Frost & Sullivan senior executives attend the High-Quality Development Conference on New Quality Productivity Empowering the Food Industry, interpreting the five major trends in innovation in new consumer categories, and exploring the new drivers for high-quality development in the food industry.
Frost & Sullivan senior executives attend the High-Quality Development Conference on New Quality Productivity Empowering the Food Industry, interpreting the five major trends in innovation in new consumer categories, and exploring the new drivers for high-quality development in the food industry.
Frost & Sullivan
On November 10, 2026, as a key national event during the 2026 National Food Safety Publicity Week, the 2026 Conference on the High-Quality Development of the Food Industry Empowered by New Quality Productivity was held in Xiamen, Fujian. The conference focused on the theme "Promoting the High-Quality Development of the Food Industry through High-Standard Food Safety Supervision," bringing together representatives from regulatory authorities, industrial enterprises, and research institutions to discuss topics such as food safety governance, technological innovation, industrial transformation, and healthy consumption, and to explore the pathways for new quality productivity to drive industrial improvement and upgrading.
Sullivan China’s senior partner and Managing Director, Zhang Gejian, was invited to attend the conference. During the “Moving Forward with ‘Quality’ – Promoting the High-Quality Construction of Healthy China” keynote session, he delivered the speech “Insights into Innovation Trends in New Consumer Products – Breakthroughs and Growth Driven by Dual Forces of Consumer Demand and Policy.” He began with changes in consumer demand and food innovation practices, systematically outlining five major trends: health-oriented, mood-enhancing snacks, new Chinese-style snacks, functional snacks, and flexible meals.
Ji Wei, a member of the Expert Committee of the State Council Food Safety Commission, and representatives from the National Health Commission, the State Administration for Market Regulation, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and the State Administration of Grain and Strategic Reserves, among other relevant entities, attended the opening ceremony and delivered speeches. At the ceremony, the attending leaders, from the perspectives of macro-policy and top-level design, deeply analyzed the key pathways to preventing and mitigating food safety risks, explained the necessary path for promoting the high-end and intelligent transformation of the food industry through new-type industrialization, and systematically discussed how standards and health can underpin the industrial foundation for the construction of Healthy China.
Ji Wei, a member of the Expert Committee of the State Council Food Safety Commission
Ji Wei, a member of the Expert Committee of the State Council Food Safety Commission, from the perspectives of law and public administration, thoroughly examined the boundaries between food safety and food quality. He pointed out that food safety is a fundamental compliance constraint, not the entirety of corporate compliance. Currently, it is necessary to clarify the relationship among the “safeguard bottom line, compliance core axis, and competitive frontline,” and guide enterprises to correct the misconception that “food safety is equivalent to compliance.” He emphasized that, in addition to strictly adhering to the safeguard bottom line, enterprises should also focus on multi-dimensional quality, building core competitiveness through the contract spirit and intellectual property protection. High-level supervision should encourage enterprises to shift from passive compliance to active innovation, and use legalized, refined regulatory services to support the high-quality development of the industry.
Health orientation has become the long-term core of snack innovation
Sullivan China’s senior partner and Managing Director, Zhang Gejian, delivered a keynote speech at the conference
In his speech, Zhang Gejian noted that consumers’ understanding of healthy food is shifting from “reducing burden” to “scientific nourishment.” Traditional demands for low sugar, low fat, and minimal additives remain important, but consumers are now more concerned about whether the nutritional balance is appropriate, whether the ingredients have clear value, and whether the food can combine taste and health experience.
This change drives snack companies to shift their R&D focus from simply removing components to “adding” precise nutrition, component optimization, and comprehensive efficacy. Around specific needs such as blood sugar control, gut health, and nutritional supplementation, products based on scientific evidence, transparent ingredients, and tailored to specific population characteristics are becoming an important direction for food innovation.
Zhang Gejian shares Trend 1: The Upgrading of Health-Conscious Consumption Perceptions and the Changing Paradigm of Snack Innovation
Mood-enhancing and scenario-specific offerings unlock new market opportunities for categories
With increasingly diverse consumer scenarios, the value of snacks is no longer limited to providing a quick meal or a taste experience. Mood-enhancing snacks offer immediate pleasure and psychological comfort through taste, flavor, packaging design, and ritualism; across various scenarios—commuting, office work and study, exercise, leisure, and family interaction—they also generate differentiated product needs such as portable supplies, low-burden enjoyment, and fun interactions.
Zhang Gejian believes that food companies should shift from “what products to sell” to “what consumer scenarios to meet,” and find a more precise combination among taste, nutrition, convenience, and emotional value, thereby promoting product innovation and the upgrade of the consumer experience.
