Eat Just has added a new single-ingredient protein powder to its portfolio, made from the same mung bean base as its Just Egg. The company says the product has more protein than “anything else on the market”.
California’s Eat Just has rolled out Just One, a range of protein powders made from the same mung bean base that powers its liquid egg alternative, at all Whole Foods locations in the US.
The unflavored, single-ingredient version is also available at Purple Carrot, and contains 30g of complete protein per serving (three heaped tablespoons, or 35g). This means it contains all nine essential amino acids, and more of them than whey, pea or soy protein, which populate the current market of protein powders.
Courtesy: Eat Just
In addition, Just One comes in three flavours – chocolate-peanut butter, maple-banana, and vanilla-chai – which contain 17g of protein per serving. Each protein powder comes in a 12oz reusable aluminium tin, priced at $34.99.
“This is more than a conventional protein powder – it’s a protein that enables you to bake, to bind, to emulsify, to make pancakes and muffins and sauces. It’s an awesome, creamy [addition] to oatmeal.” Eat Just co-founder and CEO Josh Tetrick tells Green Queen, adding that it can replace eggs and milk in a range of applications.
“It has more protein per serving than anything else on the market. It’s an entirely new category; a new, innovative kitchen staple,” he suggests.
Just One protein powder hailed by chefs
“We spent years trying to find a clean, single-ingredient protein that could make it a little easier to eat better,” Tetrick said in a statement. “We’re so excited to see what folks make with it.”
Explaining how it’s made, he tells Green Queen: “It’s exactly the same protein we use to make Just Egg. We take a bean, mill [it] into a flour, and separate the protein at high rates of speeds in a centrifuge.”
This proprietary protein separation technology maintains the protein’s integrity during processing, allowing the resulting ingredient to gel, emulsify, leaven, bind, and more. Eat Just argues that most protein powders make food denser and grittier, but Just One makes it better.
Courtesy: Eat Just
It carries some clout with culinary experts too, with celebrity chef Andrew Zimmern saying: “My chefs and I have fooled around with Just One in our kitchens for the last six months. We’re in love. From pumpkin bread to mushroom meatballs and silky smoothies, this single ingredient can do it all. It’s best in class.”
All of the flavour contains brown sugar, natural flavours, and salt, with 8g of added sugar per serving; the maple-banana powder also has banana powder and natural maple flavour, the chocolate-peanut butter version uses Guittard cocoa and roasted peanut powder, and the vanilla-chai variety has cashew powder and chai spices.
How Just One compares with eggs to feed US protein demand
To use Just One as an egg replacer in baking recipes, the company recommends blending 80g of the powder with 200g of water, with 50g of the hydrated mix equivalent to one egg. That means one tin of the protein powder can roughly replace 25 eggs.
At the suggested retail price, this equates to $1.38 per egg used in baking. That’s not far away from the price of chicken eggs in some larger US cities. Plus, the mung bean powder gives bakers the ability to add 6.5 times more protein than conventional eggs.
This will appeal to an increasingly protein-hungry American population. The number of people trying to consume more protein has been steadily increasing in the US, from 59% in 2022 and 67% in 2023 to 71% in 2024, according to a 3,000-person survey. And this year, 85% want to continue increasing the amount of protein they eat.
Courtesy: Eat Just
“I think Americans love protein for all sorts of reasons – cultural, emotional, and because of evidence-based reasons,” says Tetrick. “They have loved [it], and probably will always want more of it.”
It leaves a major opportunity for alternative protein companies, given the environmental intolerance issues associated with conventional whey protein. That said, 87% of Americans believe you need animal products to get enough protein, despite vast evidence to the contrary, so there is a need for education.
Still, the demand for plant-based protein powders can be seen in the numbers. In 2024, retail sales of the category rose by 11% (reaching $450M), with Americans buying 30 million units (a 13% rise). They also became 2% cheaper, and were the fourth-largest category in the vegan market after milk, meat and creamer alternatives.
Animal-free protein powders on the rise
Courtesy: Eat Just
Just One is among a growing list of companies offering animal-free protein powders. Just last week, Finland’s Solar Foods announced the world’s first protein powder made from air – targeted at the health and performance nutrition market in the US – while Balletic Foods entered the space with three fermentation-derived protein powders.
Perfect Day was one of the first companies in the world to create an animal-free whey protein powder, and lent its ingredient to CPG protein powder brand Strive Nutrition, as well as online sports nutrition giant Myprotein. And last year, Nestlé released a Better Whey product under its Orgain line last year, featuring the same ingredient.
Elsewhere, France’s Bon Vivant has introduced a three-strong range of functional animal-free dairy protein powders, while Dutch microbial protein maker Farmless is working on a ‘brewed’ protein powder.
Meanwhile, precision fermentation startup The Every Company has launched a sugar-free syrup with 5g of recombinant egg protein per ounce, offering consumers a new way to add protein to their diets.
In our interview series, we quiz future food investors about the solutions that excite them the most, their favourite climate-forward restaurant, and what they look for in successful founders.
Christian Nagel is a Co-Founder and Partner at Earlybird Venture Capital.
What future food technologies most excite you?
Artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionising food tech with entirely new approaches through generative models. For example, precision nutrition is becoming possible with hyper-personalised meal recommendations based on biomarkers and real-time data. In the lab, AI is accelerating synthetic biology, designing microbes that produce animal-free proteins.
Robotic kitchens powered by AI are moving beyond automation into culinary creativity, and supply chains are getting smarter with AI predicting demand and reducing food waste. Across the board, AI is making food systems more efficient, sustainable, and tailored to individual needs.
What are three future food verticals you are actively looking at for 2025?
AI is accelerating the design of microorganisms that can produce new proteins, vitamins, and fats, or even mimic complex animal products. This innovation will drive momentum in the most compelling foodtech opportunities: fermentation-based protein platforms, clean-label functional ingredients, and technology that enhances supply chain resilience.
What do you consider the food tech sector’s greatest achievement in the past five years?
The commercialisation of cultivated meat products, exemplified by regulatory approvals and first-to-market entries, such as Upside Foods and Eat Just’s cultivated chicken approvals in the US, Mission Barns‘s cultivated pork approval in the US, Eat Just’s cultivated chicken approval in Singapore, and our portfolio company Gourmey, which is in the approval process for fois gras in seven countries, representing a massive technological and regulatory milestone.
If you could wave a magic wand, how would you fix plant-based meat?
I’d significantly enhance the taste and texture parity with conventional meat, particularly around juiciness, flavour, and cooking experience. This would likely involve breakthroughs in fat formulations, texture scaffolding, and ingredient innovation to dramatically improve consumer adoption.
Like Nosh.bio’s Koji Chunks, addressing all the aforementioned points, with no additives, and now moving from the lab to mainstream shelves. This proves that sustainable, functional alternatives can deliver on taste, scalability, and consumer appeal in real-world markets without a magic wand.
What’s the top trait you look for in a founder?
We look for founders with the potential, both in grit and vision, to redefine an industry.
What do you consider your most successful future food investment so far?
When it comes to future food, impact can come from very different directions, and that’s exactly what we see in both our portfolio companies Gourmey and Nosh.bio. I wouldn’t pick just one because they represent two very different, equally exciting approaches.
Gourmey is redefining high-end cultivated meat with a focus on culinary excellence, while Nosh.bio is building a foundational fermentation platform with broad applications. Both are shaping the future of food, just from very different angles.
What do people misunderstand/get wrong most about VC?
People often think venture capital is just about chasing the next big thing, but after 28 years in this industry, the hype cycles become easier to spot. In reality, it’s about a long-term partnership. Being all in from day one is what we embrace at Earlybird, and that means being a sparring partner before the breakthrough and through the uncertainty so that you might get to celebrate the wins at the end.
What is the most ‘future food’ thing you have eaten this month?
Fois gras in Paris from Gourmey – this was an experience with cultivated meat, where it was even better than the original, also confirmed by Rasmus Munk, who was Chef of the Year 2024 and is now part of Gourmey’s culinary board.
Where is your favourite climate-forward restaurant/dish/place to eat anywhere in the world?
Besides having been catered with Nosh.bio’s products, Cookies Cream in Berlin is still my most favourite climate-forward restaurant, despite not being vegan.
What’s your ‘why’? What motivates you to do what you do?
Being part of the founding journey, from the earliest stage, is what keeps me inspired. There’s something deeply meaningful about being the first to believe in a founding team, sometimes before anyone does. That early conviction can make all the difference.
US cultivated seafood startup BlueNalu is targeting an initial launch of its bluefin tuna in California and has cemented partnerships to take the product global.
A highly prized sushi delicacy made from cultured tuna cells could soon be coming to diners’ plates in California.
San Diego-based BlueNalu is targeting the state as the first port of entry for its cultivated bluefin tuna toro, having filed for regulatory approval with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Department of Agriculture (USDA).
“Our initial launch will focus on California, starting in our home base of San Diego – a region known for its vibrant food culture and consumers who prioritise healthy and responsibly produced products,” founder and CEO Lou Cooperhouse tells Green Queen.
At the same time, the company is laying the groundwork for international operations in “markets where demand, regulatory clarity, and strategic partnerships align”. That includes Singapore (where it has submitted a regulatory dossier), the UK (where it’s part of the government’s new regulatory sandbox scheme), and several nations in Asia-Pacific and the Middle East.
The UK is the only European country to have approved cultivated meat for sale, which has prompted BlueNalu to amp up its focus on this market and expand its ongoing partnership with frozen food distributor Nomad Foods.
“We began collaborating in 2021 to explore the market potential for cultivated seafood and following compelling consumer insights, we are now working together on market entry and commercialisation strategies,” says Cooperhouse, noting that the link-up will help bring its cultivated tuna to both the UK and the wider European market.
“This includes evaluating premium foodservice offerings that align with consumer demand for high-quality, sustainable seafood, and also exploring other channels of distribution that align with Nomad’s current and future capabilities,” he adds.
Brits respond positively to cultivated seafood
Courtesy: BlueNalu
As part of its global push, BlueNalu commissioned a survey of 2,000 frequent sushi consumers in the UK last summer. “The results showed strong enthusiasm for BlueNalu’s first product, cell-cultivated bluefin tuna toro: 92% of respondents expressed some level of interest in trying it, including 55% who were very or extremely interested,” reveals Cooperhouse.
“Consumers identified the absence of parasites, pesticides, microplastics, mercury, and antibiotics as top benefits, followed by high omega-3 content and sustainable production,” he adds. “The study also affirmed that the terms ‘cell-cultivated’ and ‘cell-cultured’ effectively communicate the product’s origin and align with consumer expectations.”
BlueNalu is one of eight startups participating in the UK Food Standards Agency’s (FSA) two-year regulatory sandbox programme, which aims to help firms bring cultivated meat to market faster. It is the only US company in the scheme, and the only one focused on seafood.
BlueNalu CTO Lauran Madden calls it a “first-of-its-kind initiative” designed to support the development of safe and innovative cultivated food products. “The sandbox offers a unique opportunity for early, collaborative engagement with regulators to ensure we are aligned with the FSA’s expectations and data requirements for novel food applications, and structured dialogue and feedback,” she tells Green Queen.
“We commend the FSA for its forward-thinking approach and leadership in enabling a science-based, transparent regulatory pathway for emerging food technologies,” Madden adds.
In the aforementioned survey, 73% of Brits said they’d likely visit a sushi restaurant that offers the product. So it stands to reason that BlueNalu is planning to introduce its tuna in the UK and Europe through premium sushi and fine-dining restaurants.
“This approach reflects both consumer interest and our product’s unique value proposition. Nomad Foods has a long history of launching innovative seafood products, and together we are identifying the best entry points that meet today’s expectations for taste, safety, consistency, and sustainability,” says Cooperhouse.
“As we progress towards commercialisation, this partnership enables us to pair scientific and regulatory progress with real market insights and commercial expertise.”
The cost economics of bluefin tuna
Courtesy: BlueNalu
Bluefin tuna is a highly sought-after seafood delicacy, thanks to its velvety texture, buttery flavour and nutritional attributes. However, this species represents the ocean’s fastest and longest-distance swimmers, which makes it difficult to raise the fish in captivity, thus commanding a higher price. Toro is the fatty part of bluefin tuna belly, and is used in high-grade sushi and sashimi.
However, its supply is limited and extremely variable in quality, and its stocks face declines due to overfishing and illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing. Continued demand is driving the species towards endangerment and has prompted governments to place strict quotas to limit its fishing. Plus, tuna is one of the most polluted fish in the oceans, often contaminated with plastic debris and extremely high levels of heavy metals like mercury.
Israel’s Wanda Fish, too, is working on cultivated bluefin tuna toro to address this issue, though BlueNalu appears to be ahead in the race to bring it to consumer plates. It already operates a 38,000 sq ft pilot plant in San Diego (which can produce enough tuna for small-scale sales), and has unveiled plans for a larger 140,000 sq ft facility that can manufacture six million lbs of product annually once operational.
This will help bring down costs for the cultivated tuna, a crucial aspect for most consumers. That said, the company is already staring at an advantage here, since bluefin tuna toro already carries a premium price tag, so a cell-cultured version wouldn’t have the same cost difference as that with commodity beef or chicken. According to the poll, 74% of UK consumers are willing to pay the same or more than for conventional bluefin tuna.
“BlueNalu’s business strategy centres on high-demand species that address challenges in supply, consistency, sustainability, and food security – particularly those that displace imports… and command premium pricing,” says Cooperhouse.
“Seafood is already a premium category, and toro is one of the most expensive cuts, and has been described as the ‘Wagyu beef of the sea’. That gives us a unique opportunity to compete in a segment where consumers already expect to pay for quality, and where BlueNalu’s product’s health benefits, consistency, and safety attributes add real value.
“BlueNalu’s consumer research has already demonstrated that many consumers will see great value in our products, due to the health and safety advantages associated with our process. As a result, we believe we will be able to sell our products at or near price parity from our early stages of commercialisation.”
BlueNalu attracting global interest
Courtesy: BlueNalu
The results of the UK research are “highly consistent” with other consumer studies BlueNalue has conducted in the US, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, covering nearly 10,000 people who “showed broad demand” for its seafood.
“Across these markets, we’ve seen strong interest in cell-cultivated seafood, especially among health-conscious consumers who value safety, quality, and transparency,” says Cooperhouse.
BlueNalu has previously announced partnerships and agreements with Asian food giants Pulmuone (South Korea), Mitsubishi, Sumitomo (both Japan), and Thai Union (Thailand), as well as industry leaders like Rich Foods and Griffith Foods. In addition, it has teamed up with Neom, Saudi Arabia’s upcoming future-facing city.
It is one of the most well-funded startups in the cultivated meat industry, having attracted $118M over several rounds, including a $33.5M Series B raise in 2023. However, the firm was an outlier that year, when overall funding for cultivated meat dropped by 75%.
That fall has since continued, as legislative challenges in the US and overseas have attempted to ban cultivated meat (with several states being successful), with investment in this space dropping by a further 40% in 2024.
“As a pre-revenue startup, we’re continually exploring strategic investment opportunities to support our growth,” Cooperhouse says when asked if BlueNalu is seeking new capital.
He adds: “We remain focused on scaling production, advancing regulatory clearances, and building a strong foundation for commercialisation and global market penetration.”
Our weekly column rounds up the latest sustainable food innovation news. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers Gordon Ramsay’s partnership with Becel, a new vegan egg in Italy, and Spain’s plant-based school meal decree.
New products and launches
Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay has taken his partnership with plant-based dairy giant Flora Food Group global, appearing in a replica Skip the Cow ad (minus the expletives) for its Canadian dairy-free butter brand Becel.
In the UK, Quorn has added two new flavours to its mycoprotein-based deli slices range. The tomato-basil flavour can be found at Sainsbury’s and Asda, and the garlic-herb variant at Tesco, both for £2.60.
As whole-food plant-based food surges in the UK, The Tofoo Co introduced a Thai Burger and Southern Fried Pieces, which will retail at Waitrose and Tesco, respectively, for £3.
Speaking of whole foods, vegan seafood player Happiee! has launched what it claims is the UK’s first ready-to-cook lion’s mane mushroom chunks. They’re available in original and teriyaki flavours, retailing for £4 per 180g pack at 240 Sainsbury’s stores.
Courtesy: Happiee!
Confectionery giant Mars has rolled out a new Honeycomb for its dairy-free Galaxy range in the UK. Combining cocoa and hazelnut paste with honeycomb pieces, the bar is available at Sainsbury’s for £1.50.
Ice cream maker Oppo Brothers has launched a better-for-you vegan sorbet range called Oppo Refresh, available in Sicilian Lemon & Strawberry, Alphonso Mango & Passionfruit, and Raspberry Coulis Swirl flavours for £3.75 per three-pack.
Also in the UK, oat milk brand Minor Figures has launched the Hyper Oat line it had unveiled at Expo West. Available in berry, turmeric, matcha, and mango variants, the milks contain adaptogens and nootropics. The berry and mango flavours are available at Waitrose for £3 per 750ml bottle, followed by a wider launch in the coming months.
Courtesy: Minor Figures
In Spain, plant-based meat leader Heura has rolled out a Fine Herbs chicken burger to cater to the country’s affinity for white meat, one of several products planned for this year.
Italian plant-based producer The Bridge has launched a vegan liquid egg called Veg Egg, which is made from soy milk and soy protein.
Across the Atlantic, South Korea’s Unlimeat has brought its flagship Korean BBQ Bulgogi and Pulled Pork Original products to 300 Kroger-affiliated stores in the US, including Ralphs, Fred Meyer, King Soopers, and Smith’s.
Courtesy: Unlimeat
Californian biotech firm Checkerspot has developed what it says is the world’s first high-oleic palm oil alternative made entirely via microalgae fermentation.
Company and finance updates
US animal-free dairy startup DeNovo Foodlabs has formed a 50:50 joint venture with Earth First Food Ventures called PFerrinX26 to scale up the production of precision-fermented lactoferrin protein. They will announce a manufacturing partner soon, and plan to build facilities to produce 300 tonnes of the protein within the next decade.
LoveRaw, the cult-favourite British vegan chocolate brand known for its Ferrero Rocher and Kinder Bueno copycats, has been rescued from administration by Bulgarian plant-based producer Smart Organic, after investment and supplier challenges disrupted the former’s operations and revenue.
Courtesy: LoveRaw
Mycelium Technologies, the French parent company of mycelium protein brand Mycfoods, has kickstarted its first fundraising round, with a €750,000 target. It plans a subsequent €4.5M round next year.
French plant-based companies Hari&Co, Accro, HappyVore, La Vie and Swap Food have formed InterVeg, a coalition aimed at accelerating the transition to a plant-based diet via constructive dialogue with policymakers and promotional campaigns.
Policy and research developments
In a big win for the protein transition, Spain’s Council of Ministers has approved the Royal Decree on Healthy and Sustainable School Cafeterias, which contains a provision to protect children’s right to a 100% plant-based menu in schools, as well as increase legume consumption.
