The Editor Presents: The Dairy Edition
06 Nov 2025 | The World of Food Ingredients
Join editor Missy Green as she presents top highlights from our most celebrated edition of the year. She’ll unveil leading trends in the dairy segment and introduce a little-known vanilla species with a lot of promise. She’ll also explore formulation strategies focused on reducing salt, employing natural colors, and brewing artisan tea informed by thin-layer chromatography. Sustainability runs through the entire edition — whether it’s squeezing every last bit out of food resources or blending forests with agriculture. Join her for this 15-minute roundup.
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Welcome to The Editor Presents.
I'm your editor, Missy Green, and this edition is our most exciting of the year.
We have over 100 pages of insights, and today I'm going to share my top highlights from the edition.
So, Foodology by Univar Solutions is the proud sponsor of this World of Food Ingredients LinkedIn Live event.
With a pulse on food and beverage trends, their Foodology team offers a global menu and portfolio of food and beverage ingredients, global distribution network, and test kitchens.
Learn more at Univarsolutions.com.
And as always, if you have any comments or questions, you can feel free to post them below.
So, let's get to it.
The infographic provided by Enova Market Insights reveals that Europe is the powerhouse for dairy and dairy alternative NPD with 42% share of global launches.
Some of the biggest categories with new products are dairy-based ice cream and spoonable yogurts.
So, this really highlights the indulgence trend here in dairy.
Some of the key trends to watch are limited editions.
Those grew at a kegger of 17% worldwide in dairy and alt dairy launches, and co-branding claims grew at 50%.
I also want to point out the #2 dairy trend, which is a rise in energy and alertness claims.
And the example here is Nestle's Lindahl's high protein fermented milk.
So this feeds into the sports nutrition seeing energy on a drinkable yogurt.
Number 4 is also notable, Sweet Bites.
This is a trend showing the snackification of dairy desserts, something that can be easily picked up in your hand and eaten like this, macaron and ice cream sandwich sandwich from Marks and Spencer.
So moving on.
This article is written by dairy expert Donna Berry, who is based in the US where precision fermented proteins are now on the market.
But some of them have also been discontinued, so read the article to find out more.
In yogurt innovation, it's all about protein, and this is expanding into even more benefits like prebiotic fibers and GLP1 benefits.
At a newga last month, I saw collagen also coming into the yogurt category.
There was a drinkable yogurt, giving an even stronger position than for like sports nutrition or for beauty.
In this article, we spoke to companies who are squeezing every last bit out of the raw materials that they can, and that's in the face of ingredient shortages like citrus and cocoa.
One of the most interesting ones I thought was a Finnish company called Helia that uses fish side streams for their pulled fish products, and this can be used in sandwiches or pastas.
And the CEO said something that really stood out.
She said that.
Now, we're used to thinking of the best fish as this fresh filet that you can eat raw, but that mindset means that more than half of the fish is wasted.
So, it's time that we start treating fish more like we treat chicken or other meat where you use the whole animal and that's considered normal.
So with their processing, they're able to use 90% of the fish, which is everything except for its blood and intestines.
Next we move on to Dairy NPD where we have plenty of indulgent experiences, like 23, and actually 8.
They're all ice cream launches.
Dubai ice cream #2, very popular, still being popular.
And then, the tea flavored ice cream sandwiched between sugar cookies for #3.
1 of the other really interesting innovations here is 4, which is a hybrid cheese and potato ingredients.
So, this is, basically a cheese that has added plant-based ingredients to lower the emissions and also to You know, still have the, the meltability, the unmistakable texture and taste that you get with cheese.
So.
Check them all out.
Natural colorants continues to be a hot topic in the US.
Otera noted that over 75% of consumers in the US say that they are concerned about consuming food and beverages with artificial dyes.
So, this article goes into some of the latest innovations to overcome the challenges that come with switching away from synthetic dyes.
This piece is officially our first opinion article.
It was written by Alejandro Hernandez, who is a research professor in Costa Rica, but he's also held positions in the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Science, and he argues that the food industry needs to move beyond this battling for lower prices and instead focus on value added differentiation.
And that if you use strategies like, you know, smaller packages, that can actually backfire, especially with younger generations who are really social media driven and they're going to be the ones who are You know, sharing things about.
