Reformulation, health concerns lead innovation in key APAC staples - In-depth analysis
05/03/2025 (Food Navigation Asia) - Major APAC staple food categories from rice to vegetable oil are seeing innovation efforts being driven by consumer demands for reformulation, healthier substitutions, and sustainability concerns.
Staple foods such as rice, edible oil, sugar and salt are amongst the most traditional food categories in the food industry, with innovation having been limited over the years until recently when health and wellness became a major priority for consumers.
Even so, innovation in this sector has not been the most advanced or rapid, especially wen compared to other sectors such as snacks and beverages.
For grains such as rice and wheat, this has largely been focused much higherup the supply chain and far out of the consumer eye, such as the development of more climate-resistant rice variants, or pest-resistant wheat variants, efforts which can take years to culminate in tangible results for the food system.
That said, there have been areas in this space which have made breakthroughs- or comebacks, in the case of millets in India – and innovation has been taking place at a much higher rate than others.
“Rice and wheat are important crops, but are also very commercialised crops and we now know they are not the most sustainable in terms of water utilisation in farming,” India’s Yellow field Organics Managing Director Garvit Raj Patodia told
Food Navigator-Asia
“Rice had been our main grains business for a very long time, but we believe that there are other crops available which have enormous potential to substitute wheat and rice as staple foods both in India and other markets, such as millets.
“Millets can play an important role in food supply chain as this substitute, as they can be used to make noodles, pasta, bakery products and more, so product innovation is just at the beginning in this area and growing very fast as opposed to rice where innovation is quite rare.
“In addition to application, millets also have a much higher protein and fibre content as well as lower glycaemic index, so can also make enormous contributions in the food system from a nutritional perspective.”