Staying healthy just keeps getting more important – ask anyone staring down a waiting line in a hospital emergency ward over the holidays.

Illnesses that require hospitalization don’t always stem from poor nutrition, of course. But it’s a fact that undernourished, unhealthy people are less able to fight disease when they’re sick.

As pressure mounts on medical facilities, it makes sense that new efforts be made to steer people away from illness. And that’s a big reason why health and wellness is being called the top food trend for 2023.

Starting in the US, 2023 is when a new Farm Bill is expected. About every five years, the congress there creates a new Farm Bill, worth billions (and billions and billions – well over $100 billion). It covers the waterfront of support for farmers, as well as food programs for schools, which are huge.

Although it’s US-centred, the Farm Bill is a global pacesetter and quite likely the single most influential piece of legislation in agriculture and food, anywhere in the world.

As you can imagine, the landing spot for this massive amount of money is highly political and involves widespread public meetings to determine priorities. At one such hearing in early December, New Jersey senator Cory Booker noted that nearly $1 of every $3 in the federal budget goes towards health care spending. Reeling in that figure underlines the need to promote better-eating programs.

To him, that includes eating more fruit and vegetables. Booker noted Americans are told about half of what they consume should be fruit and vegetables… but by his count, only about 10 per cent of the farm bill subsidies go to that sector.

Those figures ring alarm bells for other commodities, such as the more powerful grain and oilseed lobby and the beef lobby. Expect them to become highly vocal about the health and wellness attributes of the crops they grow and the livestock they raise. And that in itself will keep health and wellness the key trend for 2023.

It’s also number-one in Canada with Kitchener-based health and wellness expert Jane Dummer, a registered dietitian who released her always-interesting annual food trends forecast mid-December.

But this year, Dummer expects people to have an eye on their pocketbook more than ever.

“Consumers are actively looking for affordable ways to maintain a healthy lifestyle,” she says. To her, that includes approaches such as buying in bulk, opting for private labels instead of name brands, cooking from scratch rather than using pre-prepared products, reducing spending on luxury items such as caviar, truffles, specialty or limited cheeses and meats, and purchasing fewer items to avoid food waste.

That means the companies that dominate grocery shelves must do some navel gazing.

“Brands will have many opportunities to test their capabilities to new limits,” she says. “To meet the nutritional, environmental and economic demands of consumers, manufactures must innovate to extract the maximum value from raw materials and the production process.”

Other trends she mentions are upcycling food waste to turn it into nutritional ingredients, regenerative farming, healthy food for pets and environmentally friendly food.

Grocers can afford to make some changes. They used to talk about their operations having razor-thin profit margins. But most lately, some of those with a high profile and high consumer interface, are clearly taking profits from the rising cost of food.

Loblaw Companies Ltd., for example, reported that its third-quarter profit in 2022 rose about 30 per cent compared with a year ago.

My own prediction? They’ll use some of those profits to invest in greater food-based health and wellness for their customers, or risk losing them to smaller competitors who show they genuinely care.