And by the trust and transparency of the brand.
So if there's just one article that you read during our October, November landmark edition, I feel like this is the one.
This article was sparked by the US FDA declaring that it would remove several standards of identity.
And they said these were redundant, they would hold back innovation.
It was also done because, you know, some products include a specific amount of salt and there's a need to lower sodium.
So, we need to go back and look at these standards which were established.
You know, in the 50s and really think about.
You know, are, are they still relevant today?
And, and among these, there were a combination of vanilla and vanolin.
And while the FDA is updating the standard of identity, would it be worth it to include more vanilla species into the standard of identity?
So, the author of this article, Maria Galleus, she's doing her PhD thesis work on vanilla, and she says, yes.
Currently, Vanilla pompona is a species which has historical use and flavoring, it's known to have a more subdued flavor, but the benefit is that it is a far more hardy plant than vanilla ponifolia, which is the current, you know, gold standard vanilla.
And she makes the case that vanilla pompona can withstand a much harsher climate, it can withstand, you know, more disease, and in some regions, it can also be naturally pollinated, whereas, you know, the current vanilla that's used requires hand pollinating.
Another benefit is that vanilla pomppona can be grown in the US and this is a picture that Gallez took herself at the University of Florida's Division of Tropical Research.
Here is the tedious work of hand pollination.
All right, so, this article was also a fascinating read and the author basically discusses how caseinates, dairy caseinates have a lot of advantages for sports and medical nutrition, and they can be highly complementary to whey, which is currently sort of the gold standard.
One factor is that it's more slowly digested, so whey will, you know, Give you quick energy, caseinates, they're digested more over time, so they could be positioned for more recovery, like a nighttime recovery.
Another one is that it has functional benefits within food and beverages within the matrix, so it, it retains moisture, and that can give you softer sports bars.
It can also make, sports shakes more stable.
So, lots of benefits to this ingredient.
OK, next, let's go ahead to.
Salt, lowering salts.
So, this article shares the results of a public-private consortium at Waheninge University called Salt Shift, and it sought to find a standard protocol that technologists can go to to lower sodium in soups and sauces.
And what they came up with was a threefold strategy.
So, first of all, it was replacing sodium chloride with, you know, potassium or magnesium.
Then it was to go with off flavors or mask them, and then you're enhancing the salt with other ingredients around it like herbs and umami.
This one is written by hydrocoloid expert Nisha Zalesy, and it's all about clean label hydrocoloids.
Hydrocolloids have such a beautiful relationship with dairy, they always have.
And here she compares using conventional seaweed derived hydrocolloids like carrageenan, which has recently received some negative press.
You know, perhaps unfounded as Nisha and her colleagues would attest to.
And seaweed powder, which has a different effect, but then it's a more clean label product.
So, she provides a lot of technical and practical info.
Right, T and TLC.
So, TLC for tender loving care, but also for thin layer chromatography.
This article is all about taking inspiration from TLC analysis and applying it to tea brewing to yield very different results from the same set of tea leaves.
So, you can see, for example, how a Maillard reaction in a red oolong can release a natural strawberry note, even without any strawberry flavors being involved.
There's also the size of the tea leaves, you know, how they're broken, the minerality of the water are all important factors that can ultimately influence the, the outcome.
In the opinionated suppliers shared the trends that they see up and coming in dairy, and the three big umbrella topics here are Health, indulgence, and ethical or sustainable positioning.
And sustainability is certainly gaining, you know, a lot of attention and importance.
And so much so that we have our own sustainability section here in the world of food ingredients.
And this article really goes into, you know, what companies are doing, specifically dairy companies, in light of greenwashing, how they're coping and how they are.
You know, striving to bring more transparency.
We also talk about coffee transparency and how, you know, suppliers are really, really being forced now to track everything, how they're doing that.
In this piece, we heard from a forest management expert who holds a degree in pharmacy.
He goes through rigorous literature to show that the presence of trees and diverse species have a positive effect on both the quality of the plants and the animals being farmed.
So, in the first graph, you see how trees And they don't just produce more oxygen, but they also do so much for the, the nutrient cycling and for the improvement of the soil.
