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ZOE enters retail with fiber bars, Zevia secures $20M, UPF labelling could cost industry $14B, and German consumers distrust novel foods.
ZOE is taking gut health science off your phone and onto the snack shelf — and a $14B UPF labelling threat could redefine how functional food brands talk about their products. Today's four stories are essential for any health brand operating in Europe or the better-for-you space.
In this episode:
The Health Marketing Daily is a concise briefing for marketers and founders in supplements, functional food and consumer health, hosted by Marco & Klara. New episode every day.
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Also from Marco & Klara: The FMCG Marketing Daily · The Digital Commerce Daily
The daily briefing for professionals in health, nutrition, and wellness marketing. Every episode covers an ingredient of the day, the latest science and regulatory updates from EFSA and beyond, and the brand and market moves shaping the nutraceutical industry. Hosted by Klara and Marco — evidence-based, no hype, no bro-science. Built for formulators, brand managers, regulatory affairs teams, and anyone building in the health and nutrition space.
Marco: Four stories worth your full attention today.
Klara: ZOE steps off the app and onto the shelf with a fibre bar.
Marco: Then we look at why ultraprocessed food labelling could hand industry a fourteen-billion-dollar headache.
Klara: German consumers are sounding the alarm on novel foods — and that matters enormously for European launches.
Marco: And Zevia pulls in twenty million dollars to stage a comeback.
Klara: Let's get into it.
Marco: ZOE has crossed from your phone screen into the snack aisle — and the industry should pay close attention.
Marco: Most people know ZOE as the gut microbiome nutrition app that shot to prominence during the pandemic. It built a loyal, paying subscriber base by offering deeply personalised dietary guidance backed by real research. That foundation of scientific credibility is exactly what makes this next move interesting.
Marco: ZOE has launched a range of fibre bars now landing in retail snack aisles. This takes them from a subscription digital health model into the functional food category — one of the most competitive shelves in European grocery right now. Fibre is booming. Gut health is consistently one of the top purchase drivers for European consumers, and brands are scrambling to own that space.
Marco: From a commercial perspective, this is close to a perfect brand extension. ZOE already has a data-rich, highly engaged audience that trusts their nutritional guidance. Selling them a physical product requires almost no persuasion. The hard work — building credibility — was already done.
Klara: I'd slow down there slightly. Trust earned through a diagnostic app doesn't automatically transfer to a packaged food product. EFSA — the European Food Safety Authority — has strict rules on what health claims can appear on food packaging. Saying a bar "supports gut health" isn't straightforward. Fibre does have authorised claims in Europe, specifically around digestive function, but the wording matters enormously and the formula has to back it up.
Marco: That's a fair regulatory checkpoint. But if ZOE gets the compliance right, they have something most snack brands spend years trying to manufacture — a ready-made, science-literate customer base. The tech-to-food pipeline could become a genuine template for functional food brand-building across Europe.
Klara: Worth watching very carefully.
Marco: Now, let's move to our next story.
Klara: New research puts a price tag on ultraprocessed food labelling — and it's enormous.
Klara: The term "ultraprocessed" refers to foods made through industrial processes using ingredients rarely found in a home kitchen — think emulsifiers, synthetic flavourings, and protein isolates. The most widely used classification system is called NOVA, which sorts foods into four groups based on how heavily they've been processed. Regulators across Europe are increasingly looking at frameworks like this as a basis for mandatory front-of-pack labelling.
Klara: A new study estimates that mandatory ultraprocessed food labelling could cost the food and beverage industry up to fourteen billion dollars a year globally. That covers reformulation costs, relabelling, and lost sales. In Europe, this isn't hypothetical. The EU's Farm to Fork strategy — the bloc's roadmap toward sustainable, healthier food systems — has flagged processed food labelling as a policy priority. The UK, France, and Germany all have active political momentum behind UPF regulation.
