As we look ahead to the latter half of the 2020s, it’s time to reflect and ask what’s next.

In the world of hotel wellness, things seem to be changing faster than ever as new trends emerge and different subcategories are added to the array of possible features, services, amenities and experiences.

In this post, before we get into my predictions for a decade from now, let’s first look back at where we were a decade ago in the year 2015. Some highlights:

• Red light therapy and photobiomodulation weren’t yet table stakes for a spa
• Thermal bathing as a wellness resort centerpiece hadn’t yet reached North America
• Meditation and mindfulness were seen as woo-woo and not foundational to health
• Resveratrol was only really spoken aloud by the likes of Dr. David Sinclair and his ilk
• Seed oils weren’t yet the target of crucifixion by all sides of the nutritional spectrum
• Genetics were still seen as the predominant factor in lifespan, not epigenetics

And numerous others. The point is, we’ve come a long, long way in wellness program diversification, scientific understanding of how the body (and mind) work and what’s commonly understood as being part of a healthy lifestyle.

Given how far we’ve come and how exponential our knowledge base is, it’s almost preposterous to make any guarantees about the year 2035. Still, it’s a fun exercise!

You Are What You Eat

What you get below is a combination of wishful thinking on my end (as all op-eds are) as well as what I know to be backed by strong scientific evidence but not yet widely applied inside and outside of hotel environments.

But because I’m a bit believer in healing from the inside-out or ‘food as medicine’ or ‘you are what you eat’, there’s a strong emphasis on diet and ingredients below – many of which may surprise you.

A person can make such a profound impact on their overall life direction – cognition, mood, sleep, immune strength, muscular strength and so on – by improving their diet that it’s essential I spell out all the nasty crap that may be holding you back from reaching your health goals.

Several times I’ve been asked about whether nutrition or exercise is more important. While fitness is paramount, nutrition wins hands down.

Think about it. If you feel like crap, are bloated or are lethargic all the time because the foods you’re eating are inflammatory or you have persistent gut issues, you won’t be in the mood for hauling your keester over to the gym (or even to the yoga mat next to the sofa).

And given your diet’s circular relationship with sleep, if you aren’t eating right, you likely aren’t sleeping right. And nothing is worse for gym session motivation than a crummy night’s rest.

XX Strong Trigger Warning XX

Some of what’s listed may conflict with your current lifestyle or beliefs. Some may ‘trigger’ you. But is that necessarily a bad thing? Don’t you want to be challenged in life, or do you want the whole world to bend to your ideology?

Change is how we grow after all, and change only occurs when we examine the boundaries of our own mind and our ‘limiting beliefs’.

Taking a historical viewpoint, medical ‘facts’ are always tested, debated, refuted, refined and evolved. That’s the scientific method at work, and we should all be grateful for the countless intrepid researchers who have stood against the established dogma. Much of what we ‘knew’ as conclusively true or fixed in stone has been revealed to be more nuanced in its context or outright wrong.

As one example, in the 1920s, we ‘knew’ that heroin – yes, heroin! – was a good medication for persistent coughs. Around that same time, doctors were taking about ‘tobacco vitamins’. We’ve come a long way in a century, and that’s only because of those bold scientists who have done rigorous tests, even in the face of bullying and scorn amongst from their peers. (Yes, even scientists are human and thus irrational beings.)

What I ask is to not get angry at the messenger or throw your arms up in defeat and say to yourself, “Geez, you can’t do anything that’s actually healthy these days.” Instead, it’s about having a wise mindset to evaluate new information objectively and strategize about the best approach to incorporate (or not) this updated knowledge into your lifestyle.

You can’t alter who you were yesterday, but you can improve who you become tomorrow.

Personally, I’ve adjusted my diet dozens of times over the years as new research is brought to light, oftentimes begrudgingly removing foods that I once loved from the household because they just aren’t good for the body.

Yes, it’s demoralizing to see once normal aspects of my life go by the wayside, but it’s actually a sign of progress. We are all on a journey of wellness, and a big part of that is finding our own ways to constantly be better for ourselves and for others.

