Tech-Driven Personalized Health, Wellness, and Nutrition: Opportunities for Brands in 2023

Yesterday I published, the 3 Biggest Consumer Trends Shaping Wellness in 2023. In that article, I explored how personalized health and nutrition were becoming extremely important to U.S. consumers. I wanted to delve deeper into the importance of personalized nutrition as artificial intelligence (AI), wellness related technology, and functional products and services are rising rapidly.

What Is Personalized Nutrition?

According to Deloitte, personalized nutrition is a diet recommendation that has been scientifically tailored to meet your personal nutritional requirements based on your genetic profile, microbiome composition, metabolism, environmental exposure, and personal wellness goals.?

The American Nutrition Association has proposed to define personalized nutrition as “a field that leverages human individuality to drive nutrition strategies that prevent, manage, and treat disease and optimize health.”?

Why Are Consumers Interested In It??

By 2025, consumer spending on personalized nutrition is on track to reach 2.76 billion dollars. Worldwide, that number is expected to grow to 16.4 billion. Consumers are interested in using personalized nutrition as a way to develop and maintain a healthy lifestyle, ditch the one size fits all approach found in most diets, and cut through the confusion of what to eat.?

While the consumer’s definition of personalized nutrition varies widely, the majority of them view personalization as a way to bridge their heritage, food beliefs, and preferences together. According to Melanie Zanoza Bartelme, a global food analyst for Mintel:

They [consumers] want to have someone help them connect all the different dots about what they know about themselves and create a road map.

The road map would take into account their family history, their health and health goals, food preferences and beliefs. The road map would take their genetic information and health preferences and lay them out in a plan that told them what to eat, what products to buy, and how to use that information to achieve their goals.

Technology Plays an Important in Personalization

If consumers want healthcare professionals and practitioners to be able to hand them a road map to individualized, optimal health, then they’re going to need the right set of tools.?

Enter technology: mobile apps, AI, testing kits, and more. Technology plays a critical role in being able to create customized products, services, or plans for consumers. Here are the tools currently available:?

• DNA Profiling: DNA profiling, also known as nutrigenomics or nutritional genomics is broadly defined as the relationship between nutrients, diet, and gene expression. Companies like Habit, Nutrition Genome, DNA Nutrition, and Geno Palate offer tests that analyze key areas of health like diet, energy, DNA, athletic performance, stress/cognitive performance, hormones and more.?
• Gut Microbiome Testing: In recent years, gut health has become a hot topic in the health and wellness worlds. Healthcare professions have published numerous studies on how the health of a person’s gut microbiome affects many parts of the body, including digestion, immunity, and your nervous system. Companies like Zoe or Viome have developed testing kits that help people determine what foods they may be eating that are causing problems in their body, which may correlate to other health issues they’re experiencing.
• At-home Testing For Analysis:? At-home testing and self-diagnostics kits are growing in popularity as consumers look to better understand their nutrition needs, but also their ancestry, as heritage and race is something that could be tied to optimizing health and longevity. Ancestry and 23andMe offer DNA tests that show someone their genetic history, but the person can then create gene-based food recommendations based on those results.?
• Online Questionnaires and Surveys: Not all companies are using blood, siliva, or stool samples to serve up recommendations. Care/Of and Rootine use detailed questionnaires in order to customize supplement recommendations for their customers. Questionnaires are used in place of expensive testing methods and offer less intrusive ways to collect information from customers.?
• Mobile Apps and Trackers: Google launched FitBit in 2009. After that, a host of wearable devices came to market, including Oura and Misfit.? Fitness trackers can be tied into a person’s nutrition or health tracking apps to monitor activity. Since the early fitness trackers, more sophisticated, integrated health apps have come to market. For example, Nutritionix is a dietitian-certified food tracking company that scans through the available food databases, tracks food intake and daily calorie needs through a voice-enabled device, and provides access to individual nutrition coaches. Mobile apps are a subcategory of wearable wellness technology, which is worth $28 billion.?
• Artificial Intelligence (AI): AI is another tool health, wellness, and food companies are using in order to create personalized recommendations for customers. Apps like Pinto (which powers product information for grocery stores like Whole Foods and Kroger) allow companies and manufacturers to leverage data to help improve conversion.? Calorie Mama AI allows users to snap photos of what they’re eating and receive instant nutritional data. Lumen uses a CO2 sensor and flow meter to determine how your body is burning fue (the goal being to optimize your metabolism). ZOE is also exploring a more end-to-end solution that leverages AI to manage everything from nutrition to health.?

