Fish oil. It’s a punchline. It's the supplement that elicits a grimace. Nevertheless, sales are booming. Don’t look surprised, now. Fish oil’s popularity gels with 2020’s immunity supplement mania.
Chalk it up to fish oil’s reputation for promoting cognitive health and preventing inflammation. Like most supplements, however, science doesn’t endorse all the claims. Eat more fish, experts say. You’ll get the same benefits. While this may be true, it overlooks the reasons why people choose supplements over whole foods, like time, access and taste preferences, to name a few.
The organoleptic dissonance between eating seared salmon (yum) and swallowing fish oil (yuck) says something about why people insist on purchasing supplements. One is palatable and one isn’t. When consuming fish as a supplement, we override our desire for pleasure and adopt a pragmatic approach to health. This concentration on health doesn’t change how fish oil interacts with the body, but it can change the consumer’s mindset. By engaging in an action identified as healthy, people may be more likely to perform other health-supporting practices.
In this sense, 2020’s immunity focus is a springboard. As people work to power up their immune response, they’re thinking more about their health in general, which leads to reflection on the habits they currently have and how they impact their wellbeing. Fish oil’s healthful reputation makes it an easy next step from probiotics, fermented foods and elderberry.
I also believe its consistency helps it command an aura of healthfulness. Soft-gel capsules -- those clear tan ones you’re picturing right now -- make up 59% of the market. On Amazon, 25 brands control 80% of consumer spend. Considering the fact that sales jumped from $5.6mil in March 2020 to $6.6mil by July, it’s seems evident that most people are content with these well-known formats. They aren’t expecting the experimental ones we see for immune-support from Hilma and sleep from The Nue Co -- even next-gen supplement companies like Ritual and Care/Of persist with the soft gel format.
That’s not to say that fish oil innovation doesn’t exist, but rather suggests that its healthy reputation results from its consistency. Consumers expect a particular format and even taste. These attributes have come to mark the product as health-supporting.
That’s why Barleans’s fruity-tasting fish oil smoothies are so fascinating. Called “smoothies” these viscous fish oil-infused mask the oil’s distinctive taste with the flavor of gummy candy or sweet yogurt. While the main audience for these products is children (or parents), they also come in adult varieties and in both vegan flaxseed- and fish-derived formulations.
It’s a smart move, but -- if we follow the reasoning above that people actually want fish oil to taste bad to believe that it’s healthy for them -- there’s a limited audience. These are the people who are interested in stealth health, like hiding veggies in sauces and ice creams. By removing the taste of fish from fish oil, Barleans lets people bypass the healthy signifier (taste, as we mentioned above). This means fish oil’s healthfulness is limited to what it does in the body. While the consumer absorbs its nutrients, the pleasant taste eliminates the tangible interaction with health, thereby reducing the likelihood of subsequent health-supporting actions resulting from a health-conscious mindset.
But there’s another, more tangible attribute that could impact the performance of these improved products: they don't contain the same level of omega-3 DHA and EPAs as traditional fish oil capsules. They have added sugar. And so in another sense the actual nutritional benefit is limited simply through the nutrition breakdown of the product itself. It doesn’t taste quite as healthy, because it’s not quite as healthy.
Yet there is a benefit I see the Barlean’s fruit-flavored oils playing as a gateway supplement. For people who embrace health-avoiding tactics by embracing hedonic taste over pragmatic function, there is the potential that the regular consumption of a pleasurable fish oil could transform the healthy mindset from one of avoidance to one of embrace. Through regular interaction with fish oil, it could lose some of its forbidding aura and enable the consumer to identify as someone who consumes fish oil. Once this self-identification bridge is crossed, it could thus become easier to approach the strong-tasting oils or capsules in the first place.
Yet is it really worth it? Studies show that it’s difficult to trace a direct benefit from the regular consumption of fish oil. As with protein powder -- and really as with all functional foods -- I believe food companies should explicitly acknowledge that the most certain benefit (and even this is far from certain) comes from the consumer’s mindset. If adding these products empowers people to see themselves as healthy individuals who take care of themselves -- and so long as the product is not actively harming them -- then it’s doing its job. If taking fish oil each day makes someone feel like they are investing in their health, then that’s going to carry into their mindset and make their whole life healthier.
So, yes, fish oil sales are booming. Let’s take this as an optimistic signal that more Americans than ever are willing to invest in their health and adopt a more nuanced understanding of what that means. An understanding that embraces strong flavors and overtly healthy (or overtly health-signaling) interactions. The pandemic hasn’t been about just junk food, but about self-awareness around all habits.
FUN FACT: I had way too much fun filling out the data-grabbing quiz from Care/of while writing this post. While I am not planning on taking American Ginseng anytime soon (you can ask later about magnesium and vitamin D…), I saw that they had a really cool protein shake bottle. Now, I am cringing that I have called any protein shake bottle as ‘cool’ or that I have even become a person who is interested in protein shake bottles, but it does make me think about who consumes these powders these days. It’s more than just bros. A quick Google search backs this up. You can now buy pink protein shaker bottles, snowflake-decorated ones and Vera Bradley ones. And you can buy the protein shaker equivalent of his/hers mugs: bae/bro protein shaker bottles. The more you know.