Food and beverage iteration trend: from "zero additive" competition to the value redefinition of "healthy additives"

Ask AI · How can consumer demand drive the food industry from harm avoidance to profit-making?

(Tang Jiansheng is a senior expert in consumer insights and business analysis)

The Chinese food consumption market has undergone twenty years of development, completing a three-stage leap from “taste first” to “harm avoidance” and then to “proactive gains.” “Zero additives” once became the mainstream marketing logic by precisely addressing public health anxieties, but in the face of homogenization and internal competition, it has hit a development bottleneck. The arrival of the Food Consumption 3.0 era, centered on “healthy addition,” not only reconstructs consumers’ health perceptions but also shifts the food industry from a “plus-minus game” of ingredient lists to a deep transformation of underlying business logic, becoming the core direction for breaking through industry internal competition and seeking new growth curves. This article will analyze the key business insights behind this critical transformation from four dimensions: consumption iteration logic, industry pain points, core elements of new opportunities, and ultimate trends.

1. The three-stage iteration of food consumption: from “delicious” to “harmless,” then to “beneficial” — the underlying logic evolution

Every era change in food consumption is closely tied to the upgrading of national living standards, health awareness, and consumer demand. Industry trends always dynamically adjust around consumers’ core needs. The rise of “zero additives” and internal competition is an inevitable product and stage result of the Consumer 2.0 era.

(a) 1.0 era: Taste rules, additives aid industrialization

During the phase when material abundance replaced scarcity, consumers’ core demand for food was simply to satisfy their taste buds. “Delicious and satisfying” was the sole standard for judging food quality. This period was also the golden age of food industrialization. The widespread use of various food additives made snacks and beverages more flavorful and longer-lasting, perfectly matching consumer needs at the time. Consumers paid no attention to ingredient lists; industry competition focused on flavor innovation and market channel layout.

(b) 2.0 era: Health anxiety spurs “zero additives,” harm avoidance becomes the primary principle

As national living standards improved, food safety awareness fully awakened. The potential hazards of additives were repeatedly popularized, and food safety incidents continued to ferment. Consumers’ core demand shifted from “delicious” to “harmless,” making “harm avoidance” the primary principle for purchasing food. The public began to resist artificial additives like preservatives, flavorings, and colorings, and instinctively wary of incomprehensible ingredient lists. This health anxiety provided the soil for the birth and popularization of the “zero additives” concept.

Brands precisely targeted this demand, making “zero preservatives, zero flavorings, zero colorings” their core selling points, even falling into internal competition of “shorter ingredient lists is better,” reducing from five ingredients to three, trying to create a healthy label through simplicity. Undeniably, the popularization of “zero additives” pushed the industry to focus on raw material and process purity, filtering out some inferior products. However, once mythologized, it gradually became a marketing gimmick, giving rise to new consumer traps: some “zero additive” fruit drinks replace flavorings and colorings with fruit glucose syrup, leading to high glycemic index; puffed snacks without preservatives still high in oil and salt, appearing clean on the ingredient list but offering no real health benefits. More critically, to cater to the “zero additive” obsession, the industry even refrains from adding beneficial nutrients, falling into homogeneous internal consumption of “harmless but useless,” marking the end of the Consumer 2.0 era.

© 3.0 era: Post-pandemic health cognition upgrade, “healthy addition” becomes the new opportunity

In recent years, the public’s health awareness has undergone a fundamental upgrade. Consumers are no longer satisfied with the basic need of “not getting sick after eating,” but pursue active benefits — issues like gut discomfort and nutritional imbalance caused by takeout, sedentary lifestyles, etc., lead the public to hope that daily diet can genuinely improve physical condition and provide visible health gains.

The shift from “harm avoidance” to “benefit gaining” consumer logic has made “healthy addition” the new trend in the food industry. This trend is not just conceptual hype but a market-verified inevitable choice. Recently, a leading oat milk brand launched a high-fiber oat milk product, scientifically adding polydextrose to achieve at least 7.5g of dietary fiber per 250ml bottle, meeting 30% of the daily recommended intake for adults, with stable repurchase rates; yogurt brands add probiotics and prebiotics for gut health; staple food brands add dietary fiber to create low-GI products; leisure snacks upgrade to high-protein, high-fiber variants. The layout of top brands confirms the market potential of “healthy addition” and marks the official entry of the food industry into the 3.0 era centered on “nutritional gains.”

2. Industry pain points of “zero additives” internal competition: black-and-white consumer misconceptions and internal industry friction

The public’s extreme obsession with “zero additives” essentially falls into a black-and-white misconception that “shorter ingredient lists = healthier,” which not only leads consumers to pay higher prices for only psychological comfort but also causes multiple internal frictions, restricting innovation and development.

First, the lack of genuine health benefits for consumers:

Paying premiums for “zero additives,” consumers often only avoid artificial additives but do not solve core health issues like high sugar, high oil, and high salt, failing to achieve real nutritional supplementation. Their health needs are not truly met.

Second, innovation boundaries are restricted:

Brands focus all efforts on reducing ingredient list length rather than developing upgraded nutritional or functional products. Fearing longer ingredient lists will alienate consumers, they avoid adding beneficial health ingredients, leading to severe product homogenization and loss of core growth momentum.

