DigitalFoodLab just dropped their 2026 food tech trends report, with their read on what's actually moving in the industry and what's just hype (their word, not mine!). The 5 megatrends (broken down into 36 trends) covered in the report present a candid picture of where the industry stands right now, keeping in mind the general state of affairs of the world at the moment. What I thought was interesting is how the intersection between foodtech trends and general food trends has no choice but to get stronger.

So I reached out to our friends at DigitalFoodLab to find out a bit more, and had a great chat with co-founder Matthieu Vincent.

Listen to the conversation here:

We covered a fair bit of ground:

There was also a detour into why French people eat considerably more McDonald's than they'd like you to believe, but that's neither here nor there.

One thread in particular keeps returning to my mind: healthy aging. It's one of the key trends in DigitalFoodLab's report and is increasingly visible around us in different ways and (questionable?) claims, but corporate engagement hasn't really caught up to the conversation in much of a meaningful way. Matthieu broke this down this global trend into 3 distinct markets that most people tend to lump together, and that distinction made me read a lot of current product launches differently.

An observation he made about Japan that also stuck with me: That it was a future everybody looked for, and is now a future everybody fears. What Japan is doing to address an aging population and what other parts largely aren’t is worth paying attention to whether your market is aging fast or just getting started.

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