Workshop 6: Personalised nutrition. How to bring personalisation to the mass
On 16th March we carried out the sixth online thematic workshop of Global Foodture: “Personalised nutrition: how to bring personalisation to the mass” with the participation of more than 200 attendees.
Consumer desire for personalised nutrition is growing rapidly. Because personalised food is still costly and complex to produce, it remains niche and companies focus on ‘customisation’, requiring the end consumer to do the hard work of choosing rather than personalising food to individual needs. But in the next ten years, we expect personalised nutrition to become more mainstream, supported by the use of smart devices that track, interpret, and advise consumers what their body is telling them. The challenges to overcome to reach the mass market are technological (e.g., real time biomarkers, near-effortless ‘always on’ monitoring), relevance and affordability. At this workshop we discussed and presented promising business models bringing personalised nutrition to the mass.
Thank you Judith van der Horst-Graat (Foodvalley NL), Usha Viswanathen (INTEGRATED NUTRITION SOLUTIONS, PLLC), Gwen Tan (AMILI ), Seoyoung Kim (Advanced Institute of Convergence Technology), Lynette Kucsma (Natural Machines), Tuulia Järvinen (Venner Nutrition ), Jon Henningsen (Movesca) for your inputs on personlised nutrition for the mass market.
The workshop was moderated by Anni Simonsen (Food & Bio Cluster Denmark).
The opening was provided by Judith van der Horst-Graat, Innovation Lead Food & Health at Foodvalley NL and Usha Viswanathen, Nutrition & Public Health director at Integrated Nutrition Solutions who introduced the audience to personalised nutrition from a European and Asian perspective respectively.
Under Judith’s lead, Foodvalley NL wrote a position paper with 53 stakeholders on the definition of Personalised Nutrition. The paper created a business definition and provided insights into profitable business models. Next, Judith is further developing and strengthening the personalised nutrition ecosystem by building a personalised nutrition community in which she guides parties on direction, process, content, and pace.
From Singapore, with over 15 years of nutritional experience at Danone, Usha is another expert in bringing healthy nutrition to the consumer. With her nutritional knowledge she is currently consulting Asian organizations in building a foundation of good health through nutrition.
The first block of presentations was about “Personalised nutrition from an Asian perspective”.
The first presentation was held by Gwen Tan, Chief Innovation Officer at AMILI. AMILI is Southeast Asia’s first and only precision gut microbiome company. The company performs advanced gut microbiome sequencing for service and research purposes and develop these insights into products and services. They also support partners in validating the gut health effects of their products, along with co-developing gut health friendly products.
Then, Ms. Seoyoung Kim, Senior Researcher of the South Korean Advanced Institute of Convergence Technology presented the personalised dietary planning platform they are co-developing with together with our project partner Foodpolis. This platform will provide consumers personalized recommendation of dietary intakes, based on their algorithms by measuring certain factors (life cycle, diseases, genetic information, personal preference, etc.), and an integrated database of food and human nutrition.
The second block of presentations was about “Personalised nutrition from a European perspective”.
This block started with Lynette Kucsma, Co-Founder/CMO of the Spanish company Natural Machines. Being named by CNN as one of the seven tech superheroes to watch, Lynette is the Co-Founder of Natural Machines. Her business is based in Europe and Asia and develops 3D printers that enable customers to create personalised foods, which are especially useful for patients with dysphagia. Besides that, Natural Machines takes personalizing even further by making personalised pharmaceutical drugs, facial skin care masks and eye patches.
Next, Tuulia Järvinen, Founder/CEO of the Finnish company Venner Oy presented Vegemi; an innovative food educational app and concept fighting one of the biggest global health problems, inadequate consumption of fruit and veggies by children. The solution utilises gamification, play and tech to engage and inspire children to eat their “five a day”, in collaboration with retailers and early years educators.
Finally, Jon Henningsen, CEO of the Danish company Movesca explained how the company developed an innovative digital food ordering and nutritional solution for hospitals, care homes and other centrally run kitchens and meal suppliers. The solution is an app called Min Menu (My Menu).
The online workshop was finalised with an open discussion guided by Anni Simonsen (Food & Bio Cluster Denmark) with several speakers and participants about personalised nutrition.
Are you interested in international innovation collaboration with Asian partners in the field of healthy, functional and personalised food? Please visit the website for more information, and register for the online thematic workshops or online matchmaking.
Discover all the details in the full webinar below.
