Innovations for the manufacturing and marketing of fully personalised food products
IMAGINE is a consortium project supported by two Topsectors (Life Science and Health and High Tech Systems and Materials), in which WUR and TNO work together with a wide group of industrial partners to develop an innovative digital food manufacturing technology for producing personalized food products.
Why? There is a growing understanding that individuals differ in their body responses to specific foods and nutrients, in their dietary preferences, as well as in their behaviour and psychology. Personalised foods that contain the nutrients based on these individual needs are promising to improve health, performance and well-being. Maybe even more important, the technology empowers the consumer to decide what they want to eat, to improve their motivation to consumer the food product that contains the nutrients they need.
The main objective of the consortium project 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 will develop a 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 project will develop the entire technology, from a personalized nutritional advice based on personal data, to the development of personalized in-between meal foods containing the desired nutrients and the manufacturing platform to actually produce the foods. Finally, the value of the technology will be demonstrated in two field labs: As example of a medical-care application, personalised products will be provided to post IC patients in hospital Gelderse Vallei. In a second field lab in a military setting, personalised foods will be provided to improve physical performance, vigilance, and/or physiological recovery of military personnel.
