The Greater Bay Area (GBA) — comprising Hong Kong, Macau, and nine cities in Guangdong Province — has developed a coherent set of group standards for care food and dysphagia food that are reshaping procurement, product development, and quality benchmarking across the region. For international buyers, institutional procurement officers, and food manufacturers selling into the GBA elderly care market, understanding these three standards is essential.
This guide explains:
| Standard | Full Title | Issuing Body | Scope |
|---|---|---|---|
| T/SATA 084-2025 | Specifications for Elderly Care Food for the Aged (适老照护食标准) | Shenzhen Ageing Industry Association (深圳市老龄事业发展基金会) | Texture-modified food and thickened fluids for elderly with chewing/swallowing difficulty |
| T/SATA 085-2025 | General Specification for Elderly Food (适老食品通则) | Shenzhen Ageing Industry Association | Broader elderly-friendly food (softer, easier to eat, but not necessarily dysphagia-specific) |
| T/SATA 094-2025 | General Requirements of Dysphagia Food — Care for Elderly (吞咽困難食品（適老照護）通用要求) | Greater Bay Area Standardization Research Centre (粵港澳大灣區標準化研究中心) | Food specifically for people with clinically identified swallowing difficulty |
These are group standards (团体标准, T/), not national standards (GB). Group standards in China are voluntary in principle but are increasingly referenced as mandatory specifications in GBA procurement tenders, e-commerce platform onboarding requirements, and institutional purchasing contracts. Manufacturers who cannot demonstrate alignment with these standards are progressively excluded from the GBA institutional care market.
T/SATA 084 is the foundational care food standard for the GBA. It applies to texture-modified foods intended for elderly people with chewing or swallowing difficulties. Products within scope include:
T/SATA 084-2025 was proposed jointly by:
This joint HK-mainland drafting process reflects the GBA’s cross-border policy architecture. HKCSS’s involvement means the standard is directly compatible with the HKCSS Care Food Directory’s existing criteria — a product meeting T/SATA 084 is typically also eligible for the HKCSS Directory, and vice versa.
The drafting team also included representatives from mainland GBA research institutions, food technology universities, and major care home operators.
The standard specifies:
T/SATA 084 was designed to align with IDDSI but is not a direct translation. Key alignment points:
| IDDSI Level | T/SATA 084 Level | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Level 4 (Pureed) | 照护级 4 (Care Level 4) | Identical fork/syringe test criteria |
| Level 5 (Minced and Moist) | 照护级 5 (Care Level 5) | Fork-pressure test consistent with IDDSI; bite-size specification aligned |
| Level 6 (Soft and Bite-Sized) | 照护级 6 (Care Level 6) | Fork-test consistent; additionally specifies maximum particle size in mm |
| Levels 1–3 (Thickened fluids) | 稠度级 1–3 (Consistency Levels 1–3) | Syringe flow test aligned with IDDSI; additionally includes viscosity (mPa·s) ranges |
For manufacturers exporting from Hong Kong or producing in the mainland for GBA distribution, this alignment means that IDDSI-tested products can typically demonstrate T/SATA 084 compliance without complete reformulation — primarily a documentation and labelling exercise.
T/SATA 085 is the companion standard to T/SATA 084 and covers a broader category: food for elderly people who have some difficulty eating, but who do not have a clinical diagnosis of dysphagia. This includes:
This maps roughly to IDDSI Level 6 (Soft and Bite-Sized) and Level 7 (Regular/Easy to Chew) at the food end, and to Level 0–1 for fluids (thin to slightly thick).
Same drafting consortium as T/SATA 084: HKMA + HKCSS + GBA research institutions.
T/SATA 085 is relevant for:
For most dysphagia-specific products, T/SATA 084 and T/SATA 094 are the more relevant standards. T/SATA 085 is the companion standard that covers the broader elderly food category.
T/SATA 094-2025, issued in September 2025, is the most clinically specific of the three standards and the one that matters most for dysphagia care procurement. It applies to food products and food service specifically for people who have been clinically identified as having swallowing difficulties (吞咽困難).