Unhealthy Foods In 2035

Refined Sugar: This one is commonly understood as bad, but in a decade’s time we’ll be likening its effects on Schedule I narcotic levels. Sugar in an unstructured form is highly addictive; it’s maladaptive for the gut microbiome and there’s seldom a cancer discovered that doesn’t consider it as miracle grow. This word ‘unstructured’ is critical because other sugary substances like honey or fruit are different. In honey, the glucose and fructose are matrixed alongside antioxidants, fiber and other buffering substances like trehalose.

Ultra-Processed Foods (UPF): There’s a lot of nuance around what qualifies as a UPF versus only a processed food. Technically speaking, olive oil is a processed food because you have to stone-grind the olives to press out the oil. However, what we know for sure is that the use of modern industrial or artificial chemical processes creates foods or ingredients that our bodies have never encountered prior to around 1970. That’s hardly enough time for evolution to catch up and effectively process it all correctly.

Most Artificial Sweeteners: These are largely UPFs that our bodies haven’t encountered until the modern era. The research is still lacking to conclusively say one way or another, but the overall direction is skewing towards artificial being artificial. One bombshell study on sucralose showed that it’s genotoxic, while aspartame has long been known to cause gut dysbiosis and reduce testosterone in men. Three safe ones – for now at least! – are xylitol, allulose and monk fruit extract. More critically is the existential self-examination: why do you need foods or beverages to have additive sweetness?

Seed Oils: The scientific community is currently shifting away from labeling these omega 6-dominant oils as ‘heart healthy’ to disastrous for the liver and heart. It’s taken some time, and indeed asking a doctor’s position on seed oils is a good litmus test for how up-to-date they are on nutrition. A feature of the human body is that omega 6s are both fatty acids as well as inflammatory signaling molecules, so getting too many of these particular poly-unsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) all at once initiates an inflammatory cascade that can disrupt everything from smooth electron transfer in the mitochondrial wall to the sensitivity of your innate immune system. Omega 6s also compete for the same enzymes that convert plant-based omega 3s (ALA) into EPA then DHA, and therefore they’re also bad for your brain. And that’s not even counting if the seed oils are oxidized or the refined, bleached, deodorized (RBD) process that’s required to make these ‘neutral’ oils. Throw these oils out immediately: cottonseed, soybean, corn, grapeseed, sunflower and rapeseed (rebranded as canola).

Additive Emulsifiers: A subcategory of UPF, but they deserve a special mention because they really do a number on the mucosal layer of your gut, and the media hasn’t yet caught wind of just how bad these are. Some things to look out for on labels: carrageenan, locust gum, guar gum, soy lecithin and others.

Non-Natural Food Dyes: Yet another subcategory of UPF that’s merited a special shoutout because it pains me every time I see a kid take a swig of pop that contains one of these molecules that can potentially cause brain disorders. Avoid at all costs alongside on the ingredient label that’s numbered or looks like a SKU. Instead, there are now a beautiful array of natural, plant-based pigments like beetroot powder, paprika, blueberry powder, açai, pulverized butterfly pea flower, saffron, turmeric, spirulina, hibiscus, or cacao.

Caged Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs): While the longevity community is all about pasture-raised and grass-finished livestock, this stands largely as a reaction to the atrocious conditions of CAFOs – antibiotics, hormones, glyphosate-rich unnatural feedstocks. You are what you eat, and you are what you eat ate.

Farmed Fish: Similar to CAFOs, lots of evidence is emerging describing the toxic Petrie dishes of aquaculture setups where the animals are also fed a diet that leaves them devoid of quality omega 3 fats. Worst of all is perhaps ‘Atlantic salmon’ which is pumped full of petroleum-derived compounds to make it look that tantalizing pink color instead of the cigarette ash color that it would be otherwise.

Whey Protein Powder: This is technically a UPF, but whey and casein proteins gotten a pass because right now the zeitgeist is all about a high-protein diet being associated with longevity. But I ask: where in nature does protein exist that exists in a refined, unstructured form? You’re dealing with highly charged, nitrate-rich molecules (amino acids) that our bodies have always encountered within a slow-releasing food matrix for the past two million years or so.

