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

Hybrid protein is rapidly emerging as the most pragmatic response to the global protein dilemma — and New Zealand is now directly inside that transition. Rather than replacing animal agriculture, hybridisation reconfigures it, integrating complementary proteins from algae, yeast, plants, insects, and fermentation into familiar meat formats.

Juicy Marbles has extended its whole-cut credibility into the burger category with Umami Burger, a high-protein, whole-food-forward patty now live in 225 UK locations via Tesco. The product deliberately targets the middle ground between traditional veggie burgers and ultra-realistic meat analogues, using fermented ingredients and seitan to deliver texture without leaning on heavy flavour masking or aggressive processing.

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.

Foodstuffs NZ, South Island’s trial of Leaf Rubisco Protein signals a shift from alternative proteins as products to alternative proteins as infrastructure. Rather than selling plant protein to consumers directly, Leaft Foods is embedding it into the backbone of everyday food manufacturing, replacing eggs where functionality, cost volatility and emissions intersect.

Italy is emerging as an unlikely leader in applied food fabrication. ENEA’s work at EltHub combines plant cell culture with 3D printing to precisely control food structure, from mouthfeel to sliceability, without relying on heavy industrial additives. The technology is already moving beyond R&D, with Rome-based restaurant Impact Food demonstrating real-world culinary use.

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.

China has achieved a major milestone in the cultivated meat industry - the first scaled production run of cultivated pork in a 2000-litre bioreactor, engineered by Joes Future Food at its newly commissioned pilot plant. This expands the cultivated meat narrative beyond niche lab batches toward industrialised processes with real engineering data and performance insights, a crucial stage for commercialisation.

ALDI has expanded it's Plant-Based Menu range reflecting a clear shift in how plant-based growth is being engineered in mass retail. Instead of leaning on innovation theatre or sustainability messaging, the retailer is using price discipline and private label scale to reduce friction for first-time and returning plant-based buyers. At £1.99, these products undercut much of the branded meat-free aisle, reframing plant-based as a default option rather than a lifestyle choice.

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

Ajinomoto’s Atlr.72 expansion into Solein-powered pastries marks one of the most significant consumer-facing deployments of air-fermented protein to date. Mochelie sits at the intersection of Japanese confectionery craft, environmental minimalism, and the new industrial biotech frontier.

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.

Consumers want veg, but they also want convenience. Brad’s gives them both without guilt, without processing fatigue, and without needing to understand a chemistry set on the back of the pack. It’s simple, trustworthy, colourful and crucially, reliable. The kind of brand you grab because you know the veg is real.

The global move away from the word “vegan” reflects a deep shift in how consumers perceive identity-linked food choices. Viral social proof shows that taste bias isn’t sensory, it’s psychological. Anonymous plant-based products routinely outperform animal-based benchmarks when the vegan label is removed, indicating that terminology, not technology, is the barrier. This is reshaping branding, menu engineering, and front-of-pack strategy across major markets.

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.

A controlled feeding trial in lactating mothers demonstrated that switching from beef to a plant-based meat analogue rapidly altered breast milk fatty acids (↑ medium-chain SFAs, ↓ long-chain PUFAs including ARA). This rapid biological response signals broader implications: if a single dietary swap can alter milk composition in under a week, then continuous consumption of animal meat is almost certainly reshaping adult blood lipid profiles daily, through mechanisms already do

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.