Nutrition Business Journal's Guest Editors Issue explores new voices, perspectives

Journalism, at its best, should be a conversation—writers and editors listening to a community and sharing what it hears in a dialogue of sorts. For a trade journal like the Nutrition Business Journal, that’s even more true. It hopes to create a space where ideas are shared and issues are debated.

But it is all too common to be distracted from that mission. The blinders come on, and the tunnel vision closes in. While editors brainstorm these issues as a team, they don’t often reach far enough beyond the masthead for ideas.

For this first-ever Guest Editors Issue, NBJ wanted to reach beyond its editorial bubble. Indeed, it popped.

The NBJ team recruited eight people from across the natural products industry to help shape an issue around the stories they thought needed telling. These people have experiences and perspectives that disrupted the standard editorial mix and brought in not only their ideas, but also voices we might not otherwise hear. NBJ also sought out guest editors representing a more diverse sounding board than it has historically assembled.

Read on to meet the new—albeit fleeting—NBJ editorial staff:

UNPA President Loren Israelsen wanted NBJ to explore how the industry can best take a position on the COVID-19 vaccine after the pandemic fueled historic sales growth.

UR Labs founder Marc Washington tasked NBJ to find out how the industry can better serve people of color and address their health challenges highlighted by the pandemic.

Lawyer Rend Al-Mondhiry thought NBJ should ask what supplement brands can do to prepare for a wave of immunity research that will wash over the industry in the coming months.

As a marketing consultant, Emerald-Jane Hunter guided a writer to learn how brands can make the tumult of 2020 an impactful part of their story.

Whipstich Capital co-founder Mike Burgmaier thought startup brands and investors needed a dialogue about irrational exuberance after a year when pandemic-warped channel dynamics added a windfall boost.

The appearance of tests to detect ingredients created via synthetic biology makes it time for the supplement industry to fully confront the technology, according to Organic and Natural Health Association CEO Karen Howard.

Supplement industry veteran and outspoken environmental advocate Tom Newmark had the idea for a story detailing not just why brands should be sourcing from regenerative agriculture but also how that can be accomplished.

The incoming Biden administration could provide new opportunities for the natural products industry to get involved in agricultural policy, and Tera’s Whey and Food Finance Institute founder Tera Johnson wanted to see a story exploring what that involvement could mean.