Products within scope:
Notably, T/SATA 094 extends beyond product standards to cover:
T/SATA 094 was issued by the Greater Bay Area Standardization Research Centre (粵港澳大灣區標準化研究中心) — the authoritative GBA-level standards body — rather than the Shenzhen association that issued 084 and 085. This elevates its authority within the GBA standardisation hierarchy.
SeniorDeli (Carewells) — the company behind SeniorDeli products — is listed as a Participating Drafting Unit (參編單位) for T/SATA 094-2025. This reflects active involvement in the standard’s development process, including participation in technical committee meetings, comment rounds, and product testing protocols that informed the final standard text.
T/SATA 094 achieves the most explicit IDDSI alignment of the three standards. The texture classification chapter directly maps GBA dysphagia levels to IDDSI levels with identical syringe flow rate criteria (10 mL syringe / 10 seconds / catheter-tip), fork test criteria, and the same four-level food and four-level fluid architecture.
This alignment is intentional: the standard explicitly acknowledges IDDSI as the international reference framework and positions T/SATA 094 as the GBA implementation of IDDSI with adaptations for:
If you are purchasing dysphagia food products for distribution in mainland China, Hong Kong, or Macau, T/SATA 094 is the standard your procurement committee and compliance team will increasingly require suppliers to document. Specifically:
For Hong Kong care homes, T/SATA 094 complements (not replaces) the HKCSS Care Food Directory — the Directory remains the dominant reference in HK procurement, but GBA-facing procurement is increasingly requiring dual compliance.
The three standards form a layered system:
T/SATA 085 — Elderly Food (general)
↓
T/SATA 084 — Elderly Care Food (texture-modified)
↓
T/SATA 094 — Dysphagia Food (clinical, for diagnosed swallowing difficulty)
A product compliant with T/SATA 094 (dysphagia food) meets the requirements of T/SATA 084 (care food) and T/SATA 085 (elderly food) in its applicable texture category. The reverse is not necessarily true.
For a procurement officer specifying texture-modified food for a care home with diagnosed dysphagia residents, T/SATA 094 is the appropriate standard to reference — it provides the highest level of clinical specificity and has the most direct IDDSI alignment.
SeniorDeli products for dysphagia are developed and tested to meet IDDSI framework requirements, with test results documented using the IDDSI standard testing methods. As a drafting participant in T/SATA 094-2025, SeniorDeli has verified product alignment with the standard’s texture classification, nutritional adequacy, labelling, and food safety requirements.
Documentation available on request:
SeniorDeli’s product range covers:
For GBA institutional procurement officers who need to:
Contact: raymond@seniordeli.com
When specifying care food for a GBA institutional tender, recommended standard reference language:
For dysphagia-specific products:
“All texture-modified food products for residents with clinically identified dysphagia shall comply with T/SATA 094-2025 (General Requirements of Dysphagia Food — Care for Elderly) and shall be tested to the International Dysphagia Diet Standardisation Initiative (IDDSI) framework 2019 using the standard syringe flow test (10 mL catheter-tip syringe, 10 seconds). Test results shall be available for verification on request.”
For general care food:
“All texture-modified food products for elderly residents shall comply with T/SATA 084-2025 (Specifications for Elderly Care Food for the Aged). IDDSI level shall be declared on product labelling.”
Ask prospective suppliers:
The GBA care food standards emerged from a genuine public health need. China has approximately 50 million elderly people with some degree of dysphagia — a figure that will grow significantly with the aging population. The majority receive no texture modification at all, and those who do often receive inconsistently prepared food of unknown texture level.
The standardisation initiative — driven by Hong Kong’s more advanced care food ecosystem and the GBA’s policy ambition to develop a cross-border elderly care market — aims to:
For manufacturers, distributors, and care providers, the standards represent both a compliance requirement and an opportunity: the GBA care food market is large, growing, and increasingly willing to pay for quality-certified products.
Author: SeniorDeli (Carewells) — raymond@seniordeli.com
Disclosure: SeniorDeli (Carewells) is a Participating Drafting Unit of T/SATA 094-2025 and is listed in the HKCSS Care Food Directory. This article is published as an open educational resource and does not contain promotional product links.
Licensed under CC BY 4.0. You are free to share and adapt this material with attribution.