The world’s food and drink industry descended en masse last week on Cologne, Germany for one of the industry’s largest events: Anuga.

As well as boasting 6,800 exhibitors from more than 100 countries, the event saw 160,000 visitors pass through the doors of the Koelnmesse exhibition centre. To put that figure in context: if Anuga was a city, it would be the 50th largest in Germany, just behind nearby Leverkusen.

With numbers like this it’s no surprise the products on show aranged from the sublime to the ridiculous, with many being both at once. Along with brands scrambling for a share of categories that are now well established in the UK, such as coconut water, the event featured plenty of fresh approaches to more cutting-edge trends – with functional breakfast products, free-from options and low-sugar drinks proliferating.

Alongside these were the truly blue-sky ideas that make food and drink such an exciting industry to work in. Chicken ice cream, anyone? Or a drop of algae in your soft drink?

Here is our selection of the products you might be seeing on supermarket shelves in years to come. See here for some of the drinks that caught our eye.