The 3 big focus food and drink ingredients trends

Three macro trends will dominate the food and drinks sector – and ingredients landscape – in the year ahead, as FoodNavigator reveals. Most 2025 food and drink NPD will be dictated by three macro trends that were highly visible at this year’s Food Ingredients Europe show in Frankfurt. They are:

The development of healthy indulgence, with added functionality to everyday food and drink as an undertoneWeight loss is making a comebackBiotechnologyHealth and indulgence have aligned more clearly than ever at this year’s show.

Although not a new trend, it has kicked up a notch as big ingredients players develop more ways to fortify products with the likes of protein and fibre.

In fact, plant-based protein as a functional ingredient is a common theme across many of the stands at FiE this year.

But also, there’s a new wave of natural sugar reduction, with clean label ingredients making a noise and helping manufacturers to develop healthier, though still indulgent, products.

GLP-1 and weight loss Meanwhile, some may recall the immortal words of supermodel, Kate Moss, as she told the world that nothing tastes as good as skinny feels – but that all changed in the mid-2010s with the rise of the body positive movement.

Seemingly overnight, the focus shifted from all things weight loss to embracing bodies of all shapes and sizes, with books like more than a body and body positive power encouraging consumers, women in particular, to love the skin they’re in.

But the pendulum is swinging back the other way, with the stratospheric rise of GLP-1 medications and foods and beverages to complement them. And so, weight loss is back with a vengeance.

Though very new to the market, food and beverage is embracing GLP-1 medications, like Ozempic, leading to a major and very noticeable shift in attitudes towards weight.

Biotechnology Not unrelated to the health trends seen so far is a technology trend: biotechnology.

As consumers become more interested in health and functional ingredients, more companies are developing ingredients using techniques like precision and biomass fermentation.

Such techniques can be specific, targeting the functionalities that consumers want. Biotechnology can develop ingredients that not only provide foods with taste, texture and mouthfeel, but fulfil specific nutritional needs of consumers, and even extend shelf life.

This is a worldwide trend and we’ve seen biotech-derived ingredients from across Europe and Asia, touching a broad range of sectors within the food industry, from plant-based proteins to yeast extracts.