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When we announced that Future Food Asia would rebrand as Future Fit Asia, the responses came quickly. Some were enthusiastic. Many were curious. A few were sceptical. We thought the most useful thing we could do is answer the questions we've actually been getting. |
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"ARE YOU MOVING AWAY FROM FOOD?" |
No. Food remains central to everything we do. What's changed is the recognition that food cannot be addressed in isolation. The systems that produce what we eat also determine soil health, water quality, biodiversity, and increasingly, human health outcomes. Future Fit Asia reflects that expanded scope. |
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"SO NOW IT'S ALL ABOUT DRUG DEVELOPMENT AND GLP-1?" |
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Not quite. The interest in metabolic health and therapeutics is real, and it's a conversation we're actively part of. Our focus remains on the intersection of food, health, and environment—which means healthtech and biotech are firmly in scope where they connect to how people eat, age, and live. What sits outside our remit is pharmaceutical development for its own sake. The distinction matters: we're interested in the systems that keep people healthy, within which the concept of “food as medicine”, not the treatments for when those systems have already failed. |
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"WHAT DOES 'FUTURE-FIT' ACTUALLY MEAN?" |
It means systems—food, health, environmental, biotechnology—that are designed to support longer, healthier lives while remaining resilient to climate and economic shocks. It's a deliberately integrated framing, because the evidence increasingly suggests that siloed approaches to these problems aren't working – and at times are the ones causing these problems. |
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"WHAT DOES 'FUTURE-FIT' ACTUALLY MEAN?" |
It means systems—food, health, environmental, biotechnology—that are designed to support longer, healthier lives while remaining resilient to climate and economic shocks. It's a deliberately integrated framing, because the evidence increasingly suggests that siloed approaches to these problems aren't working – and at times are the ones causing these problems. |
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"WHY TOXICITY? THAT FEELS LIKE A NICHE CONCERN." |
It's not. Chemical toxicity is accumulating in food, soil, water, and the human body. Its links to chronic disease, ecosystem decline, and reduced agricultural productivity are well-documented. It has simply received far less policy attention and investment capital than climate change, despite representing a comparable systemic risk. We see this gap not just as a risk, but as one of the most underexplored opportunities for innovation and capital deployment in the years ahead. |
That's precisely why it's a focus for 2026—and why the Grantham Foundation Detox Awards are offering USD 90,000 in non-dilutive funding for solutions targeting toxicity in human and natural systems, open to both startups and academic teams. |