Courtesy: New Wave Biotech
What makes a lean startup? Singaporean sustainable food production platform Nurasa and AI-based precision fermentation facilitator New Wave Biotech have released a whitepaper to help ingredient manufacturers “reimagine the five core lean startup principles” for the food tech world.
Researchers from the US have devised a new 3D printing process to make vegan calamari, using mung bean protein isolate, powdered light-yellow microalgae, gellan gum, and canola oil.
At the University of Florida, researchers are testing a new kind of cattle feed that could help dairy cows release less methane and use nutrients more efficiently.
Finally, in Norway, scientists are proposing kelp and other seaweed species, as well as plant residues, as an alternative to blood and other animal-derived inputs to use as culture media for cultivated meat.
The “addressable market” for plant-based meat and dairy in the US is large, with potential consumers largely omnivores. What does it say about the industry’s future?
Some 71% of Americans say they’re likely to eat products like vegan chicken and oat milk, forming an expansive “addressable market” for plant-based alternatives, a new survey has found.
Using data from a 3,000-person poll it conducted with Ipsos in 2024, alternative protein think tank the Good Food Institute (GFI) sought to find which consumers were and weren’t open to the animal-free category, and grouped them into six segments. The survey involved Americans aged 18-59, who had bought a plant-based meat or dairy product within the preceding month.
GFI divided them into the addressable market (those who see proteins as important for health and nutrition, and feel plant-based meat aligns with those needs) and the rejectors (who turn to protein for taste, satiety and muscle-building, while being more geared towards animal-based sources).
When asked about the role of meat or protein, around four in 10 Americans in the addressable market said they like the taste and find it good for their health. This group tends to be younger, living in urban areas (especially in the West), have a household income above $100,000, and have children in the home.
Meanwhile, 55% of the rejectors like the taste of meat/protein, and four in 10 said it’s filling and healthy. These consumers are more likely to be older, living in the Midwest and suburban areas, and have no children in the household. More than half of them agree that it’s natural for people to eat animals.
Courtesy: GFI
Which Americans make up the addressable market for plant-based meat?
For companies in the plant-based space, understanding the addressable market is vital to success. GFI found that these consumers fell into six segments with distinct attitudes, needs, and motivations. They are mostly omnivores – not vegans or vegetarians – looking to add meat analogues to their diets.
Four of these segments demonstrate higher engagement with plant-based meat and find it delivers unique benefits to them – they make up 57% of the addressable market and over 80% of current plant-based meat eaters.
Ethical Alternative Seekers
Accounting for 10% of the addressable market, these consumers care about sustainability and animal welfare, and are more likely to eat organic and less processed food. This group is diverse and skews younger, with people more likely to be non-white, women, and living in child-free households.
Two-thirds of Ethical Alternative Seekers have been reducing their meat consumption over the past year, while 57% have eaten plant-based meat in that period. And a large majority (81%) are very or extremely likely to consume them in the future, though they’ll be more motivated to do so if these products are less processed, healthier, and easier to find.
Health-Conscious Compromisers
As the name suggests, this group is all about health. They represent the largest share (28%) of meat alternative eaters currently, and 18% of the addressable market. Health-Conscious Compromisers tend to be older, female, and have no children – and while they worry about the potential risks of meat, they don’t want to compromise on taste.
For this group, avoiding processed food, losing weight and adding more fibre is important, and 60% of them say they’re likely to continue eating vegan alternatives in the future. Most of them (70%) agree that these products are healthy, though they are currently deterred by the gap in taste, texture and price with conventional meat.
Nutrition-Focused Integrators
Making up another 10% of the addressable market, Nutrition-Focused Integrators pay close attention to what they eat and how it tastes. They’re majority of Millennials, white, married, and have children at home. Conventional meat is a big part of their diet, while 10% have cut back, 20% have begun eating it more.
However, they do hold concerns around health and sustainability, which has pushed them towards plant-based alternatives. In fact, 85% have eaten these products in the last year (the highest of any segment), and 86% said they would continue to do so. To sway them, vegan meat analogues need to be more affordable, high in protein, and cleaner-label.
Protein Maximisers
These consumers value protein both as a comfort and functional food, and again, the majority of this group falls under the Millennial demographic. They’re more likely to exercise regularly and have emotional attachments to meat. They account for 19% of the addressable market.
Nearly six in 10 Protein Maximisers have increased their meat intake in the last 12 months, while half of them consumed plant-based versions in this time. This segment is the most likely to eat the latter in the future (89%) – to attract them, companies need to enhance the texture, reduce fat, and make the products easier to cook with.
Carefree Considerers
Gen Zers, Black and Hispanic Americans, and households with below-average incomes represent the key demographics of Carefree Considerers, who have relatively few health concerns and don’t care much about what they eat. They stick to what they know, and familiarity makes conventional meat a go-to.
Only 15% of them ate plant-based meat in the past year, and they’re the least aware of these products (63%). Two-thirds of them said they are likely to consume them in the future, with better texture, shorter ingredient lists, and lower calories than animal protein being the major purchase drivers.
Value-Driven Sceptics
Finally, the Value-Driven Sceptics represent the largest share of the addressable market (24%), with this group prioritising taste and price over health, and feeling that buying conventional meat is important to support farmers. They recognise that meat is expensive, but have little reason to stop eating it.
On the flip side, while they aren’t opposed to plant-based alternatives, their interest is low – only 29% are likely to consume them in the future. These consumers are most likely to eat vegan meat only if no other option is available, though they may be more attracted if these products are more affordable and tastier.
Insights for plant-based meat brands
Courtesy: GFI
Across the board, it appears that overprocessing, unsatisfactory flavour, and high prices remain the main purchase barriers of plant-based meat for American adults. On the other hand, those likely to consume these products tend to value their high protein concentration, versatility, and sustainability credentials.
Within the addressable market, 43% of consumers say health is a top benefit they seek from both meat and vegan alternatives, and a third of them believe the latter are better for heart health – a fact confirmed by tons of research, including a recent Harvard study.
Interestingly, 22% would also eat less of a food if they knew it was bad for the environment, highlighting the need for greater education about sustainability. Beef, after all, is the most polluting food on the planet, and animal agriculture alone accounts for 57% of the food system’s emissions.
And while taste and health are important factors, none are as likely to drive people towards a vegan burger as the price, a finding consistent with recent research.
“Some segments express more openness and recognise more benefits than others,” said GFI. “They provide the best near-term opportunity to increase plant-based meat consumption, and targeting them could enable the development of more effective and efficient strategies.”
The Good Food Institute, an alternative protein think tank, has released its latest State of the Industry series of reports for 2024. Here’s how plant-based, fermentation-derived and cultivated proteins fared in 2024.
While investment in alternative protein continued to fall in 2024, global sales of plant-based meat and dairy alternatives are up, as is interest in whole foods, according to the 2024 State of the Industry reports by industry think tank the Good Food Institute (GFI).
The annual series of reports explores the challenges and opportunities for plant-based food, fermentation-derived proteins, and cultivated meat. This year’s editions reveal a complex landscape for alternative proteins, with sales in markets like the US still declining and public investment in the industry on the rise.
Alternative proteins are part of a polarising debate in many parts of the world, punctuated by high prices and taste concerns, and enveloped by the backlash against ultra-processed foods (UPFs). However, the global performance shows promise in the market at a time when it has been portrayed as anything but.
Global plant-based sales on the rise
Courtesy: GFI
You’d be forgiven for thinking that sales of plant-based foods took a giant plunge, given all the coverage and discourse around them. In actuality, global sales reached $28.6B, a 5% increase from 2023.
Non-dairy alternatives dominated the market, with sales up by 5% to reach $22.4B, while meat analogues hit $6.1B (a 4% increase). After milk, meat and seafood, vegan yoghurt is the most popular category.
Europe was the leader in 2024, recording $9.7B in sales of plant-based meat, seafood and dairy, followed by Asia-Pacific ($8.9B), and North America ($7.3B), where conventional beef sales reached a record high last year.
Meat and dairy alternatives decline in the US, while whole foods shine
Courtesy: GFI
In the US, overall plant-based sales reached $8.1B in 2024, a 4% decline from 2023. More than a third of the market (34%) was occupied by non-dairy milk alone, whose sales dropped by 5% to $2.8B. Likewise, meat and seafood alternatives saw dollar sales fall by 7% to $1.2B, though the rate of decline was slower than in 2023.
At the same time, the demand for protein led to an increase in sales of protein powders (11%), and growing interest in whole foods resulted in a 7% hike in sales for tofu, tempeh and seitan. The biggest windfall, however, came for vegan desserts and baked goods (13%).
Plant-based eggs, meanwhile, saw a 2% increase in retail sales as avian flu wrecked chicken egg supplies in the US. This was true for foodservice too, where vegan egg sales were up by 28%. The report authors note that the data on unit sales and price changes is somewhat skewed due to the leading product in the category shifting to a larger pack size and thus a comparably higher price point.
Still in foodservice, plant-based proteins suffered a 5% decline in sales, though non-dairy milk continued its climb with a 9% growth.
Price parity and consumer reach still hindrance for the plant-based sector
Courtesy: GFI
Plant-based meat and seafood were 4% more expensive in 2024, versus just a 1% price hike for their conventional counterparts, widening the former’s premium to 82%.
The price gap for chicken and milk remained the same, while widening for pork and turkey. On the flip side, rising beef rates mean plant-based versions are just 14% more expensive now. And chicken-free eggs, which had a 317% price premium in 2023, narrowed this to 110%.
Bringing down prices of plant-based food is critical for them to compete with animal-derived products, as is improving consumer reach and acceptance. In the US, 59% of households bought a vegan product in 2024, similar to the year before, though down from 63% in 2022.
Penetration of plant-based meat and seafood remains low at 13%, though encouragingly, 63% go back to the store for more. Further, almost all Americans who buy these alternatives are not vegan or vegetarian – 96% of buyers also put conventional meat in their shopping baskets in 2024.
Milk alternatives reached 40% of households, with a repeat rate of 76%. Almond milk continues to remain the most popular dairy alternative (capturing 54% of sales), but oat milk is on the rise (25%).
VC investment slides, public funding a bright spot
Graphic by Green Queen
Alternative proteins did not escape the bleak landscape for climate tech venture capital in 2024, with total funding for the sector only amounting to $1.1B, a 27% decline from the year before.
Plant-based companies took the biggest hit, as venture capitalists backed away from foods linked to ultra-processing. These startups only raised $309M in 2024, a sharp 64% fall from the year before.
Cultivated meat, meanwhile, witnessed a 40% decline, securing only $139M, its lowest annual total since 2019. In fact, in the last three years, this sector has cumulatively raised less money than it did in 2021 alone.
The only bright spot for the category here is fermentation, where VC investment experienced a 43% increase last year, overturning a decline in 2023. This was led by Meati‘s $100M Series C round. Further, this category surpassed plant proteins in terms of the amount of public capital invested.
Speaking of which, while private investors remained cautious, governments continued to pour money into alternative protein, amid a push to meet their net-zero goals and mounting pressure from climate experts to diversify protein sources. Public investment in alternative proteins reached $510M in 2024, in line with the year before.
This was driven by the US, Denmark and the EU overall, while Asia-Pacific played a major role in the doubling of public funding for cultivated meat in 2024.
Courtesy: GFI
Legislative headwinds make for uneven regulatory progress
Meanwhile, cultivated meat continues to face threats of bans in the US and elsewhere. According to GFI’s calculations, 12 states attempted to restrict cultivated meat last year, with Florida and Alabama being successful – the former is now facing a lawsuit from California’s Upside Foods. Already this year, a host of other states have proposed similar bills, with Mississippi becoming the third to enact a ban.
Courtesy: Vow
Even so, cultivated meat regulation progressed in several other markets in 2024. Australia’s Vow was cleared to sell its cultivated quail and foie gras in Singapore (and later in Australia and New Zealand), and UK’s Meatly earned UK approval to commercialise cultivated chicken for pets, following Aleph Farms‘s greenlight in Israel in December 2023. Plus, regulators in the EU, South Korea, and Thailand received their first applications.
“Although some uncertainty exists due to shifting political winds around the globe, more approvals are likely in 2025,” said GFI. “These approvals will increase the number of cultivated meat products on the market while also generating new and more robust data on their safety and nutritional profile”
Rudy Yoo, co-founder of Armored Fresh and Pureture, has big plans for the future food industry, featuring yeast-based casein, barley-derived coffee, and clean-label, complete plant proteins.
How does a five-ingredient, sugar-free, “zero-dairy” shake with 25g of protein per serving sound to you? How about coffee made from roasted barley instead of, well, coffee beans? Or an additive-free functional bar with complete protein from plants, designed as pre- and post-workout fuel?
Rudy Yoo is working to make all this (and more) a reality. The co-founder of oat milk cheese brand Armored Fresh and vegan casein maker Pureture is embarking on several new projects this year, all to unlock nutrition that’s sustainable for both the human body and the planet.
South Korea-based Armored Fresh has been expanding its US footprint over the last year with the launch of its oat milk cheese slices and parmesan shakers. Pureture, based in New York City, has developed a fermentation-derived casein that ditches the cows for yeast and comes 30-40% cheaper than the conventional protein.
Now, Yoo is taking things a few steps further. This year, he will launch Piilk (“Pure + Milk”), a new line of protein shakes combining Pureture’s casein tech with Armored Fresh’s product development expertise. They replicate the functional and sensory attributes of dairy with a clean and animal-free ingredient list.
Then, under Armored Fresh, he has announced JustAlt, a functional food brand with high-protein, low-sugar products, and Barley Brew, a beanless coffee alternative made from grains.
“Pureture is a biotech company specialising in innovative raw materials and B2B supply, while Armored Fresh is a B2C food brand offering alternative dairy products directly to consumers,” Yoo tells Green Queen. “Through strategic partnerships, both companies are working together to lead the next-generation alternative dairy market.”
Clean-label is a ‘necessity’ in the alt-dairy world
Courtesy: Pureture
The teams at the two startups tested more than 400 yeast strains to optimise the protein yield and eliminate off-notes in taste and colour. The result is an animal-free casein that provides “the same essential amino acid profile as dairy proteins” and “replicates dairy-like emulsification, texture, and nutritional properties without additives”.
Casein is the main protein found in cow’s milk, and is a market worth $3B. Pureture employs a six-step liquid fermentation process that combines yeast with plant-based ingredients to make its version. It begins by cultivating a yeast strain and enriching it. Then, it separates the protein and tests the emulsification functionality, before sterilising and drying the casein.
Pureture’s casein is said to maintain “excellent taste and functionality”, and can naturally bind water and fat. It contains 25g of protein, with a complete amino acid profile (like dairy). Yoo explains that it “offers high digestibility and bioavailability without requiring dairy-based fortification”, and has “a nutritional profile superior to traditional plant proteins”.
“Most dairy-free products rely on emulsifiers, gums, and stabilisers to mimic dairy texture, requiring heavily processed ingredients. In contrast, Pureture’s yeast-based alternative casein offers natural emulsification, overcoming the limitations of existing dairy-free products and providing a cleaner, more natural solution,” says Yoo.
“Consumers are increasingly favouring transparent ingredients and minimal processing, making clean-label products essential for building trust,” he adds. “In the alternative dairy market, clean-label is not an option – it’s a necessity.”
Globally, around half of consumers say they’d pay more for clean-label products. And as plant-based alternatives get knocked for some long ingredient lists, especially in the ultra-processed food context, developing cleaner labels will only become a more attractive proposition.
Armored Fresh to launch clean-label protein shake
Courtesy: Armored Fresh
The vegan casein will help Armored Fresh create products that are “nutritionally competitive” with dairy. To begin, it is launching a five-ingredient protein shake under the Piilk brand in July.
“We aim to set a new standard, creating products that are cleaner and healthier than traditional dairy protein shakes,” says Yoo. “While dairy-based protein shakes rely on various additives, we are proving that superior nutrition and functionality can be achieved without them. We may not surpass nature itself, but our goal is to maintain maximum nutritional integrity with minimal processing.”
After more than 100 rounds of testing, the product is now being finalised. There were several considerations for the teams at Pureture and Armored Fresh, including the inherent tasting notes of the protein, and choosing the appropriate flavours and sweeteners.
“Natural flavours are widely trusted by consumers but may react unpredictably with protein, making flavour consistency a key challenge,” describes Yoo. “Synthetic flavours effectively balance protein’s inherent taste and ensure uniform flavour quality, but they need to align with clean-label standards and consumer preferences.”
In addition, he and his colleagues are evaluating sugar alternatives like stevia and erythritol in their bid to optimise the taste for the public’s palate. “Our ultimate goal is to deliver the most natural and satisfying taste, ensuring the best balance between functionality and consumer preference,” Yoo says.
“We are at a critical decision point – prioritising taste enhancement or committing to all-natural ingredients,” he adds. While the final ingredient list is still under wraps, it is likely to contain cocoa, a sweetener, flavourings, and the Pureture casein.
The company is in talks with Whole Foods Market and other premium retail stores for the Q3 launch of this shake, dubbed ‘Only 5’. It will be followed by ‘Only 7’ and ‘Only 9’, with each protein shake featuring distinct functionalities and flavours. “Each product is designed for specific performance needs, from balanced nutrition to enhanced recovery and beyond,” he says.
Could barley-based coffee counter caffeine crashes and climate change?
Courtesy: Armored Fresh
Beyond protein shakes, Yoo recently detailed plans for another product. Describing his struggles with the side effects of caffeine consumption, he explained that Armored Fresh has developed a coffee alternative made from roasted barley.
“Coffee is a part of daily life for millions, but many struggle with side effects from caffeine crashes and jitters to digestive discomfort and poor sleep,” he tells Green Queen. “Barley Brew is our roasted-barley coffee alternative that keeps the bold, roasted flavour of coffee, while eliminating its downsides.”
The team landed on the grain after “countless trials”, finding that it delivered sustained, gentle energy (minus the caffeine crashes) and gut-friendly digestion with low acidity. In addition, it contains natural antioxidants, beta-glucan, and GABA for immunity and focus.
In a blind taste test of a cold brew made from the barley-derived coffee, consumers praised its clean finish, depth, and smoothness. The company is offering a Half-Caf blend as well, combining roasted barley with coffee beans for those who still need a light caffeine lift. More than 80% of taste testers were unable to distinguish it from conventional coffee.
“Barley Brew isn’t just a caffeine-free option – it’s a new, flexible coffee ritual that adapts to different needs, supports gut health, and aligns with sustainable agricultural practices,” says Yoo. Coffee prices have reached record highs as climate change strains the commodity’s supply. Globally, 60% of coffee species are endangered, and the area suitable for cultivating Arabica is shrinking.
It has led to the rise of several beanless coffee startups, including Atomo, Minus Coffee, Northern Wonder, and Prefer. Now, Armored Fresh is joining that list, targeting a Q3 launch in Manhattan. “As barley cultivation requires significantly less water and fewer resources than coffee, it’s better for both people and the planet,” says Yoo.
