All PFN ARTICLES

The oat milk disruptor has just dropped its Spring/Summer 2025 Lookbook, and it’s serving glossy, food-forward, Glossier-adjacent realness with names like Smokey Matcha, Maple Miso Latte, and, because why not, Tomato Vine Soda Float.

It’s the kind of news that makes you look twice at a McMenu. McDonald’s Netherlands has quietly slipped something rather unexpected back into its stores in the form of a meatless version of the iconic Dutch McKroket, and this time, it’s loaded with jackfruit.

Just when you thought the pea protein parade couldn’t possibly squeeze in another float, along comes Vertis PB Pea and this one’s not just waving from the sidelines. Meala FoodTech, a spunky Israeli startup with a biotech brain and clean-label conscience, has teamed up with global ingredient giant dsm-firmenich to drop a new texturising bombshell on the European plant-based scene. And surprisingly, it’s not just another dusty sack of pea flour trying to pass itself off as pr

The country’s leading grower of tropical plants and fruits, Exotica is fast becoming a poster child for weather-smart food innovation. Their secret? A mix of horticultural hustle, zero compromise on quality, and a product range reading like a tropical tasting tour for the senses: freeze-dried dragonfruit, botanical extracts, mango spice cubes, and a sugarcane juice so fresh it practically hums.

It’s taken years of plant-based flops, fridge disasters, and rubbery regrets, but at last, science has served up plant-based dairy-free cheese wheels that grill, melt, stretche and brown. Cue applause from every lactose-intolerant millennial who still remembers the trauma of early cashew 'cheddar'.

Back in the 1870s, a Chinese immigrant named Chew Chong was foraging black fungi in Taranaki and shipping them by the tonne to China. (Depiction shown below) The fungus? Hakeke. Known to the rest of the world as Woodear mushroom. Today, more than a century later, New Zealand’s long-forgotten export hero is suddenly back in fashion, everywhere but in the Land of the Long White Cloud.

New Zealand’s best-selling oat milk brand, Boring, is about to infiltrate Aussie fridges, whether you like it or not. The green-and-white bottles of this unapologetically minimalist milk-alternative are now hitting 95% of Woolworths supermarkets across Australia, marking a serious cross-Tasman power play in the premium plant milk wars.

Let’s be honest. The world doesn’t need another fake meat burger. But what if your next sausage roll was plant-based, gluten-free, and didn’t taste like punishment? That’s the delicious gamble The Why Meat Company is running with and investors are lining up like it’s a Friday night footy pie run.

We don’t usually interrupt your news feed for product launches alone, but this one made us stop in our tofu tracks. Because frankly, it looks like salmon. It plates like salmon. And by the look of these shots, it might just out-fish salmon - OSHI's Plant-Based Salmon.

Let’s call it what it is - a 200-page “we told you so” from Washington. The MAHA Report, has dropped with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at the helm, lays out what anyone with half a lunchbox already knew and this is, America’s kids are sick, and ultra-processed food is a huge part of the problem. 70% of children’s daily calories now come from UPFs. Chronic illness is up.

Most alternative proteins still want you to believe you're biting into a cow. But let’s be honest: consumers are tired of being fooled, and food developers are tired of wrestling with products that fall apart in a frying pan. Enter Maia Farms, a Canadian biotech outfit serving up function over fiction with a next-gen APT (A Protein Thing) not needing to pretend.

Confession time - this writer is a full-blown plant-based pie tragic. My kryptonite? A properly spicy vegan butter chicken pie from the BP servo and with a flaky crust and just enough ooze to stain my polo. So when news dropped UK vegan pie hustlers Magpye had released a Roast Chick’n Dinner Pie, I knew we were witnessing something sacred.