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Last week, I was in New York City to attend two fantastic trade shows — 2024 Summer Fancy Food Show and Good Food Mercantile.

Whenever I go to these shows, I always come across some outstanding organic products, and this year was no exception.

Here are my Top 10 Organic Products of the 2024 Summer Fancy Food Show and Good Food Mercantile.

Living Maxwell

Company Stories

For those of us who are fans of Dr. Bronner’s, the company’s products have a constant presence in our households, and we use them to clean our bodies and physical surroundings on a daily basis.

While this is unquestionably a critical component of our lives and imperative to maintain good health, cleaning transcends removing whatever is on our skin, on our clothes or on our kitchen countertops. It also affects our emotional well-being and directly impacts how we show up in the world.

And this is precisely why Lisa Bronner’s Soap & Soul: A Practical Guide to Minding Your Home, Your Body and Your Spirit with Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps spoke to me so much, as it squarely touches on the importance of cleaning both the tangible and intangible — an essential formula for a meaningful life.

Living Maxwell

Company Stories

For as long as I have been covering the organic food industry, I have attended Natural Products Expo East, with my first show in Boston in 2009.

So, it is very bittersweet to report that after last week’s show in Philadelphia, there will be no more Expo East moving forward. New Hope, the organizer of the event, has decided to launch something new in 2024 called Newtopia Now.

Organic Insider

Better Choices

In a recent online survey of a 1,000 health-conscious consumers conducted by Market LOHAS – Mambo Sprouts Marketing Research, it was found that 80% of shoppers seek out non-GMO products, with 56% saying non-GMO was key to brand buying versus 52% for organic.

Hence, a product that has the words “Non-GMO” on its packaging is going to carry more weight with consumers than “Organic”.

On many levels, this is incredibly worrisome, mostly because shoppers are making the absolute wrong and unhealthy decision at the supermarket.

Living Maxwell

Personal

In the summer of 2001, after being on Prozac for more than a decade, I made the life-altering decision to go off of antidepressants.

Despite what doctors and nearly everyone else around me were saying – that I had a chemical imbalance and that antidepressants were essential to keep me going – I believed otherwise. Intuitively, I knew that there was a better way to live, yet almost no one in my support system was in agreement with this line of thinking.

For the millions of people facing depression and who have similar doubts about medication being the only answer, a book has arrived that completely validates our concerns.

Living Maxwell

Personal

I put up a post last week about a date I had recently and it generated a good number of responses. During this date, the woman asked if it bothers me to be with someone who drinks.

In that post, one of the things that I said was that I would “deal with it” if all of the other aspects of the relationship were good and that the drinking was kept to a minimum. This response of saying that I would “deal with it” brought an interesting comment from Tancie, and I thought it was worth addressing in its own blog post here.

Tancie stated that the phrase “dealing with it” would bring up resentment and that I should avoid all women who drink if it makes me that uncomfortable.

For me, drinking is a very complicated issue and is not so cut and dry, especially given the fact that I feel so strongly about other things as well — organic food being one of them.

Living Maxwell

Company Stories

When I was in my local organic market the other day, a handful of unconventionally-looking oranges were sitting in a back shelf.

I had never seen anything that look like these and then asked the guy working there a question.

“Do you these come like this?”

Living Maxwell

Company Stories

Whenever I go to a market in NYC these days and check out the refrigerated section, I am constantly amazed by the inordinate amount of shelf space that REBBL occupies.

But it’s for very good reason.

Under the brilliant leadership of CEO Sheryl O’Loughlin, REBBL has become the hottest brand in the beverage world, and people have become obsessed with the company’s adaptogenic coconut milk drinks.

Living Maxwell

Company Stories

Serial entrepreneur Sheryl O’Loughlin has just come out with a phenomenal new book called Killing It: An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Keeping Your Head Without Losing Your Heart, and it should be at the top of the reading list for all founders of organic food companies, regardless of whether you’re in start-up mode or well on your way to generating $100 million in revenues.

Aside from the fact that Sheryl O’Loughlin has some serious street cred in the organic food industry – CEO of Clif Bar, Co-Founder of Plum Organics and now CEO of REBBL – and has plenty of experience to draw upon as an entrepreneur, this book focuses on the most important aspect of building a company that rarely gets discussed – the human element.

Living Maxwell

Company Stories

For the first time in three years, the Fancy Food Show returned to New York City, and as usual, it was a spectacular show.

While walking around the show on the first day, I was getting a bit concerned that I wasn’t going to find some stellar new organic products. But by the end of the show on the third day, I completely changed my mind.

Some of the new organic products that I discovered have the potential to be very large, well-known national brands, and the innovation that I saw was outstanding. Additionally, narrowing this list down to just five products was incredibly challenging. It easily could have been ten.

Here are my Top 5 Organic Products of Fancy Food Show 2022.