gray area stuff here. You know, if we are going to talk about these injectable peptides, we are talking about things that likely should be regulated as drugs, which is, you know, tangential to our industry, because we talk about a lot of similar things. Maybe it's inflammation, maybe it's recovery, maybe it's metabolic speed, maybe it's, you know, performance. When we're talking about injectable drugs, we are we are talking about drugs here, but they kind of play a lot in the similar areas where it's improving your lifestyle, it's improving your body composition, it's improving your health overall.

And the truth is that there are also peptides that are legal dietary ingredients. There have been for years. We haven't really called them peptides until recently because it became a very recognizable word, but there are a lot of very legal dietary supplements that fall into this category, and there are more pretty much every day right now. So it's, you know, a not just gray in terms of what's legal and what isn't, but it's also gray in terms of what is in our category and not, and I think we're all just becoming really comfortable talking about the topic as a whole because, as HHS and RFK and, you know, the FDA start to look at legalizing these for compounding pharmacies in in America to produce and sell, it starts to become more part of the longevity and health community, which is still very relevant to our industry. We're talking about longevity and health, it's going to seep its way into our markets. We're going to start to see it, I mean we saw people marketing them at the Arnold Fitness Expo this year.

So fitness is already really full of it, and at least my perspective over the last five years has been: if it's going to be in our market, it's going to be in our community, I think that we should have quality information about safety, sourcing, regulatory affairs when it comes to it, and I think that we should be having a mature conversation about it. So, when I talk on panels about this types of stuff, I try to steer it towards dietary supplement ingredients as well, because I think that's the most relevant area that I can most often like give the best information for people that in our community to go forth and, you know, do business and commerce with.

But, the truth is, a lot of people want to hear about your BPCs, your GLPs. They are having a really like concrete effect on our industry, whether you look at how GLPs affecting the price of whey protein, which is pretty well established, or just the fact that, you know, our weight management category has pretty much died overnight from GLP, our inflammatory and joint health section has kind of changed because of BPC-157. So, I think we're going to talk a lot about the regulatory affairs because you know Eli Lilly is suing all sorts of wellness clinics and online sites, as well as there are online you know research-only peptide sites now people are going to prison, they have for a while, but it's becoming an even bigger topic. There's a lot of regulatory action taking place at the same time that RFK is pushing to legalize them for domestic compounding pharmacies to start to produce. So there's a big topic around there, but I also think it's really important that we give props to, you know, companies like Nuritas or Maypro, which are, you know, marketing and selling quality, safe, legal dietary ingredients that are peptides, of course.

Krawiec: Excellent. That should be a really interesting conversation, actually. I'm very much looking forward to it. So onto my next question, you know, this is our second annual The Outlook on Active Nutrition. You were kind enough to attend our first annual one. I wonder, you know, what brings you back, and what are you excited about for this upcoming one?

Kane: So, as a local New Jerseyan, it just makes you super happy that there's one in New Jersey, because New Jersey is a hub for manufacturing, for brands, like we have a lot of them up here, but it's always blown my mind that we haven't had any major shows outside of SupplySide Connect / SupplySide East. So to have a small summit like this, which is it's both, you know, intimate because you can really talk to pretty much everyone in the room, but it's also really impactful. Like last year, we had some great talks that I went out into the industry and was telling everyone about, like Jim Emme's opening speech last year was really impactful for me, you know, all the way down to the conversation that we had with Rahul [Roy], which was just a very quality topic and really a lot of really relevant information I think people would benefit from. So, I just like being involved in these conversations.

I'm super thankful that you guys are inviting me to speak, but even just to be in the room and hear what people have to say at these types of shows, I think it's really underrated. You know, everyone wants to go to SupplySide with the 50,000 people in the room, but when you get to go to shows like this where you have really impactful people speaking and you can actually walk up to them after the talk and have an in-depth conversation with them over coffee, I think it's like super valuable, and people don't recognize often enough how much value there is in that.

Krawiec: Appreciate the kind words. Finally, onto our final question: What are some current trends from the active nutrition space that really excite you right now?

Kane: So this is a this is a really hot topic, and it's actually something we talked about on stage last year very shortly, but it is growing even further: functional pouches, similar to your Zyns, your nicotine pouches. There are these functional pouches where we are removing the nicotine, because to combine nicotine and ingredients from dietary supplements would not be a wise idea when it comes to regulatory affairs. But they are giving just nootropics, maybe stimulants, maybe mood ingredients. There's one company that's even doing electrolytes through a buccal, is the name, delivery system.

It is an interesting new frontier. There are conversations happening on all sides of it. There are people saying that the particle size is too large for it to be effective. There are people saying that it's super effective, and people are just behind on it. And there are also people, which this happened last time when we spoke about this on the Outlook, where Doug Kalman called out, and he was rightful, and still saying that they're not really legal dietary supplement routes of delivery. It's not actually kind of legal to be doing this because we don't consume the pouch, and technically a dietary supplement must be consumed entirely. Now, Brian Tanzer from Vitamin Shoppe, the head of regulatory there, has you know, he's positioned possibly that there could be different ways to direct people to consume them so that it becomes legal.

But whether or not that's the case, there are now American manufacturers like AmeriPouch, which are doing a great job bringing really quality ingredients, new ingredients that you aren't seeing in other pouches, and it's a huge growing category. Ultra Pouches is delivering ads to pretty much anyone that has ever purchased a dietary supplement on the internet. It's a huge growing category. We aren't seeing any, we'll say action from the FDA yet, but it is really interesting. I personally have gotten to use a lot of these, and I've really enjoyed the way that they feel. I like the longer action of being able to leave it in my lip longer, then I, you know, I kind of consume energy drinks pretty quickly, and it's just exciting to have a new delivery system. You know, we've been taking pills and powders for however many years now. We've had cans and foods now, which are really fun, but to get a new delivery system is really exciting to me, and I think it's probably one of the hotter things happening right now, outside of peptides, which is obviously pretty much every conversation I have comes back to peptides. I think pouches are a fun new frontier that I'm excited to chat about.

Krawiec: Fascinating. Well, I think hopefully we'll bring it up during the actual show. I'm sure we can find a find a find a way to bring it up. Well, cheers. Okay. Well, thanks for your time and I'll look forward to seeing you then.

Kane: All right. Thank you.