What's driving growth of ashwagandha, colostrum, and emerging ingredients like sea moss?

Nutritional Outlook interviews Scott Dicker, senior director of market insights at SPINS to discuss the 2026 Ingredients to Watch. Dicker unpacks sales trends in the nutraceutical space and what they mean for product formulators and marketers. This is Part 2 of a two-part conversation in which Dicker discusses what is driving sales growth of ashwagandha, colostrum, as well as sea moss.

Read full Ingredients to Watch coverage here to access expert insights and detailed sales data from SPINS.

Listen to Part 1 of this convo here.

Listen to the full episode of The Nutritional Outlook Podcast for the full interview with Scott Dicker, senior director, market insights, at SPINS.

Sebastian Krawiec (SK): On to our next ingredient. Another ingredient we're revisiting is ashwagandha. Ashwagandha, according to your market research, has seen 27% sales growth in multi-outlet of channel in 2025 you know, what do you think is driving the growth of ashwagandha in this moment? Like we've talked about in the past, it's not necessarily a new ingredient. It has had, you know, its spikes here and there, but 27% is nothing to slouch at. What do you attribute to that?

Scott Dicker (SD): There's a lot of adaptation to the conventional channel so we're still seeing that life cycle play out. We like to talk about how fast the life cycle is now, but it still happens over some sort of period of time. It is being used in more and more formulas as well. I've been seeing a lot of male health formulas now having ashwagandha in it, along with stress and energy. So, when you have an ingredient that's being touted for such a wide range of health focuses, and more and more consumers are aware of it, I think the that brands always look to it as a nice one to put in their formulations and bring to market.

So, you're still seeing new brands adding it. It's interesting to watch it continue to grow. Because, it was 7-8 years ago when gummies really brought ashwagandha to the market. That was a new delivery format, but you're also seeing it happen in ready-to-drink beverages and things of that nature. So, there's a lot of use cases for it. Primary use case is still stress and mood support, and we know that that's still a large area of concern for people. So, there's still a lot of opportunity for ashwagandha.

SK: In some cases these ingredients appear in a specific health benefit formula because it's effective, but the consumers don't necessarily look for the specific ingredient. They're looking for the benefit. Is this different for ashwagandha? Are people looking for ashwagandha as opposed to the benefit itself?

SD: For most things, people lead with benefit, but then they do turn the label around, or search for it and see is there are ingredients that they’ve heard of, that they’ve wanted to try. So I still think that we lead with health focus, but the more popular and well known an ingredient gets, the more it will go to the top of the try-list for consumers

SK: One ingredient that's kind of was a surprise to me when I was looking at the data, was colostrum, which grew over 2,000% in hair, skin and nail category in multioutlet channel, and then over 200% in immune health category for the natural channel. Obviously, I'm familiar with colostrum from an immune health perspective. It's been in the in the industry for a while, but what do you kind of attribute to this current surge that we're seeing.

SD: A lot of this is enhanced distribution. When I did some of the State of Supplements work at the beginning of 2025 we had this as an ingredient to watch as potential to surge. And one of the things we always look at is what has really high growth rate in the natural channel and digital channels that has not yet broken into the multioutlet channel. And so this was on it. By the time Q1 ended, I could no longer include that ingredient because it had penetration into the conventional channel, significant [penetration]. And so a lot of it is new distribution. It's also an ingredient people are very interested in. There's this group of products that position as a “plus plus,” an all-in-one formula, where it's doing so many things: immune health, hair, skin and nails, beauty-from-within, whatever you want to call it. And so there's been a couple brands that have done this really well, brought it to market, so a lot of it is new distribution in the channel hitting new markets. So, big potential to grow, still. Not 2,000% year-over-year, but still big potential growth.

SK: That makes sense, marketing for multiple benefits, because I was curious about, the surge for the hair, skin and nails. Looking at that category, kind of overall, there is some unusual activity happening in the hair, skin and nail category of multioutlet. Obviously, colostrum had that big surge, but then you're seeing kind of flat or dropping sales of other popular beauty-from-within ingredients, with the exception of maybe some spikes in multivitamins, glycerin and glutathione. Any thoughts on what's happening here in the hair, skin, and nail space? What's changing? GLP-1 is another thing that comes to mind for me here, given this kind of concept of Ozempic face and the impacts of the drug in that realm.

SD: There's a few things happening. One, beauty-from-within is an area of health span that's being looked at, so it is still of high interest. People are shifting what ingredients, what brands they're trying, but they’re also competing with and sometimes complementary with topicals as well. So, now you're seeing ingredients that were mostly topical coming to beauty-from-within, ingredients that were typically beauty-from-within going to topical. And so that's capturing the whole market. Hyaluronic acid is a great one to think about. There’s collagen as well with collagen peptides. And so there are different ways that people are looking at this. And sometimes it's not as overtly marketed for hair, skin, and nails, and it is the ingredient that people heard of that could be multifaceted or multi-health focus. But the interest is certainly there. I'm not sure about the Ozempic face, but we do know that as part of a health span, beauty-from-within continues to be an integral part of it.

SK: Another ingredient that sort of has been catching my eye in your data is sea moss, particularly in the natural channel. SPINS data shows that sea moss grew 204% in sales, and particularly in the immune health category, sea moss grew 358% in sales. I'm familiar with micro-algae ingredients, but sea moss is kind of new to me. Can you kind of talk about sea moss and how it's performing so well in this space?

SD: This is an interesting one, and you're probably seeing it for the first time on our list, because we just started coding for it. We used to just code it under like plant algae, but we do see that this is a big trend. A lot of it is for immune health, I believe a lot of it's for skin health as well. And so, it's an ingredient people are watching. Again, it's been used in beverages as well as consumables, and it's used in greens powders. So, this is another one to keep an eye on for as we go from here. And you know, you teed it up, it's doing really well in the natural channel, so that a lot of times means: be on the lookout for potential explosive growth. I won't say I'm predicting that for this year, but it does have potential for high growth even this year, but I’m saying it's going be like creatine, in that nature.

SK: Are there any other trends that you think are worth noting, whether it's a specific ingredient or kind of an overall category that our listeners should keep an eye on?

SD: One of the categories that I'm very bullish on is I think this year is going to be a big year for testosterone. I think the doors have been kicked down for people using pharmaceuticals in conjunction with nutraceuticals, with GLP-1s. And we know that testosterone is high interest for people. We know that TRT use is up. You know, med spas are doing it now, all the time. And so I think that there is going to be a renewed focus on testosterone and in similar ways to what we've seen with GLP-1s, both in a competitor and companion standpoint. So competitor, you remember when test boosters were a big thing, and so all those ingredients that did well there, I expect to see those resurge, things like boron or fenugreek or shilajit. There are also companion products, which are products for the people who are going to be using with the synthetic [medication]. So just be on the lookout for that part of the store and the category, both from supplemental ingredients as well as companion products. That's something I'm really looking forward to be big this year.

SK: Yeah, I think that makes sense. I mean, I've seen a ton of, you know, innovative new products kind of marketed towards that Men's Health kind of testosterone support space, and people wanting natural alternatives to those kind of popular products you see on the infomercials or something.

SD: And if you think about it, one of the big trends that's really changing the industry is the idea of personalized nutrition. With more and more people having data on themselves, whether it's something basic like a fitness tracker or advanced blood work, a lot of people will be looking to try things out. They almost always try some sort of natural version first. But even the ones who go for the synthetic one, there will be support that nutrition and supplements can play a role in.