BR Interview | Nicoleta Tupita: At Nestlé, science meets artificial intelligence to prepare balanced and sustainabile diets

In this exclusive Business Review interview, Nicoleta Tupita, Nestlé’s Internal Communications Manager and Nutrition Health and Wellness Manager for the South East Market, explains how the company is addressing modern dietary needs through AI-driven product development and rigorous nutrition standards.

What is Nestlé’s ambition for balanced and sustainable diets?

Nutrition has been a part of Nestlé’s DNA for over 150 years. Since the Nutrition, Health & Wellness vision was set out 25 years ago, we have accomplished a great deal. In Europe we have been particularly active – from launching more nutritious products, reducing health-sensitive nutrients (salt, sugars and saturated fats), or increasing whole grains content, to rolling-out Nestlé for Healthier Kids (our program that promotes healthy eating and lifestyle habits for children), among others.

As a company that stands for Good food, Good life, Nestlé is stepping up its measures to help people enjoy a balanced diet. “Good for You” is an evolution of our Nutrition, Health and Wellness strategy. It puts consumers at the heart of our approach to nutrition, supporting them to embrace a tasty and balanced diet in a sustainable way. Our approach includes industry-leading services to help consumers achieve their healthy eating goals.

Looking at people’s diets holistically, we know that people consume food and beverages not only for nutrition but also for enjoyment. In this context, we believe each product in our portfolio, consumed responsibly, can play a part in a balanced diet that people can enjoy throughout their lives.

Can AI play an important role in the future of nutrition?

 AI can play a significant role in helping individuals maintain better diets. AI-powered apps and platforms can assist in creating personalized meal plans based on dietary goals, nutritional requirements, and food preferences. This can streamline the process of planning and preparing balanced meals. AI can analyze the nutritional content of food items, recipes, and meals, providing detailed information about calorie intake, macronutrient balance, and essential nutrients.AI technology can be used to develop apps that recognize and analyze the nutritional content of food items based on images, making it easier for individuals to track their food intake and make healthier choices. These are just few examples of the potential of AI to revolutionize the way we approach nutrition and diet making personalization of recommendation much easier, faster and accessible to majority of people.

However, I want to make something very clear, AI will never replace dietitians, physicians and other health experts that can guide people and be aware of their perceptions, emotions and misconceptions. AI can only assist the experts and ensure faster delivery of personalized nutrition plans.

How does Nestlé integrate science-based solutions and AI in improving nutritional value of its products?

Our peer-reviewed nutrient-profiling system has been helping us to improve the nutritional value of our products for decades. We recently incorporated a new feature to benchmark against the competitive landscape.  The algorithm considers five nutrients recognized by the World Health Organization: sugars, saturated fat, sodium, fiber and protein. For any reformulation of existing products and any new product development these targets have to be respected. In my 11 years of working as a nutritionist for Nestlé and being directly involved on a daily basis in the formulation and reformulation of recipes, I experienced the complexity of the process. When developing new products, we need to consider also regulations, taste, texture, cost, and sustainability, in addition to the nutritional value. 

To cope with this significant challenge, we are complementing the expertise of our product developers with AI and data science to define the ideal recipe faster. Our experts have recently developed a connected recipe tool that leverages a database of 120 000 Nestlé recipes predicting the most suitable formulations fulfilling all requirements.

Are there any products developed with the help of AI and which are those?

We hope to see soon on the market the first innovations developed with AI-assisted formulation. Until this comes fully to live, we have developed at global level an impactful set of new technologies to improve the overall nutritional value of our products in the last years.

Can you give us some breakthrough examples? Are they coming to the Romanian market?

I will start with a breakfast cereal example as we are having the products on the market for some years already. Since 2013 we have reduced sugar in our breakfast cereals by 20% without compromising on taste. This was possible on one side with increasing the content of whole grains, but also playing with how sugar is dispersed in the flakes. We observed that if sugar is at the surface of the flakes, we perceive a product sweeter, even if the overall sugar content was reduced. It’s the priciple of ”First impression matters!” which applies to food, so first bite, first spoon, first touch of the taste buds is what makes the difference.

For indulgent products we developed new micro-aeration technologies creating invisible air bubbles in chocolate to enhance creaminess without adding fat or calories. This has been introduced in our chocolate products in Latin America. However, we have to acknowledge that improving the nutritional value of products has limitations when it comes to indulgent categories, such as chocolate or confectionery.

As consumers are often not willing to compromise on taste, we have decided to take a different approach, focusing on portion size and portion guidance. Our R&D teams are working on an algorithm that allows us to calculate an appropriate portion size at the product development stage to create a clear and credible communication to consumers on-pack. This algorithm considers regulated serving sizes and food-based dietary guidelines from over 90 countries, as well as typical consumption patterns.