Brussels, 20 August 2026 — Europe’s food innovators are developing products that once seemed futuristic, from precision-fermentation-derived dairy products to cultivated meat and insect-based ingredients. Some of these products fall under the EU’s novel food framework, which requires safety assessment and authorisation before novel foods can be placed on the market. But a new report from the EIT Food Consumer Observatory, Trust in innovation: Between familiarity and fear, published ahead of World Entrepreneurs Day, finds that the next hurdle may not only be regulatory. It may also be human: consumers need to trust the food system before they are willing to accept unfamiliar food technologies.
The new EIT Food Consumer Observatory research, based on responses from around 20,000 European consumers, finds that Europeans are slightly more open to food innovation than in the past, but acceptance remains fragile without trust, transparency and cultural relevance. The report — the third chapter of EIT Food’s TrustTracker® series — shows that overall openness to innovative food products rose from 28% in 2024 to 31% in 2025. EIT Food is supported by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), a body of the European Union.
Trust appears to be one of the strongest factors shaping consumer openness. Among Europeans who trust the food system, 38% say they are open to innovation, compared with only 6% among those with low trust. The report suggests that consumers are more likely to consider new food technologies when they have confidence in the actors who develop, regulate, sell and communicate them.
At the same time, willingness to try several specific technologies fell between 2024 and 2025, particularly for innovations perceived as unfamiliar or disruptive, such as insect-based protein, precision-fermentation-derived dairy products and cultivated meat. According to the report, these technologies may clash with consumers’ cultural, personal or religious values, while emotional reactions such as unfamiliarity or disgust can also hold acceptance back.
Younger consumers remain the most open to innovation. Nearly two in five consumers aged 18–34 say they are open to new food products, compared with fewer than one in five among consumers aged 55+. However, the report suggests that trust, transparency and familiarity remain important across age groups, especially for innovations that are less familiar to mainstream consumers.
Health- and sustainability-oriented consumers are also more open to new food technologies, but only when trust is high enough. Among consumers with a strong intention to eat a healthy diet, 32% of those with high trust in the food system are willing to try new technologies, compared with 8% among those with low trust. A similar pattern appears among sustainability-oriented consumers, where willingness rises from 10% among low-trust consumers to 35% among high-trust consumers.
“Food innovation will only succeed if consumers trust the people and systems behind it,” says Klaus G. Grunert, Professor of Marketing at Aarhus University and Lead of the EIT Food Consumer Observatory. “The report shows that curiosity about innovation is increasing, but unfamiliar technologies still face significant barriers. To build acceptance, innovators need to move beyond technical explanations and show clearly how new foods are safe, useful, enjoyable and relevant to people’s everyday lives.”
The report suggests that food innovators, manufacturers and brands should focus on more than technical explanations of how new technologies work. To build acceptance, the findings point to the importance of humanising the innovation story, connecting science to people, values and purpose, and demonstrating everyday benefits such as taste, health, pleasure and relevance.
ENDS