All PFN ARTICLES

Tunnel Hill Mushrooms might be Australia’s most atmospheric food producer, literally growing the future inside a cold, abandoned Tasmanian train tunnel. In a world obsessed with glasshouses and steel-and-LED vertical farms, this one goes the other way: deep underground. The result? A quiet, almost eerie form of ambient agriculture turning a 19th-century sandstone tunnel into a precision-engineered microclimate for gourmet and medicinal fungi.

US based, Brad’s isn’t just selling kale chips, they’ve built a whole new air-dried snacking category out of air-dried vegetables. Walk down a Whole Foods aisle and their wall of colour jumps out at you in the form of Veggie Flats, Veggie Chips, Keto Crisps, Snackable Salads, and yes, Crunchy Kale. It’s the clearest example yet of how “whole-veg snacking” is separating itself from the UPF-heavy alternatives dominating grocery shelves.

Plant-based food doesn’t have a taste problem, it has a perception problem, and the internet keeps proving it. A recent viral video shows a man raving about a burger, calling it “one of the best ever,” right up until he’s told it’s vegan. It wasn’t, it was beef the whole time, yet the flavour apparently changed instantly.

India’s snack aisles are mutating again and this time, they’re going fully functional - India's plant-based snack boom. Seaweed chips, protein-packed bites, and fortified mini-meals are turning up in every metro, and they’re not framed as “vegan alternatives.” They’re just… snacks. Quick, nutritious, fuss-free, and engineered for a population that lives on the move.

Here’s the thing nobody really talks about: breast milk is basically a real-time diagnostic of the human diet. The new University of Texas study showed when nursing mothers swapped beef for plant-based meat for just six days, their breast milk radically changed its fatty-acid profile showing more medium-chain fats, less long-chain polyunsaturated ones. That’s not a moral argument; that’s biochemistry. It tells us the body is a lot more “live-wired” to what we eat than we pret

Molly Ally isn’t just another plant-based ice-cream brand, it’s the proof point Asia has been waiting for. Thai start-up's cracked the code by designing ice cream around a truth most global brands ignore: Asia is overwhelmingly lactose intolerant, and traditional dairy desserts simply don’t love Asian bodies back. Molly Ally’s success comes from treating this pain point not as a limitation but as a creative brief.

Plates earned its Michelin star back in July, but the real story has only just surfaced: 95% of its diners aren’t vegan. That single number torpedoes the tired “plant-based is over” narrative and shows what’s really happening on the ground. Flexitarians, omnivores, and curious carnivores are willingly booking a fully plant-based tasting menu because it tastes brilliant, not because they’re signalling ethics or identity.

China has just made one of the biggest protein calls of the decade and barely anyone outside the industry has clocked it. The National Health Commission has approved mycoprotein (Fusarium venenatum) as a new food raw material for the first time, thanks to an application by Jiangxi Fushine Biotechnology.

Chocolate haggis (yes, you read that correctly) is back on the menu for the upcoming Hogmanay and Burns Night, pushing the boundaries of what we politely call “ethnic food.”

Victoria, Australia has just given plant-based protein a serious upgrade, opening a $12 million Plant Protein Hub and glasshouse at Agriculture Victoria’s Horsham SmartFarm. This isn’t a token ribbon-cut, it’s a fully kitted-out engine-room with shared labs, a test kitchen, analytical gear and grower access, built to turn lentils, chickpeas and field peas into the next wave of high-protein products.

The global demand for almonds is about to hit a new high. According to the latest report from the US Department of Agriculture, global almond output is forecast to reach around 1.8 million metric tons (shelled) in the coming season, the highest volume since 2020-21.

If you want to know where food is really heading over the next five years, forget the doom-scroll headlines about collapsing plant-based sales. The real story is happening in fermentation tanks, mycelium reactors, lipid biodesign labs, cultivated-meat cell bays, AI flavour engines, and vertical farms pushing out produce with military precision. According to TRENOS, these 20 companies, the Global Top 20 Food-Tech Companies, are building the infrastructure of the next food syst