InsideTracker debuts nutrition tracker that merges blood, DNA and fitness data to unlock personalized health

27 Sep 2024 --- The health analyzing and data-driven wellness company InsideTracker adds Nutrition DeepDive to its platform and app. The food and supplement app-based tracker maps food, beverage and supplement intake in addition to blood, DNA and fitness. The tool provides its members with insights and personalized recommendations to improve sleep, exercise, energy, stress and overall health.

Nutrition DeepDive details how nutrition and nutrient intake affects a user’s blood biomarkers, how diet aligns with genetics and how meal timing and quality impact sleep and exercise. The app requires seven days of food logging and provides a comprehensive health report with color-coded graphs and personalized food and supplement recommendations.

“Daily food intake is powerful data that reveals more than most people realize,” says Gil Blander, Ph.D., founder and chief scientific officer at InsideTracker. “It’s not just about what you eat, but also when and in what quantities.”

“With Nutrition DeepDive, we can merge that information with our members’ blood, DNA and fitness tracker data. It’s a puzzle piece that helps our recommendation engine go even further in providing razor-sharp strategies for preventing disease and increasing energy, fitness and happiness.”

Nutrition-based solutions

With Nutrition Deepdive, InsideTracker members receive an analysis of 15 essential nutrients, including protein, fiber and fat, and micronutrients such as calcium, magnesium and vitamins D and B12, plus personalized recommendations for which nutrients to eat more or less.

In addition, the app spotlights which five nutrients have the most significant impact on a user’s health. Users receive personalized nutrition advice to improve blood biomarkers, including which three foods will have the most significant impact.

It also provides meal timing insights that indicate how food and beverages affect exercise, sleep and supplementation. The app also informs users how well protein and other nutrients are distributed throughout the day.

The tool can be used as needed, but InsideTracker recommends that users repeat the Nutrition DeepDive every three to 12 months.

“We created Nutrition DeepDive as a direct response to our members’ feedback,” says InsideTracker’s lead nutrition scientist Ashley Reaver. “Members tell us they want to learn how to use food and supplements better. They want to find nutrition-based solutions to health issues, and they want to help prevent diseases that run in their family. With Nutrition DeepDive, we can help them take meaningful steps toward those goals.”

The app combines food and supplement intake with blood, DNA and fitness data (Image credit: InsideTracker).Food tracking

The tool is available to all InsideTracker members with iOS devices, along with Ask InsideTracker, the company’s AI-powered chatbot that sources reliable health information. Its Healthspan Habit Report is in soft launch, providing weekly updates on how a member’s activities affect health.

Earlier this year, the company also added a new VO2max development to its product to help members determine their ideal VO2max — the maximum amount of oxygen used during aerobic exercise.

The company aimed to make food logging easy with the new tool, providing multiple ways to log food intake. Consumers indicate that diet tracking is “tedious work.”

In Nutrition DeepDive, members can look up items in a food and supplement database or scan items using their smartphone camera. The app recognizes barcodes and whole foods. Users can re-enter meals or supplements logged once by pulling up their frequently logged list.

Nutrition Insight recently discussed nutrition-tracking apps with a researcher in Nutrition and Dietetics at the University of Sydney, Australia. She highlighted that tools developed through artificial intelligence (AI) require accuracy improvements, pointing to AI’s poor ability to recognize dishes or estimate meals’ caloric values. Moreover, AI-powered health apps struggle to recognize non-Western diets.

Meanwhile, a team of US-based researchers unveiled wearable AI-powered food trackers that are being studied with increasingly realistic eating scenarios. The smartwatch and a custom-made sensor positioned on a participant’s jawline initially focus on improving clinical trials.

At the same time, South Korea-based data insights company Nuvilab has developed AI food scanners that can be applied in schools, healthcare and cafeterias to assess nutrient and food consumption to manage waste, patient meal quality and food inventory.

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