Morning Folks,

Anyone who knows me knows I’m a big Pivot listener. Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway are two of the smartest people around, and I’ve long admired the way they make tech, media and business feel sharp, accessible and actually useful. In fact, when I started the Future Food Weekly podcast with VC Steve Molino, I always thought of it as our own version of Kara and Scott for future food. So it was genuinely exciting to see Kara’s new CNN documentary, How to Live Forever, turn its attention to health and longevity — and even more exciting to see her visit Wildtype, the cultivated fish company, and taste smoked salmon made from cells. For me, that was one of those moments where two worlds I care about collided in a way that felt very real.

That clip also got me thinking more broadly about cultivated fish and why I think it may be the most strategically interesting protein within cultivated meat. Beef is still the dominant meat in many Western diets, especially in the US, but it’s hard to argue that eating beef every day is a great idea from a health perspective, even before you get to the climate or animal welfare arguments. Fish sits in a different category. Oily fish like salmon and tuna have long been associated with brain and heart health, and longevity, and most people would still consider them an important part of a healthy diet to boost healthspan and increase lifespan (in longevity bro speak). At the same time, the ocean story is getting worse, not better: overfishing, contamination, disease and the blurring of lines between farmed and wild fish all make the category feel increasingly vulnerable. Which is exactly why cultivated fish feels so relevant. More than the intersection of sustainability and animal welfare, it dovetails with trends in health, longevity and food quality (anti-UPF / MAHA / transparent supply chains).

The other thing on my mind is plastics. When I founded my anti-plastic startup, and my thesis from the beginning was that people would eventually care about plastic not because it pollutes the planet, but because it affects their health. That thinking is finally becoming mainstream. We are now in an era where the links between plastic overuse, microplastics and plastic-derived toxins in our food, bodies, air and water are being talked about much more seriously. Fertility is now part of that conversation too, and Netflix’s The Plastic Detox, with Dr. Shanna Swan — whom I interviewed back in 2021 — is another sign that the health framing around plastics is moving into the mainstream. That matters here because cultivated fish can address more than just environmental degradation or ocean conservation. In a world where people are increasingly worried about what is in their food, it could also become a non-toxic story, a cleaner protein story and, in a broader sense, a longevity story.

What really stayed with me from Wildtype’s segment was something founder Justin Kolbeck said: if you test their salmon, it’s the DNA of BC salmon. I found that fascinating because I think we are moving toward a testing economy. We’re already partly there with wearables, food testing and health tracking, but I think the logic will extend much further. Trust in supply chains will matter more, not less, and testing will become a bigger part of how we decide what’s good, what’s safe, and what’s worth buying. There are already NGOs and research groups testing fish to identify contamination, fraud or disease. That layer is only going to become more important as consumers become more data-literate and more concerned about contamination, quality and provenance. And then there is the AI agent layer. If AI agents are eventually doing our shopping, they are going to need structured proof — product data, certifications, quality checks, contamination testing, origin information — to understand what something really is and whether it’s worth buying. That makes testing not just a scientific issue, but a commercial one.

So yes, I came away from that clip thinking cultivated fish may be one of the most compelling categories in future food because it aligns with so many trends that seem to be converging: longevity, anti-toxin concerns, cleaner food, better data, stronger verification, and an era where trust matters more than branding alone. It’s one of those categories that feels bigger than the sum of its parts. And if it can scale, I think it could become much more important than people currently realize.

-Sonalie

 💡 Only On Green Queen

🇨🇳 Exclusive: One of China’s Top Hotels to Turn Half Its Menu Plant-Based by 2029
eLong Hotel Technology, which operates over 3,000 hotels and has 35 million loyalty members in China, has pledged to make 50% of its menu items plant-based within three years. Here’s how.

🇦🇺 Exclusive: Australian Plant Proteins Enters Retail with ‘Nothing Else’ to Meet Clean-Label Demand
Australian Plant Proteins has launched Nothing Else, a D2C brand of clean-label protein isolate powders, citing consumers’ growing appetite for protein among the GLP-1 boom.

🌱 Opinion: The ‘Vegan’ Label is Losing Power – That’s A Good Thing for Plant-Based Foods
Annamari Jukkola, co-founder and CEO of Finnish dairy-free company Mö Foods, explains why the plant-based movement must embrace the “post-vegan” era.

