Report: Engineering Food Systems to Enable Precision Nutrition

Diet-related chronic diseases remain the leading causes of preventable illness and premature death in the United States, contributing to reduced life expectancy and costing more than $1 trillion annually in health care expenses and lost productivity. Although these diseases are biological in origin, many of the barriers to prevention and treatment are fundamentally engineering challenges. Despite decades of public health guidance and recent pharmaceutical advances, disease prevalence continues to rise.

This trend reflects both the complexity of human metabolism and a food system optimized for taste, convenience, shelf life, and scale rather than nutritional quality. Individuals also respond differently to the same foods because of differences in genetics, microbiome composition, health status, environment, and behavior, complicating efforts to translate nutrition science into effective interventions.

Critical scientific and technical gaps further impede progress. More than 139,000 food-derived metabolites remain uncharacterized, obscuring pathways linking diet and disease. At the same time, the United States lacks the engineering capabilities needed to accurately measure dietary intake, predict individual metabolic responses, preserve bioactive compounds through processing and distribution, and deliver targeted nutritional interventions at scale. Federal assessments consistently identify inadequate measurement tools, biomarkers, sensing technologies, and data infrastructure as major barriers. Realizing the potential of nutrition science will require a coordinated research agenda that brings engineering to the forefront of innovation in nutrition and metabolic health.

To define the engineering agenda needed to enable precision nutrition, the Engineering Research Visioning Alliance convened experts from engineering, nutrition science, agriculture, materials science, artificial intelligence, public health, and industry. They identified nine engineering research directions required to translate biological insights into deployable food-system technologies and three cross-cutting themes as enabling infrastructure for precision nutrition. This report provides a framework for the national engineering research priorities needed to:

1. Translate biological insights into actionable engineering requirements;
2. Close measurement, modeling, and manufacturing gaps that impede precision nutrition;
3. Strengthen the resilience and sustainability of the U.S. food system; and
4. Advance public health by enabling targeted, personalized, and verifiable nutrition at scale.

Download the report today and explore the framework for a coordinated engineering research agenda to enable precision nutrition at scale. By aligning advances in sensing, materials, automation, artificial intelligence, and manufacturing with emerging biological insights, these technologies can transform the food system from one optimized primarily for scale and convenience into one capable of delivering measurable health outcomes. Precision nutrition represents both a national public health priority and a strategic opportunity to strengthen U.S. leadership in the emerging bioeconomy while improving the resilience, sustainability, and health impact of the national food system.

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