New personalized nutrition opportunities
01 Apr 2019 | Kerry
Personalized nutrition is a broad term, which could encompass considering from on one side personalizing to someone’s gender, age or health condition, or you could go right to the other end of the spectrum where you can personalize based on genetics or gut microbiome. For Aoife Marie Murphy of Kerry, it is open to the consumer and what they really feel like. "We know that millennials are very interested in technology and are very interested in these customized solutions and want to have products that are unique to them. They want to have products that are targeted to themselves, so this area of personalized nutrition does feed into this need for inherently healthy products," she notes.
This is Ron Wyres at the Kerry's Nay Center here in Ireland, and I'm here with Aoife Marie Murphy from, from Kerry.
And Aoife, you were speaking a lot about some personalized nutrition.
What, what are some of the kind of the platforms being addressed from this regard and what, how do you, how do you define personalized nutrition?
What does it mean for with for the nutrition space?
Nutrition is a very broad term.
It's a spectrum, I suppose.
You can consider it from one end, personalizing diets based on somebody's gender or age or maybe health condition, or you can go right to the other end of the spectrum where you can personalize people's diets based on their genetics or their gut microbiome.
So, it's a whole , spectrum of, science at the moment, and there's not any one definition of personalized nutrition, so it's open to interpretation, depending on the consumer, and, you know, what the, the consumer really feels like.
So, we know that millennials are very interested in technology, they're looking for these customized solutions.
They, they want to feel like products are made that are, that are unique to them.
Everybody wants to feel special that they have, products that are targeted to themselves.
So, this area of personalized nutrition does feed into, into people's, you know, inherent need for, for unique products.
What role has had in really bringing this into the mainstream?
Yeah, so, back in the year 2000, we first mapped the human genome.
So ever since then, in the past, 20 years we've had a whole wealth of data about genetics, about our metabolism, and we just know a lot more about ourselves, since the year 2000 as technology is also evolving along the same path, we find that there are lots of companies coming out using, you know, big data, they're using technology to be able to predict, you know, Diets based on someone's, say, blood glucose response or based on someone's microbiome or based on their genetics.
So, I think they evolve, the, the science is evolving, but also technology is helping the market to move into really innovative spaces where companies are using technology and science together.
Where do you think is the strongest scientific support when it comes to nutritional products within the space?
So, currently there's a lot of evidence coming out about the gut microbiome and how there is, potential for the gut microbiome to predict dietary response.
So, for example, somebody could consume, a banana and they would have a high blood glucose response.
Another person could consume that exact same food and they would have a different response.
And that's based on their differences in their gut microbiome.
So, that's where the science is.
Is moving that our gut microbiome can help to predict the foods that we should be eating for our health.
So there's a lot of interest then, you know, if you think about the gut microbiome, you've got probiotics, you've prebiotics, a wide diversity of foods help to feed our gut microbiome.
So, that's, I suppose, the area that personalized nutrition is moving to at the moment.
Why, why does such an interest Kerry?
What would you be doing?
Such as yourself Operating within this space and how, how are you looking to kind of promote your own portfolio with this?
So Kerry provides a wide variety of solutions to this.
We have a probiotic Ginein BC 30 that has been clinically proven to reach the gut and improve gut health.
We also have other solutions that can help improve the, the nutrition.
Quality of products, such as reducing salt and reducing sugar, and these elements can also help have a help help our gut microflora to become more diverse and healthier.
So, we want to have diets that are lower in sugar, lower in salt, lower in fat, higher in fiber, and then probiotics as can feed into that.
And finally, do you think that this space is something that That can really be mainstream, or do you think it's going to be a niche for quite some time?
Oh, no, I think that probiotics are already becoming mainstream.
I think a lot of the nutritional advice that's out there at the moment is to eat a lot of fiber, eat a wide variety of fruit and veg, and this is all due to gut health.
So, gut health is such a hot topic at the moment, in terms of nutrition.
So I think it will become quite mainstream.
Aoife, thank you very much.
Thank you.
