Our 2025 Future Food Trends are Here: Climate Commodities, Infant Nutrition, Disruptive Pet Food, Personalised Gut Health & More

A tech investor asked me what the bright areas in food tech are, and here’s what I said.

This will be my fifth set of food tech predictions. I started in 2021 with alternative proteins, then went broader. Here’s 2024’s list, and 2023 and 2022 if you want to assess my prediction skills. This year I am framing it a little differently. Rather than predictions, I’m listing out the categories that I believe will see (and should see) growth in the coming year. In other words, here’s what I think investors, aspiring founders and product developers should be looking at.

A note on alternative proteins

Before I get to the meat of my list, I want to address the elephant in the room. What is going on with investors and alternative proteins? My two cents is that funding will continue to be challenging for the wider future protein vertical in 2025, particularly for plant-based meat.

Before anyone misinterprets this post: I continue to believe in the need for alternative proteins. The intensive livestock animal industry will not be able to continue delivering the protein the world needs over the next few decades in a safe, healthy, and low-emissions way so we need solutions. I just don’t think that’s enough to convince most VCs right now.

On plant-based meat: I think it’s going to continue to be tough going for plant-based meat on the funding side. The mass public is convinced they are UPFs. People are less interested in facts than ever; unless the plant-based industry can suddenly spare 100 million dollars to wage a culture war against Big Ag’s big dollar-backed misinformation campaign, I don’t see this changing. I think the quality plant-based meat brands will continue to serve their market (mostly vegans and vegetarians, as well as some ultra-committed flexitarians), and there will continue to be opportunities for plant-based meat in the catering/foodservice space and for hybrids/blended products in both retail and B2B. Broadly, the investment fundamentals are not there for your average venture investor. The space has had almost no exits, the 2021 hype brought in tourist VCs who have since deserted the space (many of whom got burned), and VCs are generally not that keen on uber-niche CPG (which is what plant-based meat is).

On cultivated meat: From chats with over 20 investors across the space globally in the past 3 months, I don’t see any appetite to allocate more capital here. Especially given that in the US, it’s highly likely regulatory approvals will stall. That doesn’t mean I don’t think it’s a viable and needed technology. I think the strong startups in the space will continue to make progress. And I think we will see regulatory moves in the UK, Singapore, Australia/NZ and potentially Israel. I just don’t 2025 will see any major capital inflows towards cultivated meat companies.

On fermented proteins (biomass, microbial, precision): This is the most promising of the protein verticals, especially in terms of decarbonising dairy ingredients for infant nutrition, senior nutrition, and protein snacks (see below list). I think investors will continue to deploy here, a continuation of the funding activity we saw in 2024.

2025 Future Food bright spots

Here’s where I think the capital should flow:

• Land-Light & Water-Light Crops/Ingredients: This is a wide-ranging sector that covers all kinds of solutions and technologies that help us grow safe, healthy food with a lighter land, deforestation, water and energy footprint. Whether you believe in climate change or not, the reality is we have fewer of all these resources so we need alternatives.
• Alternative Commodities: This is a subset of the previous listing but it’s worth its own category. Alt-coffee and alt-chocolate startups are exploding – every week we add new startups to our database – as are alt-fats (particularly palm oil). That’s because growing cacao/coffee beans and oilseeds is increasingly complicated due to extreme weather decreasing land mass, deforestation regulations, rising ethical costs of doing business (who wants child labour chocolate?) and geopolitical instability, all of which have sent prices for these commodities skyrocketing (price volatility will continue), so Big Food needs options fast to derisk its confectionary, snack and coffee portfolios because our global appetite for these products will only continue to grow.
• Enabling Synbio Tech: Anything that makes precision fermentation, biomass fermentation, molecular farming and cellular agriculture more scalable, cheaper, more efficient and more resilient is a strong play in the medium to long term.
• Infant Nutrition & Kids Drinks: There are more environmentally conscious parents out there than we’d like to think*. Plus, dairy = allergies and intolerances. Parents are looking for healthy, low-emissions, low-sugar, seed-oil-free options for little Araminta and little Maximus and they have very few options. Lots of space for disruption here. Ditto for dairy-free/plant-based milk formula – plenty of space to innovate.
• Senior Nutrition: Ageing populations are booming the world over, and older bodies have specific nutrition needs that these folks may not be able to get from diet alone (harder to chew, harder to swallow, harder to digest) so fibre drinks and protein drinks are a growing segment. Forward-looking food companies will also be trying to decarbonise these products.
• Climate-Smart Kitchen Tech: For those who like hardware, there’s money in the waste-free banana stand (IYKYK). Home composting bins, food-waste-fighting fridges, energy-saving appliances (e.g. air-fryers instead of ovens) – managing your kitchen better means cheaper grocery and energy bills, which in this inflationary age is as good as gold.
• Customised Gut Health: The Japanese snack giant Calbee (I grew up on their potato chips and they beat Lay’s every day and all day) became a gut health pioneer when it debuted Body Granola, the world’s first personalised microbiome cereal. People are into health, and gut health is key for overall health so more generic gut-friendly packaged foods/drinks (see: probiotic soda craze or high-fiber snacks) will continue to do well and more customised solutions like Calbee’s will see significant growth.
• Medical-Grade Low-Carbon Pet Food: The pet food business is booming (people are having fewer kids and more pets) and a handful of startups have emerged to decarbonise pet food, which, unbeknownst to many, has a very high climate cost. However, plant-based pet food caters to dogs on a generic diet. While I would love to decarbonise my puppy’s food, she requires high-protein, low-fat, gastrointestinal-sensitive dog food and there are currently no planet-friendly options out there. This is a wide open space ready to be disrupted.

*According to one study, 72% of millennial parents are more likely to be loyal to a brand or store that shares its efforts to have ethical business practices