Lindsey Cunningham

"Take four letters, put it in a string, and you have a new cannabinoid." We explore product formulation on a previous episode of High Functioning. Adam Terry or Cantrip defines a THC drink. The market standard is Delta 9 THC. Consumers want authentic products. Transparent ingredients build trust. What do you look for in a beverage? Check the first comment for the full episode link. 👇

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Is 2026 the year of tallow maxxing? I sure hope not. But that's the prediction of Prima Ancestral Protein Bars, one of many new snack brands positioning beef tallow as a superfood. It's not -- and that's my biggest beef (pun intended) with this trend. RFK, Jr. may have helped ignite the anti-seed oil narrative, but now snack companies are jumping on the beef tallow bandwagon in a big way. Prima calls beef tallow "nature's most nutrient-dense ingredient" and leans into grandma-core nostalgia, positioning the bars as ancestral real food eaten before industrialism corrupted out food supply. No refined sugar is a big claim, yet the bars contain 10g of added sugar from raw honey. The company declares "join the fight against fake food" and "get back to real food," but let's hope these highly processed bars are not what consumers are going to embrace as real food. Similarly, Vaca beef tallow-fried tortilla chips boasts about being real food: "Our chips aren't just snacks, they're a return to real food without the junk seed oils, weird chemicals or fake flavors that flood the shelf." Claims about beef tallow are incredibly exaggerated, such as being high in vitamins A, D, E and K. Beef tallow is high in saturated fat, but contains only negligible amounts of these fat-soluble vitamins. And all of these companies get the story wrong about seed oils. This is a trend I don't like to see gain traction. Chips fried in beef tallow are still chips. Swapping seed oils for beef tallow doesn't transform a processed snack into "real food."

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I have written a lot lately about protein and where the category is heading. This deal is another data point worth paying attention to. Second Nature Brands, the PE-backed snacking platform behind Brownie Brittle, Sahale Snacks and Voortman, just agreed to acquire Tillamook Country Smoker. Tillamook generates more than $175 million in annual sales and makes clean-label zero-sugar jerky, beef sticks and sausages. This is Second Nature's first move into protein snacks. The category numbers explain why. Dried meat snack sales excluding jerky rose 10.7% to $3.3 billion in 2024. PepsiCo entered this year with Good Warrior. Chomps, Jack Link's Protein Snacks and Archer Meat Snacks are all scaling. The category has gone from a niche better-for-you play to one of the most competitive aisles in the store in a very short window. For Second Nature, Tillamook gives them a platform in a category with real consumer tailwinds. For CapVest, the PE firm backing Second Nature, this is the roll-up playbook working exactly as designed. Buy castoffs and undermanaged brands, add distribution muscle and retail relationships, and let the category growth do some of the work. The harder question is whether clean-label meat snacks can hold their positioning as the category gets crowded with scaled players. Full article: https://lnkd.in/gvsRjjzQ

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https://lnkd.in/gSQxk8Jv Great post by Elizabeth Parker Kuhn! Stoked to see brands like Lucky Energy expanding into on-the-go formats with purpose-built energy gummies that meet real life occasions, not just impulse buys. What’s exciting here isn’t just the format shift, it’s how better-for-you fundamentals (clean ingredients, functional blends, fiber plus caffeine) are starting to drive product innovation in energy and snacking alike. As consumer expectations for transparency and reduced #addedsugar continue to rise, clean label sugar reduction isn’t a trend, it’s the bottom line for product relevancy and long-term growth. That shift rewards companies who invest in ingredient science and formulation excellence rather than artificial shortcuts. This plays right into why teams like ours at Icon Foods are laser-focused on natural #sugaralternatives and formulations that hit sensory expectations and nutrition targets without compromise. Props to the industry for leaning into better ingredients and smarter sweetening, the future of functional eats and drinks is clean, not loaded.

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