All PFN ARTICLES

According to researchers at the University of Utah, this species triggers Lilliputian (tiny people) hallucinations, in other words vivid visions of tiny human-like figures dancing, marching, and interacting with the environment. But what’s interesting is 96% of documented cases report identical imagery. No psilocybin. No ketamine-like dissociation. Just tiny people. Everywhere.

Juicy Marbles built its reputation on theatrical, whole-cut plant-based steaks, the kind designed to be carved, shared, and Instagrammed. Now the company is deliberately stepping down from the dinner-party pedestal and into everyday eating, launching its new Umami Burger across 225 UK Tesco stores.

FoodTech in 2026 isn’t about who has the wildest idea, it’s about who actually shows up in food people eat. After years of hype, pullbacks and painful reality checks, a new class of companies is quietly moving ahead by doing something radical - making workable ingredients, scale, and slot into everyday products without asking consumers to change their habits.

Kimchi has always been more than a side dish. For centuries it’s sat at the heart of Korean food culture, not as a “superfood”, not as wellness theatre, but as a daily, living eco-system of nourishment. Now, science has finally caught up. A new clinical study from South Korea’s World Institute of Kimchi reveals kimchi doesn’t just “boost” immunity, it fine-tunes it.

Food waste has officially entered its protein era. Researchers publishing in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry have shown that fungal mycelium grown on carrot side streams doesn’t just tick sustainability boxes and it actually tastes better than conventional plant-based proteins when turned into vegan burgers and sausages.

Eggs are quietly becoming optional in South Island bakeries. Foodstuffs South Island, NZ is trialling Leaf Rubisco Protein as an egg replacement across more than 200 New World, PAK’nSAVE and Four Square stores, marking the first major retail test for the Canterbury-based ingredient maker Leaft Foods. Cakes, muffins and fresh bakery staples are the proving ground, exactly where eggs normally do the heavy lifting on structure, binding and lift.

Italy has spent centuries defending how food should be made and now it’s quietly experimenting with how food might be printed. In Abruzzo, researchers at ENEA’s EltHub are using 3D printing and lab-grown plant cells to create edible “inks” shaped into sliced foods and steak-like cuts. This isn’t novelty gastronomy, it’s applied food engineering, designed around texture, nutrition, and accessibility.

A major analysis of more than 30,000 brain scans has reignited concern about ultra-processed foods (UPFs), linking heavy consumption to cognitive and neurological risks. But as the story ricochets through mainstream media, a familiar distortion is taking hold: plant-based foods are being swept into a problem they didn’t create and don’t own.

ALDI UK is quietly doing what many plant-based brands keep promising but have not yet delivered: making meat-free eating genuinely affordable. Just ahead of Veganuary, the UK grocer has expanded its Plant Menu private-label range with a Vegetable Burger, Vegetable Popcorn Bites and No Chicken Pieces, all landing at £1.99 and hitting shelves from 30 December 2025. No premium pricing. No virtue tax. Just plant-based food priced like everyday food.

Australia is ending 2025 in full identity-rebuild mode, and food is the battlefield. According to new social and search data from Pureprofile and Quilt.AI, Australian consumers are loudly declaring the future belongs to them, their producers, their ingredients, their provenance lanes, with 81% of trending sentiment fixated on "Australian-made" goods and the cultural comfort of eating from their own backyard.

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.