Can food be healthy, tasty – and sustainable?
The short answer? It has to be.
By Jerome Barra
VP, Taste Global Marketing and Business Development, Health Nutrition and Care Unit, dsm-firmenich
Member of the SFNV Executive Committee
Consumers today expect their food to do more than ever. It should help them thrive during every phase of their lives, delight their senses and help protect the planet. But balancing health, taste, and sustainability isn’t just hard. It’s one of the food industry’s defining challenges of our time.
This transformation isn’t about choosing one priority over another. It’s about uniting what is essential, desirable, and sustainable — and doing so at speed. Since the creation of dsm-firmenich almost three years ago, we’ve seen firsthand how these forces are reshaping the food and beverage sector. The lessons learned reflect broader industry shifts, and point to a bigger truth: progress depends on relentless innovation.
Why global diets are transforming
Across the global food ecosystem, one trend in particular stands out. Conscious eating is no longer a niche movement; it is reshaping mainstream expectations. People are making deliberate choices that align with personal values, health goals, and environmental concerns. To meet these expectations, companies need two things: deep insight into what drives these choices and the technical muscle to turn those insights into breakthrough products.
Three priorities dominate this shift:
1. Essential health
Food is increasingly seen as a daily act of self-care. People are more aware than ever of how diet influences long-term health, and governments around the world are tightening regulations on sugar, salt, and saturated fat. Manufacturers are responding by reformulating products to reduce these ingredients while enriching them with fiber, vitamins, and minerals.
2. Desirable taste and texture
The shift towards more plant-based diets has opened new opportunities — and challenges — for food producers. Consumers expect these products to match traditional proteins in taste, texture, and nutrition, pushing companies to explore new ingredients and flavour technologies that make sustainable eating a pleasure, not a compromise.
3. Sustainability
Sustainability is becoming a core design principle across food, beverage, and nutrition portfolios. Producers are reducing reliance on finite resources by prioritising plant-based and fermentation-derived ingredients, which carry a lower environmental footprint than traditional animal sources. Plant-based omega-3 solutions, for example, help protect marine ecosystems by eliminating the need for fish oil while still delivering essential nutrients. Circularity is advancing through upcycled raw materials, and production processes are being optimised to cut energy use and minimise waste.
Fully addressing these priorities requires more than tweaks. It calls for strategic thinking, new tools, and the power of science and technology to accelerate progress.
Forces shaping the next phase of food innovation
Looking ahead, I see three interconnected forces that are set to define the next phase of food innovation:
- Everyday wellbeing: While consumers will keep looking for products that help them feel balanced, energetic, and fulfilled, people are also becoming more educated about how an extra nutritional push can help during certain stages in life – for example, during pregnancy, lactation, aging, and the first 1,000 days of life.
- Preventative health: Societies are shifting from treating illness to maintaining health, placing nutrition and wellbeing at the center of every food and beverage solution.
- Lifespan vitality: The boundaries between food, beauty, and biology are blurring as people seek not only to live longer but to live better.
These trends will also open new opportunities for collaboration between researchers and industry partners, across local and global innovation ecosystems.
How science can bring progress to life
Advances in food science and R&D — two pillars of Switzerland’s innovation ecosystem — are key to creating solutions that unite health, taste, and sustainability. These shifts are already reshaping innovation pipelines.
Here are four ways that I see these trends coming to life in 2026 and beyond.
1. New innovations for brain health, immunity and healthy ageing solutions
Dietary supplements and functional nutrition are expanding rapidly, as consumers seek convenient ways to support brain health, immunity, and healthy aging. Innovations such as plant-based omega-3s, advanced probiotics and new delivery formats like gummies and powders will help integrate wellness into daily routines.
2. Tailored solutions for early-life nutrition
In early-life nutrition, science is helping narrow the gap between formula and the biological gold standard of breast milk. Human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs) and tailored maternal nutrition solutions will increasingly support healthier beginnings for both infants and mothers.
3. Increased focus on recovery and independence
For senior adults, preventative healthcare is becoming essential. Nutritional solutions tailored to recovery and independence — combined with formats that improve taste and adherence — are helping improve quality of life.
4. Tackling hidden hunger in vulnerable populations
Globally, fortification initiatives will continue to address hidden hunger in vulnerable populations, ensuring access to essential vitamins and minerals through cross-industry and public-private partnerships.
Together, these opportunities also signal a broader shift: the future of food will not be defined by scientific breakthroughs alone, but by how effectively we collaborate to scale them.
Making good food the easy choice — together.
Feeding a growing population within planetary limits will demand unprecedented collaboration. To thrive, every player in the food ecosystem must ensure products are healthy, sustainable, and enjoyable. Because no matter how responsible a product is, if it doesn’t taste good, it won’t make it off the shelf.
As nutrition becomes a cornerstone of disease prevention, the challenge and opportunity is clear. We need to create convenient and affordable choices that don’t just add years to life, but life to years.
When taste, nutrition and sustainability come together, we can make good food the easy choice — for people, for the planet, and for generations to come.