More products in the pipeline
Courtesy: Armored Fresh
Last month, Armored Fresh unveiled JustAlt, whose debut product line features protein bars in chocolate, peanut butter, and fruit flavours.
“Most plant-based snacks lack performance, or sacrifice taste and ingredient integrity,” argues Yoo. “JustAlt is our new functional alt-food brand, launching with zero-sugar, high-protein, clean-label protein bars and spreads. These are designed for everyday performance, blending science-based nutrition with delicious flavours.”
The brand will enable “flexitarians, athletes, and busy consumers to make better daily choices without compromising on taste, convenience, or quality” through products designed for workout fuelling, snacking, or meal replacement.
“We are also exploring various plant-based milk and processed dairy alternatives using the emulsification function of our casein, with research on coagulation properties in progress,” Yoo says of further product development plans.
“As for Armored Fresh cheese, we plan to integrate this alternative casein into its formulation, with a target launch next year,” he adds.
“Additionally, we are developing a new research pipeline to use yeast protein peptides to mimic dairy protein peptides, further expanding functionality and applications.”
Armored Fresh, Pureture gear up for fundraising
Courtesy: Armored Fresh
To kickstart this new era, both Armored Fresh and Pureture are preparing to fundraise. The former closed a $23M Series B round in 2022, and as it continues to scale, it will initiate a Series C round in 2026. This is set to “support explosive growth, expand our zero-dairy and functional alt-food product lines, and accelerate our retail footprint”, says Yoo.
Pureture, meanwhile, secured $1M in SAFE funding led by Forward Deployed VC in 2023, and is now preparing for its Series A in 2025. The startup was previously close to finalising a $12M round, though despite “significant interest”, Yoo abandoned the effort as he couldn’t find the “right kind of investor”.
“I secured the flexibility last year to raise funds freely in the US, which allows us to move faster when the investment environment improves,” he says. “Thanks to this decision, Pureture is now in a much stronger position, and I’m confident the next round will happen under far better conditions.”
The fresh capital will help Yoo’s companies scale up yeast-based casein production, expand R&D efforts for functional proteins and peptides for sports nutrition and medical food applications, strengthen global partnerships, and optimise production efficiency and quality control.
Pureture has secured 50,000 sq ft of land to build a new production facility, and has begun research into functional peptides extracted from dairy proteins, aiming to “advance beyond plant-based alternatives into the future of smarter, more functional nutrition”.
“Through this funding, Pureture aims to set the new standard for alternative casein and functional protein markets,” he says. Scaling up will also help the firms make their products more competitive on price. “Typically, technology-driven zero-dairy products are more expensive, but Pureture’s protein is significantly cheaper than dairy proteins and requires no additives, reducing production costs.”
Yoo adds: “This allows us to maintain clean-label standards while ensuring pricing parity with conventional dairy products. As production scales, we can further reduce consumer prices, positioning Armored Fresh protein shakes as competitively priced within the high-protein alternative dairy category. By delivering superior quality without a price barrier, we aim to set a new standard beyond traditional dairy.”
Upside Foods has been handed an initial legal victory after a judge denied Florida’s request to dismiss the lawsuit against its cultivated meat ban.
The lawsuit against Florida’s ban on cultivated meat is going ahead, after a judge rejected the state’s motion to dismiss the case.
In a 29-page ruling, Mark Walker, chief judge of the US District Court for the Northern District of Florida, granted cultivated meat producer Upside Foods a “first-round victory” in its challenge against Florida’s decision last Friday.
The judge’s decision to deny Florida’s attempt to dismiss the case means it will continue to move forward in the trial court. It comes months after Walker rejected Upside Foods’s request to grant a preliminary injunction to exhibit its cultivated chicken at December’s Art Basel festival in Miami.
Why Florida banned cultivated meat – and why it’s being sued
Courtesy: Ron DeSantis/Twitter
Upside Foods was among the first two startups to be allowed to sell cultivated meat in the US back in 2021, receiving approval from both the US Department of Agriculture and Food and Drug Administration. It rolled out the chicken at Michelin-starred eatery Bar Crenn in San Francisco, and has since been hosting pop-up events at various restaurants across the US.
But in 2024, amid a growing wave of politically charged discontent against cultivated meat, Florida passed a bill that made it a crime to produce or sell cultivated meat, in what was the first such ban on these products in the US.
“Some people think Florida is theme parks, South Beach and maybe some oranges, but they don’t understand that we have one of the top cattle industries in the country,” Governor Ron DeSantis said when signing the legislation in May.
“What we’re protecting here is the industry against acts of man, against an ideological agenda that wants to finger agriculture as the problem, that views things like raising cattle as destroying our climate,” he added. “Take your fake lab-grown meat elsewhere. We’re not doing that in the state of Florida.”
Weeks after the law took effect in July, Upside Foods filed its legal complaint, labelling the ban “unconstitutional”. The lawsuit alleges that the move violates the federal Commerce Clause, which gives the national government exclusive power to regulate interstate commerce. The plaintiff argues that Florida’s law was enacted to protect in-state producers of conventional meat from out-of-state cultivated meat manufacturers.
Upside Foods, reprinted by the Institute for Justice, additionally suggests that the decision by two federal departments to allow the sale of its cultivated chicken in the interstate market supersedes any contrary state laws, as outlined in the Supremacy Clause.
The lawsuit and the subsequent rejection of the preliminary injunction cancelled the company’s scheduled appearances at Art Basel and the South Beach Wine and Food Festival, and postponed its planned debut at a restaurant in the state in early 2025.
Upside Foods ‘not looking to replace meat’
Courtesy: Kevin Martin Galante/Upside Foods
“One of the primary reasons for the enactment of the Constitution was to secure a national common market,” said Paul Sherman, a senior attorney at ICJ. “Today’s ruling is an important vindication of the principle that states cannot close their borders to innovative out-of-state competition, and a warning to other states that are considering banning cultivated meat.”
The ruling comes at a time when attempts to ban cultivated meat have become fashionable in the US, just as conventional meat sales reached a record high in 2024. Alabama and Mississippi have joined Florida in making this a law.
These efforts are fuelled by a cultural shift in the US, as beef becomes a favourite amid a renewed wave of Americana and right-wing influence, the rise of Robert F Kennedy Jr’s Make America Healthy Again movement, and his crusade against ultra-processed foods.
But historically, over 20 states have attempted to ban cultivated meat – from Kentucky, New York, and Tennessee to Pennsylvania, Texas and Arizona – but most of these efforts have fallen by the wayside.
Even members of the meat industry have criticised these attempts. In a letter sent to DeSantis in March 2024, the North American Meat Institute called the ban “bad public policy”. “These bills establish a precedent for adopting policies and regulatory requirements that could one day adversely affect the bills’ supporters,” it said, emphasising the importance of consumer choice.
“Upside is not looking to replace conventional meat, which will always have a place at the table,” said Uma Valeti, co-founder and CEO of Upside Foods, which is pursuing approval to sell a new shredded chicken product by the end of this year.
“All we are asking for is the right to compete, so that Floridians can try our product and see that it is possible to have delicious meat without the need for slaughtering animals,” he added. “Today’s ruling is an important step towards securing that right.”
Finland’s Solar Foods has developed a protein shake to help you pump your macros. The kicker? The ready-to-mix powder ditches dairy for CO2.
As it prepares to enter the US market, Finnish food tech firm Solar Foods is targeting a food format precious to Americans today: protein shakes.
The maker of Solein – a protein derived from microbes and gases – has developed a ready-to-mix powder to help you hit your daily protein goals.
It’s the first readily available protein powder made from thin air, and is aimed at a consumer base obsessed with protein. Americans are eating more of the macronutrient than ever before, with six in 10 Americans increasing their intake last year, and 85% want to continue to do so in 2025.
87% of them believe you need animal products to get enough protein, despite vast evidence to the contrary – and that’s before you account for the climate impact of livestock farming, which is making it increasingly difficult to meet America’s growing demand for food.
As it begins its next phase under new CEO Rami Jokela, Solar Foods aims to challenge that with its gas protein, which it has described as “the most sustainable protein in the world”.
New Solar Foods CEO Rami Jokela | Courtesy: Solar Foods
Solar Foods targets US performance nutrition market
The Solein Protein Shake has been unveiled in a Salty Caramel flavour, and contains no sugar. It’s designed as a daily protein supplement to support active lifestyles and conditions-based nutritional needs.
Solar Foods says Solein’s unique properties eschew the need for any other protein sources. Each 16g serving of the powder boasts 10g of protein, with the ingredient containing all essential amino acids (including branched-chain), as well as iron and vitamin B12.
“Solein is especially well-suited to be used in different kinds of ready-to-mix protein powders, as it blends well with liquid, bringing richness and indulgent, creamy consistency without dairy,” says chief commercial officer Juan Manuel Benitez-Garcia.
“Solein Shake is one example of such a protein powder, ready for consumers as it is, or to be adjusted to different consumer needs from healthy snacking to fulfilling even demanding protein needs. By increasing the amount of Solein, the shake is also ideal for boosting performance as well as muscle growth and maintenance,” he adds.
The company is positioning the product towards athletes and gymgoers looking to enhance their performance and recovery. That aligns with its commercialisation strategy for the US, which focuses on the health and performance nutrition market. Consumers in this segment consume 500,000 tonnes of protein powder worth $10B annually, according to Solar Foods.
“Ready-to-mix protein powders are usually made with dairy-based whey protein, as it has been the top choice in taste, bringing fresh flavour to products without the off notes typical to plant-based proteins,” says Benitez-Garcia, before pointing out that the demand for whey is outgrowing supply.
“When you’re a health and performance nutrition brand with a big part of your business based on whey but struggling to see where future supply will come from, you’re actively looking for better options,” he explains. “Thanks to Solein’s mild taste, it matches the freshness of whey, also bringing the upsides of sustainability as well as price and quality stability.”
Solein’s protein powder is the latest in a growing list of animal-free protein powders looking to serve the ever-growing appetite for functional protein ingredients without the environmental cost.
Perfect Day, one of the first companies in the world to create an animal-free whey protein powder, lent its ingredient to CPG protein powder brand Strive Nutrition, as well as online sports nutrition giant Myprotein. And last year, Nestlé released a Better Whey product under its Orgain line last year, featuring the same ingredient.
France’s Bon Vivant has also introduced a three-strong range of functional animal-free dairy protein powders. Dutch microbial protein maker Farmless is also working on a ‘brewed’ protein powder. And this week, Balletic Foods entered the space with three fermentation-derived protein powders, one of which is focused on recovery.
How Solein is produced
Courtesy: Solar Foods
Solar Foods produces Solein at its demo plant in Finland, dubbed Factory 01, which can churn out 160 tonnes of the protein per year (rising to 230 tonnes next year). In addition, the company is building a much larger Factory 02, which would be able to manufacture 12,800 tonnes of product annually.
It produces the protein by feeding microbes on carbon dioxide, hydrogen and oxygen instead of sugar. Doing so eschews the need for farmland to grow sugarcane, alongside any irrigation, fertilisers and pesticides. The ingredient is not dependent on water or weather either, allowing it to be produced in climates like the desert, the Arctic and even outer space.
The microbes are grown in a liquid form, and later dried into an orange-yellow powder that is flavourless and has 78% protein by dry weight, 6% fat, and 10% dietary fibre. Its macronutrient profile is said to be akin to dried soy or algae – but it outperforms both plant and animal proteins on sustainability.
Since the main raw materials required for its production are carbon dioxide and renewable energy, Solein results in emissions equal to just 1% of those generated by conventional meat, and 20% of plant proteins.
The ingredient received novel food approval in Singapore in 2022, debuting as part of a vegan chocolate gelato at Italian eatery Fico. In addition, it was the base of a Taste the Future chocolate snack bar released by Fazer (a majority shareholder of Solar Foods) in the city-state, and a line of mooncakes and ice cream sandwiches rolled out by Japanese food giant Ajinomoto.
Moreover, the company achieved self-determined Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) status in the US last year, and registered Factory 01 with the Food and Drug Administration to import Solein protein stateside. At the Natural Products Expo West in Anaheim, California last month, it announced Solein Protein Bites – Nut Mix Edition as a concept product to showcase Solein’s capabilities.
Solar Foods, which has raised over €43M ($47M) in equity funding and €30M ($32M) in debt financing, has applied for novel food approval with the European Food Safety Authority, expecting the green light in 2026. In February, it gave the region a taste of Solein through a partnership with Italy’s KelpEat, which showcased a high-protein snack with the ingredient at the Pitti Taste food fair in Florence.
As one of the world’s largest plant-based meat companies, Beyond Meat has hit back at the livestock industry with a new documentary.
Is beef just the new tobacco?
That’s one of the central claims in a new short film by Beyond Meat, a plant-based giant looking to clear the headwinds that have plagued it in the last few years.
In Planting Change, a fast-paced nine-minute documentary, the El Segundo-based firm tackles the health and environmental impacts of plant-based meat, the effect on farmers, and, of course, the misinformation campaigns from the meat industry.
“American beef producers are following a very similar playbook to the tobacco industry – of undermining science and of creating counternarratives that suggest that plant-based products are somehow harmful,” says Dr Robert K Jackler, a professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine, and the founder of the Stanford Research Into the Impact of Tobacco Advertising group.
Really, though, the livestock industry is only concerned about one thing: its bottom line. “Their concern is that plant-based meats will begin to eat into their sales and harm their profits,” says Jackler.
The meat industry has used the tobacco playbook to spread misinformation | Courtesy: Beyond Meat
And for a while, they were. At the turn of the decade, Beyond Meat was at the height of its popularity, with a successful IPO and major celebrity endorsements taking the brand’s valuation to $14B at its peak. With Covid-19 soon confining Americans to their homes, they became more health-conscious and actively began swapping out beef.
Of the $10.7B invested in plant-based food companies since 2015, $4.2B came in 2020-21, when sales of meat alternatives reached record highs. And in the two years since the pandemic, conventional meat consumption dropped by 4kg per person in the US.
Things have taken a turn in the year since. In 2024, meat made a comeback – driven by a shifting cultural and political landscape – with sales reaching record highs. Purchases of vegan alternatives, however, were declining.
So the “playbook” Jackler says the beef industry employed has been successful. Beyond Meat, one of this campaign’s biggest and most frequent targets, has felt the squeeze, with sales sliding for nine consecutive quarters until the latter half of 2024. The documentary, it seems, is its answer to Big Meat.
Beyond Meat tackles UPF concerns through documentary
Plant-based meat can be reformulated, cows cannot | Courtesy: Beyond Meat
For a while now, there’s one statistic that Ethan Brown – Beyond Meat’s founder and CEO – has been using to illustrate the impact of the meat industry’s misinformation campaign: in 2020, more than half of Americans felt that plant-based meat was good for them, a number that fell to 38% two years later.
Amid attacks on long ingredient lists and ultra-processing, the company changed tack in 2023, airing a marketing campaign focused on farmers. Months later, it took another turn, this time going all-in on health.
“We faced a fundamental choice, and that was to either bang our fists on the table and explain the health benefits of our products. Or, to take a look inward and say: ‘How do we make our products even healthier? How do we make them unassailable from a health perspective?’” Brown says in the documentary.
Beyond Meat did a little bit of both. It reformulated its core product line in collaboration with “leading medical and nutrition experts”, including Stanford professor Dr Christopher Gardner (who was behind the famous ‘twin study‘ featured in Netflix’s You Are What You Eat) and renowned dietitian Joy Bauer. At the same time, the company refreshed its packaging to put health claims like ‘75% less saturated fat’ and ‘no cholesterol’ compared to beef.
Courtesy: Beyond Meat | Graphic by Green Queen
Dr Kristi Funk, a breast cancer surgeon and advocate of whole-food plant-based nutrition, explains the difference in the film. When you cook meat, as soon as the heat interacts with the creatinine, it forms highly carcinogenic compounds.
“When you grill, sauté or barbecue a Beyond Meat burger, you’re not making any appreciable carcinogens,” says Funk. “The protein sources are healthful foods – peas, lentils, brown rice, faba beans.”
Dr Matthew Nagra, who led research on the heart health impact of meat and vegan alternatives, explains: “One of the underappreciated aspects of plant-based meat alternatives is that we can reformulate them. You can’t do that with a cow.”
The documentary also sheds light on how Beyond Meat’s faba bean steak is made, in an effort to answer critics of ultra-processed foods. “The farmer plants the crop. The plant is harvested. Then it’s milled. The flour is placed in the air chamber. Because the density and size of protein and starch are different, they naturally separate,” explains Brown.
“We then take the protein, blend it with wheat, and we run it through heating, cooling and pressure to restructure the form of that protein into animal muscle,” he continues. This is then mixed with natural flavours and colours and plant-based oils to form the Beyond Steak.
What about the farmers?
Courtesy: Beyond Meat
Beyond health, one of the other major criticisms of plant-based meat surrounds the people who grow our food. If we eat plants, what happens to our ranchers?
This argument misses the reality of climate change. There’s simply not enough land or water to feed Americans as much beef as they’re projected to eat over the coming decades. When it comes to polluting foods, beef is as bad as it gets.
Our insatiable demand for meat has led the industry to convert wild habitats into land for livestock grazing, resulting in significant biodiversity loss. Producing Beyond Meat requires 97% less land and water, and generates 90% fewer emissions.
“For us to solve climate change, beef consumers have to consume less,” says Timothy Searchinger, a researcher at Princeton’s Center for Policy Research on Energy and the Environment. “Not none,” he adds, “but less.”
The short film also features several endorsements from farmers in the Midwest. For one farmer in Montana, having red lentils has made a big difference for his farm, as well as agriculture across the state. This is because the pulse crops grown for Beyond Meat don’t need as much water or any synthetic fertilisers.
He also suggests that these crops are fuelling some hope into the younger generation to take up the profession – a major point of concern for the industry. A fava bean farmer in North Dakota, meanwhile, says the return on investment has been 20-25% higher than other crops.
Oswald Schmitz, a population and community ecology professor at Yale University’s School of the Environment, puts it best. “One of the really cool opportunities for cattle ranchers is to get them to change their mindset from being livestock producers to carbon ranchers.
The short film does feature some compelling arguments about the need to diversify our protein sources, but in an America where regenerative beef and tallow are all the rage, and UPFs are public enemy number one, will consumers bite?
Brown ends the film with a hopeful message: “[If] you fearlessly confront the questions of our time and refuse to go numb in defeat, there is truly hope and a path forward in eating closer to the sun.”
Molecular farming player Moolec Science – known for its pork-producing soybeans – has announced a merger with Argentina’s Bioceres Group and two other firms.
Luxembourg-based Moolec Science has agreed to merge with three companies, including Argentina’s Bioceres Group, the agtech firm it spun off from as a seed startup in 2020.
The NASDAQ-listed molecular farming company has entered a Business Combination Agreement with Bioceres, precision fermentation player Nutrecon, farm equipment manufacturer Gentle Tech, and their subsidiaries in an all-stock deal.
Expected to close in the second quarter of this year, the transaction will see Moolec become the parent company of these entities, and issue up to 87 million new shares and five million warrants to their shareholders.