What This Means For Brands, Manufacturers and Retailers

While the consumer’s interest in personalized nutrition is still small, its growth since the pandemic makes it a trend food industry professionals should pay attention to. And with the onslaught of new apps, tools, and technologies to help individuals crack their genetic code (so to speak), personalization may start to play a strong role in the way brands and manufacturers develop products and market their products to consumers.

Examples of Companies Experimenting with Personalization?

There are several existing food companies and grocers that have partnered with apps and DNA services.?

1. ?Nestlé Health Science acquired Persona, which develops personalized vitamin recommendations based on the consumer’s history and lifestyle.?
2. Gatorade launched customizable beverage bottles and hydration supplements. The company also created a sweat-sensitive skin patch that changes color to indicate hydration and electrolyte levels. Users can send a photo of the patch’s color to an affiliated app which then recommends a corresponding hydration pod.
3. Amazon Fresh partnered with Habit to deliver customized nutrition plans to consumers. Habit (owned by Viome) also allows event organizers, caterers and restaurateurs to offer gluten-free, dairy-free, vegetarian, and vegan dishes to accommodate food sensitivities. Food brands can upload and add all the nutritional information about their products to the app.?
4. Canyon Ranch created nutrition programs for individual visitors. Their services range from one-time personal nutrition consultations and health coaching programs, to integrative eating programs to help manage diseases to cooking classes.?
5. In 2018, the Mandarin Oriental in Hong Kong and Careys Manor UK promoted a 12-week DNAFit program that designed a workout routine for guests.
6. Cal-A-Vie in California created functional medicine and nutrition programs led by registered nurses and dietitians to help guests take charge of their health and nutritional needs.?

What Personalization Represent In 2023

Personalized nutrition has two paths that have been developing over the past decade. One that relates to technology, and one that relates to human interaction and support.?

Technology: Apps, DNA testing, and online to in-store tech tools offer everyone from retailers to restaurateurs the ability to change the way they connect with consumers. From uploading the nutritional information of food and products, to being able to create experiential offerings in the real world, technology can be used creatively in all aspects of food.?

Real-world Interaction and Connection: Personalization is creating lucrative opportunities for companies. Food brands and manufacturers can partner with celebrity chefs for demo kitchens. Health and fitness companies can create and collaborate with in-person events or conferences (Create & Cultivate and BlogHER already have wellness related events). In the B2B realm, personalization offers new distribution opportunities.?

What's Coming Next

As of today, 90% of consumers find more personalized ways of eating appealing. There's a huge paradigm shift happening because consumers are embracing the fact that their food, diet, and nutrition is not one size fits all – and it doesn’t have to be. 2023 is going to be a big year for brands and manufacturers as consumer behaviors and attitudes towards food, health and wellness continue to shift rapidly.?

By continually looking at your data, observing your customer first hand, as well as asking them what’s important to them, food brands and manufacturers can find ways to create and deliver foods that their customers will buy.?

Disclaimers

Science & Research Behind Personal Nutrition?

I know that personalization has many points of view. Nutrigenomics is an area of study that is still development.Credible research proving its validity or lack thereof are still in development (report 1 | 2 | 3). The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics are calling for caution in the field, stating that “The practical application of nutritional genomics for complex chronic disease is an emerging science and the use of nutrigenetic testing to provide dietary advice is not ready for routine dietetics practice.” The massive investment of capital in the area makes it extremely appealing.?

Variances in DNA/Food Allergy Testing

Many consumers say there are big differences in test results. “There are two reasons why,” says independent geneticist Dr. Lawrence Brody, Director of Genomics and Society Division at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) who is not affiliated with any genetic testing company. “The first could be that they didn’t test for the same thing [variants], second, they did test for the same variant but they used different scientific models for their support, and as science is incomplete, they came to different conclusions, rather than saying, ‘we don’t know’.”