And in the next page, you see a graph from a study that compared simple grass and clover versus a diverse herbal lay and how that impacted the lambs over two seasons of grazing.
What the researchers found was that there was increased weight gain in the weight gain in the lambs, there was elevated micronutrients in their blood, and they also had reduced parasites.
FIE is around the corner this year and health is very much in the spotlight.
Among the presentations on site, Luanne Williams, who is the SVP of Global Research at Anova Market Insights, will speak, and she's gonna reveal the top 10 trends for 2026 with the top one coming in as gut health hub.
So, many more connections to the gut are coming this year.
You can also see this handy guide, not only to see who's present, but also, you know, why you might want to visit their stand, their stand in the gray box, you can get a heads up if they have a new product or a new study results.
Or a new application for their ingredients.
In health and nutrition, Kimberly Decker asked companies about topical versus ingestible beauty ingredients.
There's often overlap.
Can they work together, right, like collagen is a big one.
It's in.
Yeah, it's in topicals, it's also in supplements.
She compares the two markets.
Many of you are familiar with Doctor Roger Clemens.
He was recently involved in a working group at the US FDA to assess infant formula, and this article traces back to that work, and what are the macronutrients, what are the important ingredients.
They also look at the marketing in the US and they make a call to adapt it to the WHO standards.
And lastly, William, who is the editor of Nutrition Insights, spoke to various companies about the opportunities in prebiotic ingredients.
So it's another connection here to this focus on gut health.
And lastly, we spoke with managing director of Arla Foods Ingredients and the view from the top.
And that is all I have from this edition, so I will now open the floor for any questions.
Are there any questions coming in?
Yes, yes, we have the first question from Caitlin.
What are, what are some of the late development in natural color development?
Hi, Caitlin, thanks for your question.
OK, so as we were saying, the US is working, working hard to approve more natural colors, and one of the ones that were approved this year was Oterra's jungle Blue.
It's made from jenny pin polymers that come from the jaguar fruit.
And and so Jenny Penn was one of the, the recently approved.
Ingredients, and I think what's so interesting about this is that it has historical use in indigenous cultures.
But those were used primarily for textiles and for tattoos, but now it's a food ingredient.
And this is also an ingredient that is, at first, it's transparent, but then it turns blue over time, and that can be accelerated by exposing it to heat and amino acids.
So, a new one in the toolbox.
Thank you, Missy.
We have another question from Nica.
Why wasn't vanilla Pompona initially included in the US standard of identity?
Hello, Nika.
So vanilla Pompona has historical use in the US.
In the article, you'll see that there is a book from the 1920s that McCormick mentioned it.
And really, it seems to be a little bit arbitrary why it wasn't included, because Tahitian vanilla was included, but that strain seems to also have less of a, a strong flavor impact, like, like, you know, the standard vanilla that we know.
So it's true that vanilla Pompona is, has, a more subdued flavor, but , What Maria Galleus suggests from her historical research was that Tahitian vanilla then made it because of a connection with French trade.
So, that seems to be why.
Thank you.
And Laura was asking, you mentioned a hybrid cheese example.
A hybrid launches gaining traction?
Hi Laura.
This was the, at Anooga, that was where this hybrid cheese was being launched.
So that was just a month ago.
I think it's really gonna be a matter of time to see how successful that turns out.
But an interesting aspect to think about with hybrids.
Is that cellular agriculture and precision fermentation are creating more of these meat and dairy ingredients, which, you know, are separated from the actual animals, and as regulatory approvals happen, those are going to find places in hybrid products ultimately.
So, I was just at the future of protein production conference in Amsterdam, and it was really interesting to see how, you know, when cultivated meat initially started coming out, people were talking about growing like a whole cut of muscle, right?
And how this could just sort of, yeah, replicate a steak or something.
But that's completely not how it's happening.
Now, it's, it's really these individual cells that are just coming up like in a soupy mixture.
That then needs to find a matrix to be placed into, and those are often coming from plant-based sources.
So, I think that it will, but not like how we see it right now.
Are there any other questions?
That's all the questions for today.
All right.
It was my pleasure sharing this edition with you, and I'll see you next time.
This is Missy Green signing off.
Editor
Missy Green
Editor
