According to results from the Grocery Manufacturers Association’s 2010 Health and Wellness survey, healthy foods are on the rise. Survey results show that, in response to consumer demand for healthier products, “food and beverage companies eliminated or reduced trans fat in more than 10,000 products, eliminated or reduced saturated fat in more than 6,600 products…”

More great news for healthy food makers! In a nifty, new graphic taken from Reimagining Health & Wellness 2010, the Hartman Group totals up average consumer health and wellness spending and finds that average spending on wellness products has been on an upward trend since 2005.

According to research from Mambo Sprouts Marketing, functional foods — items that provide additional health-promoting or disease-preventing attributes beyond their basic nutritional properties — are making a big splash with consumers and offer another way for manufacturers to differentiate their products.

No matter where you stand on meat analogues, it’s been hard to miss the latest news that scientists at the University of Missouri have come up with a soy-based product that very closely imitates chicken flesh. This latest food breakthrough is featured in the upcoming issue of Time Magazine, which touts that this is the “first soy product that not only can be flavored to taste like chicken but also breaks apart in your mouth the way chicken does: not too soft, not too hard, but with that ineffable chew of real flesh.”

Selling vegetarian in today’s market doesn’t mean just selling to vegetarians, it simply means selling vegetarian. Case in point — the number of vegetarians has remained relatively stable in recent years, but the number of meat reducing consumers has increased steadily. Therefore, in order for vegetarian businesses to grow, they must appeal to the larger group of meat reducing consumers who are moving closer toward a vegetarian diet with every meal.