Towzen opening in Sydney reflects a broader pattern in Japanese food exports that it's category integrity first, localisation second. Unlike Western fast-casual rollouts, Towzen preserves core broth philosophy, soy-milk base, mushroom-forward umami, overnight stocks, while flexing flavour architecture for multicultural markets. The result is credibility, not cosplay.

Believer Meats and Meatable became poster children for the promise of cultivated meat - $330mililion venture cap raised, patents filed, proof-of-concept achieved. Yet both failed to translate scientific promise into market reality because they were locked in the expensive, infrastructure-heavy domain of bioreactors and regulatory uncertainty. The result was inevitable, capital depletion without the commercial offset needed for sustainability. Now Meati, which leveraged fungal

From Gisborne’s first production in 1993 to today’s productive truffières in Canterbury and the Bay of Plenty, New Zealand has proven exceptional biological performance. Agronomically, New Zealand isn’t the problem but whether the country can become a serious player in the global truffle game.

A rare mushroom species found in Papua New Guinea and Yunnan Province is drawing scientific attention for inducing highly consistent “Lilliputian hallucinations” - visions of tiny people reported across cultures with unusual uniformity. Unlike known psychedelics, its effects do not align with established neurochemical pathways, suggesting the presence of a previously unidentified fungal compound or mechanism.

2026 is shaping up as the year FoodTech stops selling promises and starts selling ingredients, formats, and functionality. The companies below are front-running not because they’re loud, but because they’re already embedded, piloted, or positioned to be.

Researchers screened 106 fungal strains grown on orange and black carrot side streams from natural colour production, ultimately selecting Pleurotus djamor (pink oyster mushroom) for its protein yield and growth efficiency. By focusing on fungi rather than fruiting bodies, the process dramatically reduced time, space, and resource inputs.

New neuroimaging data has intensified scrutiny of ultra-processed foods (UPF), particularly formulations heavy in emulsifiers, flavour systems, and structural additives. Crucially, UPFs span all categories, meat, dairy, snacks, beverages, and plant-based alike. Yet public discourse increasingly frames the issue as a plant-based failure, rather than an industrial food-system problem.

Australia’s 2025 food signals point to a structural shift rather than a trend cycle. Pureprofile’s national social-insights model highlights a population leaning hard into provenance, local sovereignty, plant-forward living, and an AI-enabled reimagining of product development. Traditional narratives of “premium imports” are being displaced by identity-led consumption treating food as cultural expression, not just nutrition. Australia isn’t waiting for permission, it’s invent

UNESCO’s protection of Italy’s cuisine reframes national food identity as a global economic and cultural asset. Beyond symbolism, this introduces a regulatory and perception benchmark that will undoubtedly influence labelling, provenance claims, ingredient sourcing, and authenticity narratives across the global food system.

The global protein drink sector is shifting from niche sports nutrition to mainstream daily nourishment, with the global market projected to leap from US $32B today to over US $76.5B by 2032 for an annual growth of 9.36%. RTD formats dominate demand due to lifestyle convenience, while plant-based proteins, sugar-free formulations, and "clean-label" claims remain the strongest purchase drivers.

Tunnel Hill Mushrooms is a standout example of ambient agriculture, leveraging stable underground microclimates to produce premium gourmet and medicinal fungi with minimal energy input.

Seaweed chips, lentil crackers, chickpea protein bites, millet-based snack bars, and adaptogen-fortified munchables are becoming the new defaults, driven by busy urban consumers seeking quick nutrition without compromising flavour. With 2025 purchasing data showing India's plant-based snack boom surges in plant-based, fortified, and “mini-meal” snacks, India effectively becomes the world’s largest behavioural sandbox for plant-forward convenience foods.

Plates London received its Michelin star in July 2025, validating plant-based fine dining at the highest culinary level. But the new data changes everything: 95% of its diners still eat meat. This recasts the star itself as less of a milestone and more of a catalyst, showing plant-based cuisine is not only culturally acceptable but commercially magnetic among mainstream diners. It confirms a behavioural shift where diners don’t need to be vegan to choose plant-based.

China has issued its first-ever approval for Fusarium venenatum as a new food raw material, marking an historic milestone for the country’s future-food roadmap. This approval elevates mycoprotein from “alternative” to “strategic ingredient,” offering clarity on safety, production parameters, and mandated labelling for children, pregnant women, and those with fungal allergies.

Victoria’s new Plant Protein Hub at Horsham SmartFarm is more than a local upgrade, it’s a structural plug-in to a wider ANZ innovation grid. With $9m for the hub and $3m for a climate-smart glasshouse, the site offers shared spaces for start-ups, researchers and growers, backed by a test kitchen and advanced analytical kit to develop high-protein crop varieties for plant-based.

The Top 20 food-tech companies identified here demonstrate a global move away from “alternative protein” novelty and toward industrial-grade food architecture. This is the beginning of a new supply-chain model.

A next-generation mycoprotein platform has emerged via CRISPR-engineered Fusarium venenatum, enabling 88% faster biomass production, 44% lower sugar input, and up to 60% lower emissions. This materially shifts cost curves, potentially enabling broader retail penetration and finally addressing alt-protein’s affordability ceiling. The consumer effect is simple: better texture, cheaper protein, and less “processing guilt” compared with traditional isolates.

Korean Temple Food signals a subtle but powerful shift: cultural cuisines rooted in discipline, gratitude, and seasonal plant ingredients are starting to influence the global future-food landscape more than tech-first products. Its rise is being driven by wellness-seeking consumers, sustainability interest among younger demographics, and the “cultural food as lifestyle” wave that’s now spilling across Asia, Europe, and North America. This draws a clean line between plant-base

Savoury veggie tea is shaping into a clear micro-category, anchored by real brands already in-market. Millie’s Sipping Broth has made dehydrated vegetable “tea bags” a mainstream, vegan-friendly ritual. GOBBi has built a new lane entirely: caffeinated savoury tea blends designed to replace coffee with tomato, mushroom, miso and green-veg profiles.

The U.S. white mushroom market’s projected growth reflects a deeper consumer migration toward functional, plant-based nutrition. Mushrooms now sit squarely at the intersection of flavour, health, and sustainability, quietly anchoring the American diet of the next decade.