The topic of next-generation nutrition is often linked to a future where diet and nutrition is personalised to each consumer, bringing individualisation to the next level.
However, experts believe that personalised nutrition is still a long way down the road in terms of feasibility, especially in a price-sensitive region such as Asia.
“A lot of the technology for personalisation does exist to some degree already, but the issue is that most of this comes at a high price point and cannot be depended on as solutions for the masses yet,” Singapore’s A*STAR Singapore Institute of Food and Biotechnology Innovation (A*STAR SIFBI) senior scientist Dr Germaine Yong said.
Dr Yong spoke to us after hosting a roundtable on ‘Next-Generation Food Solutions: Harnessing Sensory and Precision Nutrition for the Asian Consumer’ at the recent Future Food Asia (FFA) 2025 event in Singapore.
“The consensus really was that if we’re looking at a next-generation solution, the focus really needs to be on something that can reach more consumers across all levels of the market,” she said.
“We believe these must definitely be stratified across the different segments of society to meet different commercial appetites and prices.”
Stratified nutrition here refers to the design of dietary solutions that are tailored to specific population segments based on factors such as age, gender, socioeconomic status, lifestyle, and health needs.
It is considered the middle ground between status quo, one-size-fits-all meal options and fully personalised nutrition – and even this is not going to be easy to achieve.
“This alone is more easily said than done considering the widespread cultural differences across the region: for instance, South Korea has a lot of single, individual households that prioritise convenience and RTE options; whereas Singapore often has much larger family units with three generations, where the oldest generation plays a big role in cooking,” she said.
“So the consideration here would be, how can we find a middle ground within these stratified nutritional solutions that can work for their cultures, their lifestyles and their pockets to it is widely adopted.”
What is standing in the way of personalised nutrition?
AI and big data have been generally acknowledged as a key backbone to the end-game of providing consumers with personalised nutrition, but Dr Yong also highlighted that a lot more data interfacing and exchange needs to happen before any model can be ready.
“In the food industry, there are actually a lot of different datasets that would be so beneficial to the whole initiative – for instance, upstream food ingredient firms sit on a ton of data that is very informative and relevant such as ingredient interaction, rheology, sensorial perception and more,” she said.
“We also felt that it is critical to increase public education around personalised nutrition solutions and the potential of these to improve public health – and this sort of messaging really needs to come from the government, as it plays a big part in what the consumer thinks and trusts.”
Precision nutrition vs Personalised nutrition
- Precision nutrition: Stratified by group (e.g., middle-aged women, elderly, diabetic patients)
- Personalized nutrition: Tailored to the individual (N=1)
Localised nutrition for Asians
To top it all off, there is also a need to further account for localised biological differences between Asian consumers and western ones when developing any nutritional solutions.
“There is increasing consumer demand to acknowledge and address the fact that Asians are indeed biologically different, a need which has been seen across a lot of research done locally,” she added.
“These differences span across the whole body and all forms of physiology – for instance it is well-documented that many Asians look lean but actually have high amounts of visceral fat that clings to the organs, so some diets would not suit this group despite how they appear outwardly.”
At present, a lot of the focus in Asian research and product innovation is geared towards women’s health and healthy longevity, including in the precision nutrition space.
“Efforts coming up in the next five years are likely to be focused on maximising health span and healthy longevity, especially in markets like Singapore where we are facing an increasingly geriatric population,” she said.
“The big question is how to ensure these seniors can get the best nutrition possible without compromising their satisfaction, and this is a big area where stratified nutrition could play a big role to say, meet the needs of different groups of senior consumers.”
