Plantbased makes you smell better 🍃

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Read time today: 3:20 min

Hi friend,

It’s Friday morning. You are reading VITAMIN C 🍋.

There were 5M+ posts this week about food innovation. I selected the top 5 that I believe deserve your attention.

Here they are:

A forest. A gentle rain. Birdsong in the distance.

These aren’t just sounds, they’re signals.

A new study explored what happens when you overlay natural soundscapes onto music.

260 participants listened to tracks with and without these audio cues.

Then, they were asked: Which ones feel more sustainable?

The answers: Tracks with natural sounds were consistently rated as more sustainable across every category.

Why this matters for us food people:

We live in a multisensory world. But sustainability communication is still mostly in visual mode.

Whether you're running a food brand or a restaurant, your message isn’t just seen. It’s also heard.

If your product sounds like plastic, or the background music in your restaurant is very synthetic, people will feel it. If it sounds like nature, they’ll trust it more.

Here is the link to the study.

Garlic, alcohol, meat and even fasting can affect our body odour and alter how appealing our scent is to others.

According to BBC Future, a growing body of research shows that plant-based diets don’t just boost your health. They can actually make you smell more attractive to others.

One Australian study found that men who ate more colorful produce (like carrots, tomatoes or papayas) were rated by women as having fruity, floral body odors. Not only that, but their skin also developed a healthy glow, thanks to the carotenoids.

In contrast, meat-heavy diets were linked to more intense and less pleasant scents.

Another study out of Prague showed that men who cut out meat didn’t just feel better, they smelled better too - even with no changes to their hygiene routines.

Why?

So, if you're thinking about reducing meat for environmental or health reasons, now there's one more unexpected benefit. You might just smell better doing it.

More details here.

There’s a quiet ritual in our house: One spoon a day - of omega-3 algae oil.

Even the kids take it.

I’m biased because it’s my husband’s brand, Spoon of Change 😊. But I’m also genuinely convinced.

There are only a few nutrients science agrees we can’t live without and omega-3 is one of them.

Our bodies can’t make these fats on their own, so every meaningful amount has to come from food.

And for brain function, heart health, vision and inflammation, the long-chain omega-3s EPA and DHA are what matter most.

They’re naturally found in fatty fish or microalgae.

That’s why guidelines recommend two servings of fatty fish per week. But over 80% of Europeans fall short.

And eating fish today comes with trade-offs: antibiotic-heavy aquaculture, increasing heavy metals, and overfished oceans.

So what’s the smarter option? Since fish get their omega-3s from algae anyway, Spoon of Change goes straight to the source:

If you’re curious to try it or looking for a healthy Christmas gift, you can find it here.

And if you don’t like it, I’ll personally pay you back 😊

I just found this new free AI tool created by a German team, that turns your entire LinkedIn CV into fun infographics.

I’m not sure yet what I’ll use it for, but it was fun to play with.

If you want to try it yourself, check it out here.

My new favorite word: Pronoia.

It’s the opposite of paranoia and it describes the belief that the world is secretly working in your favor.

Even when things don’t look like it at first.

I’ve felt this many times.

At the beginning of 2024 I had a startup idea that completely fell apart.

Back then, I saw it as a failure. Today, I know it led me to something much better aligned with who I am: Food Campus Berlin.

We often underestimate how many opportunities hide inside moments we label as setbacks.

And this mindset isn’t just for entrepreneurs.

It’s for anyone working in food, sustainability or innovation, where uncertainty and pivots are part of the job.

Because if you believe that life is happening for you, not to you, you don’t quit too early.

Stay awesome,
Lia

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