Thistle Baby

Just as the food kit service is taking off, and popular brands are offering more options for picky and sensitive eaters in order to attract new customers, Thistle has gone in an entirely new direction: offering a meal kit service geared to feeding babies.

Meal kit services offer a healthy option to families who prefer to cook meals at home but don’t have the time to shop for groceries, plan meals, or browse through recipes. These services have particularly taken off among millennials who have higher sources of income and limited time between work and raising young children, and who are also more technically savvy and early adapters of new apps.

Which is why Thistle is making an interesting move to appeal to the needs of the aging millennial market, who are now starting to have children of their own. Young mothers often feel overwhelmed with trying to juggle work and raising a healthy baby, and are uncertain about feeding them food from jars. Some complaints about choosing store-bought baby food, including stores with healthy options like Whole Foods, is that it is so processed the food ends up being too watery, or it’s not made with all real food ingredients and the taste and nutrition is lacking.

Mobile Shopping

People are choosing to shop online for almost anything, from researching products to reading reviews to finding the most deeply discounted items or the perfect curated gift. And it’s no coincidence. As it turns out, our phones are making it much easier.

According to a recent article in Forbes, mobile shopping is quickly taking the lead as the preferred method of making an online purchase, accounting for 49% of all e-commerce traffic, ahead of both desktop (44%) and tablets (7%). It’s easy to pick up your smartphone and purchase an item, especially when you are out and see a product you want, but wonder if ordering it online gives you a deeper discount or perhaps more options than buying it on the spot. Since our phones are always with us, it’s also easier to research and purchase right away, rather than making a note and researching and purchasing later from a laptop.

Ancestry DNA Kit

Ancestry made a savvy business decision when the company began offering simple and affordable DNA test kits. Thanks to good timing with popular TV shows featuring celebrities who discover their hidden pasts, DNA test kits are offering to help the rest of us redefine our identity.

Many of us have been told about our family’s history, but that goes back only a few generations. People have migrated for centuries, so the fact that your grandfather came from Italy doesn’t mean your ancestors were Italian. People who’d always been a little curious about their family’s genetic history are now able to glean information that wasn’t possible a generation ago.

Daily Burn Spartan Fit

The popular online exercise program Daily Burn has expanded their course offerings to include a new service for customers called Spartan Fit.

The inspiration behind Daily Burn’s Spartan Fit is based on the obstacle course called the Spartan Race. The Spartan Race is a hodgepodge of challenges, and can include anything from gritty courses filled with mud to hills and obstacles like the barbed wire crawl and rope climb, aimed to train its customers to be able to handle any fitness challenge.

“There’s always something new to surprise you — that’s the beauty of the sport,” said Kevin Donoghue, Spartan SGX coach and head trainer for the Daily Burn Spartan program. “Even if it’s the same course, it changes from day to day.”

The Daily Burn Spartan Program offers six weeks of workouts to prepare your body for the Spartan Race, or even if you don’t participate in the race, to strengthen muscles such as arms, shoulders and core as well as to improve your endurance so you feel incredibly fit, strong, and healthy.

Urine Test to Determine a Healthy Diet

Scientists in the UK have developed a simple urine test to determine whether or not people are eating healthy diets. For those looking to lose weight or deal with health problems, the study aims to provide more accurate reporting so doctors can better address their issues.

Too often, researchers claimed, when asked to record the food we eat on a daily basis, we tend to overestimate our fruit and vegetable consumption and downplay the unhealthy stuff, like donuts and cheeseburgers.

The urine test developed by researchers at Imperial College London (ICL), Newcastle University and Aberystwyth University, can get pretty specific about which foods you’re consumed. For instance, researchers found the test can reveal whether you have eaten red meat or fish and indicate whether you have eaten any fruit or vegetables. The test is sensitive enough to indicate some specific foods such as oranges, grapes and leafy green vegetables.

Fabletics Online Workouts

Fabletics is branching out of the athleisure apparel business to offer its customers fitness training as well as merchandise, including online workout routines taught by popular instructors.

The company launched almost four years ago with co-founder Kate Hudson at the helm, offering discounted but stylish workout clothing that competed with top-name brands like Lululemon. Fabletics began as an online-only business but has grown since its launch, opening 18 brick and mortar stores in the last year according to website TechCrunch.

Fabletics has had a rocky time despite its growth, including some bad press surrounding its subscription-based model. In September of 2015, Buzzfeed reported on how Fabletics' parent company Just Fab fielded thousands of customer complaints for billing unknowing customers on a monthly cycle. Most of the customers who bought one or two items had no idea they signed up for a subscription, and couldn’t find information from the company explaining how to cancel.