The Critical Food System Challenges

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), "nutrition is the food intake that meets the body's needs" and good nutrition, just like regular physical exercise, are all pledges. of good health. In fact, while nutrition has a proven impact on health, its role has also been studied from other perspectives. Mobilized to build diets adapted to the needs of athletes, it is a performance vector. To preserve the planet as well as present and future generations, it meets the imperatives of enhancing sustainable food systems.

Nutrition is therefore more broadly a fundamental factor for the well-being of individuals. Although it was for a long time considered from a strictly utilitarian angle, several recent studies have also highlighted the need to reintroduce pleasure at the heart of reflection.

Nutritional information, between general interest and emerging market

Since 2001, the National Health Nutrition Program (PNNS) has coordinated public policies aimed at improving the state of health of the French population through better nutrition and regular physical activity. Its implementation was a response to the strong growth of chronic diseases, for which numerous scientific studies have shown the involvement of nutritional factors. Nutritional information has always been at the heart of the PNNS and the system has gradually involved companies in the sector by proposing, from 2006, to affix nutritional labeling on the backside of food product packaging, then on their front side from of 2017, via the Nutriscore.

Sara Roversi, the Founder and President of the Future Food Institute, is focused on integral ecology and the revolution of food systems transformation. Her primary aim is to promote sustainable development and to work on tackling climate change, primarily by introducing methods and solutions for streamlining food systems across the globe. She is a member of the G20 Young Entrepreneurs Alliance and a member of the Google Food Lab. She is also the co-founder of You Can Group and has been working hard on tackling the food system challenges.

Who owns the data used and how is it or can it be collected to serve the general interest? According to what criteria are product evaluation systems developed? By whom and with what legitimacy? Finally, beyond the nutritional properties, what is a good product?

Nutritional innovation in search of balance

The nutritional dimension is also gaining ground in the very design of products. From the 2000s, the development of a holistic approach to nutrition helped transform the relationship between foods and their properties. They are no longer understood as a sum of nutrients without interaction with each other but as a whole. This observation generally follows three consumption requirements: a more plant-based, more varied, and less processed diet.

Faced with the growing demands of consumers in this direction and the rapid evolution of their eating habits, food companies are redoubling their efforts to constantly adapt their offers and to transform their practices in the long term. At the same time, brands led by young companies are opening up new avenues by placing nutritional quality at the heart of their value proposition. The field of innovation is wide to improve the nutritional profile of products: increasing personalization of ranges, reduction of certain processing steps, reformulation of recipes, substitution or elimination of ingredients. However, to reconcile gluttony, tradition, and nutritional balance, it still remains a real challenge for companies trying to respond to it.

In addition, nutrition generates service innovations, which are also stimulated by the increasing personalization of diets. Some mobile applications offer consumers health support and build nutritional programs tailored to their goals, tastes, and constraints. Others, intended for amateur or professional athletes, offer tools to improve their performance. The place given to gustatory pleasure is then more or less strong. This market for coaching solutions thus provides a good overview of the diversity and complementarity of approaches to nutrition.

These solutions all have different biases on the relationship between health, well-being and pleasure, through food. How to improve the nutritional quality of its offer while preserving sensory quality and best meet consumer preferences? Moreover, how can pleasure constitute a lever to differentiate oneself and promote healthy eating?