Is personalised nutrition the future of food?

A kit arrives through the let­ter­box; it con­tains mate­ri­als for col­lect­ing sali­va and blood sam­ples. You swab your cheeks and prick your fin­ger­tips, and send your DNA back to the address giv­en. With­in four to six weeks you receive a per­son­alised nutri­tion report detail­ing how your body responds to all types of food. You’re then sent week­ly recipe sug­ges­tions that are tai­lored to your ide­al ratio of fat, car­bo­hy­drates and pro­tein.

Data col­lect­ed through DNA test­ing and per­son­al­is­ing diets is going to have a sig­nif­i­cant finan­cial impact for food man­u­fac­tur­ers as it opens up whole new mar­ket­ing and rev­enue oppor­tu­ni­ties

Wel­come to the world of per­son­al­i­sa­tion, an emerg­ing trend in the food indus­try that is tap­ping into the health-con­scious mar­ket. Accord­ing to the 2016 Nielsen Glob­al Health and Ingre­di­ent Sen­ti­ment Sur­vey, 70 per cent of 30,000 respon­dents from across 63 coun­tries said they active­ly make dietary choic­es to help pre­vent health con­di­tions, such as obe­si­ty, dia­betes and high cho­les­terol.

The major companies buying into personalised nutrition

Camp­bell Soup Com­pa­ny and Nestlé are the two biggest names to have tak­en a gam­ble on DNA-spe­cif­ic food. In 2016, the for­mer invest­ed $32 mil­lion (£25 mil­lion) in Habit, the lead­ing DNA-cum-nutri­tion test­ing ser­vice. Mean­while, the Swiss food and bev­er­age com­pa­ny is report­ed to be pilot­ing per­son­alised nutri­tion in Japan; around 90,000 users of the Nestlé Well­ness Ambas­sador pro­gramme can sub­mit pho­tos of their food via an app, which then rec­om­mends lifestyle changes. The pro­gramme can cost $600 (£468) a year if users want a DNA test­ing kit and to receive in return spe­cif­ic sup­ple­ments, such as nutri­ent-boost­ed green tea, based on their indi­vid­ual data.

Per­son­al­i­sa­tion is noth­ing new – it’s long been pos­si­ble to add a name and mes­sage to a cake, dec­o­ra­tive bis­cuit or pack­ag­ing – but the increase in the num­ber of peo­ple, who want to under­stand the bac­te­ria in their gut, for exam­ple, is cre­at­ing an open­ing for the indus­try.

“Data col­lect­ed through DNA test­ing and per­son­al­is­ing diets is going to have a sig­nif­i­cant finan­cial impact for food man­u­fac­tur­ers as it opens up whole new mar­ket­ing and rev­enue oppor­tu­ni­ties,” says Tar­ryn Gorre, co-founder of Kafoo­dle, a food tech start­up that com­bines per­son­alised meal plan­ning with soft­ware for mon­i­tor­ing nutri­tion­al needs.

“Nutri­tion­al­ly focused food and drink will become more main­stream, but I believe it will be a pull [rather than pushed on con­sumers]. It will be tai­lored to those already look­ing to add a par­tic­u­lar nutri­ent to their diet and even those with aller­gies,“ Ms Gorre adds.

What will personalised nutrition actually mean for the food industry?

Look­ing at what this actu­al­ly means for the food indus­try, deliv­er­ing per­son­alised prod­ucts to the mass­es won’t be with­out its chal­lenges. The Food Stan­dards Agency (FSA) in the UK and the US Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion have strict guide­lines about what can be put on labels, and the nutri­tion­al claims that can and can’t be made.

Ms Gorre says there’s also the con­cern that it could increase food waste. Prod­ucts would have to be processed and man­u­fac­tured in advance, but by the time they reach con­sumers, there may no longer be the demand for them.

Dr Shaobo Zhou, senior lec­tur­er in nutri­tion­al sci­ence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bed­ford­shire, believes sci­en­tif­ic, legal, social and eco­nom­ic bar­ri­ers mean you’re not like­ly to see the major food man­u­fac­tur­ers devel­op­ing per­son­alised prod­ucts to be sold by super­mar­kets, at least not for now.

“Giv­en the unan­swered ques­tions around per­son­al­is­ing nutri­tion, it’s unlike­ly you’ll see a food com­pa­ny pro­duce indi­vid­u­alised prod­ucts on an indus­tri­al scale,” says Dr Zhou. “Focus­ing on more press­ing issues, like reduc­ing salt and sug­ar lev­els, would be a much more impact­ful way for the food indus­try to improve indi­vid­ual and pub­lic health.”

While per­son­alised nutri­tion prod­ucts may not be sit­ting on shop shelves in the near future, what is like­ly to hap­pen is that food com­pa­nies will part­ner with star­tups and tech com­pa­nies to improve exist­ing process­es and ser­vices, in cater­ing and hos­pi­tal­i­ty set­tings, for exam­ple.

“I think per­son­alised eat­ing is an expe­ri­ence that will be inte­grat­ed into many din­ing estab­lish­ments. There will be a rise in a more com­po­nent way of eat­ing. For instance, sal­ads bars will use food tech­nol­o­gy to enable con­sumers to tai­lor each sal­ad to their exact pref­er­ence, by adding pro­tein or reduc­ing car­bo­hy­drates,” argues Ms Gorre, whose own com­pa­ny has devel­oped soft­ware to opti­mise the nutri­tion­al care of patients and res­i­dents in the health and social care sec­tors.

Personalised nutrition requires customer engagement and trust to succeed

At the oth­er end of the spec­trum, small brands with­out the resources to invest in DNA-cum-nutri­tion test­ing, will play a role in per­son­al­is­ing food deliv­ered to the door. One such brand is Allplants, a start­up that deliv­ers plant-based meals pre­pared by expe­ri­enced chefs.

Allplant’s co-founder Alex Petrides, who found­ed the start­up with his broth­er Jonathan, believes small­er com­pa­nies can be bet­ter at get­ting to know con­sumers on a per­son­al lev­el and under­stand­ing their pref­er­ences.

“We’ve been vis­it­ing our cus­tomers in their homes from day one. It helps us to under­stand the role we’re play­ing in their lives, what we’re doing right, by luck or design, and fric­tion points that we can improve on,” says Mr Petrides, for­mer brand direc­tor at Prop­er­corn, mar­ket­ed as a healthy snack.

“Some­times it sim­ply helps us to realise things, like the fact that peo­ple are tak­ing our meals to work for lunch. Then we can tai­lor our offer­ing fur­ther, by sell­ing per­son­alised cool­er bags, for exam­ple. [Engag­ing with cus­tomers] is con­stant mar­ket research, and it’s crit­i­cal to our con­tin­u­al improve­ment and build­ing the trust behind our brand.”

In the FSA’s lat­est Bian­nu­al Pub­lic Atti­tudes Track­er, 75 per cent of those sur­veyed said they trust that food is what it says it is and that it’s accu­rate­ly labelled.

As the trend of per­son­al­is­ing diets con­tin­ues to grow, find­ing ways to build trust will be essen­tial, espe­cial­ly if you’ll be hand­ing over your DNA for the ide­al amount of pro­tein in your diet.