Protein Bars: These may appear to have protein that’s structured, but that structuring is largely derived from unnatural molecules or using the full thesaurus of alternative words for refined sugar. If you really need a protein snack, eat nuts, beans, aged cheese or high-quality meat.

Tap Water: If you live in Switzerland or Austria, I envy you because you have access to incredibly clean water right out of the faucet. Here in North America, it’s a different story. Firstly, tap water is disinfected to remove directly harmful bacteria or other pathogens, but oftentimes we’re doing a bad job of removing disinfectant byproducts (DBPs). Add to that all the leftover pharmaceuticals or prescription drugs that we all piss out or toss away directly. Then consider the recent evidence around how fluoride can disrupt the good bacteria in one’s mouth and has now been linked with lowered testosterone in men. Most water filter pitchers may significantly reduce the total dissolved solids (TDS) in tap water but fail to remove fluoride like a reverse osmosis (RO) system.

Tea Bags: There’s nothing wrong with a good herbal tea. In fact, I try to consume it every day. But I use steel cages and do my best to avoid regular tea bags (although some silk or non-plastic, luxury tea bag suppliers exist). The reason in a word is: microplastics. New studies have shown that the amount of microplastics that are transferred from the tea bag into the heated water may be so great that they negate any potential health benefits from the tea itself.

Oat Milk Is Poison

Let’s put it all in focus now by discussing oat milk – a food that’s made waves as a dairy alternative but is actually a toxic UPF for the body. Here’s why.

Start by reading the ingredient label of a typical oat milk brand. In order to deliver the flavor profile and ‘mouthfeel’ akin to what you get when you froth dairy milk for a cappuccino, they have to add a whole bunch of artificial stuff into this product:

• Refined sugar (often marketed as ‘cane sugar’ or ‘evaporated cane juice’)
• Seed oils (canola or sunflower as the two most common ones)
• Emulsifiers (carrageenan, gellan, other gums)
• Phosphate (a negatively charged compound that in an unstructured form can act as neuroexcitatory along the gut-brain axis)
• Natural flavors (they can hide a lot in here…)

Aside from being a UPF that contains many ingredients that are independently harmful, there’s one other aspect of oats that’s important to consider:

Animals resist being eaten by running away or fighting back; plants resist through chemical warfare.

The outer husk of oats is not designed for human consumption; it’s designed to protect the oat plant’s offspring from being eaten. Like most other grains, oats contain compounds within the category called lectins that cause inflammation by disrupting the mucosal lining of the gut as well as a molecule called phytic acid (also known as inositol hexaphosphate) that binds up minerals to prevent their absorption into the body.

While cooking into porridge or, ideally, fermenting oats can severely reduce the concentrations of lectins and phytic acid so that they are safe for the body, oat milk is made by taking the whole dried oat and pulverizing it into a flour. This liberates the lectins and phytic acid into a more unstructured form, removing the fibers that would otherwise buffer these harmful compounds from attaching the gut wall all at once.

Before closing out my argumentation against oat milk, there’s yet one more element to add fuel to the fire: glyphosate as a desiccant. Otherwise known as Roundup, this herbicide has been rightfully demonized for its adverse effects on the human body when consumed regularly via the consumption of non-organic crops. Many big agricultural companies have responded through the messaging that they ‘barely’ use this chemical ‘as a herbicide’. There’s one big problem to that: glyphosate is also used as a desiccant or rapid-drying agent during the harvesting process to minimize the ability for mold to rot away an entire grain silo’s full of crop. The end result is your body is still getting a full load of this herbicide.

Given these three main points against oat milk – artificial additives, unstructured lectins and harmful desiccants – I hope you will reconsider this food product.

And if you are looking for a non-dairy alternative that’s safe, my recommendation is ‘milked nuts’ which are only water and one of almond, cashew, hazelnut or walnut, and without any of the emulsifiers. The taste is a tad thin, but sacrifices have to be made in the name of health.

