IFT’s Science and Policy experts have forecasted the top ten food and beverage trends for the coming year. Digital technologies loom large on the list—from the growing impact of artificial intelligence to the need for tech-enabled traceability across the food supply chain. What’s in our food also figures prominently. Consumers will continue to demand clean labels. Conversation, scrutiny, and advocacy surrounding food additives and chemical contaminants will persist. And the idea that consumption of nutritious food is essential to preventing, and even treating, illness will pick up steam. Through collective creativity, innovation, and vision, the food science community will continue to lead the way in delivering safe, healthy, and sustainable foods.

1. The rise in GLP-1 medications will accelerate product innovation: 2024 kicked off with more questions than answers surrounding the impact of GLP-1 weight loss medications on the food industry. But 2025 will bring clarity: GLP-1 is not going away. The global GLP-1 market is forecast to grow at a 29.6 percent compound annual growth rate through 2030. While increased usage of GLP-1 medications will mean decreased overall food consumption, it also opens up opportunities for premiumization, driving food companies to adapt existing products and create new ones that focus on the protein, gut health, and nutrient needs of the GLP-1 user. 

2.  Salt and sugar reduction activities will dominate food headlines: Formulating reduced-sugar and reduced-salt products has been ongoing for quite some time, but updated policies, from front-of-pack labeling to voluntary government-industry commitments, coupled with a consumer focus on health policy, will accelerate the development or alteration of food products with less salt and sugar. This was evidenced by recent innovations from ingredient suppliers, many of which were on display at IFT FIRST 2024. And just in time. A new rule from the USDA, announced in April, will limit added sugars to 10 percent of the calories in school meals by 2027. And the big news will involve the release of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2025-2030, at the end of 2025, which is expected to provide new recommendations around salt and sugar reduction. IFT weighed in on the Dietary Guidelines for Americans with its recommendations in collaboration with the American Society of Nutrition.

3. Food is Medicine receives a stronger push and greater integration from wide-ranging demographics: With Food is Medicine continuing to make headway in policy, research, and institutions, more people are embracing it across varying demographics. Holistic approaches to health will continue in 2025 and beyond as consumers seek to improve health conditions and prevent health-related issues through food. Like consumers, government is also embracing this movement. The Department of Health and Human Services developed a Food is Medicine initiative in 2023 to reduce nutrition-related chronic diseases and has hosted events on the subject; in 2024, IFT’s Senior Director of Government Affairs and Nutrition Anna Rosales attended the inaugural Food is Medicine Summit in Washington. 

4. Clean label is not going away: Consumers are increasingly prioritizing the ingredients in their food and are purchasing products with ingredients that are easy to understand. The perception of food being healthier if prepared in a consumer’s home kitchen will persist as the focus on ultra-processed foods intensifies.

5. Chemical additive approvals and post-market reviews will intensify: Food additives approvals and GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) processes will be under the microscope in 2025. The future of certain additives will be closely scrutinized and ultimately lead to a shift in reformulation that could have wide-reaching implications. The 2023 passage of the California Food Safety Act that banned four food additives inspired nearly a dozen states to attempt to pass similar legislation the following year. Although no other state has been successful to date, consumer and state legislator concerns and perceptions continue to push for removal of certain food ingredients and artificial dyes. There will also be increased focus on the FDA post-market review assessment of chemicals in food, which IFT weighed in on in these public comments. IFT has also hosted a series of educational webinars and created a food additives toolkit to create better understanding of the targeted food additives and the science behind each one.

6. High-profile recalls will drive greater investment in food safety: The ability to quickly trace food from source to plate has become an even more dire need in the wake of many recent high-profile food recalls (i.e., McDonald’s and Boar’s Head), making tech-enabled traceability a priority for food companies around the world. In the U.S., food companies also face the quickly approaching compliance deadline for the FDA’s Food Safety Modernization Act, Rule 204 (the Food Traceability Rule) in January 2026. IFT’s Global Food Traceability Center has developed a robust series of resources to help organizations on their journey toward compliance and the creation of a safer food supply.

7. Naturally occurring and adulterant chemical contaminants will continue to be a focus, with all eyes on the FDA’s Closer to Zero program: The FDA’s Closer to Zero initiative—meant to reduce dietary exposure to contaminants while maintaining access to nutritious food—is, at its core, designed to protect vulnerable populations such as children and pregnant women. Specifically, the focus has been on arsenic, lead, cadmium, and mercury in some foods. The FDA is working to help address this issue as heavy metals in foods have been on consumers’ minds, as noted by consumer research conducted by the International Food Information Council (IFIC), due to high-profile recalls and adulteration. IFT’s recently released white paper shares, among other things, mitigation strategies to reduce heavy metal levels in foods.

8. Artificial Intelligence will continue its takeover of the food lab...: AI use cases will expand exponentially in 2025. AI’s impact will be felt everywhere from lab counters to kitchen counters as organizations develop tools to leverage it to accelerate development and capture consumer insight to build efficiency and drive innovation. 

9. …and its presence will also be felt in the kitchen: Consumers and chefs will increasingly lean into AI for recipes and healthy decision-making as the use of AI in corporate and consumer kitchens will accelerate to be used, increasingly, in cooking techniques and ingredient substitutions. AI will also become more commonplace in quality control, especially in restaurants, to ensure all meals meet the same high standard.

10. Investment in agri/food tech will restart after a lengthy pause: More support around food innovation will reignite private and venture capital investment in agri/food tech, which had been stagnant over the past couple of years. PitchBook noted in its Q1 2024 Agtech Report that global venture capital investments in the agtech industry dropped to a six-year low in Q1 of 2024, but there have been positive signs heading into 2025 that the investment market is set to rebound with multi-billion-dollar investments in agri-food transformation from organizations and governing bodies that will inspire venture capital and private-equity firms to recommit to the tech startup community.