FMCG industry reformulating products to cater to health-conscious Indians

Nearly 43% of India’s palm oil supply comes from Indonesia

Early this year, the two nations renewed their collaboration through updated technical protocols focusing on quality assurance, traceability enhancements, and sustainable production frameworks for palm oil. This cooperation strengthens the backbone of health focused reformulation, ensuring foundational ingredients meet rising safety, nutritional, and sustainability standards.

A quiet movement reshaping one of the largest food ecosystems in the world; and with it, how India eats.

You won’t see it on billboards. It doesn’t announce itself with a hashtag. It’s there when your go-to snack feels lighter, your biscuit tastes more balanced, or when the oil in your kitchen subtly shifts in colour and clarity. This is reformulation at work. Not loud, not branded. Just smarter and better.

India’s FMCG (Fast-Moving Consumer Goods) sector, one of the most complex and far-reaching packaged food systems globally, is undergoing a profound shift.

Health is no longer about premium positioning; it’s the default expectation - driven by rising lifestyle diseases, evolving consumer literacy, and increased exposure to global nutrition narratives. And these expectations are reshaping how products are designed, not just how they’re sold.

The packaging may still look familiar to us and the flavors as comforting as ever. But beneath the surface, across ingredients, supply chains, and formulations, what’s happening is nothing short of transformational.

The shelf hasn’t changed; The recipe behind has:

Reformulation isn’t new. But what’s happening in India now goes beyond recipe tweaking. It is systemic change grounded in a different consumer contract.

For years, “healthy” food has carried an aspirational label. It was often urban and mostly reserved for the top shelf—both literally and economically. But that’s no longer the case.

Across city tiers and income segments, most households actively seek food products with reduced sugar, salt, or fat. These aren’t emerging trends anymore; they are normalized expectations.

What’s more revealing is that the price gap is narrowing. Products once considered premium, such as multi-grain biscuits, low-oil snacks, and fortified staples, are now priced to compete with their conventional counterparts. Reformulation isn’t just about better ingredients. It’s about efficient supply chains, ingredient sourcing at scale, and smarter food science, which makes “healthy” viable for the mainstream shelf. Hence, brands that once competed on taste and price are now being judged on transparency and credibility because today’s informed consumer demands proof, not just promises.

The result? Every category from masala oats to cooking oils is being re-examined. Not reinvented, but recalibrated to preserve what the masses love, while removing what they have stopped accepting.

Reformulation is a system built in layers:

One the surface, reformulating a food product may seem simple - less sugar, better fats, and added vitamins. But it’s a complex balancing act involving food science, regulation, logistics, and consumer psychology.

Every ingredient plays more than one role. Cut sodium and shelf-life drops. Swap oils and texture shifts. Fortify with micronutrients, and you face stability challenges in a country where products sit in high temperatures for weeks.

That’s why reformulation today isn’t about making one change. It’s about designing a network of changes that hold together. Behind the scenes, brands are working with a new generation of formulation specialists, ingredient technologists, and supply-side partners to solve performance and perception problems at once.

Suppliers who once just delivered volume now deliver function: proteins that mimic richness without heaviness, emulsifiers that don’t need artificial carriers, stabilizers that let the product travel better without tasting worse. This is where food becomes smarter at the molecular level. And the gains are measurable. Products that once shied away from transparency now lead with it - “low in sodium,” “zero trans-fat,” and “fortified with Vitamin D.” These labels aren’t just regulatory requirements; they reflect a deeper transformation in how food is formulated and marketed. The momentum aligns with the 2025 WHO guidelines promoting lower-sodium substitutes and clearer labeling to empower healthier choices.

Still, reformulation has limits. You can swap and optimize every supporting element but if your base ingredient can’t adapt, the system stalls. And in most Indian kitchens, the base ingredient is oil.

Oils determine reformulation:

Consumers may overlook it, but oil is more than just a cooking medium. It dictates everything from nutrient stability to texture, shelf life, and operational feasibility across India’s diverse climate and consumer bases.

Today’s reformulated oils aren’t merely about steering away from saturated fat. They’re precision-engineered to meet several critical demands: stability in 40 °C heat, reliable delivery of vitamins A and D, and rigorous limits on process contaminants like 3 MCPD and glycidyl esters as reported by National Library of Medicine and Menara Perkebunan journal, respectively.

These compounds, known to form during high-temperature refining, are now being intentionally minimized through refined-deodorization and blending processes. The outcome? Dramatically cleaner oil profiles with achieved upstream, not patched downstream.

These aren’t laboratory feats; they’re real-world breakthroughs powering mainstream products. In countless kitchens, consumers now enjoy snacks and staples where palm-oil-based blends deliver the necessary structural integrity and nutrient profile—without taste compromise or premium pricing.

The quiet shift matters:

Statista estimated India’s FMCG market at around $167 billion in 2023, and is expected to reach $615 billion by 2027, with health-oriented categories like fortified staples and functional foods rising, at a CAGR of approximately 6.10 per cent between 2025 and 2033. This isn’t a niche movement anymore; it’s structural transformation.

Delivering health on a scale isn’t just a matter of cleaner recipes. It requires a supply chain engineered for performance. Nearly 43 per cent of India’s palm oil supply comes from Indonesia.

Early this year, the two nations renewed their collaboration through updated technical protocols focusing on quality assurance, traceability enhancements, and sustainable production frameworks for palm oil. This cooperation strengthens the backbone of health focused reformulation, ensuring foundational ingredients meet rising safety, nutritional, and sustainability standards.

This is helping India rebuild its food system from farm to fork. Products that look the same on the shelf today are the outcome of labs, logistics, and intergovernmental engineering working in sync and redefining what it means to deliver “better” at scale.

The change is quiet. But the impact won’t be.

(The writer is Chairman of Indonesian Palm Oil Association)