Following the announcement, Moolec co-founder and CEO Gastón Paladini announced that he had stepped down from his role, pledging his continued “support and collaboration as a shareholder and as a founder”. The company has not yet named a successor.
“The need to accelerate agricultural innovation to address current and future challenges, such as enhancing on-farm profitability and reducing environmental impact, is increasingly evident,” said Federico Trucco, CEO of Bioceres Crop Solutions.
“Bioceres is enthusiastic to be part of a larger, more ambitious Moolec, one that expands its focus from science in food ingredients to a comprehensive ‘cradle-to-cradle’ approach.”
Merger marks ‘new stage’ for Moolec
Courtesy: Moolec Science
Molecular farming enables the modification of plant cells to express animal proteins, which can be harvested from leaves or other plant tissues. It allows companies to scale up faster while keeping production costs low, since they’re using plants – not expensive bioreactors – as factories.
Research suggests it’s a market that could be worth $3.5B by 2029, and Moolec is one of the leaders in the space. It has already commercialised several innovations in the US, with three ingredients receiving regulatory clearance in the US in the last two years.
This includes a nutritionally rich GLASO safflower oil, Piggy Sooy (soybeans that contain pork proteins), and PEEA1 (peas that produce bovine myoglobin).
“Molecular farming, as exemplified by Moolec Science, offers a compelling solution to the challenge of balancing productivity and sustainability. For instance, what soybean yield technology can rival the direct production of 300kg of animal protein from a three-tonne-per-hectare crop?” Trucco pointed out.
The impending merger marks a “new stage” for Moolec, positioning it within a broader organisation with “synergies on multiple levels”, according to Moolec CFO José López Lecube.
“Becoming part of a larger organisation will enable cost efficiencies and significant revenue increase as well as product portfolio diversification. It will also enlarge our investor base, providing the company with new stakeholders who support Moolec’s new and more diversified business,” he said.
Once the deal is completed, Moolec said it would be “uniquely positioned” in the agricultural value chain, with a proposition centred around modifying seeds and microbes to change how we use land and water resources and enhance human health.
Merged entity recorded over $500M in sales in 2024
Courtesy: Moolec
Moolec suggested that its technology discovery and development engine allows it to address multiple upstream and downstream needs in a cost-competitive way.
It will continue to develop its flagship molecular farming products, and will integrate Mycofood, the fungi protein technology developed by Nutrecon’s Eternal brand. Through Bioceres, it will now also offer upstream technologies for regenerative agriculture – a hot topic in the US – including biological inputs and climate-resilient seeds.
Moolec will offer R&D, contract manufacturing and regulatory services under brands controlled by Bioceres and Nutrecon Plus, it will expand its reach into emerging technologies for biomass and grain fermentation – especially for biomaterial production – as well as new concepts on equipment, integrating material science, electric mobility, and autonomy.
Finally, the merger is expected to result in “significant cost synergies” and create an integrated management structure. The combined entities will manage a portfolio of over 800 patents and 550 product registrations, together representing over half a billion dollars in sales in more than 50 countries in 2024.
Moolec – which raised $30M to fund R&D and scale-up efforts in 2023 – reported a revenue of $5.8M in 2024, compared to $1M the previous year, against a rise in operating losses to $9.3M. Its sales primarily came from the texturised soy protein flours developed by Valoraoy Food, a molecular farming startup Moolec acquired in 2023.
It’s a burgeoning space with a number of players growing everything from casein in soybeans to egg protein in potatoes. These include Alpine Bio, Mozza, Miruku, Tiamat Sciences, Bright Biotech, ORF Genetics, PoLoPo, and NewMoo are all innovating in this field.
In our interview series, we quiz future food investors about the solutions that excite them the most, their favourite climate-forward restaurant, and what they look for in successful founders.
Jenn Burka is the Principal at FTW Ventures.
What future food technologies most excite you?
Technologies that look at the future of food with a systems approach are the most interesting to me – things that aren’t a single product solution, but that can actually make an impact on the way we grow, transport, and get nourished by our food.
What are three future food verticals you are actively looking at for 2025?
Food as medicine
Cold-chain technologies
Farmer fintech
What do you consider the food tech sector’s greatest achievement in the past five years?
The advances we’ve seen in our understanding of the microbiome have brought the idea of a healthy gut into the mainstream and released some exciting first-generation products that will pave the way forward for more focus on how to utilise food to make us healthier.
If you could wave a magic wand, how would you fix plant-based meat?
In order to make these alternatives competitive with meat, there would need to be significant changes in how meat is subsidised. Otherwise, at current costs, it’s hard to see these products being adopted by a significant enough part of the population to have a true climate impact. It also has to taste good.
What’s the top trait you look for in a founder?
Product-founder fit is incredibly important, especially in food tech, which is such a complex system that really requires an understanding of how the parts fit together.
The One That Got Away: What is the deal you wish you had gotten into, but didn’t?
What do you consider your most successful future food investment so far?
Our fund is only two years in, so it’s a bit too early to say, but I’m really excited about our portfolio company VoltAir, which is looking at the impact that food has on other global emissions in the cold chain by creating a fully integrated software and hardware solution to electrify the refrigeration unit in diesel trucks.
What has been your most disappointing investment so far?
I’ve invested a ton of my time looking at microbiome startups, and I’m disappointed that I haven’t yet found the company that we’ve gotten over the finish line. Still waiting for the perfect blend of founding team, true technological innovation, and intelligent go-to-market strategy (we’re still rather hesitant about pure supplement plays).
What do people misunderstand/get wrong most about VC?
VCs are often startups too! Particularly emerging funds that don’t have cushy management fees that allow them to earn a lot of money and pay for a lot of resources.
We have to really love working with founders and believe in their outsized potential in order to keep doing what we do.
What is the most ‘future food’ thing you have eaten this month?
I found a craft beer that was brewed with Oishi berries…a bit gimmicky but I had to try it (and I do love a sour beer)!
Where is your favourite climate-forward restaurant/dish/place to eat anywhere in the world?
Probably my favourite climate-forward dish would be the one I make out of our backyard garden using peak summer produce. With tomatoes, peppers, basil, garlic, and eggs from our neighbour’s chickens (plus homemade sourdough with my five-year-old starter), it’s easy to sustain myself for a few months (plus more with what I freeze/can/preserve).
What’s your ‘why’? What motivates you to do what you do?
I’ve worked in the food system most of my career, and there are so many legacy players that haven’t changed in 100+ years. I believe that startups can be the catalyst for change in these industries, and change is what needed to make our system better for you and better for the planet.
As sales of meat alternatives continue to slide, a new crop of whole-food plant protein formats is on the rise. Oh So Wholesome’s Veg’chop is among the products spearheading this shift.
This month, a shift seems to be occurring in Europe’s plant-based protein ecosystem. Austria’s Revo Foods, known for its vegan seafood, launched a Prime Cut product that isn’t intended to replicate meat, but provide a new source of plant protein. And in the UK, the brand behind THIS Isn’t Chicken rolled out a Super Superfood that champions whole foods and rivals tofu, not meat.
The latter’s product is said to have been years in the making, and will reach supermarkets like Tesco on April 28. On the same day, also at the UK’s largest retailer, a new startup will debut another whole-food plant-based protein format, also years in the making.
In 2023, Squeaky Bean and The Cultured Collective founder Simon Day explained his vision for what he called Vegbloc. Packed with whole grains, vegetables, legumes and seeds, he described the idea as “a no-brainer”, made from ingredients and a process “based firmly in food heritage rather than novel science”.
Oh So Wholesome co-founder Jason Gibb | Courtesy: Oh So Wholesome
Fast-forward to now, a few tweaks later, Vegbloc is now called Veg’chop, and will be sold under Day and co-founder Jason Gibb’s new brand, Oh So Wholesome.
“I wanted something that tasted like the plants it was made from and that I was happy to eat daily with my family,” says Gibb, who developed the product after being unenamoured by the current plant protein option on the market.
Next week, his innovation will stock the shelves of 649 Tesco stores, rivalling not just meat and vegan alternatives, but also tofu and tempeh.
Why Tesco bet big on plant-based whole foods
Veg’chop comes in a sausage-like chub chape, which can – as the name suggests – be chopped for use as a centrepiece in fajitas, curries, pasta dishes, salads and wraps, to name a few. It comes in two flavours (original and Mexican-style), boasting 10g of protein, and 9-10g of fibre.
The 250g packs retail for £3, and contain ingredients like red lentils, quinoa, yellow split peas, mushrooms, gram flour, chia and flax seeds, onions and nutritional yeast (plus spices).
They lean into some key consumer trends in the UK. Gut health has been in sharp focus, thanks to the popularity of apps like Zoe and the introduction of GLP-1 agonist drugs Wegovy and Mounjaro. A recent survey by Tesco showed that gut health is a top concern for 37% of Brits in 2025, which pushed the retailer to launch its own-label Gut Sense brand in January.
Meanwhile, 91% of Brits don’t eat enough fibre. Among children, only 4-14% consume the recommended amount. The Tesco poll showed that 70% of people are adding more fibre to their diet to maintain a healthy microbiome.
Courtesy: Oh So Wholesome
The push is also being led by health experts like Tim Spector, who has popularised the 30-plants-a-week mantra. In that vein, vegan food brand Gosh! this month refreshed its packaging to introduce a ‘Plant Points’ system, highlighting how many plants each of its products contains. If you’re wondering, Veg’chop has over 10 plants.
There was one more critical finding from Tesco’s research: 22% of Brits want to consume more plant-based foods. Last year, the retailer revealed that “veg-led meals” accounted for 40% of its plant-based sales, prompting it to go big on whole foods – rather than meat alternatives – in its vegan range for Christmas. It also introduced a meat-free Root & Soul ready meal line that put vegetables front and centre.
“Tesco specifically have often been at the forefront of plant-based category development in the UK and led with new ranges, and I see their backing of Veg’chop as another example of their strategic approach to the category,” Day tells Green Queen.
For Veg’bloc, entering the CPG world makes perfect sense. Only a quarter of Brits say they choose a healthier food option when dining out, but this rises to two-thirds at supermarkets.
“Most retailers are looking for more plant-packed, healthy and minimally processed foods with clean ingredient lists across the store. In plant-based specifically, I think the whole market knows that some changes need to be made to excite shoppers and inspire home cooks,” says Day.
A new category, based on age-old plants
Courtesy: Oh So Wholesome
Explaining why Vegbloc became Veg’chop, he says: “People really valued the naturalness of our product and how wholesome the ingredient list was. Our original design didn’t reflect that, so we made a change to use a more natural colour palette.”
He adds: “The product name was changed from Vegbloc to Veg’chop to help people more quickly understand how to use the product. We also felt that Veg’chop had more appetite appeal than Vegbloc.” The overarching brand name, Oh So Wholesome, was added because there are other products in the pipeline “that will help people to eat more plants”.
The new format will be stocked alongside tofu, tempeh, falafels and meat alternatives – but will Brits take to it? Oh So Wholesome conducted consumer research to answer that very question, and found that there was widespread interest in ‘eating more veg’ and ‘natural products’.
“People really welcomed how conveniently Veg’chop could deliver this. They were often surprised by how much they liked the taste. There was also very high interest in Veg’chop (and appreciation of our ingredient list) from people concerned with ultra-processed foods [UPFs],” says Day.
In the UK, the main growth is coming from products that are versatile, healthy and perceived as natural, with clean ingredient lists – foods that you would be happy for your family to eat every day, as he explains.
“Veg’chop, tempeh and tofu epitomise this. The growth is largely from people who will continue to eat some meat and aren’t interested in products that seek to taste like meat,” he says, noting that rising interest in beans comes from the same place too.
“Along with other brands who sell these products and are doing a fantastic job, our work is to inspire people to cook with these whole-food products and arm them with recipes and high-quality products that ensure they love them when they eat them,” he adds.
“I’m also a believer that a long history in food is a good predictor of future longevity. Tofu and tempeh are obviously traditional products with a long history, and whilst our product is a new concept in a way, it is just made from plants that have a long history in cooking.”
Courtesy: Oh So Wholesome
UPF concerns have ‘forced hands’ of plant-based meat companies
The launch of products like Veg’chop, THIS’s Super Superfood, and Revo Foods’s Prime Cut comes after sales of meat alternatives fell by 7% in 2024, while tofu expanded its market share to reach 9% of households. One of the best-performing meat-free brands was Better Nature, whose sales grew by 476% (albeit from a small base) as the UK embraced tempeh.
This comes on the back of rising concerns around UPFs, which make up 57% of the average Brit’s diet, and up to 80% when it comes to children or people with lower incomes. A December survey revealed that 90% of Brits agree that diet is an important factor in overall health, and among these consumers, 28% are likely to cut back on UPFs this year.
Day believes some meat alternative makers have “had their hands forced”, and “probably wouldn’t have looked to whole foods/non-mimics if their mimic sales were rocketing”. “I’m sure there are also some people who always wanted to do something in whole foods, but went where the growth was to start with,” he says.
Courtesy: Oh So Wholesome
As a food purchase driver, health isn’t going anywhere, and he expects that this will ensure the shift to whole-food plant-based continues. “Specific drivers like the need at a population level for us to eat more fibre (in the UK at least) and interest in the beneficial effects of eating a wide diversity of plants for the gut microbiome are also likely to support this direction,” he says.
“The backlash against UPF only seems to be gathering momentum and whilst there are nuances, I think products like ours will increasingly be looked for,” he adds. “In future, food security and making these products from locally available plants could also be a factor. Meat mimics often rely on protein isolates that are not produced in sufficient quantity in many locations.”
This will make brand positioning essential, especially as Oh So Wholesome competes with established plant-based players like THIS, which raked in £22M in sales last year. “We welcome any plant-packed and nutritious launches in the category,” says Day.
“Plant-based needs to entice and inspire people who have been sceptical about the whole category – we want it to be a destination for people who want to eat more plants, and that will take more than one brand. I’m confident there is a role for a brand like us, which isn’t associated with what has come before, as well as for more established brands.”
THIS, the UK startup famous for its plant-based meat analogues, has introduced a new product format that champions whole foods and has more protein than tofu.
After years of building its brand around products named THIS Isn’t Chicken and THIS Isn’t Beef, London-based startup THIS has announced a new range of plant-based products that it says are not meant to replicate animal meat, while still offering shoppers a centre-of-plate protein option.
The food tech innovator has launched THIS Is Super Superfood, which it describes as a “next-generation” plant protein that can compete with traditionally vegan protein-rich ingredients like tofu and tempeh. It’s geared towards a UK population currently looking for minimally processed whole-food options, just as meat alternatives struggle to capture wallet share.
The new product range comes in a 250g block format, as well as a 180g pack of lemon-and-herb-marinated pieces, with both retailing at £3.95. They will roll out at Tesco and Waitrose and on Ocado by the end of this month, and in Sainsbury’s and Asda (only the Super Block) in May.
They contain fava bean protein, a range of seeds, and vegetables to offer consumers a protein rich in fibre, omega-3, and iron, and contribute to your five-a-day. The block and pieces can be used for stir-fries, curries, pasta and ramen dishes, among others, and importantly, the protein holds its texture when fried in a pan.
With the Super Superfood, THIS is aiming to fill a gap in the category by delivering on health, convenience and flavour.
“Two years ago, I thought of the idea in the shower, whilst my cat was watching me,” THIS co-founder Andy Shovel said last week. “Since then, the team have done an amazing job of developing them, building a supply chain for them, perfecting their branding, and selling them in… I think these have a shot at really disrupting the plant-based food category.”
Is this the next generation of plant-based protein?
Courtesy: THIS
Luke Bryne, innovation director at THIS, explained that the Super Superfood range is a testament to how simple ingredients can be transformed into something “truly innovative”. “Our innovative superfood technology harnesses the natural synergy of beans, seeds, and mushrooms to create an entirely new plant-based texture,” he explained.
“At its core, we use fava bean protein as the primary source of protein, blending it with shiitake mushrooms, celebrated for their rich umami depth and unique texture. To further enhance the sensory experience, we incorporate selected seeds that add layers of complexity and mouthfeel.”
The products contain pumpkin seeds, flax seeds, hemp hearts, and chia seeds, while the shiitake mushrooms are complemented by spinach. They contain 18g of protein per 100g, on par with tempeh and 9% higher than the UK’s bestselling tofu from The Tofoo Co.
The protein concentration is lower than conventional animal proteins like chicken or beef, as well as THIS’s own meat alternatives – though given that the UK overconsumes protein by 44-55% than what’s recommended, the company is betting on the fact that they will still hold appeal for the average British consumer.
In fact, THIS plans to lean into the demand for nutritious plant proteins with a texture that matches consumers’ expectations. “This cutting-edge approach allows us to craft a next-generation plant-based protein – one that is not only nutritious, but also elevates texture and taste to unprecedented levels,” says Bryne.
THIS CEO Mark Cuddigan added: “We have created a whole new plant-based protein and texture using nothing but natural ingredients – it’s like discovering a new superpower. We think that’s pretty super… so much so, we named it twice. The plant-based category is evolving, and THIS Is Super Superfood offers consumers something new.”
New range meets consumer demand, but THIS’s meat alternatives here to stay
Courtesy: THIS
The launch of the Super Superfood was teased by Cuddigan last year, when he said the company was developing a ‘tofu-life’ superfood with more nutritional value than anything currently on the market. The company’s £20M Series C round was also earmarked to roll out new products catering to “evolving consumer health preferences”.
There’s a heightened demand for whole-food plant-based options in the UK. While sales of plant-based meat slid by 7% last year, tofu expanded its market share, reaching 9% of households. One of the best-performing meat-free brands, meanwhile, was tempeh maker Better Nature, whose sales grew by 476% (albeit from a small base). And searches for ‘high protein’ on online grocer Ocado doubled in 2024, with interest in plant-based sources like lentils up by 18%, chickpeas by 27%, and edamame by 44%.
“People are less focused on vegan food vs non-vegan food. Instead, they’re looking for food that’s good for them, the planet and animals vs food that’s not,” Better Nature co-CEO Elin Roberts told Green Queen earlier this year.
Consumers are increasingly apprehensive about ultra-processed foods (UPFs), which make up 57% of the average Brit’s diet, and up to 80% when it comes to children or people with lower incomes. Plant-based meat has suffered from a loss of confidence due to its classification as a UPF, driven by some misleading coverage by national media outlets.
“There’s so much misinformation out there now – people don’t know what to believe. Is vegan food good or bad?” noted Roberts. “Nutrition can be complex. That’s why messaging that is focused on eating more plant-based whole foods is resonating better – you can’t go too far wrong there.”
It’s this philosophy that drives THIS’s new superfood range. And it’s not the only brand taking this approach – Oh So Wholesome uses a similar concept, packing whole plants like quinoa, red lentils, split peas, seeds, and vegetables into blocks that can be used in a variety of dishes. Its product line, called Veg’chop (formerly Vegbloc), will launch at Tesco on April 28, the same day as THIS’s Super Superfood.
