Future of personalized nutrition lies in investment and tech collaborations: Newtrition X. summit 2018

27 Sep 2018 --- The “nutrition revolution” has begun, according to the speakers of the Newtrition X. summit, which focused on presenting personalized nutrition from an interdisciplinary perspective. NutritionInsight spoke with two of the key speakers following the event, Professor Christian Sina from the University of Luebeck and Jo Goossens of nutrition consultancy company shiftN, to present their views on the future of personalization. Both experts agree that the success of personalized nutrition lies in a multitude of actors from different industries working in tandem, with Dr. Sina emphasizing scientific research and Goossens emphasizing technology companies.

A key theme at the summit was the idea that personalization is not just one of many options in nutrition; it is the central mechanism for preventing and tackling lifestyle diseases in the long-term.

Professor Christian Sina explained how scientific research findings could be translated into nutritional concepts suitable for everyday use through partnerships, for example.

Investments and collaborations are key to the success of personalized approaches to health mainstreaming: “The Newtrition X. congress is a great example for this. Yet, we also see interest among manufacturers. We would love to see more companies getting involved in the topic and ideally with concrete projects. What we often see is that there is a general interest, but when it comes down to investment, corporates are hesitant and take an observer’s seat,” Sina tells NutritionInsight.

“We recommend companies embrace the opportunity that personalized nutrition can be for consumers and manufacturers. In our experience, companies that started with small projects have had great success and continued with that,” Sina adds.

Indeed, the nutrition world has seen a selection of successful personalized nutrition ventures hit headlines. DSM’s MixFit partnership and Nestlé and Nuritas AI and personalized nutrition collaboration being just two examples.          

Fonterra’s B2B ingredients business, NZMP, told NutritionInsight at Vitafoods Europe 2018 how they are looking at partnerships with start-ups, universities and research centers all over the world to target the personalized nutrition topic.   

The food industry can actively partake in making personalized nutrition a reality by “developing either fully personalized or clustered food products to make it as simple as possible for consumers to eat and drink ‘personalized,’” Sina concludes.

Neutral digital platforms are needed for consumer trust
Presenting a different view on the topic, summit speaker Jo Goossens from shiftN posited that personalized nutrition can only succeed with a strong input from industry. He tells NutritionInsight that the “the food industry is not in the right position. Not from their core competency point of view and also not from the ‘consumer trust’ point of view.”

Goossens further explains that consumer confusion in the area of nutrition has led to a lack of trust in the companies that provide products and diets, thus leading them to search for different sources. He advocates for new actors to deliver to consumers, such as technology companies.

“They [technology companies] will bridge the gap between food, nutrition advice and tools/app companies to create a proper service. From that service onward, there can be a variety of ways how consumers can be presented with the service. Take, for example, an insurance company wishing to trigger healthy behavior and thus ‘reward good behavior’ of clients based on their health or nutrition behavior. That will combine a health and nutrition benefit also with a financial benefit,” Goossens explains.

Technological companies will need to collaborate for these interventions, opening up the space for partnerships with other industries: “For sure, there is a strong need for networking in this area as the services will require many different types of tools, from inputs of data (online, body-monitoring, diagnostics) to advise generating algorithms and a wealth of tools and interfaces to connect with end-users to retrieve information and channel advice to them,” he notes.

“As usual in novel business development, there are many smaller – and larger – players that try to develop their stand-alone service but typically these tend to be too limited in scope, scientifically not well-validated and not flexible in terms of interface approach and so on,” Goosens says.

“Very often it is the algorithm that converts data into advice that is considered the core value-generating tool but how can this install trust if that algorithm is not publicly available and essentially designed to generate profits? The right of every individual to get the best possible advice is an ethical aspect that many personalized nutrition companies, as well as our authorities, will have to keep in mind.”

Following the Newtrition X. launch summit in Luebeck earlier this month, the innovation summit plans to become a regular series of events to reflect the rapid developments in the field of personalized nutrition. In 2019, Anuga (Cologne, Germany), will host Newtrition X. 

“Newtrition X. has brought science and industry together. The next step is now to jointly develop solutions to make personalized nutrition usable for retailers and end consumers. Anuga is the meeting place for industry and retail where we can bring this trend-setting topic into the spotlight of the international food industry,” Lorenz Alexander Rau, Anuga Director, concludes.

By Laxmi Haigh