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Read time today: 3:43 min
Hi friend,
It’s Friday morning. You are reading VITAMIN C 🍋.
Welcome to the 33 new readers who signed up in the last two weeks. You are in good company.
As always I hunted down 5 food insights that deserve your attention.
Here they are:
1. [Science | Report] Whole Foods’ 8 trends for 2027 🔮
picture credit: Whole Foods
Last week, Whole Foods Market published its eight food trends for 2027.
I enjoy reading this report every year because it comes from real market observation. The Trends Council consists of buyers and food experts who comb through markets, trade shows and restaurants all year long.
Five trends stood out to me:
↳ Ingredient Minimalism: Whole Foods’ quality standards ban more than 300 ingredients. Because of the UPF debate, it’s becoming a quality marker for many.
↳ Dish Reinvention: Birria on ramen, smash burger as a taco, cinnamon roll as focaccia. On shelves, that means mango sticky rice as ice cream. At home, we have a concept called “Tiny Upgrade”: once a week, we swap one ingredient in one of our standard dishes, for example lasagna with figs instead of tomato
↳ Beautrition: Drinkable collagen, olive oil shots, sunscreen you swallow. Snack, supplement and skincare are blurring. How far such marketing claims will carry in the EU remains open.
↳ Zero Waste 2.0: Wasted Pasta turns leftover bread into noodles, Renewal Mill turns oat pulp into baking ingredients.
↳ Bitter Done Better: Radicchio, amaro drinks, chocolate with licorice root. Sober curious and digestion are driving the trend.
Check out the full report here.
2. [Insight] 🎫 FOMO as a business model
A month ago I wrote about the five-minute apple-eating event in Washington, which 6,500 people signed up for. A perfect example of the power of in-real-life (IRL) experiences.
It’s a topic I keep coming back to, because I live community IRL, at work and in my free time. I’ve helped build communities through Nutrition Hub, Food Campus and Women in Climate Tech, and outside work I’m part of a running community.
Lately I keep noticing IRL influencers: people who build their reach mostly offline.
Three examples I find exciting:
↳ Tionne Barmer (USA) hosts Café Soul, a rooftop party in New York. $30 gets you R&B karaoke and a chance to meet new people. Tinder sponsors it, Patrón runs the bar.
↳ Cephas (Germany) runs a string of events in Berlin through his FOMO community, from founder runs to coffee raves. And just like the name promises, you get serious FOMO if you miss one.
↳ Hyrox (Germany) co-founders Christian Toetzke and Moritz Fürste turned a fitness race format into an event with 1.3 - 1.5 million participants in the 2025/26 season, backed by Puma, among others.
According to the Bertelsmann foundation, 57% of 18- to 35-year-olds in the EU feel moderately or severely lonely, and 51% in Germany. That fits the longing for real-life encounters.
For food brands, the takeaway: show up where groups already gather. Or build communities that fit your brand, whether that’s barista nerd clubs, Schnippeldiscos (disco soup nights), pasta parties, beer yoga, or fermentation meetups.
3. [Insight] 🔄 Are supplements changing their format?
Picture credit: Bodie’z
Capsules and powders are still the default in supplements. For a long time, the question was what’s inside. Now the format helps decide whether someone reaches for the product at all. And more new formats are popping up.
Three recent examples:
↳ Bodie’z (Australia) launched Fizzers: fizzy powder sachets you eat straight from the packet, no water needed. Lock In Fizz combines L-tyrosine, matcha and vitamin B6. Think kids’ birthday party for adults, with a focus promise on top.
↳ Foodology (South Korea) packs 5 g of fiber into each 25 g stick of its Coleology Cutting Jelly, in pomegranate with chia seeds. Tear, squeeze, done.
↳ Physician’s Choice (USA) is bringing out its first jelly format. Fiber Jelly comes in three flavors and delivers 21% of the recommended daily value of fiber.
All of this fits with current trends of fibermaxxing, functional snacking and the desire for easy everyday wellness. On claims, little changes in the EU: the Health Claims Regulation still sets what can go on the packaging, so big miracle promises are not to be expected.
Across the US, a lot of people are getting angry about supermarket prices, and specifically about how those prices get set.
AI-driven pricing on the supermarket shelf is already everyday practice there. In apps, shoppers sometimes even see different prices depending on how deep the AI thinks their pockets are.
Many are furious. Terms like “dynamic pricing” and “surveillance pricing” are trending on social media. There’s even a rumor that the price tags scan your face. According to the news agency AP, that’s not true.
We’re used to prices shifting on flights and hotel rooms. At the grocery store, that’s new.
Here in Germany, retailers are rolling out digital price tags too. Whether they use AI tools for pricing, I don’t know. What I do know: under the EU’s Omnibus Directive, online retailers have to disclose when prices are personalized through automated decision-making. Dynamic prices aren’t covered.
More on the topic here.
5. [Fun] 😂
We Germans love our bread, and we’re famous around the world for our obsession with precision. Jan, known online as Germanbreadcutter, brings the two together.
Every day he slices a loaf of bread so evenly that you can hardly believe it was cut by hand. More than 130,000 people follow him on Instagram.
I worked in a bakery myself as a teenager, so I know how hard it is to be truly precise. But seriously, how German can you get? 😂
Stay awesome,
Lia
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