NC Food Innovation Lab sent a strong team – joining thousands of food scientists, industry leaders and food innovators – to the 2025 IFT FIRST Annual Event & Expo, the largest global food science and innovation expo, held in Chicago in July. 

Executive Director Bill Aimutis, Director Julie Mann, Operations Manager Joe Hildebrand and Senior Food Scientist Lisa Sand shared some of their event takeaways and observations.

The Big Hits 

1. AI Accelerates: IFT launched CoDeveloper, an AI-powered R&D platform built by IFT food scientists, to accelerate innovative formula development by pulling from IFT’s 85+ years of research and content. The NCFIL team also saw Simulacra, an AI platform impacting how research is conducted. 
2. Clean Labels Lead: Clean labels continue their reign as what consumers seek. Clean processes and ingredient transparency moves to center stage as the ultra-processed foods movement, which focuses on the health and environmental impact of food, persists. 
3. Protein Persists: Protein continues to be the number one “desired” consumer need, and companies are up for the challenge – producing more protein in more applications. Many sources on display at IFT FIRST were from dairy or plants; specifically, lupin and grain proteins were trending. 
4. Fantastic Fiber? Fiber is making a comeback. The resurgence can be partially attributed to consumer’s growing interest in healthier and more sustainable food options as well as the need for fibrous food products to complement the use of GLP-1 medications for weight management. 
5. Color Changes: The practice of color replacement in food products grows in response to the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement, led by Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. The goal is to remove color agents within food.
6. Cocoa Concerns: Cocoa replacement is an industry need, given the multiple issues in cocoa growing regions, including pests and disease, poor weather conditions, aging cocoa trees and decline in yields resulting in shortages. 
7. Women’s World: An evolving trend at this year’s expo was a women’s health focus, specifically on menopause and the consideration of diets and foods for naturally solving hormone imbalance. 

Team Observations 

1. Innovation: Despite known challenges with funding, the conference proved there still are a good number of new start-ups, which is a positive sign for the future. 
2. Atmosphere: The NCFIL team described the overall atmosphere as “tense” given the new administration and recent moves by the Department of HHS, including the MAHA Report on ultra-processed foods. 
3. Sustainability: It was clear to our team that upcycling – the use of edible food that would normally be discarded to create new food products – and sustainability are being more directly marketed as well as showing up more often in ingredient discussions. 

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