Rather than banking on the next consumer-facing food brand or trend, this year’s Mars-Unreasonable cohort is focused on technologies that could reshape how food is formulated, produced, tested and packaged.
The program connects growth-stage ventures with Mars executives, mentors and investors with Unreasonable’s food-tech startup network to help scale solutions across food sectors, including nutrition, ingredients, food safety, circularity and supply chain resilience.
Mars said the first 2024 Unreasonable Food cohort reported nearly $200 million in additional revenue, prevented 140,000 tons of CO2e, conserved 310 million liters of water and sold 1.14 million kilograms of food after entering the Mars-Unreasonable program.
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Now in its third year, Mars and Unreasonable selected 13 emerging global companies from the US, UK, Netherlands, France, Portugal and India. The cohort mirrors a wider shift in food-tech investment from finished products toward technologies that support food manufacturing and supply chains.
“The 2026 cohort builds on the work of the two previous cohorts, with a strategic focus on gut health, nutrition and ingredient innovation, protein, data and wellness platforms, food safety and circularity,” according to Mars.
Food’s next frontier: Health, resilience and circularity
One of the first members of this year’s cohort, Lasso Labs, addresses one of the biggest challenges in alternative proteins: texture.
Lasso says it can produce a meat-like texture by spinning ingredients into fibers like the way sugar is spun into cotton candy. The company’s process aims to give foods meat-like textures without additives or high-heat processing.
The next company in the cohort, Nutrition from Water, grows microalgae in fermentation tanks to produce powdered proteins for the dairy industry at three times lower the cost, according to the company. Its MWG marine protein powder is neutral and flavorless and contains protein and fiber for bakery applications. Also neutral in flavor, MW50 is a replacement to sodium caseinate and can be used across applications. MW70 Plus is designed for functional nutrition applications.
Amid food recalls across the globe, the third company in the cohort, Spore Bio’s AI-based technology, detects contamination in manufacturing facilities in minutes versus days. Last year, the company raised $23 million to integrate machine learning to its microbiology testing. Its technology uses wavelengths to illuminate a sample and create a spectral signature, and the machine learning algorithm can detect bacteria or pathogens thanks to Spore’s partnership with Pasteur Institute’s bank of bacteria samples.
The final company in the cohort tackles one of the most difficult materials to recycle: Multilayer plastics. Without’s technology turns mixed textiles, multi-layer plastics and colored PET into durable, industrial plastics used for other products like electronics, appliances and equipment, among others. this could be a better place for a climate smart plug