 ✅ Must-Read Headlines

🇨🇦 Canadian startup Opalia secured C$3.2 million ($2.3 million) at the first close of its latest funding round to expand production of its cell-based dairy and pursue regulatory clearance in North America.
💡 The startup is now selectively engaging additional strategic investors, citing “strong early demand”, and expecting to raise a further C$1.8 million ($1.32 million).

🐶 US startup Friends & Family Pet Food is rolling out 12 cultivated meat products for cats and dogs in Singapore retail, ahead of a fresh $1.1 million funding drive.
💡The company is the first to sell cultivated pet food in Asia, and the products contain as much as 70% cultivated meat content - significantly more than those from other companies.

🇨🇳 A new report by Systemiq and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation explores how China is aligning policy, capital and technology to become the world’s alternative protein capital, following its lead from the green energy and mobility sectors.

🇺🇸 US health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr has aired his “amplified concern” about cultivated meat, promising that these proteins would have to undergo strict FDA oversight.
💡It remains to be seen how this view fits into his agenda to Make American Biotech Accelerate.

 📈 Tech To Scale

🇮🇳 Indian biotech Praj Industries has established a new precision fermentation lab in Pune and signed an MoU with a government body to accelerate the technology’s industrial scale-up.
💡The Indian government announced its BioE3 strategy in 2024, which aims to make the country a global hub for biotech - take note, other global leaders!

🤝🏼 German specialty chemicals company Wacker has teamed up with US biotech firm Amyris to create bio-based, sustainable personal care ingredients using precision fermentation.
💡Wacker will contribute its comprehensive formulation and application expertise, while Amyris will bring its biotech and biomanufacturing know-how.

🇱🇹 Lithuania’s Pentasweet has begun construction of its 8,000 sq m precision fermentation facility to produce the sweet protein brazzein.
💡The upcoming facility at the Vilnius City Innovation Industrial Park, chosen for its access to highly qualified talent, is supported by a €65 million ($76 million) investment.

📖 Latest Research

🏦 The world’s largest banks, including The Royal Bank of Canada, Barclays, and Bank of America, provide lending and bond financing totalling $159 billion to 15 of the largest methane-emitting food companies, according to a new analysis from think tank Planet Tracker.

📊 WWF, WRI and other civil society groups are calling on Europe’s supermarkets to disclose the share of sales emanating from plant-based and animal-derived foods and rebalance the ratio in line with the Planetary Health Diet.

🤑 Analysis by Systemiq and ProVeg International reveals that private-label brands make up 82% of processed meat sales in the UK, but only 15% of plant-based alternatives – and retailers risk losing out on billions if they don’t promote protein diversification. Here’s why.

🥛 A majority of cafés in the UK would consider offering oat milk as the default option in milk-based beverages, if consumer demand exists and wholesale prices are lowered, per a campaign launched by London-based oat milk startup Minor Figures and animal rights organisation Animal Justice Project.

🚀 Everything Else In Future Food

💪🏼 Californian dairy-free brand Kite Hill introduced a first-of-its-kind cream cheese alternative with twice the protein of its dairy counterparts.

🇨🇭Swiss startup SentiaNova has emerged from stealth with a pre-processing technology that removes off-flavours from plant proteins, one of the industry’s most common complaints.

💊 Indian supplements brand Immunosciences has introduced a plant-based protein powder that it claims is the category’s “lightest” product, thanks to an enzyme blend that boosts digestibility.

🌱🍔  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 Tiba Tempeh’s protein bites, Prefer’s Brazilian bean-free coffee collab, and Garden Gourmet’s vegan tilt.

📆 Scene & Heard

🚀 Catch Up With Sonalie Figueiras At Bridge2Food Europe 2026

💡 Green Queen’s founder and editor-in-chief Sonalie Figueiras will be speaking at Bridge2Food Europe 2026, happening 9-11 June 2026 in Copenhagen, where she will give a keynote titled “The Global Politicization of Food and the Influence on Consumer Choices”. Catch her live to unpack how geopolitics and consumer behavior are increasingly intertwined in the future of food. Register here, and use code GREENQUEENMEDIA to get €200 off your ticket.

🇪🇸 Expo FoodTech is the leading food industry fair to explore innovations in automation, robotics, AI, packaging, logistics and sustainability, alongside the Food 4 Future World Summit. It’s taking place 27th-28th May in Bilbao; get more details here.

🇦🇹 Meet 280+ carefully selected suppliers from across Europe and beyond, showcasing thousands of retail-ready products in high-growth categories such as free-from, plant-based, organic and functional food, at the Free From Food Expo in Vienna on 16th-17th June. Register here.

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