The $900m spritz

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Read time today: 3:56 min

Hi friend,

Good morning You are reading VITAMIN C 🍋.

Welcome to the new readers who signed up in the last two weeks. You are in good company.

As always, I hunted down five food insights that deserve your attention.

Here they are:

I saw this slide in a talk by Ilias Tagkopoulos (professor at UC Davis) at the GDI Food Innovation Conference in Zurich, and I haven't been able to get it out of my head since.

It shows the Nobel Prizes that came out of nutrition research:

After that, nothing for a long time.

As a nutrition scientist, I know these names from my textbooks. I just never asked myself why the list is so old.

The answer is in the budget. According to Ilias, pharma invests 15 to 25% of revenue in research and development. The food industry < than 2%.

So we have a healthcare system that earns money from disease. And a food industry that likes to print health on the packaging, but too rarely funds the research for real innovation.

We see that also with product launches: fiber in sodas. Bars with creatine. That is innovation, but real breakthroughs are rare.

The good news is that a field this underfunded maybe still has its biggest discoveries ahead of it.

Summer is over, so let's recap its #1 drink. You already know which one.

Aperol was created in 1919 in Northern Italy. For decades it stayed a regional thing. In 2003, Campari Group bought it for around $160 million.

The liquid stayed the same. What changed was everything around it:

↳ A branded wine glass replaced the rocks glass

↳ An orange slice replaced the olive

↳ A recipe anyone can remember: 3 parts Prosecco, 2 parts Aperol, 1 part soda

↳ Free bartender training and free samples at festivals like Coachella

The timing helped too. Prosecco boomed, low-alcohol drinks became popular, daytime drinking got a name, and an orange drink looks good on Instagram.

The result, according to the Wall Street Journal: $900 million in sales last year, 26% of Campari Group's sales, and 1.5 billion spritzes served annually.

This is cool stuff!

It shows how far a 107-year-old product can travel once someone designs the ritual around it so precisely that people order, make and photograph it the same way everywhere.

I’ve been in the startup world long enough to know the vocabulary: stack, boost, platform. Beyond Meat used a lot of those in their latest press release.

The company just launched the Phytosphere, a portfolio of powders, bars, drinks and burgers designed to let people “stack” plant nutrients across their day.

The last one made me smile. A company founded in 2009 to recreate meat now sells a chipotle black bean patty. I like the return to the basic ingredient.

This new Phytosphere positioning is a smart move. It speaks to the protein hype, fibermaxxing and supplement routines all at once. Curious to see whether shoppers follow Beyond Meat from the burger to the powder.

The full press release is linked here.

What do an Australian tennis star and one of the richest women in India have in common? They drink A2 milk.

A2 milk, you ask?

I hadn't heard of it either until last week when I met a guy who wouldn't stop talking about its benefits.

So I took a look:

A2 milk differs from regular milk by a single amino acid in the protein beta-casein. That small difference changes how it is digested. Regular A1 milk releases a peptide called BCM-7, which has been linked to chronic disease. A2 milk doesn't, so it is sold as the healthier, gentler option. Germans even call it "Urmilch", primal milk.

But the evidence is scarce. The Bavarian competence center for nutrition (KErn) reviewed 21 studies and could not give a recommendation because many studies had methodological flaws. And the lactose content is identical, so A2 does nothing for lactose intolerance.

The market grows anyway. Mordor Intelligence expects $4.64 billion in 2026, up from $4.24 billion in 2025.

I think A2 sits right where gut health, the longing for "original" food and the search for a gentler kind of dairy meet. People are buying a feeling about digestion, despite the lack of science to properly back it up.

People in Berlin are queuing for a bratwurst right now. That alone is not news.

But this one you can’t eat. The bratwurst is called Wilhelm, is made of plush and lives at KaDeWe, Berlin’s grand luxury department store.

The brand Jellycat has set up a funfair-style pop-up with Berlin exclusives: Heinrich Pretzel, a Candied Almond, an Eiskaffee, and Wilhelm the bratwurst.

It's absurd and funny at the same time.

If you are in Berlin and want to check it out, you can book a slot here.

Stay awesome,
Lia

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