Italy Starts 3D Printing Its Food, Literally
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.
1 hour ago1 min read
Ultra-Processed Foods Are Under Fire But Plant-Based Isn’t the Villain
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.
2 hours ago1 min read
China Cracks Industrial-Scale Cultivated Cultivated Pork In A World First
China has just vaulted to the front of the global cultivated meat race with the announcement Joes Future Food has commissioned the country’s largest cultivated meat pilot plant and completed the world’s first scaled trial production of cultivated pork in a 2000-litre bioreactor. This moves cultivated pork from research curiosity toward real production models supporting massive commercialisation. Such pilot scale is rare in the global sector and signals China’s growing enginee
1 day ago1 min read
Kombucha as a Gateway to Metabolic Ferments
A new computational study from the UK has thrown a curveball at the functional-food world as researchers find sterilised plant-based metabolic ferments, dead ferments, may still exert meaningful metabolic effects along obesity and type-2 diabetes pathways. Forget probiotics and gut flora nostalgia, these researchers are mapping how heat-treated ferments could influence insulin signalling, lipid regulation, and appetite control without the live bacteria consumers assume are do
2 days ago1 min read
ALDI £1.99 Plant-Based Play Rewrites the Veganuary Rulebook
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.
2 days ago1 min read
Monkey Picked Coconuts - An Ethical Scandal
For years, the coconut aisle has traded on a halo of tropical purity, hydration, wellness, plant-based goodness. But behind some Thai coconut products sits a practice feeling wildly out of step with 2026 ethics and that is forced monkey labour. According to Foodfacts, pig-tailed macaques are still being captured, chained, and trained to harvest coconuts in parts of Thailand, despite repeated assurances the practice has ended - monkey picked coconuts.
3 days ago1 min read
Australia 2025 = Provenance, Plant-Forward Eating, and the New Food Identity War
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.
4 days ago1 min read
Ajinomoto’s Atlr.72 Drops in Singapore Filled with Solein Air-Protein
Italy has its UNESCO cuisine moment, but Japan just slid in with something arguably more disruptive in the form of a dessert made from air. Ajinomoto’s conscious brand Atlr.72 has officially launched Mochelie, a mochi-filled almond tart powered by Solein, the world’s first commercial “protein from air.” It's just hit Singapore shelves in three flavours, and yes, it’s still a pastry, with a carbon footprint reading more like a rounding error.
5 days ago1 min read
Great article! It’s exciting to see how innovations like this are redefining food future — especially how something seemingly niche brings broader benefits for beauty & health too.