Zhang Gejian shares Trend 2: Mood-Enhancing Snacks and Scenario-Based Consumer Innovation
New Chinese-style snacks reshape consumer value through cultural expression
The integration of national trend culture, intangible cultural heritage techniques, and regional characteristics is injecting new vitality into traditional food categories. Zhang Gejian points out that the innovation of new Chinese-style snacks should not merely lie in the visual presentation of traditional elements, but rather in combining local ingredients, classic flavors, traditional craftsmanship, and modern food processing technology, in a way that better aligns with contemporary consumers’ aesthetics and usage scenarios, resulting in products with cultural distinctiveness.
From the in-depth development of regionally distinctive foods to the fusion of classic IPs, nostalgic flavors, and youth-oriented packaging design, new Chinese-style snacks carry emotional identity and cultural belonging, as well as social sharing and gift attributes. The synergistic enhancement of cultural value and product quality holds the potential to help brands establish a differentiated competitive advantage.
Functional snacks evolve toward precise nutrition and technological innovation
As the concept of health management becomes integral to daily life, functional snacks are moving from a broad nutrition concept to a more specific targeting of population and demand. Related product forms are continuously expanding around protein supplementation, dietary fiber intake, and nutritional needs under different lifestyle rhythms; at the same time, biotechnological and food engineering technologies such as fermentation, enzymatic hydrolysis, and microencapsulation are creating more possibilities for raw material application, improved taste, and product stability.
Zhang Gejian states that the intersection of digital tools and nutritional science will promote food R&D toward more refined, scenario-based innovation. For enterprises, functional innovation must be built on food safety, compliant language, and scientific evidence, enabling them to win long-term consumer recognition through credible product quality.
Flexible meals are emerging, driving the integration of snacks and regular meals
The fast-paced lifestyle is changing traditional dietary structures. Consumers are no longer solely dependent on fixed three meals a day but instead choose small, convenient, and relatively balanced foods according to their schedule, physical needs, and consumer scenarios. Products such as high-protein bars, ready-to-eat light meals, nutritional milkshakes, and combinable meals reflect the parallel trends of “snacks becoming regular meals” and “regular meals becoming snacks”.
Zhang Gejian points out that flexible meals are fundamentally about addressing efficiency, nutrition, and personalized needs simultaneously. Food brands need to further optimize their product structure, supply chain organization, and channel adaptation capabilities, and create more everyday-friendly food solutions across diverse scenarios such as commuting, office work, fitness, and night-time consumption.
Promoting the high-quality development of the food industry through consumer insights and innovation capabilities
This speech begins with the health-conscious perception, emotional value, and lifestyle changes on the demand side, presenting the innovation space for the food industry in terms of raw materials, technology, product form, and brand expression. The five major trends collectively point in one direction: food companies need to provide safe and reliable products, as well as continuously improve nutritional quality, innovation efficiency, and consumer experience, in order to respond to the ever-changing market demands through differentiated supply.
Looking to the future, as technology advances, the food safety governance system improves, and health-consumption needs deepen, the food industry is expected to further accelerate the collaborative innovation between product R&D, production management, and market demand. Sullivan will continue to leverage its industry research and market insight capabilities, focusing on the integrated development of new technologies, new categories, and new scenarios, and providing research support for food companies to seize growth opportunities, enhance their core competitiveness, and promote the high-quality development of the industry.
In terms of local regulatory practices, Zhu Qinbing, a second-level inspector of the Hubei Provincial Market Administration, along with representatives from the market regulatory departments of Fujian, Henan, Qinghai, and Xiamen provinces, shared vivid practical experiences of using high-standard safety supervision to support local industrial innovation and high-quality development, offering valuable lessons for building a modern regulatory system. They stated that food safety is both produced and managed, and it must be based on high-standard food safety supervision, driven by new quality productivity, strengthened by standard-led leadership and deepened collaborative innovation, and effectively ensuring the “safety on the tip of the tongue” for the people, thereby fully empowering the food industry to improve quality and efficiency.
Conference venue
The participating representatives believe that the successful holding of the conference marks the start of the “15th Five-Year Plan” period for China’s food industry, sounding the clarion call for the comprehensive march toward high-quality development driven by new quality productivity. Seizing this historical opportunity of new quality productivity and accelerating technology-enabled empowerment and industrial integration will strongly facilitate the food industry’s transition to a new, more efficient, safer, and healthier stage, contributing to ensuring national food safety, supporting the construction of Healthy China, and enabling the people to realize their aspirations for a better life.
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