Personalized nutrition researchers say start with goals, not diet plans

A secondary analysis of the Food4Me nutrition intervention study reveals the importance of goal orientation in personalized nutrition and dietary behavior change. 

Nutrition Insight speaks with corresponding author Mariette Abrahams, Ph.D., CEO and founder of Qina, who shares that her study addresses a gap in personalized nutrition. “Most personalized nutrition solutions ask about health goals, but very few assess habit strength in combination. This analysis demonstrates it is important.” 

The study shows that personalized nutrition worked best for people who were already goal-oriented. Abrahams comments: “This is certainly not new. We know that motivated individuals, who more likely have specific health goals, are more likely to change their habits and adopt personalized nutrition recommendations.”

On why goal orientation seems to matter more than receiving personalized advice alone, she explains that personalized advice based on data is “just not enough.”

“The advice should be tied to a goal the individual wants and is motivated to achieve. Goal setting provides direction, but habit strength ensures sustainable action. For example, you could get advice because your biomarkers are not in range.”

“However, if your goal is to improve your cognitive health as a goal, the direction of the health journey becomes much clearer, and advice can be linked to the best available evidence.”

Study details

The Food & Function study distinguished three groups based on low, moderate, and high degrees of goal orientation.

The Food4Me study split participants into three groups based on low, moderate, and high levels of goal orientation.Additionally, the study analyzed differences in healthy eating indices between treatment and control groups at six months post-intervention.

The initial Food4Me intervention study had found that those receiving personalized advice showed a greater increase in healthy eating indices than controls, no matter which personalization type they received. 

The new study takes it a step further to uncover what type of patient benefits the most from personalized nutrition. After splitting the groups based on goal levels, the researchers checked whether the intervention worked differently across these groups.

Additionally, they examined whether habits mattered, finding that habit strength and diet quality had an impact on how healthy people were six months after. However, habits only had an effect on the intervention in the high-goal group.

Start with goal setting

According to Abrahams, personalized nutrition programs should start with goal setting and progress checks rather than dietary advice.

“Goal setting is the starting point, which eventually helps with motivation. Considering the current trends toward healthy aging, the advice could involve more than dietary advice alone.”

Six months post-intervention, both habit strength and diet quality influenced how healthy participants were overall.“Consumers are adopting a holistic approach to health. So it is important to understand the goal of an individual and use different behavior change techniques to design a program that will strengthen habits in order to reach their desired health goals,” she says.

To help more people benefit from personalized nutrition, Abrahams believes that companies need to better integrate behavior change theory and techniques into their design. She underscores that behavior change takes time. “Practitioners can also take more time to understand which health goals individuals want to achieve and why.” 

“Finally, I believe that in order to meet the needs and preferences of individuals, we need to adopt an ecosystem approach to ensure individuals get access to the best tools and experts in order to ensure that individuals change their behavior in the long term because high cost and lack of support are no longer key barriers to adoption of personalized nutrition advice.” 

“A great example is our Qina Food Health ecosystem we have set up to ensure all stakeholders along the value chain reap the benefits through capturing the nutrition-behavior data that can identify white spaces for product development while leveraging personalized nutrition solutions as incentives and rewards,” Abrahams she concludes.