Food Matters Live Podcast

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500

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Sep 2026

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About the show

Welcome to the Food Matters Live podcast – where we showcase the innovations, the big ideas, and the visionaries in the food industry. We dig deep, we look to the future and the past, and we question everything we think we know about food. Hit subscribe to make sure you never miss an episode. And find out how you can join the conversation on our website foodmatterslive.com .

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60 recent

September 28, 2026Episode 62924 min

629: GLP-1 opportunities and blind spots for the food industry

GLP-1 medications are not a silver bullet. That's not a controversial statement, but it is one that tends to get lost in a media narrative that swings between miracle cure and moral panic. The more interesting question for the food industry might be: what actually happens to people's diets when they're on these drugs, and what do they need from food, from support services, and from manufacturers, both during treatment and when they come off? The honest answer, for now, is that the data is thin. People are eating less, but whether they're doing that through smaller portions, skipped meals, or a shift in macronutrient preference is largely uncharted territory. In this episode of the Food Matters Live podcast, recorded at our London Olympia event, three specialists bring different lenses to the GLP-1 debate. They cover dietary deficiencies, dietary support alongside the drugs, and how consumers’ tastes are changing as a result of taking GLP-1 medication. If this has whet your appetite for next year’s Food Matters Live events - you can already register your interest to partner with us in London and Rotterdam. Just head to foodmatterslive.com

September 21, 2026Episode 62829 min

628: Mandatory vs voluntary regulation - what’s best for the food industry?

In the UK, around a third of the soft drinks market reformulated before the sugar levy even came into force. Most of the change happened in anticipation of the law, not in response to it. So does that prove mandatory regulation works? The answer, according to the panellists in this session, recorded at the Food Matters Live event at London’s Olympia, is more nuanced than it first appears. Mandatory policies level the playing field and remove the competitive anxiety of going first. But our panelists all agree they only work if they're well designed, broadly applied, and given enough lead time for industry to respond. In this episode four specialists debate the policy landscape in the food industry right now and what it means in practice. They discuss nutrient profiling, GLP-1, new claims challenges, sugar levies and portion size reduction. We also hear the case for the food industry to engage with regulators much earlier in the development process. If this has whet your appetite for next year’s Food Matters Live events - you can already register your interest to partner with us in London and Rotterdam. Just head to foodmatterslive.com

September 14, 2026Episode 62728 min

627: You can't change your genes - you can change your gut microbiome

Twenty years ago, roughly eight scientific papers a year were being published on the gut microbiome. Scientists barely knew it existed. Today it is one of the most actively researched areas in all of human biology, and what it's revealing is that this community of trillions of microbes living in your lower intestine is not just relevant to digestion. It's connected to your immune system, your brain, your metabolism, your mood, your response to stress, and your long-term risk of many major diseases. In this episode of the Food Matters Live podcast, recorded at our London Olympia event, two scientists approach the gut microbiome from very different angles. Dr Emily Leeming, microbiome scientist, registered dietitian and author of Genius Gut and Fibre Power, opens with a compelling and accessible masterclass on what the gut microbiome is, why it matters, and what we can actually do about it. Dr Umar Jan, President of European Operations at Sabinsa, then presents the science behind two of Sabinsa's biotics. His presentation addresses a question that sits at the heart of the postbiotic category: when you inactivate a probiotic, what exactly are you left with, and can you prove it's doing something useful? If this has whet your appetite for next year’s Food Matters Live events - you can already register your interest to partner with us in London and Rotterdam. Just head to foodmatterslive.com

September 7, 2026Episode 62630 min

626: Neil Rankin on reinventing what food can be

Neil Rankin applied for a job at Pret after the 2008 financial crisis closed his sandwich business. He didn't get it. What followed was seven years in professional kitchens, a Michelin-level career built around fire and meat, and then slowly, a growing conviction that the most important thing he could do with everything he'd learned was to stop cooking meat altogether. Symplicity started in a home kitchen during Covid, hand-making sausages and shaping burgers with an ice cream tub lid. Its first customers were Soho House, Dishoom and Gordon Ramsay. It is now in Waitrose and 3,000 restaurants across the UK and every product is still made by hand, using wild lacto-fermentation, everyday vegetables, miso, flaxseed and flour. In this episode of the Food Matters Live podcast, recorded at our London Olympia event, Neil sits down for an extended conversation about the journey that brought him here and what he's learned along the way. He explains why he thinks everything truly delicious in the world has been fermented and why he believes the plant-based industry's fatal mistake was starting with bitter proteins and working backwards. He opens up about the genuine tension of being a meat eater building a meat alternative and why retail remains the hardest frontier of all. If this has whet your appetite for next year’s Food Matters Live events - you can already register your interest to partner with us in London and Rotterdam. Just head to foodmatterslive.com

September 1, 2026Episode 62518 min

625: A new future for managing NPD processes?