That said, THIS’s meat alternative line – which helped the brand grow by 33% to reach £22M in sales last year – isn’t going anywhere, Cuddigan noted. “We’re just growing. We still make the best plant-based meat alternatives, but now we’re giving consumers more options,” he said.
“The future for the plant-based category is about creating something for everyone, whether you’re a meat-lover, flexitarian, or fully plant-based. So whether you want meat-like texture or whole-food protein, we’ve got you covered.”
Still, THIS and other plant-based meat makers will need to navigate a fine line: catering to a new set of whole foods-focused customers without alienating the core fans of their original line of plant-based meat replacement products.
Our weekly column rounds up the latest sustainable food innovation news. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers Purple Carrot’s partnership with Fable Foods, Gosh!’s new points-based packaging, and SimpliiGood’s spirulina-based salmon.
New products and launches
Plant-based meal company Purple Carrot has addedFable Foods‘s Pulled Shiitake mushrooms to its lineup, including the Bluff Bourguignon Stew and BBQ Burnt Ends kits.
Courtesy: Purple Carrot
US non-dairy creamer brand Laird Superfood has released a larger 750ml pack of its functional-mushroom-infused coffee creamers, which come in Unsweetened, Sweet & Creamy, Cinnamon and Vanilla flavours.
In the UK, ready-to-eat vegan food brand Gosh! has revamped its packaging with a new ‘Plant Points’ system aimed at supporting the goal of eating 30 plants a week. Each point denotes the inclusion of a fruit, vegetable, whole grain, legume, or seed, and each of the brand’s products has a minimum of six points.
Courtesy: Gosh!
To mark Earth Day (April 22), Dutch cultivated pork startup Meatable has joined forces with Food Tank, the United Nations Global Compact, and The Hunger Project to tackle climate change and global hunger through the food system.
Also in honour of Earth Day, Indian plant-based brand Blue Tribe – backed by actress Anushka Sharma and cricketer Virat Kohli – has launched an Eat Green Initiative to promote sustainable eating. The weeklong campaign (April 22-28) sees employees and influencers share recipes made with the company’s products.
At the ongoing Expo 2025 Osaka, members of Japan’s Cultivated Meat Future Creation Consortium are showcasing 3D-printed cultured meat and an at-home marbled meat maker, aiming to commercialise the products by 2031.
Company and finance updates
Indian plant protein manufacturer Proeon Foods has secured a €1M grant from the Province of South Holland, as part of the European Regional Development Fund, for its EGGcellent project. The startup is working with precision fermentation firmVivici, Applikon Biotechnology, and Planet B.io to develop an egg alternative for industrial baking applications.
Relsus, a Singaporean producer of functional plant-based ingredients, has opened a commercial-scale manufacturing facility in Ujjain, India.
Courtesy: Quevana
In Europe, cashew cheese maker Quevana has opened a 2,400 sq m facility in Segovia, Spain, which will double its capacity to over 400,000 units of fermented dairy-free cheese each month.
Swiss vegan seafood startup Catchfree has raised $1.45M in seed funding to scale up production and commercialise its plant-based shrimp, fish burgers, and fish bites this summer.
Elin Roberts and Christopher Kong, the co-founders and co-CEOs of British tempeh startup Better Nature, have been named in the Art & Culture of Forbes‘s 30 Under 30 list.
Courtesy: SimpliiGood
Armed with a $4M grant from the Israel Innovation Authority, AlgaeCore Technologies‘s SimpliiGood has secured European approval to commercialise its spirulina-based smoked salmon alternative. It is now pursuing clearance in the US too, has pilots with several companies, and will launch its first products as part of private-label brands within the next six months.
Alternative protein think tank The Good Food Institute is experiencing a change at the top, with CEO Ilya Sheyman departing in June. Jessica Almy, senior VP of policy and government relations, will take over as interim chief as the organisation hunts its next CEO.
Californian vegan frozen foods maker Sunday Supper has expanded its executive team, adding Spencer Oberg as CEO, Matt Williams as head of sales, and Chris Hays as CMO, as it kickstarts a $2.5M seed funding round.
Meanwhile, the Canadian province of Nova Scotia has invested $5M in the newly opened Neptune Bioinnovation Centre in Dartmouth. The 4,738 sq m facility will offer precision fermentation and spray drying capacity, and is set to create over 2,400 jobs and contribute $334M to the region’s annual GDP.
Courtesy: Government of Nova Scotia
Event organiser Emerald Expositions has acquired the Plant Based World Expo and its media platform, Plant Based World Pulse, from JD Events for an undisclosed sum. The deal includes both the North American and European editions of the show.
Research and policy developments
Amid the hike in dairy sales in the UK, plant-based milk is also on the rise for the first time since 2022, with sales volumes up by 2.1% between February 2024 and 2025. Oat milk is the leader, with a 7.2% growth in that period – it’s set to take 40% of the non-dairy market this year, according to Kantar.
In related news, British bakery chain Gail’s has dropped the surcharge on soy milk after a Peta campaign, offering the alternative for free from May 21. However, it will still ask customers to pay 40-60p extra if they want oat milk.
Courtesy: Gail’s
The US Department of Agriculture has cancelled the $3B Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities programme that aimed to promote environmentally friendly farming practices. The revocation of the Biden-era initiative is part of the Trump administration’s sweeping climate rollbacks.
In Canada, meanwhile, candidates from all four major political parties will participate in an election debate about animal protection today (April 23), organised by a group of animal welfare organisations, including Animal Justice and World Animal Protection.
Courtesy: Kai Kitschenberg/Funke Foto Services
In its TrendTracker 2024 report, food giant Cargillfound that 73% of consumers want their governments to set stricter environmental standards for the chocolate supply, just as European plant-based chocolates and desserts grew by 25% annually between 2019 and 2023.
Swapping out red meat for plant-based alternatives and choosing non-dairy milks can help cut the average Australian household’s emissions by six tonnes a year, research by the George Institute for Global Health has found.
Courtesy: Technical University of Denmark
Finally, researchers from Novonesis and the Technical University of Denmarksuggest that the bacteria in lactic acid could help reduce off-flavours and degrade anti-nutrients in plant-based dairy products, enhancing their taste profile and nutrient bioavailability.
Transitioning away from emissions-heavy animal proteins is critical to saving the planet, but it isn’t possible without government action.
This story is part of The 89 Percent Project, an initiative of the global journalism collaboration Covering Climate Now.
The last 10 years have been the hottest 10 on record, with 2024 breaking temperature records and becoming the first year to be more than 1.5°C warmer than the preindustrial era. And some suggest 2025 is on course to surpass this.
All these records have come directly after the 2015 Paris Agreement, when 196 countries signed the 1.5°C pledge to prevent precisely these outcomes. Now, the world is in danger of breaching 2°C by the end of the century, potentially having catastrophic consequences.
The thing is, the public supports change in favour of the planet – whether that’s reducing meat consumption, fossil fuel use, or air travel – but individual action can only take you so far. Really, the only way to meet our potential to lower emissions is through action from our leaders in government.
People support dietary change
Courtesy: Earth4All/Global Commons Alliance
The way we produce food is a key part of the problem, responsible for a third of global greenhouse gas emissions. More specifically, it is the animal agriculture industry, which makes up as much as a fifth of all emissions, and generates twice as many greenhouse gases as plant-based food production.
At the current trajectory, the livestock sector is on track to take up nearly half of our GHG budget in line with the 1.5°C postindustrial temperature rise goal.
And according to one recent study, when taking into account measures like effective radiative forcing and cooling emissions, livestock farming is actually the leading cause of climate change.
In 2024, a major survey by Earth4All and the Global Commons Alliance – spanning 22 countries – showed that three in five people support policies that advocate for healthier diets and reduced meat consumption to lower emissions, with the sentiment most popular in developing countries.
That was reiterated by a 31-nation poll this February, which suggested that two-thirds (68%) of consumers want to eat more plant-based food, and folks from countries in the Global South are the keenest.
Courtesy: EAT/GlobeScan
Change is already afoot in places like Europe, with a 10,400-person survey revealing that over half (52%) of its citizens have made dietary shifts over the last two years to lead a more eco-friendly lifestyle, with 29% cutting back on meat. Plus, 42% of Europeans are exploring plant proteins and meat analogues.
In China, while health trumps all, a quarter of consumers are also motivated to eat plant-based foods because they’re better for the environment.
The public feels let down by the government
One of the world’s largest climate polls, commissioned by the UN Development Programme, found that 53% of people globally were more worried about the climate crisis in 2024, and over two in five blamed their governments as the main culprit.
But less than half said their nations are doing well to tackle climate change, and a quarter thought the opposite. In fact, 80% of consumers believe their country should strengthen their climate commitments.
Courtesy: UNDP
These results chime with the aforementioned Earth4All/Global Commons Alliance survey, which revealed that 88% of people were worried about the state of nature. But more respondents (37%) felt their government wasn’t doing enough to combat the emergency than those who did (33%).
In fact, this was the case across several huge surveys. One of them covered nearly 60,000 respondents in 63 countries, and found that “belief” in climate change was 86%, measured through perceptions on whether humans were causing climate change, whether it was a serious threat to humanity, whether it was a global emergency, and whether it was a serious threat to humanity.
In an even larger poll of 130,000 participants from 125 countries last year, 89% of people said they wanted to see more political action to fight the climate crisis.
And their political alignment doesn’t matter. Ahead of last year’s presidential election in the US, one study found that 85% of Gen Z Americans were concerned about climate change, and 58% “very” or “extremely” so. And 86% of Democrats, 75% of independents, and 62% of Republicans said they’d vote for candidates who support “aggressive policies to reduce climate change”.
Courtesy: Lancet Planetary Health
Policy shifts on livestock are crucial
Where does this leave us? Science is clear: we need to cut back on meat and dairy – and fast. In a survey of 210 global climate scientists and agrifood experts last year, 92% agreed that reducing livestock emissions is key to limiting temperature rises to 2°C, and 85% felt it was important to shift from “livestock-derived foods to livestock replacement foods”.
Meanwhile, 78% said global livestock numbers should peak this year, while an even higher share agreed that animal agriculture emissions need to be cut in half by 2030. Additionally, plant-based alternatives that have comparable or better health outcomes should be considered a “best available food” and given preference in climate (83%), agriculture (78%) and food purchasing policies (82%).
Courtesy: Harvard University
There is broad support for climate-friendly food policies among the public. In the US, 54% of poll respondents correctly identified beef as the most polluting of five food products, and nearly half (46%) would consider a plant-based diet for the sake of the planet.
It is critical that governments step up. The above survey found that 60% of Americans feel federal food policies should discuss the industry’s impact on the environment. The US was also among the countries covered in a 2024 poll that found 33% of people to be in favour of rationing meat and 44% backing a meat tax.
The importance of dietary change was outlined by the European Environment Agency this month. In its new foresight report, the EU body looked at four imagined futures of the region’s food system in 2050 – in each scenario aligned with its agenda of “living well, within environmental limits”, a dietary shift from meat and dairy to alternative proteins was seen as an important way to “decarbonise the food system, innovate across the food supply chain, and contribute to food security”.
In other words, the protein transition towards planet-friendly alternatives will be inevitable. But despite consumers’ willingness to embrace this, the impact on the climate would be minimal without public sector support.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has suggested that individual behavioural change across transport, energy and food choices could lower global emissions by 34%, but “comprehensive” shifts that include tech advancements, industry practices, and policies could lead to a 40-70% reduction.
Courtesy: World Resources Institute
Building on that, the World Resources Institute WRI analysed 11 pro-climate behaviours – such as going vegan or reducing meat consumption – that could reduce a person’s annual emissions by 6.53 tonnes, cancelling out the global average of 6.28 tonnes. But without government support, they can only reduce about 10% (0.63 tonnes) per year.
Danish pharma giant Novo Nordisk has provided a grant worth 50 million kroner ($7.6M) to the University of Copenhagen to develop less processed plant-based proteins.
As meat alternatives continue to be scrutinised for their level of processing, a new University of Copenhagen project aims to tackle this with food science and artificial intelligence (AI).
Running over the next seven years, the AI4NaturalFood project is backed by a 50 million kroner ($7.6M) grant from the Novo Nordisk Foundation, which owns the eponymous pharmaceutical giant famous for diabetes and obesity medications like NovoRapid, Ozempic, and Wegovy.
The investment is part of the company’s Recruit grant, which aims to help Danish universities attract top researchers and build strong ecosystems within certain areas of support.
It comes weeks after Novo Nordisk came under heavy criticism by nutrition researchers for another project, which aims to create the “next generation” of the Nova classification, the tiered system that groups foods by the amount of processing.
Mild processing is more complex – AI can help simplify it
Courtesy: Deliciously Ella
The AI4NaturalFood project is being helmed by Remko Boom, who spent 26 years studying plant-based foods at Wageningen University & Research, and is starting a new research group at the university’s food science department, called Food Materials Engineering.
He will work with data scientists from the university to develop new experimentation processes that generate sufficient data and create AI models to interpret the information.
“Food is fundamentally very complex. A piece of bread contains hundreds of different substances interacting with each other: there’s a molecular structure, a colloidal structure, a microscale structure, [a] macroscale structure – there’s structure everywhere. And this structure largely determines the properties,” he explained.
“In food science, we traditionally tried to reduce these complexities, to make it possible to understand what is happening. I think that now is the time that we, as food scientists, should not shy away from the complexity, but instead aim for it. With the availability of AI, we can begin to capture all these interactions and use them rather than trying to avoid them.”
Boom argued that mild processing retains more of the plant’s natural structure and composition, which makes it more complex to work with. This is where AI comes in. “Rather than the elaborate and costly process of breaking down raw materials and then rebuilding a product from the resulting refined ingredients, we’re going to use much simpler methods to create enriched fractions and then use AI to predict how we can combine them into good foods,” he said.
“It could perhaps ultimately predict how food products will turn out before even starting the production process. In the future, it could even help us determine which crops are best suited for specific food applications.”
With these “simpler” methods, he noted that proteins sourced from legumes, seeds and other plants would be able to retain more of the original structure and nutrients from the raw materials. “We have already proven the principle and got some very nice products from it. And most importantly, we can do it with a lot less energy and water use,” he said.
Nutrition experts slam Novo Nordisk’s ‘Nova 2.0’ project
Courtesy: Pixelshot/Canva, Novo | Composite by Green Queen
Novo Nordisk has had a profound impact on the food system, thanks to the immense popularity of its appetite-suppressing drugs, Ozempic and Wegovy. They’re part of a class of GLP-1 agonist drugs that have taken the US by storm – and now, the world – by storm.
The company is not only targeting weight loss and less processed foods, it’s also aiming to redefine what ‘ultra-processed’ means. Plant-based meat products have been stuck with this tag, which has partly contributed to their slowdown in sales and investment over the last couple of years.
In October, Novo Nordisk announced a two-year project to “develop a scientifically based understanding” of the importance of different food processing methods. In other words, the research is focusing directly on the nutritional content of foods, rather than the production process.
However, the effort has been labelled “deeply problematic” by over 90 health and nutrition scientists, who wrote an open letter calling out the company’s “vested financial interests”. It was co-signed by experts like NYU Professor Emerita Marion Nestle and infectious disease doctor Chris van Tulleken (author of Ultra-Processed People).
“This initiative involves, and is being promoted by, scientists who have been paid by food companies in the past, including Arla, McDonald’s, McCain Foods, Nestlé and others,” said Phillip Baker, a research fellow at the University of Sydney, another signatory of the letter.
Professor Carlos Monteiro, who led the University of São Paulo team that developed the original Nova classification, strongly denounced Novo Nordisk’s ‘Nova 2.0’ project: “Do not use the term Nova in the title or objectives of your project. Do not refer to your project as an improvement or new version of the Nova classification. Do not suggest that your project has any connection with the Nova classification or its creators”.
Novo Nordisk is yet to respond to the reaction, and is pressing ahead with its initiative for now. As for the AI4NaturalFood project, it opens to bridge the gap between food and data science, adding to a growing list of AI-led efforts to advance alternative proteins.
“Historically, food scientists and AI researchers have operated in separate worlds,” said Boom. “Food scientists focus on experimentation, while AI experts often work on, for example, logistical problems. With this grant, we’re in these fields together, working on the same thing. And this is how we can really create something new and innovative.”
Finland is well-placed to become a cellular agriculture leader, with its export potential set to reach €1B in the next decade – but funding and regulation challenges must be addressed.
In a decade’s time, cultivated meat, cell-based cocoa, and carbon-derived proteins could amount to €1B in export value in Finland, according to a government-commissioned report.
The country’s natural resources and biotech expertise leave it on the cusp of becoming a global leader in the cellular agriculture field, which involves the use of microbial, plant and animal cell cultures to produce proteins, fats, coffee and cocoa (among other products) in bioreactors.
While a majority of young adults in Finland (83%) have a positive or neutral attitude towards new technologies in food production, there are several challenges that the ecosystem needs to address before it can reach its market potential, according to researchers at the VTT Technical Research Center of Finland, the Natural Resources Institute Finland, and University of Helsinki.
Commissioned by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and Business Finland, the experts lay out a policy roadmap to help Finland become a leader in this sector.
Finland’s future food system will blend cellular and traditional agriculture
Courtesy: VTT
The country is already home to food tech leaders like Solar Foods (maker of Solein gas protein), Onego Bio (which makes egg proteins via precision fermentation), and Enifer (producer of Pekilo mycoprotein).
“One of Finland’s biggest challenges currently is the lack of capital, which limits the growth opportunities of cellular agriculture,” said VTT’s Emilia Nordlund, who led the study. “Building production facilities requires large investments, and success will not come without government support to accelerate investments and realise venture capital investments.”
The nation is home to a variety of carbohydrate-rich side streams like straw, sawdust, wood chips, and grass biomass, which could be utilised as feedstocks for cellular agriculture. For instance, if more than half of the straw were used as a sugar source for microbes, the amount of food produced would be enough to meet the annual protein needs of the population.
“The future food system will be based on the interplay between modern agriculture and cellular agriculture, utilising circular economy solutions,” said Päivi Nerg, state secretary from the agriculture ministry. “We must identify the necessary change paths and ensure that measures consider the entire chain, from farmers to consumers and other stakeholders.”
Teija Lahti-Nuuttila, executive director of Business Finland, added: “Finnish companies should recognise their strengths as part of emerging new value networks and build their competitiveness in the long term together with research organisations. Business Finland is already currently funding ambitious cellular agriculture RDI projects, so there is no need to wait for a separate programme.”
The researchers have come up with an eight-point plan to tackle the bottlenecks of Finland’s cellular agriculture industry and fulfil the estimated annual export value of €500M to €1B by 2035.
1) Ramp up major infrastructure investments
The report states that the country needs an action plan to increase venture capital funding and attract international investor interest, especially for small- and medium-sized enterprises. The public sector can “provide support that signals the realisation of private financing”.
Infrastructure investments are critical to enabling new value chains, and the government is being urged to create risk financing and loan instruments to enable factory financing.
