The industry is at a pivotal inflection point. Not only are the lines between food, health, tech and wellness increasingly blurred, GLP-1 is directly impacting food, shopping and lifestyle behaviours of consumers. It is expected that there will be 31 million GLP-1 users by 2035 (1). This will undoubtedly re-shape the food industry as consumers who are on treatment switch to high protein, high fiber and fresh fruit & vegetables whilst cutting out confectionary, sugar sweetened beverages, take-away meals and reducing the size of their shopping baskets.

In addition, Gen-Z’s and Millennials are currently driving the demand for “Better-for you” foods that are minimally processed, sustainable and personalised to them. In fact, a recent survey demonstrated that 57% of consumers are interested in food and beverage products that are tailored to their biology (2).

Food has become more than just sustenance; food has become an important lever in determining health and increasing healthspan, and consumers understand this.

Technology plays an important role in this monumental shift towards prevention to meet the demand of consumers who know more and expect better. 
Technologies that will be at the forefront of this shift include: 

AI can be leveraged to connect and make sense of different data points. For example, an AI agent can be used to understand a users’ lifestyle, preferences, behaviours and daily routine in order to create personalised recommendations based on an individual’s work schedule, social calendar, wearable data, weather and budget. The AI agent could identify a product that would match the users’ needs at a particular moment, nudge the user to consider it, and with approval, can place an order to have it delivered within 30 minutes. In order to achieve this, the AI agent would need to have access to personal data, product data in retail, nutritional analysis, scientific databases, wearable data and publicly available datasets such as geolocation and the weather. This means that data would need to flow between the food and digital health industry.

Digital twin technology can predict individual responses to specific interventions. In the next few years, these will be better and cheaper to develop. This means that users would be able to know how a specific food or product would impact their health.

Computer vision is leveraged for food logging, product and food recognition. This data can be matched to traceability, nutrient analysis and ingredient processing data. The current focus on Ultra-processed food means that by using computer vision, users can be informed about how processed a food is. These solutions are already shifting consumer shopping behaviours to better or less processed alternatives and adoption will only grow. Understanding which products consumers shift to and why, will drive future innovation and shift in the food system. 

Barriers to digital integration is that data is often siloed. This creates many challenges in order to provide user-centred care and recommendations. With chronic diseases on a worrying trajectory across the globe, many governments are making plans to give citizens access to their health data such as the European Health Data Space (EHDS). The goal is to promote mobility of health data in order to self-monitor and control. Blockchain technology facilitates the exchange of data, in this case health data, securely and safely across borders by allowing users to share their data with whom they see fit. For Personalised health & nutrition, this is a huge deal, as it could be the bridge between food and health data. This means over the next few years we could witness a demand for services that provide personalised nutrition and health advice in return for sharing their data. Data will no longer be controlled by tech giants, and consumers will have the opportunity to finally benefit from their data to improve their own health. This shift empowers the user to no longer be the product but actually be in the driver seat.

For example, a user could receive a “food script” when starting a GLP-1 treatment that could include coaching (human +AI), a discount voucher for specifically designed meal kits and personalised nutritional supplements from their personal nutritionist in return for sharing their health, nutritional, behavioural and wearable data. In this way, commonly cited barriers to personalised nutrition services such as high cost, lack of support, low personalisation can be addressed. This approach however would require the seamless collaboration and data exchange between the food, health and tech industry.

Healthcare, however, does not move at the speed of digital adoption and advances in AI. This misalignment risks widening health inequality and the perpetuation of sick care that does not put food and nutrition at the centre of the long-term health of the consumer.

This opens the path for a new way of thinking and business, which is the creation of a new digital ecosystem where all stakeholders in the value chain can benefit. It is an opportunity for the food industry to shift towards the production of foods that contribute to health that everyone can afford, but in a data-driven way. As a result, healthcare can shift towards prevention where consumers are empowered and supported to make the necessary lifestyle and dietary choices that benefit their health through sustainable behaviour change in the long term.

The combination of rising data mobility, a shift towards prevention, heightened consumer interest in health & nutrition as well as rapid advances in computational power, means that the food industry can expect significant changes over the next few years. Consumers refuse to be the product, they want to benefit too.
The winners in this new industry will be those who leverage data, invest in science, and commit to cross-sector collaboration to deliver truly personalized, sustainable, and effective nutrition solutions.