NutrEvent is the annual European meeting place for key players of the fields of food, human and animal nutrition innovation. It gathers, established companies, start-ups, investors, ingredient suppliers as well as distributors. This year, the event will take place in Rennes on October 17th and 18th.
NutrEvent fosters collaborations through its meeting platform, exhibition area, innovation pitch sessions and last but not least its conference programme. Each year, the plenary sessions of the conference programme offer a transversal vision of key issues of the industry. For this edition, the plenary conference of the second day will gather experts of the field to exchange about personalised nutrition. More precisely: “How can personalisation be applied to a diversity of metabolisms and food intake behaviours?” This session will be held on October 18th from 2.00 to 3.15 pm.
“Companies will need to join forces to better help consumers”
Nard Clabbers, thought leader in personalised nutrition, NCNC Nutrition Consultancy, will moderate this session. According to him the concept of personalised nutrition is “only clear to a small subset of people and not an unhealthy category of people. There is still a lot of innovation required to make it a reality outside of this niche.” He follows up with describing the two principal limiting factors to the development of personalised nutrition: “The personalised nutrition solutions are usually very targeted, and I believe companies will need to join forces to better help consumers. Also, there is a lack of knowledge about behavioural changes from the companies. Personalised nutrition and healthy behaviour habits go together.”
A bright future ahead of personalised nutrition
Despite these limitations Nard is optimistic: “There is more and more relevant data and more and more people who are concerned about making better choices for their health but also regarding sustainability. What is key is to make personalisation much simpler and differentiated for each niche: healthcare, sports and retail.”
While Nard Clabbers recognises the potential of wearable tech as a driver for personalised nutrition, to him the next step is elsewhere. “I think smart, short, simple behavioural questionnaires, and digital tools to track mood, behaviour and measure psychological traits are the next game changer. A special mention must go to the microbiome as it is starting to be a next frontier of science-driven nutritional advice.”
There is already a lot to think about and this conference is the opportunity to explore the different directions personalised nutrition could be evolving towards. The presence of three speakers has already been confirmed for this session: Yiannis Mavrommatis, Associate Professor in Nutrition Genetics, St Mary’s University, Ivan Stefanic, EIC Programme Manager for Food Chain Technologies and Novel & Sustainable Food, European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency (EISMEA), Michael Collier, Strategic Consultant, Director Human Performance, McLaren Racing.
We look forward to finding out the input of the experts and the audience on our conference programme.
NutrEvent will take place in Rennes on October 17th and 18th
