Selling international style healthy-branded foods in Malaysia: how the packaging design for ‘plant-based’ foods risks misleading/misdirecting consumers

Scholars in food and nutrition studies have urged for more research on how global diets are entering into new territories around the world, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region, about which less is known. In particular, there is concern as diet-related disease tends to escalate after the arrival of supermarkets and ultra-processed foods. In this region, there has been growing government promotion of, and public interest in, healthy eating. However, food companies have also seen this as an opportunity to market healthy-branded foods which tend to be no better than highly processed foods in general. The danger is that these products can distract the public from actually eating a healthy, balanced diet, low in processed foods. In this article, looking at the context of Malaysia, where dietary shift and related illness have become particularly acute, the authors carry out a close analysis of an array of food packaging for a newly arrived product type: foods branded as ‘plant-based’. They seek to explore how such processed foods use this vague category to draw on a range of visual cues to present themselves as healthy options to the Malaysian public.