Engineering Food Systems to Enable Precision Nutrition

Precision nutrition is an emerging approach to answering the question: What should one eat to optimize one’s health? The answer is different for each person based on genetics, microbiome, metabolism, medical and physical conditions, dietary preferences, personal goals, food environment, and socio-economic-psychological background. The goal of precision nutrition is to ensure that functional ingredients are active and bioavailable upon consumption by the individual.

Foods are critical elements in precision nutrition, yet current drivers of our food supply entail ensuring safety, shelf stability, quality, consumer demand, cost, and, in some cases, nutrient retention. This ERVA event aims to address the gap between the status quo and a future customizable food supply that will accommodate current needs while also serving personalized nutritional needs.

The event will focus on the elements in the green box in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Key Components of an Engineering Food System to Meet Precision Nutrition Requirements

Our focus will be on the components of the “food system,” which takes raw agricultural and other sources (materials) as inputs to produce edible foods (food processing) prepared for the consumer (the system outputs). Numerous engineering processes convert these raw materials into available and absorbable nutrients in foods; this is where innovation in tools and processes may be required. Ensuring the type and amount of absorbable nutrients post-processing will rely on analytical input throughout the food system. In turn, these foods should be edible and packaged in convenient forms for transport, safety, and shelf longevity. Ultimately, these foods should appeal to and meet consumer demands and be vehicles (via individually tailored combinations) to deliver nutrition, from macro- and micro-nutrients to bioactives best suited for the individual.

Food product development for precision nutrition will be guided by a framework of materials/nutritional content, tools and processes, and analytical characterization. This ERVA event will address the following engineering research opportunities to address the key barriers to precision nutrition:

1. Materials/Nutrition Content: What are the key engineering technologies for optimizing and controlling nutritional content in various crops? What are potential new sources of nutrients?
2. Tools and Processes: How can food process engineering be tailored to ensure bioavailability of functional nutrition? What are the key novel processes and engineering systems technologies needed to integrate new nutrient sources into the food system?
3. Analytical Characterization (Sensors and Analytics): What novel sensors, monitoring technologies, etc., will enable nutrition preservation, shelf stability, and delivery while minimizing food waste and reducing costs?