Courtesy: Timo Kauppila/Onego Bio
2) Ease EU novel food regulation
One of the biggets bottlenecks for the cellular agriculture industry concerns regulation – the EU’s novel food stringent framework has “significantly” slowed progress and left it playing catch-up with other markets. The report suggests setting up an office in Finland to support startups with the novel food process through advice and financial backing.
This office would actively influence the EU to expedite and ease the adoption of novel technologies, something that Finnish policymakers must support. Reviewing agricultural subsidies is also key, since these novel food technologies aren’t covered by any EU subsidies yet.
3) Build a €100M R&D programme
Finland should introduce a five-year, €100M R&D programme that would produce future food innovations, making use of the nation’s technological expertise and abundant natural resources.
The multidisciplinary initiative would ensure the development of value chains at the regional level too, while facilitating long-term development and economic growth. In addition, it will help the country achieve its target of increasing R&D spending to 4% of the GDP.
Courtesy: Solar Foods
4) Establish a future food ministry
The researchers propose creating a joint working group or organisation of ministries to develop the future food system, support the R&D programme, and promote cross-sector collaboration. This Ministry of Future Food would enable a broad perspective for a common goal to develop both conventional and cellular agriculture, boost the value chain, and enable competitiveness.
Another solution would be to establish a food innovation centre that would take overall responsibility for the implementation of R&D activities, including political decisions.
5) Expand education to secure future experts
While Finland has a sufficient knowledge base, the critical mass is not enough – there should be closer cooperation between education and training organisations to produce experts for the food sector. The report says it is “critical” that the number of industrial biotech experts increases in Finland.
The government’s Growth Programme goal to increase food experts also requires training people about exports. Education programmes focused on future solutions can enable the internationalisation of an expert corps in the country. The talent environment should embrace even those with limited proficiency in Finnish.
Courtesy: Vesa Kippola
6) Conduct public tastings to educate consumers
The report calls for the spread of “strong and inspiring stories” about the future food system to enhance consumer knowledge and acceptance. One way to do this would be to create a ‘showroom’ to present novel foods and provide examples of how cellular agriculture can work in tandem with conventional farming.
Moreover, Finland should follow the lead of European states like the Netherlands to allow public tastings of these foods before they go through the lengthy approval process – the government needs to create a national model to enable these events, which would increase the industry’s chances of success and dispel any prejudices from consumers.
7) Incorporate primary production in the novel food industry
Finland’s rich feedstock supply can help the cellular agriculture industry, though there are challenges with production, processing, storage, and logistics. This is why cooperating with primary producers is crucial – for them, this industry can open up new business opportunities. According to the report, business models and practical trials need to be developed to create this value for primary producers.
Further, the opportunities for cooperation can strengthen the role of agricultural entrepreneurs and the financial profitability of farms when underutilised feedstocks are converted into a business.
Courtesy: VTT
8) Target export support functions for cell-based food
While local production and related product exports are key to the growth and export potential of cellular agriculture in Finland, the equipment and technology exports, IP licensing, and value chains and factories built by Finnish companies overseas can play a crucial role too.
Given that this is a young, startup-driven market with a wide range of opportunities, export support functions should be built specifically to meet the needs of the sector to ensure that growth is effectively enabled.
Atlantic Natural Foods, the plant-based company behind Loma Linda and Tuno, has filed for bankruptcy months after withdrawing from a takeover deal by Above Food.
In the latest example of the financial challenges facing the plant-based industry, one of the US’s foremost vegan food brands has filed for bankruptcy.
Atlantic Natural Foods, whose portfolio of brands includes Loma Linda, Tuno, Chick’n, and Neat, sought Chapter 11 protection in the Eastern District of Louisiana earlier this month.
It comes five months after the company mutually terminated an agreement to be acquired by fellow plant protein maker Above Food, citing rising food inflation, supply chain disruptions, and the impact of Covid-19.
Bankruptcy filing follows withdrawal from acquisition deal
Courtesy: Atlantic Natural Foods
The roots of Atlantic Natural Foods have been around for a long time. The company itself was founded in 2008, predating giants like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods, but Loma Linda was first established in 1890 by John Harvey Kellogg, the founder of Kellanova.
Atlantic Natural Foods bought Loma Linda from its parent (then called Kellogg’s) in 2014, and has since expanded to over 25,000 stores in the US, plus 30 other countries.
It sells canned plant-based alternatives like hot dogs, steaks, tuna and chicken from Tuno, Chick’n and Loma Linda (an umbrella brand that also offers plant-based meals). Additionally, it makes vegan egg and meat substitutes via its Neat line and a caffeine-free coffee alternative through the Kaffree Roma range, and has a dedicated foodservice brand called Modern Menu.
The company – which has manufacturing plants in Nashville and North Carolina in the US, and Bangkok in Thailand – hasn’t provided a specific reason for its bankruptcy filing. But it plans to reorganise its business over the next few months.
In its petition to the district’s bankruptcy court, it listed $10-50M in assets and $1-10M in liabilities, with 100 to 199 creditors.
The development follows Atlantic Natural Foods’s decision to pull out of an acquisition deal with Above Food, which was first announced in 2021. It was ascribed to the former’s “strategic realignment following a comprehensive evaluation of the evolving business landscape”.
Had the $30M deal gone through, Atlantic Natural Foods would have become part of Above Food’s sprawling portfolio of 120 plant-based meat, dairy and baby food products and 17 unique grains and proteins, which are distributed at over 35,000 retail points in 29 countries.
Financial hurdles drive M&As in plant-based sector
Courtesy: Atlantic Natural Foods
“Operating in the industry’s ever-changing landscape has not been without its challenges, but we remain steadfast in our commitment to resetting the standards for the years ahead,” Doug Hines, chairman of Atlantic Natural Foods, said after the agreement was terminated.
“We are drawing on tried-and-true food preparation and supply methods that have withstood the test of time to meet the needs of our global consumers,” he added.
The two companies said they would continue to maintain their collaborative ties, with Atlantic Natural Foods keeping its shares in Above Foods, while the latter will retain its interest in the Loma Linda owner.
“This strategy allows us to reinstate our commitment to returning the company to its core principles, products and consumer while carrying out our mission of creating healthy food for the world in 2025 and beyond,” Hines said.
Researchers in Japan say they’ve reached a “breakthrough” in tissue engineering that could open up “transformative opportunities” for cultivated meat production.
To solve one of cultivated meat’s biggest challenges, scientists have resorted to the circulatory system.
The same way blood vessels carry nutrients and oxygen to cells to help animals grow, scientists from the University of Tokyo have devised a “breakthrough” method to deliver these nutrients to artificial tissue, making it possible to grow whole cuts of cultivated meat, the holy grail for the future food industry.
Currently, most production methods can only render tiny pieces of cultivated meat (akin to mince), which are then assembled into a larger product via edible scaffolds, or combined with plant-based binders and ingredients to form a whole piece.
The problem lies in the random distribution of hollow fibres, which prevents uniform nutrient delivery and hinders tissue quality. Shoji Takeuchi and his colleagues have come up with what they say is a “scalable, top-down strategy” for producing whole cuts of cultivated meat using a perfusable hollow fibre bioreactor.
Could this be the future of cultivated meat?
Courtesy: Shoji Takeuchi
The study, published in the Trends in Biotechnology journal, explained that getting enough oxygen and nutrients to the cells in the centre of thick tissues is a major hurdle. Diffusion alone can’t sustain cells across considerable distances.
To overcome that, the researchers developed a bioreactor equipped with an array of semi-permeable hollow fibres that function as artificial circulation systems, which ensured uniform nutrient distribution throughout the tissue.
“We’re using semipermeable hollow fibres, which mimic blood vessels in their ability to deliver nutrients to the tissues,” said Takeuchi.
“These fibres are already commonly used in household water filters and dialysis machines for patients with kidney disease. It’s exciting to discover that these tiny fibres can also effectively help create artificial tissues and, possibly, whole organs in the future,” he added.
“We overcame the challenge of achieving perfusion across thick tissues by arranging hollow fibres with microscale precision,” Takeuchi says.
Tissues without an integrated circular system have generally been limited to a thickness of less than 1mm, but this new method allowed the scientists to produce a 2cm thick piece of chicken muscle that was several centimetres long and wide. Made using chicken fibroblast cells, which make up connective tisuse, the meat weighed 11g, and was about the size of a chicken nugget.
Further, the hollow fibre bioreactor had microfabricated anchors to promote cell alignment. And when using active perfusion, the chicken muscle tissue showcased higher protein expression and improved taste and texture.
Many obstacles to overcome
Courtesy: Shoji Takeuchi
“Cultured meat offers a sustainable, ethical alternative to conventional meat,” said Takeuchi. “However, replicating the texture and taste of whole-cut meat remains difficult. Our technology enables the production of structured meat with improved texture and flavour, potentially accelerating its commercial viability.”
Speaking of which, there’s still a lot to do and a long way to go before this production method can scale up and make cultivated meat fit for our plates.
There are several reasons why. The hollow fibres are not edible and must be pulled from the meat by hand, so the team is working on automating their removal or replacing them with edible cellulose fibres that can be left in and fine-tune the texture of the meat.
In terms of scaling up, as the tissue size increases, ensuring a sufficient oxygen supply becomes more challenging. So future versions of the bioreactor may need artificial blood to help carry more oxygen to cells and grow larger pieces of cultivated meat.
The researchers used cells cultured in a medium containing animal serum too, which is expensive and raises ethical concerns. To commercialise the product, the team would likely need to use plant-derived collagen and serum-free culture media, something many companies are already doing.
“Alongside solving these technological issues, regulatory challenges must also be addressed, including the approval of materials and processes for food production by relevant authorities, such as the FDA or European Food Safety Authority,” the study noted. “In addition, fostering a culture that embraces new foods is essential for the acceptance of cultured meat products by the public.”
Speaking to the Guardian, Takeuchi said with enough funding, products made using this approach could be available in five to 10 years. “At first, it will likely be more expensive than conventional chicken, mainly due to material and production costs,” he said. “However, we are actively developing food-grade, scalable systems, and if successful, we expect the cost to decrease substantially over time.”
Over half of Americans identify beef as the most polluting food, and many are open to eating plant-based – but they need policy changes to support the shift.
Americans are hurting over the cost of beef to their wallets, and many also seem to know about its cost to the planet, a new survey has found.
Beef is the most emissive food on the planet, generating twice as many emissions as the next most polluting food, dark chocolate. When asked to rank five foods based on emissions, 54% correctly identified beef as the top emitter.
That said, surprisingly, a fifth of respondents ranked vegetables as the top polluting food, and another 10% said tofu. This was followed by cheese (9%) and nuts (7%).
Courtesy: PCRM/Morning Consult
Conducted by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) and Morning Consult, the survey involved over 2,200 adults to explore Americans’ relationship with food sustainability ahead of Earth Day.
It found that despite the confusion about the climate impact of food production – and the discontent around ultra-processed meat alternatives – nearly half of the respondents (46%) would consider a plant-based diet for the sake of the environment. They’re also willing to back policies that educate them and address the problem.
Consumers would eat plant-based despite climate confusion
Courtesy: PCRM/Morning Consult
Globally, the overall food system is responsible for a third of all emissions. This is mainly due to animal agriculture, which accounts for nearly 60% of the sector’s GHG footprint. In fact, according to one study, meat and dairy production is the leading cause of climate change.
According to the survey, more than half (54%) of Americans don’t know what foods contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, while only 9% know for certain. A Millennial postgraduate man who hails from the west, votes blue, and earns over $100,000 is most likely to be able to tell you which food items pollute the planet.
The results are reminiscent of previous research demonstrating the disconnect between food and climate change in the US. In 2023, one poll showed that 40% of Americans didn’t believe consuming less red meat would help lower emissions, and months later, another survey found that 74% of them thought cutting out meat would have no impact on the climate.
However, the PCRM-Morning Consult research reveals that 16% of consumers would “strongly consider” eating a plant-based diet to reduce emissions, and another 30% would “somewhat consider” it. While Gen Z and Black adults are among the least likely to identify which foods are the highest emitters, they’re also the most receptive to eating vegan.
Courtesy: PCRM/Morning Consult
Americans want their government to step up
The pollsters believe the findings exhibit the need for public education about agricultural emissions, with Gen Z and Black adults again the most supportive of policy changes that increase awareness about this.
But this is likely easier said than done, considering the vast climate cutbacks that have already occurred under a president who has a hard time believing climate change is real. Meanwhile, in his quest to Make America Healthy Again, Robert F Kennedy Jr has been singing the praises of raw milk and beef tallow while attacking more sustainable plant-based alternatives for being ultra-processed.
The American public, though, agrees that federal food policies – like the national dietary guidelines – should discuss the impact of food on the planet. It’s a sentiment that 60% of the survey’s respondents agree with, and only 19% don’t. This has bipartisan support too, resonating with 77% of Democrats, 55% of independents, and 50% of Republicans.
Courtesy: PCRM/Morning Consult
It’s a pertinent question, since the scientists who advise the USDA on the dietary guidelines have recommended cutting back red meat and prioritising plant-based proteins instead. It remains to be seen whether the government adopts these measures later this year.
Most adults (59%) also agree that the government should incentivise livestock farmers to transition towards plant-based farming, a belief that rings true across party lines, income levels, races, and ages.
However, a carbon tax on meat and dairy farming – like the one Denmark will begin in 2030 – is much more divisive. Two in five Americans agree that the livestock industry should be taxed to help offset climate change, but the same number disagree too. And one in five are unsure or neutral about this issue.
According to PCRM, though, this has to do with the perception that those taxes will hurt their own pockets, underscoring that while planetary costs matter to Americans, their wallets likely matter more.
The Swiss government has published its nutrition strategy for the next eight years, expanding the focus to sustainability, plant-based diets and food waste.
Swiss citizens are eating too much meat, animal fat, sugar and salt, and very few fruits, vegetables, nuts and legumes. With diet-related diseases and greenhouse gas emissions on the rise, their consumption habits need an overhaul, according to the government.
The Food Safety and Veterinary Office (FSVO) has published the country’s latest nutrition strategy for 2025-32, spotlighting plant-based diets, food waste reduction, and sustainability as core goals, in addition to balanced eating and greater nutritional literacy.
“The new nutrition strategy is broader in scope than the old one,” said Élisabeth Baume-Schneider, a member of the Federal Council and head of home affairs. It’s no longer based exclusively on the National Strategy for the Prevention of Non-Communicable Diseases – it now integrates sustainability-led approaches, including the national climate and agriculture goals for 2050, and the food waste action plan.
“This holistic perspective is essential to strengthening the effectiveness of the Swiss nutrition strategy. It also requires close cooperation between the relevant federal agencies, stakeholders from the nutrition and food sector, as well as science and civil society,” explained Baume-Schnieder.
Why Switzerland needed a new nutrition strategy
Courtesy: SGE/SSN
Around a quarter of the Swiss population (2.2 million) suffers from a non-communicable disease, and that share is rising. A major factor is diet, with current eating patterns skewed towards animal products and unhealthy foods high in salt, sugar, and fat. Meanwhile, 15% of the country’s children and teenagers are overweight or obese, rising to 43% of adults (up from 30% three decades ago).
At the same time, the food system accounts for a quarter of Switzerland’s emissions, and food waste itself is responsible for a quarter of that impact. The nation produces 2.8 million tonnes of avoidable food waste annually, or about 330kg per person.
The national strategy to tackle this issue aims to halve food waste by 2030 (from a 2017 baseline), which would lower agrifood emissions by 10-15%.
Switzerland’s nutrition plan for the next eight years takes all of this into account, with the hope that it “strengthens healthy food supply, reduces the ecological footprint, and supports research in the areas of nutrition and food”, noted Baume-Schneider.
The strategy has six key objectives: promote a balanced and healthy diet with sufficient nutrient intake, boost nutritional literacy, strengthen plant-based nutrition, involve all food industry actors, create healthy and sustainable food environments, and reduce food waste.
The focus on plant-based builds on the country’s latest dietary guidelines for adults, published last August, which recommend eating more whole foods and plant proteins. It’s a trend occurring in more and more countries, including Canada, Germany, Austria, Norway, Finland, and potentially even the US.
Swiss consumers are already eating less meat and dairy – thanks to a large flexitarian population – with mushrooms, vegetables and legumes gaining popularity. Plant-based meat alternatives, however, only attract 15% of flexitarians, behind proteins like tofu and tempeh (21%). That said, environment and health are the largest dietary drivers for these consumers.
Switzerland to create an action plan to implement nutrition strategy
Courtesy: FSVO
While the nutrition strategy is a good first step, how it will be implemented is more important. The FSVO will develop an action plan with measurable goals by the end of this year to show how it plans to effect these changes.
Covering a period between 2025 and 2028, this plan will contain measurable goals across four areas. The first area is information and education to help the Swiss connect health, nutrition and sustainability. This involves further publicising the dietary guidelines, reducing household food waste, training teachers and caregivers on nutrition, and promoting healthy and sustainable diets in schools.
The government notes that food composition, advertising, and availability all impact eating habits, and politicians and businesses share equal responsibility in promoting the right food environment. So it is important to promote healthy and sustainable catering, reduce salt and sugar in processed products, create clear food labelling, and restrict food advertising aimed at children.
Coordination between the federal government, cantons, cities and the food industry needs to be expanded too. Pooling resources will help create the necessary structures for a future-oriented nutrition policy that serves both the people and the planet. The country should more actively participate in international networks like the World Health Organization, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), and more.
Finally, since an effective nutrition strategy is based on scientific principles, supporting research is key. As part of this, the federal government will collect additional data on nutrition and food to be made available to researchers and the public, monitor the nutritional behaviour of both adults and children, and fund studies to develop and test effective measures to promote healthy diets.
“The science is clear – and while the government’s upcoming action plan might shape important steps on education, regulation, and collaboration, the real test will be in how boldly it’s implemented,” said Pascal Bieri, co-founder of Swiss vegan leader Planted.
He called for public procurement measures in schools and hospitals to reflect the strategy, fair market conditions for all protein sources (“not just the ones with the most expensive lobby”), and educational resources to help the Swiss make better choices “without shame or complexity”. “The policy is slowly catching up,” he noted. “Now it’s time for implementation that’s focused on real impact – not just optics.”
What will the food system look like in 2025? According to the EU, meat will give way to plants and novel proteins, no matter how things end up.
The EU’s production and consumption patterns require “fundamental changes” to reach its sustainable living vision for 2050, its environmental arm has said.
The European Environment Agency’s (EEA) new foresight report looks at how the region can futureproof its food, mobility and energy systems, in line with its agenda of “living well, within environmental limits” by 2050.
Its predictions of what society would look like in 2050 are based on four imagined futures – or “imaginaries” – developed by the EEA and its Eionet network, each a distinct pathway shaped by societal drivers, governance models and technological roles.
Courtesy: European Environment Agency
In ‘Technocracy for the common good’, national governments drive the sustainability shift as liberalised markets get blamed for decades of socio-environmental problems, supported by the unprecedented monitoring capabilities of the IT sector.
