Parents, meet NINA: Nestlé India pilots nation’s first AI nutrition assistant developed with Google

01 May 2019 --- Together with developers at Google, Nestlé India has launched the country’s first Artificial Intelligence (AI) assistant – Nestlé India Nutrition Assistant (NINA) – as part of the company’s expressed ambitions to further strengthen its credentials as an expert of nutrition and deepen trust with consumers and stakeholders. NINA is integrated into Nestlé India’s new corporate service website (AskNestle.in), geared towards parents seeking nutritional information for their children’s health needs.

The virtual assistant is equipped with a voice-activated functionality, which instantly responds to verbal queries on nutrition. As time progresses and the assistant is used frequently, the automated learning system is said to become more responsive and helpful to users of the software.

AskNestlé specifically caters to parents and caregivers cooking for children up to twelve years of age. Through this mobile platform, parents can access a Growth Tracker to keep track of their child’s healthy development, in line with information linked to a database of the Indian Academy of Pediatrics. The service also offers Custom Meal Plans personalized for allergies and regional preferences. Additionally, users can access a Food Diary to enter what the child has eaten throughout the day, which generates a Nutrition Score for easy evaluation.

The service also issues regular content that answers frequently asked nutrition questions around nutrition facts, debunks dietary misconceptions, and provides tips to get fussy eaters to eat, as a few examples. The service also has a live chat functionality that allows consumers to chat with Nestle nutrition experts.

To market the new online service platform, Nestlé India teamed up with marketing services company McCann World Group to create slice-of-life television commercials showcasing how AskNestlé can be used by parents and grandparents alike. The company endorses these family-oriented narratives as being duly representative of traditional Indian food cultures, while demystifying the science behind nutrition for all generations.

The AI revolution is heating up the “digiceuticals” space
Personalized nutritional planning, particularly in the “digiceuticals” sphere, have been an emergent trend coming into fruition over the last few years. Increasingly, leading companies are launching mobile platforms to be used in conjunction with their products, which assist consumers with planning, achieving and sustaining their health and nutritional benchmarks. When synergized with AI, these technologies can prove to be highly attractive to health-conscious, digital-savvy consumers of all ages, who prioritize functionality and efficiency.

Spanish nutraceuticals specialist Monteloeder coined the term “digiceuticals” in 2016, through the release of its AI-powered mobile application, offering the capacity to calculate a “UV budget” for users based on weather information, users’ skin type and amount of NutroxSun oral skincare product ingested.

And in March, Dutch health and nutrition company DSM, together with digital health company Mixfit, launched Mixfit's Intelligent Nutrition Assistant (Mina) - an AI solution that dispenses beverages containing a customized mix of vitamins and minerals according to a person's genetic makeup, diet, lifestyle and health goals.

Last year at the Newtrition X. summit in 2018, NutritionInsight caught up with experts in the field of personalized nutrition – dubbed the “nutrition revolution” – who re-affirmed that digiceutical platforms are a pathway to building consumer trust. “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,” summit speaker Jo Goossens from shiftN tells NutritionInsight.

By Benjamin Ferrer