• 💉 Watch Supergut Speak About The “Ozempic Curious Consumer”
• 🥦 Flashfood Sets Up Shop In The Golden State
• 📝 Oobli Receives ‘No Questions’ Letter 
• 🧑‍💻 General Mills, Coke Support QR Code GMO Labels
• 🛒 Subway Rolling Out Sauces to Retail Shelves

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The halls of Expo West may now be empty, but our reporter’s notebooks are still brimming with insights and observations from those whirlwind few days in Anaheim. Our latest report highlights the evolution of nostalgia-driven innovation, textural developments in the plant-based egg space, oatmeal’s new, unexpected ingredients and more. Here’s a sample of what you’ll see:

✨ Nostalgia’s Newest Looks: Pops and Dunkaroos. Last year’s Expo brought plenty of s​​maller pack sizes and Uncrustables alternatives, and while mini snacks and sandwich-things were still on the scene this year, popsicles and Dunkaroos may have stolen the new-nostalgia portion of the show. 

Real Pops, Mauna Loa, Daily Harvest and others showed off clean-label, produce-forward frozen pops positioned for both kids and adults. In the shelf-stable set, brands like Kokada, Sunnie and Endangered Species Chocolate innovated with on-the-go sweet snack packs that embraced the classic dippable format. 

And the BFY push into kid-friendly formats is not a coincidence, at least according to Happy Wolf Snacks founder Jana Goodbaum. She believes that as Millennial parents have embraced the better-for-you-ification across grown-up grocery categories, they are now seeking similar options to feed their children and spearheading the cleaner label expansion to kid-centric categories.  

🍳 Plant-Based Brands Crack the Code on Egg Textures. A pair of exhibitors demonstrated new plant-based spins on eggs at Eggs-po West. (Sorry, we couldn’t resist).

Israeli startup Yo Egg introduced two SKUs, poached and sunny-side-up, both made with sunflower oil, soy and chickpea protein. The products were originally made for foodservice use but are now being shipped out grocery store freezer aisles.

Crafty Counter’s WunderEggs has mastered an Easter mainstay. The Austin, Texas-based brand debuted a deviled egg alternative and an eggless egg salad, both made with Fabalish’s vegan mayo. With newer formats entering the space, higher household penetration of plant-based eggs could be eggs-pected (OK, we promise, we’re done).

🥣 ChiChi Wants to Turn Oatmeal on Its Head. The long-standing staple breakfast category brought unexpected ingredients, single-serve innovation and better-for-you attributes to the show floor. Los Angeles-based ChiChi was just one exhibitor looking to fill whitespace, specifically with a  4-SKU lineup of protein-packed oatless, chickpea-based-meal.

Check out the full news roundup on Nosh. 

It’s not just you, everyone in CPG food and beverage is still talking about GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic. While large strategics decide whether to evolve with or pivot towards consumers using the drugs, Supergut has positioned itself at the epicenter of the pharma-diet trend. The brand was founded in 2019 as a gut-health focused supplement for weight loss and has found increased momentum as demand for GLP-1s grows. 

Nosh senior reporter Lukas Southard spoke with founder and CEO Marc Washington about how his products can be used in conjunction with, as an off-ramp from or even as a slightly less invasive (and cheaper) alternative to GLP-1 drugs.

Watch the full interview on Nosh now.

 Sweet protein platform Oobli announced today it has received a “no questions” letter from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its Oubli Fruit Sweet Protein, effectively deeming the sweetener generally recognized as safe (GRAS) for use in food and beverage. 

👀 The California-based food tech company produces a range of sweet teas and chocolates sweetened with its novel Oubli Fruit Sweet Protein, which the brand claims can replace 70% or more sugar in most food and beverages. 

🍫 Sweet proteins, derived from fruits primarily found in West Africa and other equatorial environments, are a class of proteins that deliver a sugar-like sweetness without impacting blood sugar, insulin, or the gut microbiome, according to Oobli.

💭 “Oobli is changing the future of sweetness through the use of sweet proteins as a replacement for traditional cane sugar and other alternative sweeteners,” said founder and CTO Jason Ryder in a statement. 

Food waste technology company Flashfood is partnering with Save Mart banners in the San Francisco Bay Area as it makes a bid to grow its grocery waste reduction mission in a region known for tech companies and progressive opinions towards food systems and climate change.

🛒 Flashfood is initially rolling its free app out with 44 Lucky’s stores and plans to expand to all 194 Save Mart stores (Lucky’s, Foodmaxx and Save Mart) in California and Nevada by the end of year.

💲 The Toronto, Canada-based tech platform launched in 2016 and aims to save food that would otherwise be thrown away by selling it at up to a 50% discount in branded lockers at select retailers. The system brings additional income to retailers and cost-savings to consumers.

😁 To date, the company claims to have saved 90 million pounds of food from landfills and brought more than $200 million in savings to consumers.

The Consumer Brands Association (CBA), a trade group representing General Mills and Coca-Cola, has requested that a Ninth Circuit appellate court maintain a federal label regulation that allows brands to use QR codes disclosures for products containing genetically modified ingredients. The trade group argues another change to the rule would cause a “significant disruption for industry and consumers alike.” 

⏪ The regulation took effect in 2022 and mandated that food producers must include a text, a symbol, or an electronic or digital link on-pack to indicate to consumers whether a product contains bioengineered ingredients.

🧑‍⚖️ Later that year, Northern California District Judge James Donato ruled that QR codes weren’t enough to meet GMO disclosure requirements after determining most shoppers wouldn’t be able to regularly access the information. However, he said the method could be used until the USDA came up with an alternative. 

📲 Invalidating digital GMO labeling options could instantly make “millions of packages of food” already on shelves non-compliant and threaten “consumers’ access to safe, nutritious and affordable foods,” the CBA claims. 

Catch Up Quick: Judge Rules QR Codes Alone Don’t Meet GMO Disclosure Requirement.

Subway has partnered with specialty foods manufacturer T. Marzetti Company to launch a line of bottled sauces in Walmart, Kroger and Albertsons stores nationwide next week. 

🧅 Inspired by “in-restaurant favorites,” varieties include Sweet Onion Teriyaki, Roasted Garlic Aioli, Baja Chipotle and Creamy Italian MVP, a twist on the sandwich chain’s MVP Parmesan Vinaigrette, according to Paul Fabre, SVP, Culinary and Innovation at Subway.

🥗 T. Marzetti Company has previously teamed up with restaurant brands Olive Garden, Buffalo Wild Wings and Chick-fil-A to develop licensed sauces and dressings for retail. 

💡 Trend alert: Fast-food and casual-dining operators are gaining entry into the grocery channel through partnerships with food manufacturers. Earlier this year, Taco Bell collaborated with Kraft Heinz Company to introduce Cravings Kits, and Wendy’s unveiled a canned chili product produced by Conagra Brands.