A personal nutrition touch: A key theme at Vitafoods Europe 2018 

22 May 2018 --- Personalized nutrition has become somewhat of a buzzword in the industry over the past year. But despite its popularity, the term “personalized nutrition” is open to many different interpretations, raising the question of how it is actually to be applied in the industry, with experts pointing to the role of wearable devices, mobile apps and forward-looking options such as genetic profiling. At Vitafoods Europe, NutritionInsight spoke with a number of suppliers about their R&D and views on personalized nutrition.    

DSM on its approach to personalized nutrition
“When we talk about ingredients, the question ‘do they work or not’ is a big issue for many consumers,” says Ivo Lansbergen, VP Strategic Marketing at DSM Nutritional Products.

“We are looking into, on the one hand, diagnostics and monitoring. So we are looking for non-invasive devices which can prove that a nutritional is actually working. At the same time, we are looking at delivery platforms,” he says.

“We are partnering with a number of players in the industry because we don’t think just DSM, or any company in particular, is going to [be able to] address this topic in the industrial platform of actually delivering personal nutrition,” Lansbergen notes. “One good example is our work with opticians where we have a device which measures the lutein content in your eyes. For this, we work with opticians, supplement providers and diagnostics providers.”

Another key project for DSM at the moment is its partnership with digital health company Mixfit. This partnership combines DSM's knowledge in essential micronutrients and Mixfit's technologies to provide the ability to analyze health data in real-time to effectively identify nutritional gaps and create customized beverages.

“Mixfit is personalized nutrition delivered in real time, based on each individual’s unique health, physiological and biological needs. In that context, it incorporates a very sophisticated platform that, in real time, analyzes and aggregates with your devices, with diagnostics and such. Whatever more data that we put into it, the more information that we have and through MINA (Mixfit Intelligence Nutrition Assistant), you can communicate with the device and dispense exactly the drink required for you,” Reza Zanjani, CEO and President of Mixfit, tells NutritionInsight.

In explaining the technology, he notes: “Essentially the companion app which is MINA is a chatbot. There is a minimal amount of information, whereby you can connect devices around activity, sleep etc. In that context, your profile is on the cloud and when you are in the same environment with the machine your profile is registered. If you want to make a drink you could say so. With each [beverage], we would also display what the exact contents are from the various compartments of the machine, in order to personalize that for you.” 

“We are currently finalizing what our target commercial launch will be. What we plan to do is to conduct focus groups and small pilots over the course of the remainder of 2018 in order to have customers engaged. In 2019, we are looking to commercially launch it,” he says.

Monteloeder on its digital nutraceuticals concept
One often seen approach to personalized nutrition is the marrying of digital tools with nutritional/nutraceutical ingredients. Spanish company Monteloeder made waves at Vitafoods Europe this year with its “digital nutraceuticals” concept, which uses mobile technologies and wearable devices during a product's development. With the information gathered, Monteloeder develops digital solutions where product effects, consumer personal characteristics and context are taken into consideration.

“We noticed that our final consumers are more digitalized, often have wearable devices or mobile applications for health and are more aware of their health in general. So they realize that there’s a huge amount of products in the market and many either are considered not efficient or not as relevant. We decided that we had to change the company and the nutraceutical sector as the consumer is changing too,” Dr. Jonathan Jones, Research and Development Manager at Monteloeder, tells NutritionInsight. “We coined this 'digital nutraceuticals,' where we combine a supplement, which has been clinically demonstrated to be efficient, with a mobile app which helps the consumers [to reach a certain health goal].”

Speaking about the benefits of such an approach, Jones points to consumer compliance.

“Consumers may forget to take the product or they do not take it properly. One thing we include in the app is [education on] when to take it and how to take it,” Jones notes. “Once we know the consumer is taking the product properly, and daily, the next step is to show them how efficient it is for their health.”

Fonterra’s NZMP focuses on R&D, scaling up personalized nutrition solutions
NZMP, Fonterra’s global dairy ingredients B2B brand, has tipped personalization as one of the top global consumer food and beverage trends shaping the dairy industry at present. 

“As a company, we spend a significant amount of money and resources on R&D. We have our research center in Palmerston North in New Zealand with over 400 scientists working on a whole range of different areas and applications, and we spend about NZ$100 million on R&D per year,” Thijs Bosch, Fonterra Sales Director Europe, tells NutritionInsight. “We are also looking at partnerships with start-ups, universities and research centers all over the world to target this topic. So there is more to come in that area.”

“Personalized nutrition has over the past 12-18 months come up as a theme to do research in. The big challenge for many companies in the industry is [the question of] how you really scale it up. So how do you create an offering which appeals to the mass market but still brings a customized solution to an individual consumer. And that is what personalized nutrition is really about. It is not necessarily about tailoring food towards your DNA profile or new high-tech applications. It’s more about how you can get the right nutrition at the right time, for the right type of consumer. This is where our efforts are going at the moment.”

By Lucy Gunn