Most food manufacturers are running their product development on spreadsheets. Nutritional values in one file, allergen data in another, recipes in a shared drive, submission forms being manually rekeyed the night before a customer deadline. But the pace of change facing food manufacturers right now is unlike anything in recent memory. HFSS reformulations, UPF scrutiny, carbon labelling, gut health claims, retailer-specific submission formats that change without warning, and behind every single one of those challenges, a development process that in most businesses still runs on fragile, disconnected data. In this episode of the Food Matters Live podcast, recorded at our event at London’s Olympia, the case is made that a significant portion of the pressure that technical and NPD teams are feeling isn't coming from the market or from regulation, but from out-dated background systems. Could it be that in a decade where AI will increasingly depend on the quality of the data underneath it, the manufacturers who treat product data as a strategic asset rather than an administrative byproduct will be the ones who pull ahead? If this has whet your appetite for next year’s Food Matters Live events - you can already register your interest to partner with us in London and Rotterdam. Just head to foodmatterslive.com

August 24, 2026Episode 62457 min

624: Clean label, bold taste - the innovation realities of making natural work at scale

Consumers say they want natural. But do they want it enough to accept a less vibrant colour, a shorter shelf life, or a higher price? And when regulation forces the change anyway, how do you bring consumers with you when they weren't asking for it in the first place? Clean label means something very different to a Michelin-trained chef building a fermented meat alternative from scratch, to a bakery NPD manager reformulating existing lines away from artificial colours, to a global consumer science director at one of the world's largest confectionery companies navigating the cocoa crisis. What all three have in common is the same uncomfortable truth: natural is harder, less stable, more expensive and less forgiving than artificial - and the consumer rarely gives you credit for it unless you tell them. In this episode of the Food Matters Live podcast, recorded at our London Olympia event, our expert panel dives into the world of clean label, from the practical realities of moving from artificial to natural colours, allergen considerations, shelf life constraints, and why consumers may accept a dimmer colour once you explain the reason. If this has whet your appetite for next year’s Food Matters Live events - you can already register your interest to partner with us in London and Rotterdam. Just head to foodmatterslive.com

August 17, 2026Episode 62351 min

623: Fibremaxxing: Why reformulating for fibre is harder than it looks

Only 4% of UK adults meet the recommended 30 grams of fibre per day. The average intake is 16 grams, which is barely half the target. And this isn't a new problem. It's been consistent for years, across every age group and demographic, with no sign of closing. What makes that statistic more troubling is what sits behind it: most people don't even know what the recommendation is. In this episode of the Food Matters Live podcast, recorded at our London Olympia event, a panel of specialists look at the fibre gap from every angle: policy, science, product development, supply chain and consumer behaviour. We hear from a nutrition researcher from the Danish Agriculture and Food Council, who explains how Denmark's Whole Grain Partnership drove consumption to 63 grams within four years. And we learn why fibre reformulation is technically more complex than it looks. If this has whet your appetite for next year’s Food Matters Live events - you can already register your interest to partner with us in London and Rotterdam. Just head to foodmatterslive.com

August 10, 2026Episode 62215 min

622: What a Michelin chef saw that the food industry didn't

A chilli con carne for four people carries a carbon footprint of 6kg. The same meal, made with upcycled sunflower protein and plant-based seasoning, comes in at seventy grams. In this episode of the Food Matters Live podcast, recorded at our London Olympia event, Frank Lantz describes how he came to food innovation from Michelin-trained fine dining. His view is that the food industry is sitting at one of its biggest inflection points in a century, that the conversation about how we grow, cook and eat is overdue, and that chefs who understand flavour from the inside out are better placed than most to solve for it. He talks about the moment he decided to step out of restaurant kitchens and into food innovation, why organic is a proof of concept rather than a marketing badge, and why he believes the brands that make the most sustainable products, without asking the consumer to sacrifice anything, will be the ones that win. If this has whet your appetite for next year’s Food Matters Live events - you can already register your interest to partner with us in London and Rotterdam. Just head to foodmatterslive.com

August 3, 2026Episode 62147 min

621: Why the UK is a leader in global flavours

Salted caramel spent roughly 50 years travelling from a Parisian chocolatier to a British supermarket staple. Nduja took a decade. Kimchi felt like an overnight success, but it wasn't. So when a flavour trend lands on a developer's radar, how do you know whether you're early, right on time, or already too late? The answer, our expert panel suggests, is rarely found in data alone. It lives in the gap between what a trend tracker can tell you and what a developer's gut tells them. And knowing how to triangulate the two is one of the most underrated skills in food innovation. In this episode of the Food Matters Live podcast, recorded at our London Olympia event, we explore how both a major retailer and a multi-brand manufacturer approach the now, next and future framework for flavour trend tracking. Our panel debates the cuisines that have genuinely crossed over and the ones that are still waiting. And they dig into the tension between authenticity and accessibility, the power of the silent ingredient, and why calling something a tortilla instead of a Spanish omelette can be the difference between a product that flies and one that sits. If this has whet your appetite for next year’s Food Matters Live events - you can already register your interest to partner with us in London and Rotterdam. Just head to foodmatterslive.com

July 27, 2026Episode 62024 min

620: Soy, salmon and sidestreams - where the protein industry is heading

Global demand for protein has been rising for sixty years and shows no sign of stopping. But the way we're producing it is running into hard limits, environmental, ethical and economic, at exactly the moment that consumers have decided protein is the most important thing on the label. So where does that leave manufacturers, retailers and innovators trying to navigate a market that wants more protein, cheaper, more sustainably, and still delicious? In this episode of the Food Matters Live podcast, recorded at our London Olympia event, three experts try to answer that question. They discuss overgrazing, marine over-exploitation, and the opportunity in novel proteins. They also talk about how constraints on animal protein are opening a window for plant-based innovation that the industry hasn't had before. And they discuss the future of soy protein, all with one thing front of mind - the products produced need to be attractive to consumers. If this has whet your appetite for next year’s Food Matters Live events - you can already register your interest to partner with us in London and Rotterdam. Just head to foodmatterslive.com