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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Personalized Food

I Tried Viome’s Health Intelligence Test to Understand My Gut Microbiome and Biological Age

In recent years, the gut microbiome has drawn a lot of attention in the field of nutrition science for being able to tell us an extraordinary amount about our health. Viome, a personalized nutrition company founded by executive and entrepreneur Naveen Jain, offers at-home testing that allows users to get insight into their microbiome and overall health. As someone who is deeply interested in cutting-edge personalized nutrition, I was excited to try out one of Viome’s at-home testing kits.

Taking the test

Viome sent me its Health Intelligence Test, which measures stress response, biological age, and the health of your immune system, gut microbiome, cells, and mitochondria. Taking Viome’s at-home test is straightforward, and simply required both a blood and stool sample. The testing kit included all the materials needed to gather this, and supplied extra testing materials just in case you made a mistake during the collection process. I appreciated that the instructions were detailed but also easy to follow.

Once the stool and blood samples are gathered, packaged, and sealed, I just had to drop them off in a prepaid package at my local post office. Once the samples are received, Viome states that it takes about four weeks to receive the results, which is about the amount of time it took for mine.

Before you receive the results, you must take a lengthy intake survey in Viome’s user portal that asks questions about what you eat, how you sleep, stress levels, and other lifestyle questions. It took me about 40 minutes to answer all of the questions.

Background on my health

Prior to disclosing my results and experience with using Viome’s test, I think it is important to share my perceived health and lifestyle to give you more background. For the past eight years, I have followed a whole-foods, plant-based/vegan diet that incorporates a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, legumes, and grains. I do yoga and walk every day, and rock climb multiple times a week. I get plenty of outside time because I hike, stand-up paddleboard, and forage for wild foods. I do not smoke, am not a heavy drinker, and have no chronic illnesses. I have rarely taken antibiotics in my life.

The results

In general, I consider myself to be a very healthy person and feel great most of the time. Therefore, I was surprised when I received my results.

Overall, my results were not terrible, but they were not great, and certainly did not meet my expectations. The results were graded on a scale from 0 to 100 (0 being the worst, 100 being the best), and the classification of being not optimal, average, or good.

How my mitochondrial health, immune system health, and stress response health were rated in my Viome portal

My cellular and mitochondrial health were classified as “not optimal”. My gut microbiome health and immune system health was rated as “average”, while my stress response health was “good”. I am 25 years old, but my biological health was considered to be that of a 21-year-old.

Within these larger categories were subcategories that were also graded. For example, within the “gut lining” category, there were other subcategories like butyrate production pathways and gut lining health.

The number of different ingredients recommended to me

One of the things that surprised me the most was that based on my results, the company recommended 56 different ingredients for me to supplement with. This included vitamins, herbs, minerals, food extracts, amino acids, prebiotics, and probiotics “we’ve identified to improve or help maintain your scores.”

Within the Viome portal, you can see what bacteria, archaea, eukaryotes, viruses, and probiotics, are present in the “My Active Microbes” section. My test results show that my sample contained several viruses: Paprika mild mottle virus, Pepper mild mottle virus, Tobacco mild green mosaic virus, Tomato brown rugose fruit virus. These are plant diseases, so I did not understand why this showed up in my gut.

As I mentioned before, I eat a diverse whole-food diet, eat pro-and prebiotic foods, forage wild foods, and even brew my own fermented beverages. Despite my efforts to maintain a healthy gut, only one probiotic strain was identified in my sample and my active microbial diversity ranked low.

A few of the foods on the “minimize” list

The company recommends foods that you should avoid and minimize, and also foods that are considered “superfoods” for your body. My avoid list had five foods listed (tomato, paprika, alfalfa sprouts, bell pepper, and mung bean sprouts), while my minimize list consisted of nearly 80 different foods. My superfood list consisted of 17 different foods, including cabbage, apple, artichoke, and broccoli.

Understanding the results

I first felt overwhelmed and stressed about receiving my test results, and decided to share them with my primary care physician. After looking over my results she said she was not concerned at all, especially since I did not have any symptoms I was worried about. I asked her specific questions about why some of my scores were not optimal, and she said that was not her field of specialty, and in all honestly, she wasn’t even sure of who would be best to bring my test results to.

I then decided it would be best to speak with someone from Viome to discuss my results further. I was able to talk with Grant Antoine, a naturopath by training and clinical expert at Viome. The Viome test results are intended to be self-explanatory, and Antoine said, “They’re straightforward, and hopefully, you’re doing a lot of the interpretation on your own.” When I asked who would be best to take the results to for a deeper explanation, he stated that a nutritionist or health coach would be a good option.

I actually have completed my health coaching certification and felt that I still needed to take the results to someone who was more qualified than myself.

Personally, I felt as if supplementing with 56 ingredients is excessive, especially since as a young, plant-based, athletic female, I already take a decent amount of supplements. When I asked Antoine to elaborate on why this is necessary, he said that this recommendation is based on my results, questionnaire, goals, and scores, and then seeing where there might be an opportunity to improve my scores. The recommendations are based on the company’s artificial intelligence engine that calculates the best way to support your scores and gaps with food and supplement.