Klara: The number that worries me most isn't fourteen billion. It's the definitional gap. Under NOVA, protein bars, fortified drinks, and fibre products — including functional snacks from brands positioning themselves as health-forward — could easily be classified as ultraprocessed. That's a direct collision between a brand's health claim messaging and a regulatory label calling the same product ultraprocessed.
Marco: Commercially, that's a crisis scenario for a large chunk of the functional food market. Brands have spent years building credibility on ingredient quality and science-backed positioning. A mandated UPF label could undo that overnight on shelf.
Klara: The sensible move right now is an honest audit — ingredients, processing methods, the lot — before regulators define your product for you.
Marco: Our next story is up.
Marco: A new German survey sends a clear warning to any brand banking on novelty as a selling point.
Marco: Germany is the largest consumer market in Europe. If you want EU-wide reach for a novel food product, Germany is effectively the gateway. Getting regulatory approval from the EU is one thing — getting German consumers to actually buy is another matter entirely.
Marco: Lebensmittelzeitung has published survey data showing that a substantial share of German consumers are sceptical or outright distrustful of novel foods. That category — defined under EU novel food regulation as ingredients not widely consumed in Europe before 1997 — covers lab-grown meat, precision-fermented proteins, and ingredients like NMN, which has been the subject of novel food applications across the bloc. The distrust is broad, and it's commercially significant beyond Germany's borders because sentiment here shapes how retailers across the EU stock and position these products.
Klara: This data doesn't surprise me at all. EU novel food approval is a rigorous safety assessment — EFSA scrutinises the evidence thoroughly before anything gets the green light. But a clean safety dossier tells consumers nothing about where something comes from, how it's made, or why they should trust it. Those are communication gaps, not regulatory ones. Brands arriving in Germany with novel ingredients need a transparency strategy, not just a compliant label.
Marco: My read is slightly different. I think the deeper problem is that many novel food brands lead with the technology — "precision fermentation," "cultivated protein" — when German consumers want provenance and purpose. The innovation story needs to come second. The trust story has to come first.
Klara: That's the harder work, and most brands aren't doing it.
Marco: Let's move to our final story for today.
Klara: Zevia has just secured a twenty million dollar investment to fund a strategic turnaround — and the story behind that funding round is worth unpacking carefully.
Klara: Zevia built its entire brand identity on stevia-sweetened, zero-calorie sodas at a time when most fizzy drinks were loaded with sugar or synthetic sweeteners. It was early to the better-for-you drinks space, which earned it a loyal following. The problem is that the category it helped create has now exploded — and Zevia hasn't kept pace.
Klara: The twenty million comes from GP Investments and will be directed at product diversification and distribution expansion. Those two things — range depth and shelf reach — are precisely where Zevia has fallen behind competitors like Olipop and Poppi, who've built strong momentum in the US and are increasingly visible to European buyers watching where the functional drinks market is heading.
Klara: What I find instructive here is the ingredient story. Stevia has EFSA-authorised use as a sweetener in Europe, so there's no regulatory barrier to bringing Zevia-style positioning across the Atlantic. The issue is that "no sugar, plant-based sweetener" is no longer a point of difference. Every major drinks brand now makes that claim. Clean ingredient credentials got Zevia into the conversation — they didn't keep it competitive.
Marco: That's the core tension. Zevia was a pioneer, but pioneering a category doesn't mean you own it forever. Distribution discipline and taste iteration are what convert early credibility into durable market share. The brands winning right now didn't just lead with health — they nailed the flavour experience and locked up retail space fast.
Klara: For European wellness drink brands, that's the real lesson from this funding round. Health positioning is the entry ticket. Everything else decides whether you stay in the game.
Marco: Today's through-line is simple — trust is the only currency that actually converts, whether you're launching a snack bar, redesigning a label, or pitching investors.
Klara: And trust, in this industry, is built on claims you can defend and ingredients you can prove.
Marco: The brands that understand both will own this space.