The alternative protein industry has suffered a multitude of setbacks in Asia over the past two years after peaking in 2018 and through the pandemic.
Plant-based protein in particular has been put through the wringer in terms of pricing, taste, formats and so on – but one of the newest and most-debated arguments against its adoption has been its ‘ultra-processed’ status.
While there are many plant-based companies in the region working to overcome this by developing minimally-processed or even whole food options, industry experts generally believe it is wrong to demonise ‘processing’ as a term.
“The first thing that needs to be understood is this: Not all processing is bad,” ProVeg International managing director Shirley Lu said at ThaiFex-Anuga Asia 2025 in Bangkok, Thailand.
“There are many ‘healthy’ items that all undergo processing – bottled water is processed, frozen chicken is processed, ground pepper is processed.
“So consumers are of course correct to avoid products containing many unfamiliar additives, but this does not necessarily correlate with processing, and it should also be noted that some additives are always going to be needed for food safety, freshness or other unavoidable reasons.”
Speaking at the same session, CP Foods Open innovation manager Dr Sunisa Chatsurachai seconded Lu’s comments, adding that most ultra-processing critics have focused only on one side of the coin.
“Some food scientists have been urging others to stop using the term ‘ultra-processed’ because there is in fact no generally academically-determined scientific definition or parameters for this term, and it is at best oversimplified,” she said.
“Right now, the definition used in the industry and in any studies out there now tend to focus only on one angle, which is the processing – very few will look at the other side of the coin which is nutrition.”
In this sense, she was referring to a lack of discourse on how ultra-processing serves to reduce a product’s saturated fat or increase its micronutrient content despite increasing its level of processing.
“As such, condemning ultra-processed foods is at present based on just one dimension only, and we need better policies and regulations in place to increase education and awareness so consumers can make better judgements about their food.”
What would happen in a world without processing?
SGProtein co-founder and CEO Dominique Kull added that processing has in fact become a necessity in today’s world due to the changing times and population size.
“Plant-based products make up a very small portion of the food market, but if we look beyond that and into foods and beverages in general, at least 70% of all food today is processed to some degree,” he said.
“It would be great if we could all return to eating fresh foods from our own gardens, or picked from a tree and so on, but the reality is that today we buy our foods from the supermarket, so should actually be glad that there is processing to keep the food safe and ensure an adequate supply can reach us.”
This was seconded by foodtech consultancy SchellhasFood founder Karsten Schellhas, who pointed out that the world today has far too large a population to depend on traditional methods and still maintain food security.
“If we look back to the time when processed foods were less common, perhaps a few decades ago in the sixties or seventies, this was possible because the world population was at just around 3.5bn,” he said.
“Today we have close to 8.5bn people living on planet Earth – there is no way to depend on old food supply chains to support everyone, and without food processing many people would starve as no food would get to them before spoiling, so it has undoubtedly become a necessary part of today’s food system.”
