One of my favorite things to do each year at Natural Products Expo West is to pick out the best trade show booths. While the majority of people’s time and attention is focused on showcasing new products, it cannot be overlooked that a good number of brands invest a tremendous amount of energy and resources into building their trade show booths.

As such, I like to recognize those companies that go the extra mile and present something special.

What I look for most are originality, interactive experiences, and impact. Two of this year’s winners brought a very educational and scientific approach to their booths, and the other one took home the prize for sheer dedication to a cause.

Here are my Best Trade Show Booths at Expo West 2019.

GENERAL MILLS 

On the first day of the show when I was interviewing Carla Vernon, President of the Natural and Organic Operating Unit for General Mills, she said, “Make sure you see our booth. I think you’re going to like it.”

Given that General Mills won my award for Best Trade Show Booth of Expo West 2018, Carla knew that I was on the lookout for creative and unique presentations. Read more »

As I do after each Natural Products Expo West, I name my top picks of the show.

With 3,600 companies having booths at this year’s Expo West, not only was it a challenge to narrow down my long list of great products but actually seeing everything was extremely difficult as well. This show keeps getting bigger and bigger, and fortunately, the quality of offerings improves along with it.

Below are my Top 5 Organic Food Products from Expo West 2019 and if you’d like to read my key trends, full analysis and takeaways from the show, be sure to check out this week’s Organic Insider.

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WHOLE FOOD BARS FROM BRIGHT FOODS

The most innovative product I came across all week at Expo West were the whole food bars from Bright Foods.

What makes these bars so special is they are the very first HPP, refrigerated bars on the market. And because no co-packer had ever manufactured them before, the company needed three years to figure out and perfect the process on its own. Read more »

For most people, having their organic food start-up grow in record speed (from 300 retail locations to 8,500 over the past year) and land high-profile appearances (on The Ellen DeGeneres Show and in People magazine) would have exceeded any measurement of success.

However, for Once Upon a Farm co-founders John Foraker and Jennifer Garner, these accomplishments were not the motivating factors why they joined this Berkeley-based start-up.

“Bringing good nutrition to children everywhere has been our mission since the beginning — it’s never been and will never be about just feeding children who have a socio-economic advantage. I’m committed to finding ways of providing healthy food to children who have less access and often limited opportunities,” said Chief Brand Officer Jennifer Garner. Read more »

The U.S. faces a real challenge when it comes to sourcing and producing organic food.

Right now, organic comprises more than 5% of overall food sales in the country. However, out of the total farmland in the U.S., less than 1% is organic. As a result, we are forced to purchase an incredibly high percentage of our organic food from abroad.

Making matters worse is that there is no governmental vehicle to help transition farmers to organic, which would not only create jobs in the U.S. but would lessen our dependence on imports.

Wanting to do its part to address this problem, Prairie Organic Spirits, the nation’s leading organic spirits brand, has created the Spirit of Change Fund. Through the establishment of this fund, Prairie Organic has committed 1% of its sales to support the next generation of organic farmers and to help transition more conventional farmland to organic. Read more »

* Ultrafine particles are linked to serious health conditions such as lung cancer and cardiovascular disease. The EPA warns about the dangers of ultrafine particles.

* Using a Particle Counter (a Class 1 medical device), we test the Intellipure vs. the Molekule and the Intellipure vs. the Molekule. Both tests demonstrate that the Intellipure removes 100% of all ultrafine particles while the Molekule and the Dyson both fall very short of that number.

* Intellipure machines are 40x more efficient than the standard HEPA air machines.

* The patented DFS kill zone technology is proven to remove 99.99% of all harmful viruses, fungi, molds, bacteria and particles as small as .007 micron in size.

* Use the code LIVINGMAXWELL to get 10% off your Intellipure machine.

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For those of us who truly care about health, we eat organic food, we drink purified water, we exercise, we meditate, we do yoga, we have a positive attitude, we use clean personal care products and the list goes on and on and on. Read more »

After writing about the organic food industry for nearly a decade, I have come to learn one thing — there are many powerful corporations that will do whatever it takes to get you to continue eating their unhealthy products.

Why?

Money.

These products can be easily produced, are highly profitable and provide little to no nutritional value to consumers.

Given the profits at stake and with sales of these unhealthy foods rapidly losing market share to organic ones, these major corporations employ highly sophisticated and often very manipulative tactics that the average consumer is unaware of or cannot identify.

And that is why Vani Hari’s Feeding You Lies: How to Unravel the Food Industry’s Playbook and Reclaim Your Health is such a must-read. Read more »

(One of the families that participated in the peer-reviewed study.)

If you read in the media or someone tries to convince you that organic doesn’t matter, do not believe them.

It does.

And it could potentially save your life.

In a just-released, peer-reviewed study, four families across the country were fed both an organic and non-organic diet, and the ones who ate all organic saw their pesticide load drop by as much as 95%! Read more »