All PFN ARTICLES

The plant-based seafood sector may have just crossed a line from “interesting startup category” into something much bigger. Oshi, the company behind the first whole-cut 100% plant-based salmon fillet in the U.S. market, has secured a US$3 million strategic investment from one of Latin America’s largest traditional seafood manufacturers. That’s not just funding. That’s the old seafood economy quietly acknowledging the future may not look like trawlers forever.

China’s food strategy should be setting off alarms across New Zealand and Australia. Beijing is not merely trying to feed its population anymore, it is building a vertically integrated protein factory system spanning genetics, fermentation, synthetic biology, AI-led agriculture, ingredient processing and export manufacturing. Yet ANZ still largely behaves like a commodity frontier economy: grow it, ship it, hope the market stays loyal.

Clinical evidence helps point the way. A randomised 3×3 crossover study, published in a peer-reviewed journal and indexed on PubMed, shows that adding avocado to a mixed meal can improve post-meal blood glucose response and satiety, particularly in overweight adults. For GLP-1 users, those outcomes are not theoretical, they map directly onto daily challenges around energy dips, under-eating and nutritional adequacy.

Fresh, live fermented foods are quietly breaking out of the health-food corner in the UK and sauerkraut is leading the charge. Once seen as a sour continental side dish, kraut is now being re-discovered as a flavour-forward, everyday food, buoyed by growing interest in gut health, fermentation literacy, and mounting consumer distrust of ultra-processed foods.

The 2025 FoodTech 500 reads less like a hype parade and more like a post-mortem. Plant-based hasn’t vanished, cultivated meat hasn’t collapsed, but the centre of gravity has shifted. The companies still standing are quieter, more technical, and far less interested in convincing consumers to “change behaviour”. This year’s list rewards those building infrastructure, ingredients, and systems that slot into existing food supply chains.

Dubai, Jan 26–30, 2026 marks the launch of Gulfood 2026, the world’s largest annual food & beverage show, bringing together thousands of global exhibitors across food categories, from traditional products to cutting-edge food tech and plant-centric innovation.

Canadian Maia Farms isn’t trying to win shelf space with a brand. It’s embedding itself inside foods people already eat. Their mushroom and mycelium ingredients are 'scaling up and are showing up' invisibly in thickening sauces, adding fibre to comfort meals, boosting protein in savoury dishes without changing flavour or texture. The consumer doesn’t meet Maia at the fridge. They meet it already on the dinner plate.

Emirates is seeing a significant uptick in vegan meal preorders as travellers increasingly choose plant-forward options, pushing the airline to rethink its in-flight cuisine strategy. In 2025 the carrier served more than half a million vegan meals, up by 100,000 year-on-year, and demand continues to climb across global routes including London, Sydney and Bangkok. Emirates attributes growing vegan interest not only to plant-based passengers but also to non-vegans seeking li

For years, dairy-free cream has talked a big game but quietly failed the barista test. Now New Zealand based, ANDFOODS looks like it may have cracked something more meaningful, not in a lab, but in cafés and full-scale facilities stretching from China to Auckland and Singapore.

For decades, the meat industry framed alternative proteins as fringe, fake, or faddish. Now, as MEAT the book prepares to land as a top-ten Spring 2026 science release, that narrative is quietly collapsing. Written by Bruce Friedrich, Founder of GFI - Good Food Institute, the book doesn’t argue against meat consumption at all, it argues the method of producing meat is obsolete. And crucially, many of the world’s largest meat companies agree.

In the UK, Marks & Spencer ( M&S) is under fresh scrutiny after a vigilante food waste watchdog posted a video on Instagram and TikTok showing wheelie bins of in-date, unsold food and flowers left behind an M&S store, everything from sliced meats and whole chickens to potatoes and bakery goods still days from expiry.

Vietnam’s busy cities are confronting rapid urbanisation and shrinking farmland by augmenting traditional organically grown vegetables with cutting-edge urban vertical farming models. In Ho Chi Minh City, cooperatives like Tuan Ngoc Hydroponic Vegetable Cooperative are expanding hydroponic and IoT-controlled production, scaling from 1,000 m² of leafy greens in 2019 to over 10,000 m² today and boosting output from 3 t to ~30 t monthly while maintaining premium quality and trac