BCAAs: 3 Trends That Google Didn't Miss

This post was originally written as a submission for Nutritional Outlook Magazine.

Thanks to the Internet, we can gain a better understanding of almost anything these days and market trends are no exception, including those in the world of sports nutrition.

In the sports market, one acronym currently ranks above the rest: BCAA. Short for branched-chain amino acids, these uniquely structured amino acids have worked their way—one powder product at a time—into the sports nutrition spotlight. With the help of Google (and, more specifically, Google Trends), we can gain some valuable insight into consumer interest in BCAAs and predict what may be next for these exceptional amino acids.

Recognizing the Larger Trend

Google Trends (www.google.com/trends) is a search platform that allows users to see how certain Internet search terms are trending. Through Google Trends, for instance, we can discover that turmeric is a “rising star” (as Google calls it), sitting among some of the most-searched food words in 2016. Even though BCAA isn’t at the level of a “rising star,” Google Trends still reveals that interest in the term is high—and growing.

Taking a look at the past decade, even though interest in the term BCAA did start to climb by mid-2008, according to Google’s “Interest over Time” report, the surge in interest over the last five years has been nothing less than tremendous. From August 2011 through August 2016, interest in the search terms BCAAs and branched-chain amino acids grew at an average rate of 22% each year. What’s more, this quantifiable (not to mention impressive) surge in interest has shown no sign of slowing as we work our way into 2017...