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Mintel releases its global food and drink trends for 2025

Heading into 2025, Mintel has identified four key trends that food and beverage brands will need to keep their eyes on to stay competitive. We explore these four trends.

The trends relate to the shifting concept of "Food as Medicine"; breaking food norms and embracing imperfections; transparency around the disrupted food supply chain; and the growing partnership needed between technology and agriculture to address this.

The 2025 trends, according to Mintel are driven by dualities, which are reflected in consumers' contradictory decisions.

On the one side, consumers seek sustainable, healthy options, but on the flip side, they also indulge in convenience, push back against rigid food and beverage rules, and seek out innovation.

To balance tradition with innovation, Mintel explains that brands will need to tread carefully, utilising clarity, authenticity, and trust to keep consumers engaged.

The three over-arching contradictions shaping the 2025 trends include health vs indulgence; local vs global; and traditional farming vs high-tech farming.

These complexities are at the heart of the four key trends identified by Mintel and are something the company believes brands will need to keep on their radars to stay competitive in 2025.

Trend # 1: Fundamentally nutritious

The concept of "Food as Medicine" is fundamentally shifting due to the emergence of GLP-1 weight-loss medications, such as Ozempic and Wegovy. This shift is changing consumers' perceptions of the connection between health and food.

Where consumers used to turn to functional ingredients as "food as medicine", now as GLP-1s gain attention, Mintel predicts consumers' focus will shift toward foods that address daily nutritional needs, in particular products that offer satiety and are packed full of essential nutrients. In addition, simplified claims that focus on protein, fibre, vitamin, and mineral content will appeal to these consumers.

Looking forward, Mintel believes consumers will be increasingly interested in personalised nutrition and will turn their attention towards products with a balance of macronutrients – carbohydrates, protein, and fat – presenting opportunities for brands to highlight fibre and protein claims alongside macronutrient statistics.

In addition, blood sugar and hormone health, two metrics crucial to the way GLP-1s work in the body, are expected to receive increased interest from consumers, leading to a higher demand for low-glycaemic options and products that address hormone-related issues.

Trend # 2: Rule rebellion

According to Mintel, this trend is all about embracing imperfections.

Consumers may have the intention to pick the most nutritious options and cook all their meals at home, from scratch, using a range of fresh and organic ingredients, but in reality, intention and actual behaviour are not always aligned.

Mintel believes we will witness more rule-breaking behaviour when it comes to food. Breaking a food norm, is, for example, choosing indulgence over perfection. Over one-third of German consumers adhere to this ethos, eating something indulgent, like dessert, every day.

Leaning into consumers' desires for indulgence and imperfect choices is something brands can support by creating products that enable food and drink rules to be broken. By offering unconventional products brands can help consumers feel validated in their “imperfect” choices.

There are also opportunities for brands to play a role in consumers' identity: half of US consumers feel that certain brands help them express themselves. To achieve this, brands can experiment with novel textures, flavours, and aromas to provide unconventional food experiences.

Rule-breaking innovation could also come in the form of sustainable rebellion, where brands can explore unfamiliar sustainable ingredients, such as lemna or seaweed, to appeal to the consumer looking for rebellious but still innovative options.

Brands can also take a step further into rule-breaking territory by addressing and discussing less-talked-mental health issues in their products.

Trend # 3: Chain reaction

The supply chain is no longer a behind-the-scenes part of food production. As companies across the global food supply chain grapple with disruptions due to more frequent geopolitical and environmental challenges, consumers are also confronted with the reality of these disruptions and their impact on increasing food prices, and consequently consumer grocery choices.

The "chain reaction" trend emphasises the need for brand transparency around sourcing adjustments and to help consumers embrace new origins, ingredients, and flavours.

On the flip side, consumers also want transparency about where and how their food is produced. For example, 70% of coffee drinkers in France want to be informed about how growing conditions impact the flavour of their brew.

Food self-sufficiency and local sourcing may be the goal for many nations, but consumers are more likely to prioritise availability and are more concerned with getting the products they want at the time they need them.

Looking forward, Mintel predicts supply chain disruptions are likely to remain, and it will be the brand's responsibility to transparently communicate these challenges to consumers.

One option for brands is turning to alternative ingredients. Mintel used the example of olive oil, and how production is increasing in countries like Peru and Algeria to compensate for the dwindling supplies in Mediterranean countries that are currently experiencing droughts.

Mintel suggests highlighting and communicating to consumers how these sourcing choices fit into the shifting dynamics of the supply chain.

Trend #4: Hybrid harvests

Consumers concern about the environment is ever-increasing, as is the demand for a stable food supply.

Technology and agriculture will increasingly work hand in hand to address this, something which consumers are still coming to grips with – often wary about the role technology plays in creating, modifying, and producing the very foods they are expected to eat.

To get consumers on board, brands will need to bridge this gap, communicating and showing consumers how, rather than replacing nature, technology can enhance it.

There is, for example, an increasing burden on farmers who are expected to meet both food production demands and reduce their environmental impact. By communicating and educating consumers on how technology can assist in closing this gap and the benefits it can bring, brands can act as intermediaries, slightly lifting the burden off farmers.

Once brands have built a reputation for themselves as trustworthy educators, Mintel notes there is more room for them to integrate technology into their products, with backing from consumers. When communicating the benefits of the technology to consumers, Mintel suggests focusing first on taste, enhanced nutrition or consistent supply, and second, the environment.