Personalized nutrition: Teamwork between Maastricht University and BASF Vegetable Seeds
Date:02-15-2019
Recently, Claudia Daniels, Market Research Specialist at BASF Vegetable Seeds, met 160 Master students at University Maastricht (UM). Claudia explained a new project on ‘personalized nutrition’ submitted by her department Market & Competitor Intelligence to the students. As a result, we selected 6 motivated Master students with a very diverse study background to join the project.
Claudia Daniels, Market Research Specialist at BASF Vegetable Seeds, met 160 Master students at University Maastricht.
What is personalized nutrition?
Personalized nutrition is an approach that uses information on individual characteristics to develop targeted nutritional advice, products, or services. For example, information can be based on DNA, stool samples, and blood markers, but it can also be based on easier to measure variables, such as weight, blood pressure, eating patterns and physical activity.
What’s in it for BASF Vegetable Seeds?
Driven by the escalating global epidemic of overweight and obesity, we see ‘personalized nutrition’ rapidly emerging as a key issue for the long-term future of the industry. Knowing how ‘personalized nutrition’ might play a role in the future, we can better define our strategy and therefore focus investments on the right output traits. If in the end this results in the development of vegetable varieties that better fit consumer needs, then this is not only beneficial for the consumers, but also for our-, and our customers’ business.
Elements of investigation
As the topic of personalized nutrition is very broad, many elements could be investigated, some examples are:
- What variables will be measured, and how can nutritional components in vegetables play a role in this?
- Are consumers willing to pay for personalized nutrition concepts?
- How will this affect the needs and characteristic of food products, and what are relevant food label regulations?
- Will personalized nutritional advice be effective, will consumers comply to this kind of diet?
Kick-off meeting.
What’s up next?
Now it’s up to the Project team to decide which elements they will focus on. They will focus on elements that fit best with their background, interest, and which they think are crucial to understand to come back with a sound advice. In the coming months, until July 2019, these students will work on the project in their free time. They will be guided by a supervisor (with an expertise in consumer genetics & prevention services) and two personal development coaches.
Project member Tanya Zerbian says: “The reason why I enrolled in the project is because I believe that paradoxically, food is one of the main causes of health related problems of today's society, but it is also one of the solutions to them. In a world of accelerated technological development, personalized nutrition may be the path towards solving this "wicked" situation.”
Click here to find out more about the
PREMIUM project on personalized nutrition.
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