🫧 Fat-Trapping Micro Beads

Amid rising appetite for injectable weight-loss drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy, researchers at China’s Sichuan University are prototyping a gentler, plant-based contender: plant-based fat-trapping microbeads.

Crafted from green-tea polyphenols, vitamin E and seaweed, these tasteless boba- pearls bind dietary fat in the gut without harsh side effects.

Having seen a 17% weight loss for a trial with rats, now 26 (human) participants have been enrolled in a clinical trial, with results expected in the next year.

Could edible chemistry be a pathway for less invasive weight management, compared to current treatments?

This week in FoodTech:

🐝 15-fold honeybee colony reproduction
📍 5 cities look for a FoodHack Ambassador
🍊 12,000T of orange peel to save a national park

The Digest

📈 What’s up? The Food Industry Association’s 2024 State of Fresh report shows that despite inflation concerns, US meat department sales grew 4.7% to $105 billion, marking the strongest growth among fresh food categories.

📉 What’s down? Dutch plant-based company Vegan Finest Foods, which makes Vegan Zeastar, has declared bankruptcy following financial struggles and declining demand post-pandemic.

🔐 Also down. UK cellular agriculture tech company CellRev has gone into administration after failing to secure Series A funding.

🐝 University of Oxford researchers have engineered a yeast-based food supplement enriched with key sterols that boosted honeybee colony reproduction up to 15-fold in trials, offering a potential breakthrough for pollinator health and global food security.

🌍 Become our next FoodHack Ambassasdor in Amsterdam, Barcelona, London, Sao Paulo or Wageningen.

↪ Take part in our Global Impact Survey packed with perks as a thank you 🧢

New in Funding

🧬 Japanese biomanufacturing startup Fermelanta secured $13.6 million in a Series A funding round led by Universal Materials Incubator Co and Beyond Next Ventures, with participation from Angel Bridge and a Japanese government grant. It engineers bacteria to procure plant metabolites, and will use the funds to expand its R&D and scale from lab to pilot stage.

🍽️ NuCicer closed an $11.5 million Series A funding round led by Rhapsody Venture Partners with participation from Leaps by Bayer, Illumina Ventures, Better Ventures, Stray Dog Capital, and a global food company, to scale its high-protein chickpea varieties and advance next-generation breeding for sustainable, minimally processed ingredients.

🛒 Indian D2C grocery startup Anmasa raised $1.1 million pre-seed funding in a round led by Snow Leopard Technology Ventures, Veltis Capital, Blume Ventures, and Indigram Lab. It will use the funds to further expand its operations across Delhi-NCR.

🌱 UK-based Bright Biotech secured £1 million from ARIA’s £62.4 million Synthetic Plants programme to advance its chloroplast technology for developing resilient, sustainable crop plants and animal-free proteins.

💸 Spanish startup Vanetta Food secured investment from BeFuture Invest, boosting its valuation by 70% and enabling it to expand production to make high-protein, tradition-inspired plant-based dishes more accessible to restaurants.

New in Startups

🧬 Levelle Nutrition launched Cycle Syncing Protein, the first protein powder tailored to women’s menstrual cycles, formulated with Helaina’s precision-fermented human-identical lactoferrin to meet changing nutritional needs across different cycle phases.

🍗 India’s Biokraft Foods showcased its cultivated chicken through the country’s first Great Indian Cultivated Chicken Cook-Off, where young chefs created dishes to highlight the product’s culinary potential and spark dialogue on sustainability and the future of food.

🍚 New York-based Mitti Labs has developed AI-powered software that uses satellite and radar data to measure methane emissions from rice paddies, enabling accurate tracking, reporting, and verification of emissions at scale.

🤖 Robomart, based in LA, unveiled its new RM5 autonomous delivery robot, a level-four vehicle with 10 lockers for batch orders, aiming to make on-demand delivery profitable through a $3 flat-fee, self-driving marketplace and challenge the likes of UberEats and DoorDash.

🍹 Kendall Jenner’s 818 Tequila launched a Gen Z–focused “Free the Nip” campaign for 818 Minis (50ml Reposado and Blanco bottles).

Plant Based

🐑 Barcelona-based Novameat has expanded its clean-label pulled plant-based meat range with new pork and lamb alternatives, launching next month for foodservice partners, distributors, and manufacturers.

✅ Taiwan announced plans to launch a government-backed national vegan certification label in February 2026 to standardise labelling, boost global competitiveness of local vegan products, and support plant-forward consumer choice.

🌭 Livekindly Collective’s Like brand is re-entering the UK market after a three-year absence, launching vegan chicken nuggets, popcorn chicken, and hot dogs across major supermarkets.

🫧 Scientists at China’s Sichuan University have developed edible plant-based microbeads that trap fats in the gut, offering a potential safer, drug-free alternative to weight-loss drugs like Ozempic. See how it works.

🧀 RIND by Dina & Joshua launched Bleu Crumbles, a dairy-, gluten-, and allergen-free plant-based alternative made with roqueforti cultures to replicate the tangy flavour and creamy, meltable texture of traditional bleu cheese.

9️⃣9️⃣ Competitive eating champion Joey Chestnut will partner with Impossible Foods to attempt eating 99 Impossible Chicken Nuggets during the Giants vs. Dodgers game on 12th September, with one fan selected to join the challenge.

Big Food

🛒 Lidl GB is launching a new ‘Live Well’ logo across its own-label range to highlight products that are both nutritionally healthy and aligned with the sustainable Planetary Health Diet, marking an industry-first initiative developed with the British Nutrition Foundation and WWF.

☕️ Keurig Dr Pepper is acquiring JDE Peet’s for $18.4 billion and will merge the two businesses into one of the world’s largest coffee companies with around $16 billion in sales.

🏭 General Mills is investing $54 million to expand its James Ford Bell Technical Center with a new 35,000-square-foot pilot plant wing, boosting R&D space by over 20% to enhance innovation and technology.

From the Community

Apply for your next role:

• Amatera (France) is hiring a Senior Scientist

• Opalia (Canada) is recruiting for a Project Engineer

• Peakbridge (Netherlands) is looking for a Senior Analyst

🍊How 12,000 tonnes of dumped orange peel saved a national park.

🗽 Join us in New York, September 10th for a Meetup on the role of AI in the Food and Beverage space. Sign up here 

🇨🇭 Meet us on September 5th in Zurich for a Storytelling Breakfast Meetup

🚡 Just for fun: VCs “adding value”

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Until next time - Stay Hungry