Morning All,

Both the new book It's on You: How Corporations and Behavioral Scientists Have Convinced Us That We’re to Blame for Society's Deepest Problems, by behavioral scientists George Loewenstein* and Nick Chater, and The Atlantic’s piece “Why Nudge Policies Failed” about it, have been on my mind all week because they cut straight into alternative protein’s core change theory. The authors’ i‑frame versus s‑frame distinction, tweaking individual behaviour vs. changing systems, raises an uncomfortable question for our sector: have we been over-invested in the idea that better choices at the shelf will fix a food system that is structurally wired for cheap meat, cheap sugar, and overproduction?

Alternative proteins were, in many ways, the ultimate nudge project. Make the burger look and taste like meat, slide it onto the menu next to beef, keep the price “close enough,” add a sustainability story, and hope consumers quietly switch. Behavioural teams have even designed cafeteria and menu nudges to get more people to pick plant-based options. But as Loewenstein and Chater argue, nudges tend to deliver marginal, fragile gains, and they can drain political energy from the systemic moves that actually reshape markets, such as public procurement, dietary guidelines, fiscal policy, and hard rules on what can be sold, marketed, and subsidised.

If that critique is right, it has big implications for future food. It suggests that hoping individual shoppers will ‘vote with their fork’ for alternative proteins against a backdrop of massive meat subsidies, lax marketing rules for ultra-processed foods, and no clear protein policies is a losing strategy. It doesn’t mean alt protein is pointless; it does mean the sector needs to stop pretending that product innovation plus clever positioning equals transformation. Instead of treating regulation, procurement, and classification systems as a hostile backdrop, we should be in the room helping to design sustainable protein policies, nutrient‑profile models, and labelling schemes that make lower‑emission, nutritionally solid options the default, not the niche.

For me, the takeaway from the “nudges failed” conversation isn’t that individual choices don’t matter; they clearly do, especially when they signal new norms that can unlock policy shifts over time. It’s that alternative protein’s next chapter has to be more s‑frame: less faith in menu hacks and carbon labels alone, more work on the hard, slow levers of governance, standards, and public menus. If we want these products to be more than a lifestyle tweak for the motivated few, we have to move beyond nudging consumers and start nudging the system itself. As reporter Rob Wolfe writes in his piece, the book is a “convincing argument that grounding the collective good in personal choices can be corrosive, especially in a deeply individualistic culture.”

-Sonalie

PS: As soon as I pressed send last week, I realized that I had omitted a key part of the context for McGuinness leaving Impossible: the IPO problem. As a wise industry insider wrote in response to my note: “I suspect he signed on to that role with a ton of options as CEO with strike prices on a valuation that were never going to be achieved…The food industry has a value: typically 1x sales or 10X EBITDA. If Impossible had sales (at that time) of $700M, how in the world could it have been worth $9B?  It wasn't...and Peter got caught up in the hype himself when he signed on to that package. His payout was never going to be achievable. I suspect he went to Bel because he went back to basics.”

*It’s worth highlighting that the book’s authors are not just your average social scientists. As per The Atlantic, “Loewenstein is widely credited with co-founding the field of behavioral economics, and both he and Chater, a U.K.-based behavioral scientist and consultant, contributed to nudge-policy making and research. This book is in part their mea culpa.”

💡 Only On Green Queen

🧫 Cultivated Meat Outlook: 10 Leading CEOs Lay Out Their Challenges & Plans for 2026
Cultivated meat is at a critical juncture, with investment at a seven-year low and the closure of several pioneering startups. Execs from the leading players speak to Green Queen about their plans for 2026 and the industry’s future.

☕️ Industry Insights: As Surging Coffee Prices Change Consumer Habits, One Singaporean Startup Has An RTD Solution
The world’s top coffee producers are getting too hot to grow the crop, and high prices are already changing how we consume it. Singapore’s Prefer is betting on ready-to-drink, bean-free drinks as a solution. Here’s why.

🇪🇺 75 Projects, Seven Pillars, €3B in Funding: How Europe Can Achieve A Sustainable Protein Transition
A coalition of plant-based food representatives is calling for €3 billion in research and innovation funding to rebalance and greenify Europe’s protein supply over the next decade. Here’s their strategy.

🥕 A New Gut Health Trend: Stop Fibremaxxing, Start Fibrelayering
After a year dominated by fibremaxxing, nutritionists recommend turning your attention to a new UK trend: fibrelayering, which emphasises variety over volume.

