Future Food Quick Bites: Non-Dairy Milk Frother, Lactoferrin Powder & Vegan Crousty
Our weekly column rounds up the latest sustainable food innovation news. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers Lavazza’s Alpro-endorsed milk frother, HappyVore’s kebab collab, and the FDA’s self-GRAS update.
New products and launches
Italian coffee giant Lavazza has introduced MilkEasy Plus, a new milk frother designed to create barista-style foam with both dairy and plant-based milk. It’s received a stamp of approval from non-dairy giant Alpro.
US startup Once Again has launched high-protein nut butters in squeezable pouches. They come in peanut, chocolate-peanut, sunflower, and almond butter, each containing 8g of protein, and are available at Whole Foods Market and on Amazon for $1.49 per packet.
Also in the US, Juice Plus has released a strawberry-flavoured complete nutrition shake with 14g of plant-based protein, 8g of fibre, just 1g of added sugar and 100 calories, as well as essential vitamins and minerals.
Plant-based protein drink startup Owyn has introduced a chocolate-flavoured nutrition shake for kids, featuring 10g of protein from peas, brown rice, and flax seeds, alongside 5g of fibre and 22 vitamins and minerals per 250ml bottle.
In more plant-based protein news, Grounded‘s dairy-free chocolate and mint chocolate shakes have hit the shelves of all 477 Whole Foods Market stores in the US.
Meanwhile, Waywyld has launched a precision-fermented lactoferrin powder featuring TurtleTree’s animal-free LF+ protein in the US. It’s available on the former’s website for $90 per 150g jar, which contains 50 servings.
Another supplement rollout comes from Create Wellness, which recently bagged $20M in Series B funding. It has introduced a limited-edition sour grape flavour of its plant-based creatine gummy, which is selling for $60 per tub of 90 gummies on its website and Amazon.
Across the Atlantic, France’s best-selling plant-based meat brand, HappyVore, has landed on the menu of Unik Kebab restaurants, which will offer its alternatives in a burger, wrap and the viral crousty format (chicken tenders with a sweet-and-sour sauce).
And in the UK, clean-label plant-based milk brand Rude Health has entered Asda stores with its calcium-fortified chilled oat and almond milks, following a 50% increase in sales of its chilled portfolio. Overall, the business has grown by 19% year-on-year.
Company and finance updates
Canadian startup BioHarvest Sciences has received a $1.4M grant from the Israeli Innovation Authority for a new initiative that combines advanced data science, machine learning, computer vision and high-throughput digital sensing to accelerate its plant cell culture programmes.
Californian firm Posana has secured $650,000 in an oversubscribed pre-seed funding round for its plant-based protein startup, which makes bars made from pea, rice and almond proteins, and almond butter, chicory root fibre and pea protein crisps.
At French plant-based meat startup La Vie, co-founder and chief marketing officer Romain Jolivet has announced that he will step down in September, while continuing to “remain close” to the team and the brand.
New Zealand-Portuguese startup Nutrition From Water has appointed former FrieslandCampina and Thai Union executive Leon Coolen as its commercial director for the EMEA region.
Portuguese cultivated seafood firm Cell4Food, which was targeting octopus as its first product, has ceased operations, hinting at funding difficulties.
Policy and research developments
The US Food and Drug Administration has pushed back the long-awaited publication of its proposed rule to eliminate the self-affirmed Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) pathway for food approvals, which is now expected in December.
New York-based C16 Biosciences has published a comprehensive data package detailing the efficacy of its Palmless Torula Oil, a deforestation-free alternative to harmful fats like palm oil.
Singapore’s Republic Polytechnic has joined the APAC Society for Cellular Agriculture as a strategic member, joining a host of international future food startups and organisations.
The European Patent Office has awarded Greek-Swedish food scientist Angeliki Triantafyllou, who developed Oatly‘s oat protein process, the European Inventor Award 2026 in the Industry category for developing an enzymatic process to enhance the stability, taste and functionality of oat milk.
Finally, researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem teamed up with New Zealand molecular farming startup Miruku to successfully demonstrate the growth of beta-casein protein inside Arabidopsis seeds. The best-performing plants contained 1.26% of total soluble seed protein.
Check out last week’s Future Food Quick Bites.