Third, marketing outweighs actual product quality:

Some brands treat “zero additives” as the sole marketing point, neglecting the product’s nutritional attributes and quality, causing industry competition to drift away from core product value and into superficial concept battles, which is detrimental to long-term healthy development.

3. Core proposition of the 3.0 era: “Effective addition” is the soul of “healthy addition”

When the industry shifts from “zero additives” to “healthy addition,” it is not simply about adding more ingredients to the ingredient list but a comprehensive test of brand R&D capabilities and product quality control. Currently, 90% of functional health foods on the market fail to gain market recognition, mainly because they fall into the trap of “ineffective addition.” The true “healthy addition” in the 3.0 era emphasizes “effective addition” — meaning added nutrients must not only meet the health needs of the public but also reach effective doses, rather than just concept stacking.

From the perspective of national health status, over 90% of Chinese residents have insufficient dietary fiber intake, with an average of only 12.9 grams per day, far below the recommended 25-30 grams in the “Chinese Dietary Reference Intakes (2023).” Dietary fiber deficiency directly relates to common issues like gut health, weight management, and blood sugar control. This makes fiber supplementation a real health necessity. The success of high-fiber oat milk hinges on capturing this need and achieving effective fiber addition, allowing consumers to supplement nutrition through daily consumption.

Conversely, products that only add “a little” trendy nutrients and heavily market them, without reaching effective doses, merely harvest consumer health anxieties without generating sustained repurchase or market stability. Therefore, “healthy addition” competition fundamentally depends on brands’ precise insight into public health needs, scientific nutrient formulation, and product development execution. Only by truly achieving “effective addition” can brands break free from concept hype and gain long-term market recognition.

4. Ultimate industry trend: health integrated into daily life, creating highly adaptable consumer experiences

Looking at the development trend of the food industry, whether “zero additives” or “healthy addition,” products that truly gain consumer recognition and achieve long-term growth must align with everyday lifestyles. Many functional health products quickly rise and fall because they make health an “anti-daily” activity. The ultimate goal of “healthy addition” in the 3.0 era is to embed health value into daily routines like cooking, eating, and drinking, rather than turning health into a strenuous ritual.

The main pain points of “anti-daily” products are: 1) poor taste, hard to sustain long-term consumption; 2) high prices beyond average consumer budgets; 3) limited scenarios, only as occasional health supplements, not integrated into three meals a day. A successful “healthy addition” product must balance four core elements: effective nutrition, good taste, affordable price, and full-scene adaptability. Consumers should be able to achieve nutritional and health benefits naturally in daily scenarios like drinking oat milk, eating yogurt, or snacking, without changing their habits.

This implies that the ultimate competition in the food industry will return to “user experience.” Brands need to base their science-driven R&D on balancing functionality and consumer appeal — ensuring effective nutrient addition without sacrificing taste and cost-effectiveness; creating products that fit breakfast, afternoon tea, meal replacements, and other daily scenarios. Only by deeply integrating health into daily life can “healthy addition” evolve from a product selling point into a lifestyle, which is the core path for long-term industry growth.

5. Business insights for industry transformation: reconstructing the underlying logic from ingredient list addition/subtraction

The shift from “zero additives” internal competition to “healthy addition” rise is not merely about adjusting ingredient list components but a fundamental overhaul of business logic, offering important commercial insights for brand development.

First, consumer demand is the core driver of innovation. Brands must move beyond static perceptions and grasp dynamic upgrade trends:

Brands should not remain stuck in catering to past demands but must keenly sense changes in health cognition, shifting from “meeting existing needs” to “exploring potential needs,” from “passive harm avoidance” to “active benefits,” to seize new industry opportunities.

Second, product competition should return to core value, abandoning marketing gimmicks, and creating genuine health benefits:

Industry should shed ineffective “ingredient list length” battles, focusing R&D on scientifically adding nutrients and optimizing product functions. “Effective addition” should be the core to build product competitiveness, making health value the true selling point rather than superficial marketing.

Third, industry development must balance functionality and daily usability, creating sustainable consumer experiences:

Healthy foods are fundamentally “food,” inseparable from consumer habits and scenarios. Brands need to find a balance between functionality and daily use, integrating health addition into three meals a day, enabling a shift from “one-time purchase” to “long-term repurchase,” fostering sustainable growth.

Reflecting on twenty years of food consumption iteration, the rise of “zero additives” was an inevitable stage, establishing basic food safety and health awareness. The advent of “healthy addition” is a necessary progression under consumption upgrade. Behind this transformation lies consumers’ evolving understanding of health from “simple harm avoidance” to “scientific benefits,” and the industry’s upgrade from “concept competition” to “value competition.” In the future, brands that precisely grasp “effective addition” and embed health into daily life will hold a core advantage in the Food Consumption 3.0 era, guiding the industry toward a more scientific, healthier, and consumer-centric new stage.

First Financial’s exclusive first release, this article solely reflects the author’s views and does not constitute investment advice.

(This article is from First Financial)