💰 Funding News

🇫🇷 French precision fermentation startup Verley secured €32 million ($37.6 million) Series A funding to scale up and commercialise its cow-free, functional whey proteins in the US this year.
💡Verley wants to become an industrial ingredient company, not a consumer brand, so it is choosing to focus exclusively on the B2B channel in order to scale faster.

🇩🇰 Copenhagen-based Reduced, which upcycles food processing waste into high-value savoury flavour enhancers, raised €4 million ($4.7 million) Series A funding to expand production to industrial levels.
💡Over the last year, Reduced has already doubled its industrial partnerships and expanded its product lineup across multiple applications. 

🥜 New Zealand cellular horticulture startup Forever Harvest bagged NZ$1.2 million ($715,000) pre-seed funding to speed up the development of its lab-grown fruit and nut ingredients.
💡Forever Harvest has already begun a collaboration with a global food brand to explore commercial applications of its cellular horticulture technology.

✅ Must-Read Headlines

🛒 Dutch startup Vivici has launched its precision fermentation lactoferrin protein under the Vivitein brand, after self-determining its GRAS status in the US.
💡The product, which can fit into an array of health and wellness products for consumers, is designed to unlock an ingredient that is highly sought after, but too rare and expensive to be widely available.

🍫 Confectionery giant Puratos will launch a cell-based chocolate product for professionals in the US this year.
💡The planned launch will leverage Puratos’ investment in startup California Cultured, which is already producing at commercial scale.

🤝🏼 Indian firm PreferCo (not to be confused with Singapore’s Prefer) has teamed up with German biotech giant Glatt to launch a precision fermentation scale-up centre in Hyderabad.
💡The deal comes just weeks after India’s landmark free trade agreement with the EU, and will be a big boost to India’s BioE3 strategy.

☑️ US startup Plantible Foods secured a ‘no questions’ letter from the FDA, validating its duckweed- derived protein ingredient for the food industry.`
💡The announcement comes six months after Plantible Foods opened a 100-acre factory in Eldorado, Texas, to manufacture hundreds of tonnes of Rubi Protein annually.

🇵🇱 The Polish health ministry published new regulations that will guarantee access to plant-based meals in schools and ramp up food waste reduction strategies.
💡The move is “an investment in education, teaching children to make informed and responsible food choices that benefit both themselves and the planet,” said Patrycja Homa, president of the ProVeg Foundation.

📚 Key Research

📊 A new investigation by food systems charity Foodrise reveals that the EU spends over 500 times more money via CAP subsidies on beef and dairy than on plant-based foods like legumes and nuts, driven by intense lobbying and the rise of the far-right.

💡 Cultivated meat is still referred to by an array of names, from ‘lab-grown’ to ‘cell-cultured’ – a new poll by the Good Food Institute spotlights the most appealing way to describe it to consumers.

🌾 Funding efforts to make plant-based, fermentation-derived and cultivated proteins as tasty and cheap as conventional meat can reduce cropland expansion by up to 82% by 2050, finds research by climate charity Giving Green.

🚀 Everything Else In Future Food

⭐️ One-Michelin-starred restaurant in Berlin, Bonvivant Cocktail Bistro, has ditched dairy and eggs from its brunch offerings, completing its transition to a fully vegan menu.

📈 Finland’s largest supermarket, S Group, has revealed that sales of plant-based products were on the rise last year, alongside growing interest in blended meat.

🇳🇱 After fulfilling its 2025 target of aligning its sales with the Dutch dietary guidelines, Lidl Netherlands has set a new goal for 2030, with a focus on plant-based whole foods.

🌱🍔  Future Food Quick Bites 

In our weekly column, Future Food Quick Bites, we round up the latest news and developments in the alternative protein and sustainable food industry. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers a new vegan docuseries on HBO Max, Lasso’s protein fruit snacks, and PepsiCo’s plant-based soup bet.

📆 Scene & Heard

Don’t Miss the 2nd Annual TASTY Awards!

🌱🥛 Head to San Francisco on 18th March for the 2nd Annual TASTY Awards, and you might run into Green Queen’s super reporter, Anay Mridul! Find out more here.

🇨🇭 MassChallenge Switzerland, the world’s largest equity-free accelerator, just launched their 2026 Early-Stage Accelerator Programme to help startups scale, connect with world-class experts, and amplify their impact on the environment or society. Find out more and apply here.

🇳🇱 Join Europe’s biggest conference for alternative protein professionals, Plant Fwd, at the Midden Nederland Hallen in Barneveld on April 8th-9th. Get your ticket here.

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