Started yesterday, May 5, and until May 8, trends and novelties land in Rho Fiera Milano from all over the world when it comes to food: food between health and hedonism, territorial roots and unthinkable reinterpretations, the need for speed and the search for slowness, apparent simplicity and real complexity, sustainability as a mantra.
A tour of the pavilions and booths of the event, which is bidding to become among the most important international agribusiness fairs, will be enough to learn about the global pantry that awaits us.
Tuttofood 2025 opened with the elite of Italian institutions, associations and food stakeholders-and from the approximately 5,000 exhibitors present rained reports of hundreds of new products from which it is possible to draw the trend lines of a sector that has taken on a key role in today’s society, at all latitudes: food now goes far beyond the satisfaction of a primary need of human beings, to encroach on the sociology of consumption, the philosophy of contemporaneity, and the culture of peoples to land significantly on corporate budgets and national GDPs.
According to Antonio Cellie, CEO of Fiere di Parma: “from the pavilions of the fairgrounds to the city where Tuttofood Week, our off-show, will be staged, one will have a distinct sense of breathing in the future that awaits our way of eating, anything but monotonous or predictable, rather varied and open to welcome stimuli that come from all latitudes and from Italy travel the world, without betraying the inspiration from territories and traditions, grafted, however, by healthy and user-friendly innovations.”
These range from the rediscovery of an ancient and healthy taste such as “smoking” – in sauces that combine Ligurian extra virgin olive oil and edible charcoal with light smoky notes, or single-serving snacks with smoked roasted almonds that seem to indicate precisely the trend toward rediscovering the ancient taste of “flavor of embers” -, to the “truffle trend” where the prized tuber marries with black salt to elegantly punctuate even a simple fried egg or glamorizes onion compote to give a new twist to everyday cooking, to single-portion cocoa-mint-truffle ice cream. And there’s no shortage of novelties for more traditional Italian foods such as oil and pasta, either: with numbered bottles of Puglia’s limited-edition extra virgin olive oil for the Jubilee and the ready-made carbonara sauce, which ensures performance up to par for those in a hurry but who don’t want to give up the most beloved taste of our traditional cuisine. Wandering around the stands it will be hard not to be attracted by the basil pesto and mozzarella di Bufala Campana DOP that combines the most celebrated flavors of Liguria and Campania. Emilia –Romagna appears in a sour-sweet key with raisins in Balsamic Vinegar of Modena IGP: soft grains soaked in cooked must give fruity notes and a slight acidity perfect on ice cream or yogurt. The south finds in Calabria an ambassador of the pork tradition with an Italian black pig prosciutto, knife-cut and packed in a modified atmosphere or vacuum packed on a innovative saucer made of fully recyclable kraft paper, ready to be brought to the table and enjoyed.
This type of packaging, the first in Italy, is a good example of another trend: packaging innovation that gives personality and new uses to products, such as the transparent sphere filled with dried porcini mushrooms that lends itself to become a fun Christmas gift idea or to decorate the tree in a gourmet way, or the beer from the luminous label-recalling LED label experiments-that lights up the bottle in the dark and turns the toast into an Instagram ritual–ready. An example of “smart packaging” increasingly sought after by the premium consumer.
Confirmed among the news is the trend healthy-fitness that prioritizes protein but makes it smart for quick meals out of the house, at work, at the gym or at aperitif time, with 20-gram bresaola bars weighing only 58 kilocalories; the Salumette soft bars of prosciutto or smoked South Tyrolean speck; the Hot Salami Chips, dehydrated salami slices that answer the craving for chips with the protein power of cold cuts.
There is a growing trend in general related to the health and wellness world from a vegetarian or vegan perspective. A high-protein paste promises fourteen grams of protein per serving without betraying tightness when cooked; Natural Plant Protein cocoa powder enriches smoothies and bowls with essential amino acids; a plant mix –based that replaces the egg gives one hundred percent vegetable omelets, while eggless mayonnaise convinces even omnivores thanks to impeccable creaminess, on the wave of a demand for mayonnaise in vegan versions growing by more than 6 percent a year in Italy, according to Cognitive Market Research (data 2025). And plant-based fish is also making its debut as an alternative to plant-based meat.
Many products “ready-to-use”, which cater to Gen Z who don’t want to give up traditional flavors but don’t have the desire/time to cook, such as saffron spray or precooked fettuccine cacio e pepe or a product that not surprisingly by chance is called Zero Slam, which allows you to create desserts without the use of scales and other tools.
Also among the products from the world (see in this regard Pills from the World) we read a taste for experimentation as in mochi ice–matcha cream, already in vogue on American restaurant menus and now coming to the home freezer; edamame gyoza that combines street–food and lightness, while the almonds with wasabi become pungent spezzafame to be paired with a craft beer.
Territorial roots, truffle mania, gentle smoke, veg wellness–protein, globalization of taste and novel sensory experiences: that’s all from Tuttofood for now.
