2022 EIT Food activities

The increasing transition of Europeans to plant-based diets and particularly vegan diets presents some specific nutritional challenges to those consumers. For example, levels of minerals such as iron are lower in plants and the iron is much less bioavailable than that from animal sources, and plants do not produce any vitamin B12 at all, increasing the risks of insufficiencies and deficiencies. The prevalence of micronutrient deficiencies in Europe are increasing and innovative solutions are required to address these issues.

In this project, two innovative solutions that sought to overcome these potential nutritional issues were developed and tested. First, we tested the ability of plants to take up vitamin B12 supplemented into the nutrient growing solution used in domestic hydroponic growing systems and developed growing conditions that generated vitamin B12 biofortified green leafy vegetables that met the Reference Nutrient Intake (RNI). Second, we identified vegan recipes and modified other vegan recipes to generate around 60 recipes that contained higher levels of bioavailable iron and incorporated these into a consumer facing app that supported vegans in achieving higher intakes of iron-rich foods with increased bioavailable iron. The nutritional information in the app was informed by high quality nutrient composition data held in the UK National Food Composition Databank.

Finally, we tested these innovations with consumers using various consumer testing approaches. These included workshops, focus groups, use of questionnaires, consumer app testing and testing of the developed innovations within consumer households. The information obtained from these activities fed into the design of a novel domestic hydroponics growing system that met consumers’ needs such as being suitably sized, easy to use, cheap to run and affordable to buy. The data also supported the development of the prototype app and its development into a working user interface for testing in households with potential for further development of its capabilities.