The ‘Unity in adversity’ pathway is driven by recurrent climate disasters, geopolitical tensions and financial shocks, empowering the EU to use stringent, top-down regulatory measures to set rigorous economic boundaries. Here, industry plays a subservient role.
In the third scenario, ‘The great decoupling’, innovative businesses are the central actors, with their bioeconomy and tech breakthroughs enabling the decoupling of economic growth from environmental harms.
And finally, the ‘Ectopia’ imaginary combines climate change, growth scepticism, government distrust, and the desire to live in harmony to empower civil society stakeholders to lead a shift in collective action, as consumption and resource use scale back notably.
Each of these scenarios offers different ways for Europeans to meet the 2050 goal – though some solutions are common across all four futures. Alternative proteins – whether plant-based, cell-cultivated, or fermentation-derived – are one of them.
Here’s how the protein industry would fare 25 years from today, according to the EEA.
Technocracy for the common good
Courtesy: European Environment Agency
Under this scenario, national governments use dynamic food pricing to reflect the health and environmental costs of products – think carbon taxes on meat, as in Denmark starting 2030 – with the aim of nudging consumers towards healthier dietary choices. In fact, nutrition plays a bigger role than taste and food culture.
People are eating cultivated meat, as well as biofermented proteins, which the EEA describes as extracted from “bio-based residual resources”. In contrast, animal-based nutrition is “marginal”.
Policymakers prioritise health and the environment over individual preferences. Digitally implemented dynamic food pricing provides an effective monetary incentive for such diets and guarantees that people can always afford to purchase healthy food no matter their economic situation.
Meanwhile, Europeans increasingly eat food produced in bulk at biorefineries, with exotic food consumption now a celebrated ritual for those who can afford it.
Unity in adversity
Courtesy: European Environment Agency
Here, all food production is controlled by the EU and local authorities, which are pushing for the integration of agroforestry, agricultural drones, and low-methane livestock diets.
The production of meat alternatives has reached industrial scale to support food security, and these technologies are highly regulated by EU institutions to monitor food safety, environmental impacts, resource allocation, and responsible and ethical research and production.
A large amount of food is produced within Europe, resulting in more seasonal diets and a reliance on fermented products. Alternative proteins, including algae-derived proteins and plant-based dairy, are subsidised and play a key role in nutrition security.
Meanwhile, at the societal level, dietary choices are influenced by a broader culture shift and policy instruments like taxes, subsidies and carbon pricing, all in favour of organic, low-carbon and local products. This ‘imaginary’ also involves “very little food waste”, amid incentives to reduce waste in both processing and retail.
The great decoupling
Courtesy: European Environment Agency
With biotech giants dominating the agriculture sector, this imaginary sees a highly efficient, circular bioeconomy. Agriculture is used for carbon sequestration, and tech-enabled productivity gains and organic farming come to the fore.
However, the large multinationals control much of the food system and fiercely compete for scarce resources like water and minerals, with less of a focus on healthy food.
That said, policies promote pricing incentives to “shift dietary choices away from emissions-intense animal products” while wild-caught meat is severely limited in availability. Meat alternatives are developed at an industrial level from protein-packed pulses and algae, which are cheap.
A growing number of Europeans are eating cell-cultured superfoods made from a customised composition. “Due to a strong market orientation, standards, monitoring and control systems are seldomly regulated by the state and are only harmonised across Europe in particularly critical areas,” the EEA predicts.
Ecotopia
Courtesy: European Environment Agency
In a consumer-influenced food landscape, production has shifted to closed-loop systems on small-scale, cooperative farms and urban areas that prioritise integration with natural systems, dominated by organic farming, agroecology, and virtually no pesticide and fertiliser use.
Many European citizens have become “prosumers”, producing some of their own food, while food value chains are shorter, localised, seasonal, less processed, and plant-based. These attributes can be seen in products beyond just supermarkets.
With consumers wanting to connect with their food and how it’s produced, nutrition has become a cornerstone of life. The dietary shift away from animal products is motivated by ethical and ecological concerns, too, with EU citizens prioritising plant-based, legume-rich diets to reduce diet-related health problems and cut emissions.
While the desire for “highly processed food” is scarce, non-sustainable foods are extremely expensive due to taxes, making sustainable products the more affordable alternative.
Is the EU making progress on these goals?
Courtesy: European Environment Agency
Agriculture is responsible for 11% of the EU’s greenhouse gas emissions, and 81-86% of these come from livestock. That’s despite animal-based foods only providing 35% of calories and 65% of proteins in the region.
The meat and dairy sector is heavily subsidised, receiving four times as much public money as plant-based farming and around 82% of the subsidies under the Common Agriculture Policy (CAP).
It explains why there have been growing calls – from doctors, consumer groups, food giants, and even farmers – for the EU to transform its protein supply towards planet-friendly sources.
“Across all imaginaries, a dietary shift from animal-based to plant-based foods is seen as an important strategy to reduce overall GHG emissions and resource use across the food system,” the EEA notes in its report, adding that the transition towards alternative proteins is seen as an opportunity to “decarbonise the food system, innovate across the food supply chain, and contribute to food security”.
In a potentially positive sign, agriculture commissioner Christophe Hansen has answered calls to create a protein diversification strategy, promising a “holistic approach” that would encompass both protein production and consumption and diversify the imports of plant-based protein to boost food security.
Anna Strolenberg, a member of the EU Parliament and a key voice behind this push, has called for more concrete steps and a timeline. She told Green Queen that “there is real momentum to take further steps”, with the upcoming CAP reform providing an opportunity to support farmers to adopt new protein crops.
“This can help de-risk investments in new production methods and crops,” she said. “If the strategy also includes measures to develop value chains and expand consumer choices, we believe it has the potential to become a real success.”
European future food startups saw a 25% boost in funding in 2024, making the region a global leader in the space – but economic uncertainty is keeping investors cautious this year.
While US tariffs keep business leaders and investors on their toes this year, 2024 was a bright spot for the food tech ecosystem in Europe.
Companies in this space attracted €4.1B, only a 2% decline from the €4.2B they raised in 2023. After a 57% drop from the highs of 2021 (compared to a 72% decline globally), investments are finally stabilising in the region, according to research by Paris-based food tech consultancy DigitalFoodLab for the eighth edition of its State of the European FoodTech Ecosystem report.
The firm suggests that 28% of global food tech funding flowed into startups originating from Europe in 2024, thanks in large part to the food delivery (accounting for a third of the total) and food science (30%) verticals. The latter includes alternative proteins like plant-based milk and cultivated meat, as well as climate-friendly foods like cocoa-free chocolate and beanless coffee.
Future food leads Europe’s charge
Courtesy: DigitalFoodLab
When it came to deal count, alternative proteins were the most well-funded subcategory in Europe last year. And even in terms of the capital invested, this category ranked second, behind only “new retailers”.
Globally, alternative proteins secured 27% less financing in 2024, according to separate research – though when combined with other climate-friendly innovations in chocolate, coffee and fats, this future food sector saw a 25% hike in investments last year, reaching €830M. That means they account for about a fifth of all food tech funding in the region.
“Europe was the most attractive region for alternative protein in 2024,” says Matthieu Vincent, co-founder of DigitalFoodLab, citing the firm’s unpublished data on other markets. This is despite the EU being host to a “more complicated regulatory framework” for novel foods.
“We have observed a surge in the number of grants and research programmes funded by the EU and the UK, which firmly position themselves to compete and have a leading role in the burgeoning bioeconomy,” the report notes. In fact, European research funding for alternative proteins reached an all-time high of €290M in 2024, according to the Good Food Institute Europe.
Vincent ascribes the future food success in Europe to a “focus on specific areas that have done extremely well this year, notably alternative chocolate and coffee”. Germany’s Planet A Foods, for example, closed a $30M Series B round in December to scale its cocoa-free ChoViva chocolate.
“European startups have always skewed a bit more toward B2B, [and] hence healthy ingredients, which are also doing quite well in comparison to B2C-focused alternative proteins,” says Vincent. “It confirms the main trends of the ecosystem: more B2B, a focus on health, and on supply chain solutions, rather than on new brands.”
Tariffs and economic uncertainty are a blight for European food tech
Courtesy: DigitalFoodLab
DigitalFoodLab’s report found that German startups lead investments in the food science category, which includes pet food, beverages, CPG firms, and cloud kitchens, in addition to functional ingredients and alternative proteins. They made up a fifth of the category’s total investment, reaching €250M.
This was closely followed by the UK (€240M), and then France (€130M), Switzerland, and Finland (€110M each). This mirrored the trend across the food tech ecosystem, with strong performances in Germany, the Netherlands, and the Nordic countries.
The main reason why these countries have attracted investment is that they already have “large consumer markets interested in these products”, according to Vincent.
“Lagging behind is all the rest of Europe, notably the southern part, where investment in alternative proteins is much more modest,” he points out.
Courtesy: DigitalFoodLab
The global economy faces a huge threat with the arrival of US President Donald Trump’s tariffs, which have plunged every industry into chaos. While things are changing on an almost daily basis, the EU was slapped with a 20% tariff before Trump’s 90-day pause on most such levies a day later.
However, talks between the bloc and the US are not going smoothly, raising fears of higher tariff rates for EU member states. Food tech investors are already advising founders to exercise caution, and for Vincent’s money, Europe’s progress from last year may be undone.
“I would have been much more certain about the direction a month or two ago. Now, things look very uncertain with the current economic situation, which is also impacting investments in food tech,” he says. “Uncertainties combined with a declined appetite for sustainability won’t be good for the European ecosystem.”
He adds: “At the start of the year, I would have predicted a stable year with neither a bounceback nor a decline. Now, as far as I can see, the year will be tough, with probably a decline in funding, at least for the first half of the year, while investors wait to see where things are going.”
In our interview series, we quiz future food investors about the solutions that excite them the most, their favourite climate-forward restaurant, and what they look for in successful founders.
Steve Simitzis is a Partner at Solvable Syndicate.
What future food technologies most excite you?
Contrary to the doom and gloom, I’m most excited by cellular agriculture and cultivated meat. The crash in funding has, in my opinion, been a good thing for the space, as it’s refocusing founders on building real businesses with B2B customers in mind (meat producers, pet food manufacturers, etc.) without impossible valuations hanging over their heads.
Where I’m most interested is at pre-seed and seed level, where founders are inventing high-leverage technologies to reduce costs. Keep a close eye on the Tufts University Center for Cellular Agriculture, which is building a new ecosystem around cell ag and, I expect, will have the next wave of breakout companies.
What are three future food verticals you are actively looking at for 2025?
Enabling technologies for cellular agriculture and bioprocessing that reduce costs.
Pet food! Always looking at pet food.
Future food replacements for ingredients, especially pigments and dyes, that have broad applications across food, beauty, nutraceuticals, textiles, etc.
What do you consider the food tech sector’s greatest achievement in the past five years?
The achievement of plant-based milk reaching almost half of US households is something I could never have imagined in a million years. I went to a Starbucks in southeast Missouri and had my choice of soy milk, almond milk, and oat milk. Seriously, that’s incredible.
If you could wave a magic wand, how would you fix plant-based meat?
By getting costs down to cheaper than animal-based meat. We could be headed in that direction already: startups are engineering new ways to drive down costs (Rebellyous Foods is leading the way here), while from the other end, pandemics and supply shocks are raising costs for animal proteins. Once they meet in the middle, that’s the tipping point.
Sales growth of vegan egg alternatives during the egg crisis has me convinced that food inflation is the central villain in the story of plant-based. It’s a rational choice: why pay 5x for a plant-based alternative when your grocery bill is rising? You’re going to cut the most expensive products first. Let’s make tastier and healthier products where we can, but without fixing the cost of goods sold, only vegans are buying them.
The other force at work, unfortunately, is the rise of trad culture, which is leading people to dangerous choices like carnivore diets and raw milk. So if I can be granted a second magic wand, it would be for America to re-embrace modern civilisation.
What’s the top trait you look for in a founder?
I love founders who are obsessed with the problem they’ve set out to solve. When you’re problem-obsessed, you’ll want to keep digging deeper and deeper into your problem, and you’ll never give up until you solve it. I would say that tenacity and curiosity are the top founder traits that are downstream from being problem-obsessed.
I also look for founders who embrace work-life balance, even as they’re thinking about their startup 24/7. (Still problem-obsessed!) I don’t think anyone is more effective without good sleep, food, exercise, and time spent caring for the people and animals in your life. If I sense that a founder is neglecting those (and there’s always a tell), they are, to me, not investable.
The One That Got Away: What is the deal you wish you had gotten into, but didn’t?
A startup from our old incubator in Berkeley. I had the opportunity to invest, but public markets were tanking and I was hesitant to pull out cash.
What do you consider your most successful future food investment so far?
It’s still too early to claim winners, but I’m very excited about Omni Pet, who just received investment and exposure on Dragons’ Den UK, and has had exceptional growth over the last two years. Great product, great founders, what’s not to love?
What has been your most disappointing investment so far?
Back in 2000, I invested in a bottled tea company based in Santa Cruz that was right at the beginning of yerba mate as a new beverage category in the US. Product and timing were perfect, but the team fell apart due to co-founder infighting.
What do people misunderstand/get wrong most about VC?
Founders should deep dive into venture economics and how VC funds work (and where the capital comes from) to understand all of the incentives at play. Once you learn about the mechanics of venture funds, you start to see what kind of businesses aren’t a fit for venture capital, and more importantly, you’ll understand why.
What is the most ‘future food’ thing you have eaten this month?
I was lucky enough to try the Mission Barns meatballs and salami, made with cultivated fat, at its FDA approval party during Future Food-Tech week. It was delicious and tasted like a real meatball without that uncanny valley experience you sometimes get with alternatives.
Even though I’ve been vegan for decades, the food you eat in childhood still resonates with you and unlocks old memories when you taste it again, and the Mission Barns meatballs were 100% future nostalgia.
Where is your favourite climate-forward restaurant/dish/place to eat anywhere in the world?
I would consider moving to Zurich just to eat at Hiltl every night. It claims to be the oldest vegetarian restaurant in the world (since 1898, but who can say if Pythagoras wasn’t running a bistro on the side?).
The food at Hiltl is served buffet-style, so you never run out of new flavours to sample. I still think about their cremeschnitte, which was fully plant-based yet had the most delicate puffy pastry and custard. A triumph of a dessert.
What’s your ‘why’? What motivates you to do what you do?
I have been vegan for almost 30 years. I originally went vegan for the animals, in the OG days of brown soy milk and TVP (which, to be clear, I still eat and love).
Over time, I thought more and more about food system transformation, and the absurdity of using most of our land to raise cows. The wildfires here in the Bay Area that tore through forests around 2018-20 were deeply unsettling, and I wasn’t able to stop thinking about the destruction of habitats for the animals who lived in those forests. So, the fires cemented for me that this would become my life’s work.
At one point I considered going into climatetech (back when it was “clean tech”), but I connect with food more than power grids and heat pumps. Food is so fundamental, and everyone (and every culture) connects with it in a different way. We’ll never run out of problems to solve in food, which is what makes it such an endlessly interesting space to be in.
With sales of meat analogues continuing to drop, some plant-based companies are moving away from replication and betting on new product formats. Revo Foods is one of them.
“The plant-based industry had a dogma that if you replicate meat 100%, consumers will come, and I don’t think this is true anymore.”
Those were the thoughts of Robin Simsa two weeks ago. He is the founder of Austrian vegan seafood maker Revo Foods. People care less about a one-to-one replica, and instead want a good protein source prepared in an attractive way.
Simsa was speaking to Green Queen to mark the launch of the startup’s newest product, El Blanco – Inspired by Black Cod, made with mycoprotein, fermentation, and 3D printing.
But his words were also a sign of what was to come. Today, the firm has introduced The Prime Cut, described as a “new class of performance nutrition that doesn’t try to imitate meat – and doesn’t need to”.
“We believe the next generation of food shouldn’t be about replacement – it should be about enhancement,” says Niccolò Galizzi, head of food tech at Revo Foods.
The startup is diving head-first into the consumer demand for functional foods, in a landscape where Europeans are becoming less trusting of the food system. For alternative protein players, can a shift in thinking be replicated in their customers too?
Courtesy: Revo Foods
Plant-Based 3.0 is about nutrition, not replication
The Prime Cut marks a departure from Revo Foods’s lineup of seafood analogues – and, for that matter, the lineup of most meat-free companies.
“Most plant-based products still live in a ‘meat vs vegan’ world. We wanted to move beyond that, by stopping to copy and start creating,” explains Galizzi. “The Prime Cut isn’t here to replace steak – it’s built to fuel people who want to live longer, think clearer, and move better.”
It labels the innovation as the first product of the Plant-Based 3.0 generation, designed with targeted nutrition in mind, instead of a focus on mimicking animal protein. This is despite a survey of 7,800 Europeans last year revealing that taste is the most important factor when it comes to their daily food choices, cited by 87% of respondents.
Health wasn’t far behind though, with 81% of consumers finding it important. That said, this attribute is more critical for flexitarians (28% of whom called it an influential factor in their food choices) than omnivores (20%).
This bodes well for Revo Foods, which says The Prime Cut isn’t intended for vegans or carnivores specifically, but “a third group” who are looking for foods that “help them perform better, live longer, and feel stronger”.
Courtesy: Revo Foods
The shift towards healthy eating in Europe is being driven by Gen Z, 45% of whom say they want to buy more healthy food this year, and one in three are willing to pay a premium for such products. But what does healthy mean to them? According to McKinsey, high protein and low calories.
The Prime Cut contains 8g of protein per 100g, and an identical amount of fibre. This will appeal to the 30% of Europeans who would like to eat more protein, and 38% who want to increase their fibre intake.
Aside from the high protein and fibre content, Revo Foods is also focusing on micronutrients. Thanks to microalgae oil, the new product covers the daily recommended intake of omega-3 fatty acids, while also containing folic acid, vitamin B6, and vitamin B12.
A wider shift towards functional plant-based foods
These nutrients are preserved through Revo Foods’s patented 3D extrusion process, which eschews the high-heat treatment common in other food manufacturing methods. The use of mycoprotein, meanwhile, provides the natural umami flavour consumers desire even in health-first products.
Only a third (35%) of Europeans feel fermented and plant-based products like Revo Foods’s products contribute positively to their health, while 28% feel the opposite. Their main complaints revolve around the use of additives and long ingredient lists (cited by 56% of respondents).
The Prime Cut isn’t exactly what you’d call clean-label (compounded by the fact that the term doesn’t have an established definition) – it has over a dozen ingredients. But the company is leading with the health claims on the front of the packaging, highlighting the protein, fibre, vitamin, and omega-3 content to focus on “what the product delivers rather than what it avoids”.
Retailing for €4.19 per 110g pack, it’s now available at Billa, Gurkerl.at, Kokku, Prokopp and other select retailers across Europe, with Revo Foods suggesting the product doesn’t belong in the traditional plant-based aisle – rather, it should be placed alongside functional foods like protein snacks or health supplements.
