The Qina journey into leading Personalised nutrition
The emerging area of Personalised nutrition is not only exciting it is also rapidly moving. Qina is an industry leader providing market intelligence and consultancy services to companies in the Food, Ingredient, Consumer health and Digital health industries. However in order to understand how Qina managed to find a sweet spot in a very crowded nutrition industry, our CEO & Founder Mariette Abrahams was interviewed for her perspectives of where Qina is now.
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Describe your background and professional journey.
I originally trained as a dietitian at Stellenbosch university (South-Africa) starting out in food service, then working at a pharmacy before taking the big jump to move to London for a job as a clinical dietitian in 1999. During my 7 years in the hospital I specialized in gastroenterology and nutrition support, managed a team of 15 dietitians and completed my MBA. I then moved into medical nutrition for industry as a scientific and medical affairs manager. After 3 years in industry I decided to switch from nutrition therapy to disease prevention with a focus on new technologies. It was then that the Personalized nutrition industry started becoming interesting and I decided to set up my own niche consultancy here in Portugal. I was not completely sure what I would offer but I was confident that I had picked up the necessary technical nutrition knowledge, leadership, communication and business skills to make it work….somehow.
After some tough lessons, plenty of mistakes, precious time wasted on less important things, new skills learnt as well starting a PhD and raising two kids, I am happy that I stuck with it, as I am involved in some of the most exciting start-ups, companies and projects I would never have imagined just a few years ago.
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What drives you? What are you passionate about?
I love to learn new things, I like to stretch my skills, my thinking and my ideas to the limit. I am driven by a desire and responsibility to be a role model, to impact those I meet, to help especially women and girls who are not able to see their own potential and power.
I am not afraid to be first, and don’t hide when I am the only woman or even woman of colour in the room. I am small, but stand tall to hopefully influence the next generation of entrepreneurial nutrition professionals.
I am passionate about health, I believe that nutrition, water and access to healthy food is a human right. I believe in the power of education and that before anything, good health and nutrition is the foundation of a functioning, collaborative and productive society.
I am passionate about the potential of technology to reduce health inequalities and improve ways to prevent disease and tracj nutritional interventions both in developed and developing countries. I believe strongly in fairness, equity, opportunities for all and at every corner sending that elevator back.
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What does QINA do?
We help startups and SME’s to use advances in nutrition science and lifestyle medicine to develop products that help end users to improve their health. We do that by bridging the gap between technology, academia, industry and front-line healthcare professionals by helping companies to explore, get insights and launch in Personalised nutrition.
We provide nutrition data-science, expert consulting, training and communication services.
Our focus is on Personalized nutrition and wellness. We work with digital health, biotech, pharma, retail and nutritional supplement companies. We work virtually and flexibly, therefore we can work on long-or short term projects without the need for a full-time headcount as we know that the industry is still emerging.
We essentially act as your external nutrition, research, training and relationship manager team.
Our mission is to become the go-to resource and partner for companies large or small looking to innovate in personalised nutrition. Currently we hold the first comprehensive and curated database of Personalised nutrition companies in the industry.
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The core work of Nutrition experts is to provide personal nutrition/health advice. How is this profession changing?
The profession is changing and is pushed to change because of advances in technology, more educated consumers, rising healthcare costs as well as changing social and environmental factors. Rapid advances in technology can replace the core tasks that nutritionists do such as taking a detailed history or developing a meal plan. New technologies such as data generated from wearables and sensors, at-home testing kits, machine learning and artificial intelligence can be used to identify trends and patterns and develop personalised recommendations. This means that the value of what we offer has changed. People can easily use a free shopping app, find recipes on social media, use a meal planning service and now even order their meal kits at home. In view of easy access to information online, individual now expect information from a nutritionist to be beyond what they can find online.
The profession is therefore changing to become more of a partner in health and wellness that is expected to be available “on tap and on trend” rather than an “expert” who is sitting in a clinic. Consumers and the public want us to meet them where they are at. In addition, brand new career avenues are opening up and it is up to the profession to adapt and evolve. We need to lead the change we want to see, or technology will do it for us, and it will be harder to reverse the end result if we are not satisfied. Involvement, engagement and translation of science into products and services by experts is key.
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What is the definition of personalized Nutrition?
- In the absence of a clear definition, personalized nutrition in my view is the ability to provide dietary and lifestyle advice that is based on an individuals preferences, goals and beliefs and that focuses on prevention rather than management of disease. This approach can take into account the social environment of the individual as well as their phenotypic and genotypic data. The benefist of personalised nutrition is that it can lead to higher motivation, better adherence and superior behaviour change as well as health outcomes.
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Who is working on it?
At present the Personalised nutrition industry is predominantly flooded with start-ups, however as in any industry we are starting to seeing increasing blurred lines and global companies such as in food, technology, pharma and agriculture are starting to get involved either through investment, acquisitions or open innovation.
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What is your role as leading Personalized Nutrition Consultant ;) in this space?
My role on every project is different and that’s what I love about it. At times I am the nutrition expert, other times I help with business development, building scientific advisory boards, conducting research, creating content, strategizing, writing content, ideating, building stakeholder relations or even teaching.
With a growing focus on regulation, data ethics and inclusion I have started developing data strategies for start-ups as well.
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Anything else you would like to let readers (experts, consumers) like to know?
Every individual is different with their own unique metabolic signature. While there is plenty information online and new technology released every day, the obesogenic environment we live in has a huge impact on the food behaviours we display.
Behaviour change is hard and a journey. Personalized nutrition is therefore not a fad and best delivered by a nutrition expert who can make sense of the science and the actual goals, social environment and levels of motivation of the individual to identify the levers that works best for that particular individual.
Nutritionist however are underfunded, under resourced and not reimbursed. Consumers and the public need to demand that stakeholders such as supermarkets, pharmacists, medical centres, public health, restaurants, employers and schools make it easy to access a nutrition expert. We need to fund-holder to create new roles that take advantage of a new wave of nutrition experts that understand what consumers want and how they access nutrition information.
On the other hand experts need to raise their voices, lead during these uncertain times and carve out new careers to ensure that our views and that of the consumers is at the forefront of any new developments.
This interview was published for the German Food Forum magazine