Innovations for the manufacturing and marketing of fully personalised food products
The main objective of IMAGINE is to deliver personalised food products into consumers’ daily life by connecting personal data and digital food manufacturing technology, thus allowing consumers to be and/or perform at their best.
IMAGINE brings together TNO’s and WFBR’s scientific expertise on health, personalised nutrition, consumer behaviour, industrial innovation, and food science, with a consortium of renowned industrial partners in medical and personalised nutrition, food products and food processing, as well as the stakeholders in the military and care domain. Together, we set out to create, test, and demonstrate this first-of-its-kind technology to allow consumers to select and manufacture the food products that fit with their individual bodies’ requirements, and to form an ecosystem to implement and commercialise the outcomes of this project.
The project will first identify drivers and barriers of consumer acceptance and perceived added value of the personalised foods, as well as user requirements for the technology platform from 4 user groups (military, sport, patients and care personnel). IMAGINE will develop a vending-machine-type Flexible Food Manufacturing Platform based on a digitally controlled 3D printing process. This will enable on-demand production of fully personalised food products, based on a personalised nutrition advice platform. The value of the technology will be demonstrated in two field labs. As example of medical-care applications, personalised products will be created in a rehabilitation centre for COPD patients. In a field lab in a military setting, personalised foods will be provided to improve physical performance, vigilance, and/or physiological recovery of military personnel.
In the end, the project will provide a complete functional field set-up (machine, software, formulations, user interface, etc.) with which in a follow-up project efficacy studies could be performed to validate the effect of personalised food products to optimise performance and recovery (for future research).