Courtesy: Revo Foods
It’s not the only plant-based meat or seafood company making this play. Cult-favourite British brand This has been teasing a new tofu-like “superfood” that would have more nutritional value than anything else currently available on the market. The product is set to launch later this month, at a time when tofu and tempeh are outpacing meat alternative sales.
“As consumer awareness of environmental and ethical concerns surrounding meat consumption grows, we’re seeing continued interest in plant-based products, particularly with a lean towards health-focused choices and an ingredients list people recognise,” This CEO Mark Cuddigan told Sifted last year.
This shift can be seen in the US too. New York-based Actual Veggies doubled its revenue in 2024 thanks to its line of plant-based burgers – but instead of mimicking meat, these put vegetables front and centre. It recently displaced a legacy veggie burger brand on the menu of Eurest, a corporate caterer that serves some of the country’s largest companies.
“Actual Veggies isn’t trying to mimic meat. We’re celebrating vegetables,” co-founder and co-CEO Jason Rosenbaum told Green Queen. “People are looking for food made with real, recognisable ingredients – not ultra-processed meat alternatives… Whole-food plant-based options are no longer niche – they’re becoming the standard.”
Our weekly column rounds up the latest sustainable food innovation news. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers This’s pasta partnership with Ugo Foods Group, Starday’s $11M Series A round, and a nomination for the Earthshot Prize.
New products and launches
London-based meat alternative startup This and Ugo Foods Group‘s vegan ravioli products are hitting supermarkets, with the Bacon & Cheese and Chicken & Pesto flavours now available at 250 Morrisons stores, priced at £6 for two packs.
Courtesy: This
UK plant-based milk maker Rude Health has introduced a clean-label iced coffee range in oat latte and mocha variants. The 750ml ready-to-drink Tetra Paks are available at Waitrose for £3.75, and Ocado at the end of the month.
Also in the UK, plant protein brand Tibah Tempeh has released a Smoky Block. It’s available for £3 per 220g pack at Ocado (from April 18), and Sainsbury’s and Waitrose at the end of the month.
Meanwhile, free-from snacking company Crave has expanded its lineup with a gluten-free, vegan Pink Cheetahs wafer biscuit, available at 480 Sainsbury’s stores for £2 per 100g.
Courtesy: Eurest
In more news from the island, Eurest – the corporate division of Compass Group, the world’s largest catering company – partnered with plant-based chef duo Bosh! for a new vegan smokehouse menu at Jaguar Land Rover‘s head office in Warwickshire.
Vegan meal kit brand Grubby has partnered with artisanal non-dairy cheese maker Julienne Bruno on a limited-edition Creamy Burrata-Topped Za’atar-Spiced Squash option for Easter.
Across the Atlantic, Fungi protein startup Nature’s Fynd, meanwhile, has launched Spicy Indian Fy Bites at Plantegalocations in New York City. They contain 14g of protein and 5g of fibre per serving.
Courtesy: Nature’s Fynd
Miyoko’s Creamery has rolled out a new flavour of its spreadable cashew cheese. The Jalapeño Plant Milk Cheese Spread can be found at Nugget Market stores for $6.99 per 8oz tub, with further retailers to follow this summer.
Vegan cheese giant Violife has partnered with James Beard Award finalist Dan Richer to launch the first-ever non-dairy pizza at his Jersey City pizzeria Razza. The Spicy Vegan Vodka Pizza is made with plant-based mozzarella shreds and on the menu until the end of the month.
Chilean food tech unicorn NotCo has expanded its partnership with Aeromexico to offer passengers in its Premier and Premier One classes a NotBurger with manchego-inspired NotCheese until May 31.
Courtesy: Vinker
Canada’s Vinker is bringing its vegan Korean Crispy Chick’n to the US, rolling out at Pop Up Grocer in Manhattan, New York.
Germany’s Loryma, a subsidiary of Crespel & Deiters Group, has launched Lory Stab, a stabilising compound of technically treated raw materials to replace eggs and dairy in baked goods.
Swiss plant-based meat leader Planted has announced former wrestler Christian Stucki as a brand ambassador for its upcoming BBQ campaign, alongside a new Paprika steak and listings at several new retailers in Europe.
Courtesy: Planted
In Hong Kong, plant protein producer Ferm by SpiceBox Organic has teamed up with food preservation specialist Ixon to launch a shelf-stable range of tempeh, vegan meatballs, and plant-based meat sauce for pasta.
And in India, Mumbai’s Bandra district is home to Pause Café, a new all-vegan 32-seater eatery serving continental dishes and desserts.
Company, policy and awards
Speaking of restaurants, US vegan taco chain Tacotarian has launched a franchise programme as part of its expansion strategy.
Courtesy: Starday
AI-powered plant-based snacking brand Starday has raised $11M in Series A funding to accelerate its retail expansion and partner with retailers and CPG brands to create bespoke products. It takes the company’s total funding to $20M.
Meanwhile, US precision fermentation manufacturer Liberation Labs has received a strategic investment from Saudi Arabia’s Neom Investment Fund to establish a local facility for Neom’s food company, Topian.
US manufacturing specialist SPX Flow has partnered with the Danish Agricultural Agency‘s Green Development and Demonstration Program’s LinkingOat project to advance oat-based product development.
Courtesy: Beneo
In Germany, plant-based functional food ingredient maker Beneo has opened a €50M pulse processing in Orbigheim. The 4,000 sq m facility also produces Palatinose, a ‘smart carb’ ingredient that promotes GLP-1 release.
Ramkumar Nair, founder and former CEO of mycoprotein startupMycorena, has established fungi protein firm Smaqo, with a direct-to-consumer focus.
In Spain, the National Centre for Food Technology and Safety‘s EATEX Food Innovation Hub has launched an Agrifoodtech Sandbox to offer companies a “controlled, forward-looking environment” to test breakthrough technologies and products operating at the edge of regulatory frameworks.
Courtesy: Opalia
Finally, Canadian cell-cultured milk maker Opalia has been nominated for the 2025 Earthshot Prize by Impact Entrepreneur.
Mumbai-based food tech startup Biokraft Foods has debuted cultured seafood prototypes in collaboration with the government, and will apply for regulatory approval for cultivated chicken this summer.
Cultivated meat is inching closer to Indian plates.
Biokraft Foods, a Mumbai-based startup, will soon make the first application to sell cultivated meat in the world’s most populous country.
“We will file for the approval of the chicken meat product, which is expected to happen in the next two months,” founder and CEO Kamalnayan Tibrewal tells Green Queen.
The development comes just as the startup has raised an undisclosed sum in a pre-seed funding round, with the deal currently under process.
Meanwhile, it has also unveiled structured fish products made by cultivating the cells of native trout species, as part of a project with a government-backed research institute.
Working with the ICAR-Central Institute of Coldwater Fisheries Research (ICAR-CICFR), which falls under India’s agricultural ministry, Biokraft Foods has developed fish cell lines and applied its 3D printing technology and bioink to transform these cells into whole-cut cultivated fish.
“We are working on snow and rainbow trout, a Himalayan delicacy with a huge value proposition in terms of pricing,” says Tibrewal. “Given our collaboration with ICAR-CICFR, whose primary work is around trout fishes, it made sense to proceed with that.”
Mixing cultivated fish cells with plants and algae
Courtesy: Biokraft Foods
Trout is a high-value fish with limited availability in India, making it an expensive source of seafood. Several populations of trout are considered either endangered or threatened, and farming this fish is a resource-intensive, planet-harming process.
Biokraft aims to address these challenges through cell cultivation. Its tech platform for cultivated chicken uses 3D bioprinting to replicate the texture, taste, and structure of conventional meat, and it’s using the same tech to produce seafood.
The resulting product is said to be “structurally and nutritionally on par with conventional trout”, with year-round production without any dependence on animal farming, wild catch, or fragile ecosystems. It would further eliminate any antibiotic contamination and microplastic pollution.
According to the startup, cell cultivation also has the potential to bring down prices over time through scale and process optimisation. But for now, it’s still using the controversial and expensive fetal bovine serum in “certain concentrations in the medium”.
“The long-term goal is to keep it serum-free. It is too early to discuss the unit economics, but it will be priced lower than conventional trout meat,” says Tibrewal.
As for the composition of the new seafood products, he reveals: “The current cell biomass stands at 3% due to the slow doubling rate of cells, but we want to boost it up to 10% if unit economics allows. Apart from that, we are using algal and plant-based ingredients.”
Biokraft Foods to host a series of public tastings
Courtesy: Biokraft Foods
“At ICAR-CICFR, our mandate has been to promote sustainable coldwater fisheries through advanced research and innovation,” said Amit Pande, principal scientist at the research institute.
“The collaborative development of India’s first cultivated trout product with Biokraft Foods exemplifies how academic institutions and emerging industry players can jointly contribute to the evolution of alternative protein sources. This initiative not only aligns with our vision of conserving aquatic biodiversity but also opens up new avenues for cell-based aquaculture research in India.”
The development comes months after Biokraft Foods hosted India’s first public tasting of cultivated meat, serving over 30 attendees a hybrid chicken breast with cultivated chicken cells mixed with plant-based and algal ingredients.
“A series of tasting events are lined up starting next month and will primarily focus on chicken,” Tibrewal says now. “The trout product is still under development and will need to undergo validation trials before making it public.”
The company is also opening a dedicated R&D and pilot facility by the end of this year, which will act as a hub for innovation. “The plan is under development but will be implemented in a step-by-step manner,” he says.
Biokraft Foods has already been consulting with the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) as the regulator established a framework for novel foods, and aims to achieve a commercial rollout of both its meat and seafood products by 2026.
A 2024 survey found that over 60% of Indians are willing to buy cultivated meat, with 59% identifying it as an alternative to conventional meat that promotes nutritional security. And it’s not just citizens – the government has also been keen on these proteins, as evidenced by the ICAR-CICFR’s involvement.
Eat Just is bringing its bestselling vegan egg to Europe after striking a distribution deal with Vegan Food Group, which is investing £11.5M ($15.2M) to ramp up production at its sites.
Just Egg – the pioneering vegan egg alternative from California’s Eat Just – is crossing the Atlantic following a partnership with Vegan Food Group (VFG), which has secured exclusive rights to manufacture and distribute the mung bean egg in Europe.
VFG is set to begin manufacturing the product in late 2025, and has pumped £11.5M ($15.2M) to build a fully automated line to produce Just Egg at its facility in Lüneburg, Germany (the largest dedicated plant-based factory in Europe), as well as boost automation and efficiency across its UK and German sites.
“European consumers clearly desire innovative, sustainable food options, and collaborating with VFG is key to meeting that demand effectively,” Eat Just co-founder and CEO Josh Tetrick told the Grocer. “This investment in the Lüneburg facility represents a crucial step towards making high-quality plant-based egg alternatives widely accessible to our global audience.”
Just Egg finally breaks Europe
Courtesy: Eat Just
Just Egg’s journey to Europe has been long in the making. In 2018, before it even hit supermarkets in the US, Eat Just agreed to a manufacturing and distribution deal with Italian egg supplier Eurovo. This was followed by a sales and distribution agreement with German poultry giant PHW Group a year later, with the liquid mung bean egg initially slated to launch by the end of 2019.
However, this was always subject to novel food regulatory approval by the European Food Safety Authority, whose expert committees deemed the product safe in October 2021.
Six months later, Eat Just received approval from the European Commission, meaning no other company was allowed to use mung bean proteins for egg alternatives in the region for five years, unless it goes through the same novel food process. At the time, the firm had teased a Q4 launch of the product.
Now, with the VFG partnership, the food tech unicorn is finally clearing all the hurdles that have hampered its European arrival.
Through its investment, VFG will enhance automation, extend shelf life, cut waste, and improve product quality at its facilities in the UK and Germany. It will also support retailers and foodservice partners with “next-gen innovation and operational excellence”.
“This partnership is a huge leap forward in transforming plant-based food across Europe,” said Matthew Glover, co-founder and chairman of VFG.
Avian-flu-fuelled egg crisis boosts Eat Just sales
Courtesy: Eat Just
The Europe announcement comes just as Just Egg sees “increases in sales like we didn’t see in the past” in the US, according to Tetrick.
The current bout of avian flu has wrecked the conventional egg industry in the US, with over 167 million birds culled since February 2022. Prices have continued to rise, reaching a record high of $6.23 per dozen in retail in March. In some cities, each egg costs $1 now.
With egg shelves empty, if Americans want eggs, they only have a few choices, Tetrick told Green Queen in February: “One, don’t eat them. Two, you know, have applesauce. Or three, have Just Egg.”
The company says it’s already sold the equivalent of 500 million chicken eggs and captured 99% of the market for alternatives in the US, and the egg shortage has brought about a windfall for Eat Just’s mung bean innovation. In January alone, Just Egg’s sales grew five times faster than in the past year, while 56% of shoppers returned to buy more (a three-point increase from 2024). Most shoppers (91%) putting it in their basket, meanwhile, are neither vegan nor vegetarian.
“We have some of the largest chains in the country reaching out to us – on the foodservice side, the convenience store side – saying they don’t know when this is going to end, and they want to bring in something that’s more reliable and more permanent, i.e., what we’re doing,” Tetrick said. “This is a real moment in time for the plant-based industry to prove that it’s up to the challenge.”
VFG CEO Dave Sparrow echoed this sentiment following its link-up with Eat Just, noting: “Our partnership with Eat Just marks a significant milestone, aligning perfectly with our ambition to transform plant-based food across Europe.”
Can Just Egg fill Europe’s egg shortage and appetite?
Courtesy: Eat Just
The egg crisis isn’t just restricted to the US – in Europe, the cost of eggs has reached its highest in at least a decade, reaching €268.5 ($292) per 100kg last month. But as people seek cheaper protein sources than meat, the demand for eggs continues to increase, even if supplies don’t.
At the same time, Europe’s plant-based egg market is set to grow by 40% annually to reach $3.88B in 2031, so the opportunity for disruptors like Eat Just is there. Here, it will compete with fellow vegan liquid egg producers Crackd (UK), Perfeggt (Germany) and Vegge (Italy).
That said, the industry isn’t without its challenges. British brand Oggs, known for its aquafaba, also marketed a liquid whole egg alternative, but it hasn’t been in stock in supermarkets for several months now. VFG’s Sparrow, though, is confident that Just Egg is up to the task. “There are other egg replacements on the market, but quality-wise, there’s nothing that can stack up against Eat Just,” he said.
Eat Just, which reformulated its mung bean egg to deliver greater flavour and functionality last year, will also take solace in the success of fellow American plant-based giant Beyond Meat, which entered the European market in 2018. While the vegan burger maker has had a tough couple of years, its foodservice partnerships in Europe have been a constant bright spot.
Meanwhile, another major plant-based player, Impossible Foods, is hoping to bring its ‘bleeding’ burger to Europe soon, having cleared key food safety assessments last year. It will now undergo a public consultation period before seeking final approval from the EU Commission and its member states.
Plant-based proteins have come under heavy scrutiny for being ultra-processed, but current classification systems don’t fully reflect a food’s healthfulness, a new study has found.
Plant proteins shouldn’t be “demeaned” as unhealthy ultra-processed foods (UPFs), as their biochemical composition and micronutrient profile suggest otherwise, according to a new study.
Researchers from the University of Turku in Finland argue that current classification systems like Nova and Poti don’t sufficiently acknowledge the presence of compounds. Recognising the value of certain added ingredients – not just those that are harmful – is crucial, their research shows.
Published in the Nature Food journal, the analysis looked into the biochemical composition of 168 plant-based proteins made from a host of different base ingredients, as well as eight conventional meat products. They specifically explored the presence and availability of phytochemicals, which are bioactive compounds linked with multiple health benefits.
“Phytochemicals are a very large group of different compounds found only in plants, of which there are thousands of different types. On average, we consume 0.5-1g of phytochemicals per day, depending on our diet,” explained Kati Hanhineva, a professor of food development at the university. “However, until now there has not been enough research on how different processing methods affect these compounds.”
This latest study, though, contends that classifications like Nova “fail in several cases to provide a meaningful interpretation of the effect of processing”, suggesting that these systems often categorise foods containing beneficial bioactive compounds as processed or ultra-processed, “potentially misleading consumers into avoiding them”.
Nova classification of UPFs is limited for plant-based foods
Courtesy: Nature Food
The research particularly focused on soy products, including whole beans, tofu, tempeh, concentrates or isolates, and meat analogues. All of these finished products contained high levels of phytochemicals. When it came to isoflavonoids, vegan steaks were found to contain very little of these, but foods with lighter processing techniques, like tofu or soy chunks, retained a higher amount from the original soybean.
“Fermentation was highlighted as an important processing method in the results. We found that in tempeh, for example, these isoflavonoids were in a form that is more readily absorbed due to the activity of the microbes used in fermentation,” said doctoral researcher and lead author Jasmin Raita.
The problem, though, is that some fermented tempeh products fell into the UPF category in the existing classification systems, just like products made with extrusion. This highlights why UPF categorisation is limited when it comes to plant-based products, the researchers said.
“It is important to note that food processing should not be seen as exclusively harmful, as fermentation, for example, can even improve the nutritional value of a product,” Raita pointed out.
“The phytochemical compounds identified in the study may have health benefits, although they are currently not included in the nutrition labelling of food products,” added Hanhineva.
These can also indicate how well the original composition of a plant-based raw material has been preserved. “If there are no phytochemicals left in the product, it indicates that the product has undergone heavy industrial processing, after which the biochemical composition is completely different to that of the original plant used as a raw material. This perspective is not fully supported by current food processing classification systems,” she explained.
Courtesy: Springer
Not all processed foods are unhealthy, researchers say
The researchers explained how certain UPFs have been linked with adverse health effects, but not all. Studies have shown that plant-based foods, including those categorised as UPFs, are not associated with the risk of multimorbidity (or having two life-threatening diseases concurrently).
“It cannot be assumed that all processing makes a product unhealthy, because ultimately it is only the nutritional components of the edible product that matter, and how they are absorbed by our bodies. These determine the nutritional value and healthiness of food products,” said Ville Koistinen, a research fellow at the university. “Processing food is common, and even unprocessed food is often eventually processed at home, for example, by cooking,” he added.
Along these lines, the study described how the Nova classification bases the definition of UPFs on the processing techniques and added ingredients, and that of processed foods on the addition of elements like oils.
“Tofu and tempeh are categorised as processed, according to Nova. However, if they contain various flavouring ingredients or have been pre-fried, they are labelled as ultra-processed, even though consumers would probably cook and season them similarly at home,” the authors wrote.
This latest study noted that under the Nova category, most UPFs span unhealthy convenience food products and sugary beverages – but this group also contains phytochemical-rich foods, for which there’s no scientific support to limit their dietary intake.
“Ideally, people would consume the presumably healthier UPFs, such as tempeh, but other factors, such as price and convenience, are important drivers for consumer decisions,” it stated. “Bearing these factors in mind, refining the current classification system could assist in guiding consumers to select nutritionally and phytochemically richer food products.”
