“Hex Technology”: China’s Viral Additive-Free Food Movement
As we roll into CIIE and China’s ecommerce festival season, where new products are revealed and critiqued, it feels timely to share a few trends. Many trends in China are related to the interconnected beauty and health categories, and three new trends recently caught our eye.
Last year, China approved the use of an injectable drug called semaglutide for treating Type 2 diabetes patients. In September, the country signed off clinical trials for treating chronic weight management. It wasn’t long before bloggers, who’d been following it in other countries, were broadcasting the effectiveness of the drug and bragging about losing double-digit kilos within a month. Demand has exploded. Young Chinese aspiring to get skinnier as quickly and easily as they can; risking vomiting, diarrhoea, constipation, retina damage, kidney problems and who knows what else, are paying above the odds for the prescription drug on the black market.
Arguably more concerning is another booming beauty category targeting the earlier stages in the life cycle. Parents in China, fuelled by false information on social media, are investing in infant products which they believe will help their children conform to traditional beauty standards.
Do 3.5 hours of extracurricular classes a day if you like, but many Chinese parents believe that it may not lead to success if their kids don’t grow up to be good looking. Parents are intervening early, supporting an industry of products covering everything from braces for 3-year-olds’ teeth, to helmets designed to mould a baby’s skull to a desired shape, to leg binds that supposedly make children’s legs grow straight. For those seeking cheaper, entry-level infant beautification, why not buy tape for your baby’s mouth, so they breathe through their nose while napping? 100,000 packs of children’s mouth tape are sold on Taobao every month.
While many image-conscious folk are injecting themselves to fit a smaller size next month, and parents are risking cutting off oxygen supplies to their sleeping kids, masses of Chinese consumers are seeking beauty within through food without additives. The term “hex technology,” borrowed from the gaming industry, is being used in China to describe food companies’ use of additives in food products, receiving over 3 billion views on Douyin alone. Social media posts praising “zero-additive” products are going viral.
The clean label trend should serve as another reminder of how closely many Chinese consumers study ingredient labels on food, beverage, beauty and health products. The recent uproar with local household name condiment maker, Haitian, illustrates that consumers don’t just study labels in China, but overseas as well. As we saw a little over a year ago when Magnum ice creams were slammed for ingredients double standards between China and Europe, Haitian’s soy sauce is being criticised for similar variances abroad.
In Japan, Haitian’s soy sauce contains only natural ingredients such as water, soybeans and wheat. Whereas the China version has a number of additives. Although Haitian was quick to offer an explanation online, many Chinese are still unhappy.
Each additive story, or double standard saga, helps further raise awareness of the importance of being as additive free as possible. KOLs – and those aspiring to be – earn credibility for identifying products with nasties inside, and also those discovering good clean products, which is further nourishing the trend.
Although China’s unhealthy weight-loss regimes and dangerous infant beauty routines may make the headlines, Chinese consumers as a whole, are becoming ever-more focused on good, clean healthy products, so businesses would be wise to give them what they want. Contact China Skinny to learn more about identifying much more specific needs and how best to market them.
