Overview

Nutritious by Design introduces a data-driven framework for the integration of nutrition and health principles across the New Product Development (NPD) process. Led by the Agricultural University of Athens (AUA), and funded by the EIT Food, ‘Nutritious by Design’ brings together research and food industry to co-create an innovative product development framework in a two-step approach. Firstly, AUA and NUTRIS Institute Slovenia will collect and analyze data from food labels to describe how “healthiness” is expressed in the composition of processed foods. Then, DELTA FOODS SA using its expertise in product development, together with AUA will pilot a new way of designing healthier foods.
Through training events and hackathons, food producers in Greece and Europe will be given the opportunity to familiarize themselves with the “Nutritious by Design” methodology and apply it in real-world cases. The final goal is to deliver a credible, data-driven, industry-tested framework that enables healthier food innovation.

Our Mission

Nutritious by Design aims to identify the correct metrics to describe what healthiness looks like for processed foods and then integrate them into food product design. AUA and NUTRIS will harness data from food labels to identify industry and policy relevant metrics for healthiness. Together with DELTA FOODS SA, these metrics will be mapped into the New Product Development (NPD) process and offered to the wider food industry as a working framework. Our mission is to create tools and educational offerings that will assist the food industry in considering nutrition as a core pillar of product development.

Our Ambition

Through Nutritious by Design, we envisage a shift in the mentality of designing healthier products. We aim for a new era where innovation to promote healthier choices is realized as a core business goal for the food industry. Food data will be central in ensuring an environment in which businesses, policy makers, researchers and consumers can discuss abstract concepts like healthiness and agree on pathways that restore trust and instigate changes in modern food processing.
The project will investigate the creation of organizations that ensure the long-term implementation of this framework, via continuous data management and science translation activities.