Food Matters Live Podcast

About Food Matters Live Podcast

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 (https://www.foodmatterslive.com).

Publisher

Food Matters Live

Category

arts · health & fitness · technology

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

27 Mar 2019

Latest episode

12 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

1 of 633 episodes have a transcript.

1. 

   12 Oct 2026

   631: Botanicals - the case for ingredients that do more with less

   If you handed a consumer two products - one with 18 ingredients and one with 6 - they already know which one they’d choose. But here’s the more interesting question: what if the product with fewer ingredients didn’t just look better, but performed better? That’s the argument at the heart of this episode of the Food Matters Live podcast, recorded live at our event in London's Olympia. Clean label has largely been framed as a removal exercise, but often that leads to having to add something else in. Daniel Jones, Head of Food and Beverage at Blue Sky Botanicsis argues it makes more sense to choose better ingredients in the first place, ones that bring flavour, function and fibre simultaneously, without the downstream cascade of additions. In this context, we learn about the baobab, a fibre-rich African superfruit that also delivers mouthfeel, viscosity and system stability. Daniel also makes the case for elderflower as a masterclass in what gets lost when you isolate compounds: there are 148 identifiable flavour compounds in an elderflower, and extracting each individually produces wildly different results. But if you extract the whole plant naturally, it tastes of elderflower.

2. 

   5 Oct 2026

   630: Women's nutrition and the potential role of microalgae

   Seven out of ten women say they want to improve their nutrition. The problem isn't knowledge or even willingness, it's time, mental bandwidth and a food system that makes consistently hitting nutritional targets genuinely difficult. And for women, that target is moving all the time. Nutritional requirements shift across the monthly cycle, through pregnancy, perimenopause and beyond, meaning the standard one-size nutritional recommendation built largely on male data is, at best, a starting point. At worst, it's masking a persistent micronutrient gap that shows up as fatigue, brain fog, poor concentration or even just feeling cold, and gets dismissed as a lifestyle problem when it's actually a nutritional one. In this episode of the Food Matters Live podcast, made in partnership with Arborea (https://arborea.io/), three experts from the company make the case that microalgae could be a quiet but significant part of the answer. We learn about the biochemistry of why minerals such as iron and magnesium and vitamins such as D and B so critical for women specifically, why nutrition is not just what's on the label but what survives processing and can actually be absorbed by your cells, and why uniquely cultivated microalgae may be what it actually takes to get these micronutrients in a bioavailable form into foods that people want to eat. The Arborea team bring the science to life and into the real world, explaining how their technology can be used to produce clean microalgae at scale. Guests: Karen Stetter, Senior Research and Development Programme Manager, Arborea Ulliana Sampaio, Senior Product Development Scientist, Arborea Estelle Alexandre, Business Development team, Arborea Arborea Arborea uses its patented Biosolar Leaf™ technology to capture and convert carbon dioxide into controlled, highly nutritious, natural food ingredients. It uses sunlight for the industrial photosynthesis and extraction of microalgaeon barren, non-fertile land and thus with zero deforestation and no loss of biodiversity. The consistent micro-environment in this contained process ensures uniquely controlled taste and nutritional content. The process is easily scalable, without requiring expensive fermentation tanks, open ponds, internal photobioreactors, pressurised gases, and without risk of any cross-contamination from heavy metals or organic toxins. Example products include : BioSolar Spirulina™ bioactive nutrient concentrates rich in iron, magnesium and vitamins but without the ‘fishy’ or ‘earthy’ aftertaste of traditional microalgae production methods NOvo Protein™, a white, neutral tasting, water-soluble, multi-functional ingredient nutritious protein suitable for any easily incorporated into any food product Pure Blue™ spirulina extract food colouring. Find out more at arborea.io (https://arborea.io/)

3. 

   28 Sept 2026

   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 (http://foodmatterslive.com)

Inside a recent episode

79: Plastic reduction in a post-COVID world

Published 1 Oct 2020 · Transcript excerpt

[…] I think a lot of these were delivery drivers. I was seeing gloves near large depots, for example. If there's anything that's going to happen, I think now is that there'll be hopefully a move away from the single -use disposable PPE masks and the like to go to more reusable ones. And again, that becomes a custom practice. But I think overall, we've definitely lost momentum, and the pollution risk has definitely changed from what would have been on the go food and drink to now the PPE. And the question is, when things settled down, if we go through a second wave, then, you know, we might get a resurgence of disposable masks being found on the streets more. […]

Who has been a guest on Food Matters Live Podcast

Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.

• Industry experts
• Dieter Cendon
• Melanie Sturm
• Mark Evans
• Dr Rodrigo Ledesma-Amaro

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

YouTube views

188,001

Score snapshot 15 Sept 2025

Apple Podcasts (US)

4.2 / 5

5 ratings

Spotify

4.8 / 5

26 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 71 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

71

Social presence

0

YouTube

86

Engagement

92

Contact Food Matters Live Podcast

Guest appearances

Does not typically book guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.

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Questions about Food Matters Live Podcast