The global wellness economy is expected to grow into a 4.5 trillion-dollar market. With so much at stake, it is important that consumers work with credentialed wellness practitioners to find personal wellness solutions that empower, engage, and are effective.

We thought we'd start 2020 by talking about a trend we've noticed over the past few years. It’s a trend toward what we call "keyword nutrition"—the effort to build a health & wellness halo for a brand based on what keywords you can get on the label.

As we all look ahead to 2020 and what the new year will bring, we thought the article Why 2020 Will Be The Year That Wellness Dies — And What Comes Next from mindbodygreen raised some interesting issues to consider.

In the article, the authors draw a distinction between wellness and well-being, with their thesis being that wellness has become a "buffet of high-price, low-return products to enter the market and convolute what 'wellness' really means—and who has access to it."

2020 will mark the 20th anniversary of Pulse Health & Wellness. We started with a few great clients—BlueCross BlueShield of North Carolina, Kellogg's and Procter & Gamble. The challenges these clients faced 20 years ago are the same challenges healthy brands face today: How do you communicate the benefits of your healthy brand to consumers with the trust and credibility required to drive behavior change and a purchase?

It is a well-tread cliche that our understanding of what is healthy to eat and what is not changes almost daily. The way the joke is usually told goes something like this: "One day broccoli is good for you, the next it could kill you."

Sadly, we have all come to expect that newly released nutrition studies or meta-analyses with unexpected findings will be trumpeted in the mainstream media with provocative—and mostly misleading—headlines.