Non-Organic Flash-Ripened Bananas Are Bad

Are you triggered yet? That’s not necessarily bad or good, but what’s more important is whether you are reacting or responding to new information.

Like oat milk, bananas represent another huge gap between our present-day knowledge of what’s healthy and what contemporaneous research is telling us.

Modern bananas are already a mutant fruit that’s been bred for low fiber and high fructose content. Green bananas are healthy because they have lots of fiber and some other nutrients like beta-carotene, but the ripening process involves the breakdown of those fibers into fructose.

This is a simple sugar that our bodies can’t use directly as fuel but our livers have to first convert into glucose. So, on top of all the other projects our livers have to complete (detoxifying, recycling old blood cells and so on), now you’re adding a big batch of fructose to the service order. The flash-ripening of commercial bananas accelerates this fiber-to-fructose conversion.

Not only that, but bananas have a high amount of polyphenol oxidase (PPO) which is the agent that browns the flesh of a banana but can also act to break down polyphenols in berries when eaten together.

Thirdly, bananas that are not organic are sprayed with fungicides so that they don’t rot while in transit from the tropics to a supermarket near you. They’ve recently shown that those chemicals do indeed leach through the peel and get into your body upon consumption.

How do I eat bananas? Sparingly, usually only when I’m in the tropics and know the source, and independent of dark fruits with polyphenols.

Non-Food Unhealthy Choices

By now your eyes may be a bit tired while your brain is also wrangling with a number of conflicting thoughts about what you previously accepted as status quo. Let’s disrupt that even further!

Here are some regularly purchased items that are demonstrating some rather unhealthy qualities to them:

• Mouthwash: often contains fluoride; kills good bacteria in your mouth
• Fluoride toothpaste: opt for coconut-based or other fluoride-free ones
• Mouth breathing: your nose is there for the very important reason of filtering the air, while many of the harmful bacteria in your mouth would welcome the chance to have a fresh dose of oxygen to turbocharge their activity
• Hand sanitizer: just like how we are teasing out the mouth-brain relationship, there’s also the skin-brain connection wherein coming in constant contact with artificial disinfectants can agitate the skin and get absorbed into the blood
• Disinfectant wipes: same story as hand sanitizer; use good old-fashioned soap
• Thermal paper: known to contain high amounts of bisphenol A (BPA) which is a hormone disruptor
• Food delivery and QSR food wrappings: often containing microplastics that leach into your food under heat
• Polyester underwear and leggings: much like tea bags or QSR food wrappings, we have to be cautious of microplastics leaching into our bodies
• Plastic kitchenware: anything that touches heat should never be plastic, which includes microwavable containers, cutlery, cutting boards, frying pans, spatulas cookware or sous vide pouches
• Sunscreen: with the exception of zinc oxide, the active ingredients like avobenzone or oxybenzone have been known to be hormone disruptors, not to mention their deleterious effects on ocean life
• Artificial fragrances: while there are a number of great brands out there that test their products to ensure safety, many cheaper fragrances
• Scented candles: aside from beeswax versions, many brands use artificial ingredients to aerosolize chemically derived fragrances
• Social media: ending on yet more controversy, but heading into 2026 I think we all sort of know that the newsfeed algorithms are designed to make us addicted with polarizing content; LinkedIn is an exception here because it’s educational content but just be wary of what posts Instagram or TikTok serves to your eyeballs

Larry Mogelonsky, MBA, P. Eng. - Hotel Strategist, Industry Pundit, Veteran Marketer, and Public Speaker. Adam Mogelonsky, is the chief technologist of the company, Adam has a broad understanding of the complexities of the hotel tech stack as well as the vendors who are paving the way for increased labor efficiencies and new revenue growth opportunities.

Leveraging over 40 years working in hospitality, Hotel Mogel Consulting helps both hotel owners maximize property performance and technology vendors navigate the industry's entry barriers to realize financial success. Visit our contact page to start the conversation.

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