Growing consumer awareness about health driving the market for personalised nutrition
Consumers are increasingly seeking personalisation in their daily experiences, shifting away from consumption of one-size-fits-all media and meals. The movement toward quantifying personal characteristics to track and improve health is driving the need for personalised products. Personalised nutrition refers to the approach of using information based on individual characteristics to develop a customised nutritional profile and deliver advice, products or services accordingly. In other words, it can be defined as an approach that assists individuals in achieving a lasting dietary change that is beneficial for their health. The overall goal of using personalised nutrition is to enhance health using phenotypic, medical, genetic, and nutritional information about an individual. Personalised nutrition is equally applicable to patients and healthy consumers, as it helps in understanding individual susceptibilities to specific diseases through genetic testing.
Personalised nutrition has numerous advantages that can be used for analysing the health of an individual. Microbiome-based data plays a major role in developing personalised nutrition—results of which help in understanding the effects of dietary factors on metabolism and health. In other words, personalised nutrition provides an in-depth analysis of an individual, which is helpful and provides long-term health benefits, as well. Some of the personal data collected during testing for personalised nutrition includes clinical tests, blood metabolome and proteome, genome sequences, fecal microbiome, and physical activity, among others. The growing market of personalised nutrition is providing opportunities for established players and disruptor companies to work in synergies, to innovate.
High demand for tailored solutions in diets
Personalised nutrition has redefined the parameters of dietary analysis and delivers tailored solutions to the individual by giving advice so as to fit physical, clinical, and emotional needs. Nowadays, specific or tailored nutritional habits have become a trend that is being followed by one and all. It is testing a person’s genetics, physical activity, sleep behaviors, microbiome, dietary habits, and metabolome to deliver a tailored solution. This has become a major driver for the global personalised nutrition market.
However, considering all the factors, it's the gap between defining the actual relationship within eating patterns and genes that affect the interplay within the behavior and environment that remains the major limitation to the growth of the market.
Geographical prominence
Geographically, it is North America that accounted for the largest market share in the personalised nutrition market, followed by Europe. The growing awareness among consumers regarding health and nutritional benefits through tailored options have made personalised nutrition one of the significantly growing markets in North America, and especially the US. Companies understand the growth prospects and have, therefore, ventured into the personalised nutrition market either through apps, kits, or plans. The subscription model provided by the companies has given them the window to make changes as per individual requirements. This often comes at a cost, which varies from high to low based on the customer requirements. Even with all these attributes, consumers are ready to pay the price, given they get the desired results.
Leading market players
The players in the personalised nutrition market are directing their efforts toward the commercialisation of personalised nutrition on a broader scale through different channels. Companies are entering into the industry with business segments such as apps, diet plans, supplements, and gene testing, among others. Some of the major companies operating in the personalised nutrition market include Amway, Viome, Persona, Vitagene, Zipongo, Panaceutics Inc, Habit Food Personalized Inc., DNAfit, Mindbodygreen, Bayer AG, Bactolac Pharmaceutical Inc., Nutritional Genomix, Biogeniq, etc. The food industry is also actively partaking in the manufacturing of fully personalised or clustered products and capitalise the opportunity through strategic collaborations.
For now, personalised diets are helping individuals decide what to include and what to omit from their diet, which is going to dominate their personal health space. It is expected that the future of this developing trend could get very interesting. Personalised nutrition is set to disrupt the conventional health and wellness market, helping consumers get more from their daily life. In a market comprising of consumers who are increasingly aware of their nutritional needs, and others who live at the risk of disease due to poor nutritional intake, it seems that this is an area of huge potential for the food industry.
By creating products that are personalised to the needs of smaller subcategories of individuals, companies may not only be able to benefit those who stand at the risk of disease directly, but further help others to achieve the high level of nutrition they seek.
Download the latest free personalised nutrition report published by Vitafoods Insights, February 2020
