Do we need to change how we talk about Personalized nutrition?
What’s in a name? That which we call an industry by any name would smell as sweet.
It’s true that in many nascent sectors, there’s much variation in basic definitions. It makes sense, considering much of the groundwork is still being built. Where players are few, gaps are big and adoption is still early, there will be considerable overlaps between existing concepts, which over time will either converge, evolve or give way to newer iterations.
For us in personalised nutrition, there’s an identity crisis brewing. This is mainly in part due to its various origins - a cocktail of dietetics, genomics, behavioural psychology, big data, clinical research, epigenetics, ethics and other influences, each occupying more or less space in the limelight. This has meant that the terms personalized nutrition, precision nutrition, lifestyle medicine and food as medicine are often used interchangeably. This does not help our cause to raise the bar for Personalised nutrition which is making health accessible through nutrition for all, nor does it help consumers to understand the science.
Let´s just get on with it
As the space continues to grow and pique the interest of deep pockets, a more standardised culture of language and definition around cornerstone themes is needed.
Why? Because innovation needs parameters and definitions in order to measure progress. So far we can´t even agree on the industry-wide definition of personalised nutrition, as to date we have at least 3 definitions being touted as THE one (ANA, FoodvalleyNL)
What exactly do we mean when we talk about personalised nutrition, or lifestyle medicine? Are we certain that lifestyle medicine also includes the role of clinical studies, or that personalised nutrition also references sports nutrition?
Personalised nutrition is more commonly associated with dietary preferences, lifestyle, religious, ethical and cultural food behaviours, whereas Lifestyle medicine encompasses nutrition and lifestyle such as sleep, stress management and social networks.
Those leading the charge - startups, researchers, nutritionists, dieticians, technologists - will need to eventually converge on a universal name for the category, or splinter into smaller niches.
What’s the fix?
As it is with most things, Qina believes that the solution to untangling these definitions starts with the end consumer. How are they seeking the kinds of solutions that help them achieve their weight-loss goals, or better deal with chronic conditions? Which words and phrases are they using to make sense of the science and translate it to their own health behaviours?
In other words, the behaviours and habits of consumers usually dictate how brands and solutions are ‘landing’ in their imagination, and the value they perceive when it comes to accomplishing their health and lifestyle goals. This means we need to acutely understand how Personalised nutrition is framed in their minds.
For example, below charts a keyword search comparison between comparatively similar terms, personalized nutrition’ (blue), ‘lifestyle medicine’ (red) and ‘precision nutrition’(green). Looking back over the past 10 years, lifestyle medicine seems to have broken out above the rest and increasing whilst precision nutrition is declining whilst personalized nutrition and Food as medicine searched much less.
Fig. 1 - A Google Trends comparison between ‘personalised nutrition’, ‘lifestyle medicine’ and ‘personalised health’ from 2012 until present day.
Why could this be happening? We believe that the rising interest in disease prevention and holistic health and wellness align more closely to consumers´expectation and perception of their health aspiration by looking for practical day-to day solutions to change their lifestyles. Precision nutrition on the other hand could spark the illusion of accuracy, of real-time feedback and ultimate hyper personalization to “me, me ,me” which is what consumers want, but totally not where we are at in the science right now.
So what does this mean? Does it mean that all personalised nutrition companies should immediately rebrand and avoid referring to their market as anything but lifestyle medicine? Or should we get better at communicating what Personalised nutrition is or should be? The solution probably lies in a blend of tactics that leverage technology and big data.
A recent systematic review has demonstrated that using Social network analysis or SNA is a powerful tool to understand how information spreads online. This technology makes use of unstructured data such as blog posts, social media posts, product reviews as well as discussion forums as unstructured data. It matters because as more nutrition experts talk and share accurate information online, the more likely this information is to be found by consumers while they are searching for information but that means the onus is on us to use the correct terminology. This applies to Personalised nutrition as an industry and how we want to evolve as a credible and trustworthy industry.
Based on how algorithms work, this influx of accurate and evidence information will mean that consumers will be shown more of the same, rather than an echo chamber of hyped up and inaccurate and potentially dangerous messages promoting quick fixes and pseudo-science. “…the routine use of SNA within a mixed method approach could yield actionable insights that would be useful in the transactional context of complex interventions”.
Legendary marketing guru Seth Godin famously said ‘data is not valuable until it becomes information’. If the personalised nutrition space is to truly become a multi-billion goliath as many predict, it will need to resolve these key questions by truly understanding how consumers are navigating this world for themselves.
While we cannot accurately predict the future, we can help to shape it, which is why at Qina, we not only write about topics important to Personalised nutrition, we also use a mixed-methodology approach to analyse consumer sentiment and topic modelling to answer important questions that define the industry. QinaVer, is our proprietary text-mining solution that unlocks deep actionable insights from troves of consumer data that we overlay with our domain expertise to provide context.
Reference:
- Smit LC, Dikken J, Schuurmans MJ, et al. Value of social network analysis for developing and evaluating complex healthcare interventions: a scoping review. BMJ Open 2020;10:e039681. doi:10.1136/ bmjopen-2020-039681