Purchasing 56 different supplements would be extremely pricey (and take up a lot of cupboard space), but Viome offers personalized supplements it creates for you based on your results. If I did want to follow these supplement recommendations, it would really only make sense to purchase from the company. Viome offers customized supplements for a monthly subscription fee of $150 per month, which includes all of the recommended ingredients.

When asked why I had plant viruses present in my gut, Antoine said that when we eat plants that contain these viruses, they can linger in our gut, potentially causing an immune response or affecting the gut lining. He also said, “What exactly they’re doing, how harmful they are, we don’t exactly know if I am being 100% upfront, but there are indications that they’re inflammatory.”

Conclusion

When I asked Antoine if anyone had perfect scores across all health categories, he said, “For most people, there’s, room for improvement. We do have some all-stars that come through and they’re green across the board. I would say that those are elite athletes; there are some superstars out there.”

After already spending years figuring out what foods I should avoid, and creating health and wellness routines that make me feel great, I have decided to not follow Viome’s recommendations. Even though my results were slightly alarming, Antoine said, “But you actually have a very good result. You have a really good report of your biological age. I consider that to be kind of like your overall report card grades.” Maybe if I did follow the recommendations and take the supplements, I would feel better than I could have ever imagined.

If you are interested in giving Viome’s Health Intelligence Test a try yourself, it is currently available on sale for $199 (It is normally $299). For $129 (normally $199), the Gut Intelligence Test can be purchased on its own.

Investor Look: 10 Trends to Watch in Ag + Food Tech in 2022

Food, ocean and agtech venture fund S2G Ventures released a report citing ten catalysts that will shape intersecting industries including agriculture, food manufacturing, nutrition and food retail in 2022. The report examines the trends that are driving the transition to a climate-smart, healthy food system.

S2G — investor in several food and agtech startups — looks at technology disruption in three major categories including agricultural innovation, supply chain disruption and personalized food and nutrition.

“The food transition is still in its infancy but is being propelled by seismic tailwinds: massive demographic change spurring new consumer demand, significant advancements in the biology, chemistry and physics of food production to create new choices and now capital markets anchored by ESG that want to fund high growth, disruptive companies,” commented Sanjeev Krishnan, S2G Ventures Managing Director and Chief Investment Officer.

Farmers in the US are facing new challenges every day from nutrient-challenged soil to lack of access to capital. The S2G report describes the ways that innovation in fintech, robotics and biotech along with an increase in socially and environmentally conscious investing (ESG) will lead to the “fourth industrial revolution” in farms across the country.

The drivers of innovation in farming include:

  • Robots will increase efficiency while reducing labor needs across the food system.
  • The rise of ESG will help to digitize the farm.
  • Fintech will transform opportunities in agriculture, just as it did for the student loan and mortgage markets.
  • RNA technology that saved lives during Covid-19 will be applied to farms to save soils.

Supply chain disruptions experienced over the past two years have catalyzed both governmental institutions NGOs and the private sectors to fund and drive innovation in biotech, cellular agriculture and food waste solutions. The result according to S2G Ventures will be supply chains that are more nimble, sustainable, localized and less wasteful.

Innovations that will revolutionize supply chains include:

  • Fermentation will power the next generation of alternative protein products.
  • Cellular protein will provide consumers around the world with safe, sustainable food.
  • Adoption of food waste solutions will be recognized as both a good business practice and an essential tool for feeding the world.

Even prior to the pandemic, consumers were demonstrating a desire for better food choices and a renewed focus on ways to personalize their nutrition and healthcare. To answer this demand, food and nutrition startups are using cutting-edge bio and food science as well as AI and machine learning to develop nutrient-dense, functional and personalized food products.

Personalized food & nutrition catalysts include:

  • AI and machine learning platforms will unlock greater understanding of and use cases for plants and fungi.
  • Food will become central to the effort to prevent chronic disease and improve health outcomes.
  • Food brands and grocers will have to “personalize or perish.”

To dig into more details on areas to watch in food and agtech this year, download the full report from S2G Ventures.

Amazon Alexa Expands Food Personalization Features With Launch of ‘What to Eat’

Last week, Amazon launched a new personalized meal recommendation feature for Alexa called ‘What to Eat?’. The new capability, which was part of a slate of new features for Alexa first teased at the end of September, gives users recommendations for restaurants, recipes, prepared items, and more based on their preferences.

What to Eat is an expansion of the personalized food recommendation capabilities of Alexa that the company began rolling out earlier this year with the ‘What’s for Dinner’ feature. Where What’s for Dinner offers personalized recipe ideas based on past purchase behavior, What to Eat goes a step further by recommending options based on a user’s dietary preferences and restrictions shared with Alexa.

Once a user asks, “Alexa, what should I eat?” the voice assistant will share recommendations for restaurants, recipes, prepared food, and meal kits. Users can share their preferences and restrictions by telling Alexa to “open my food preferences.” From there, they can choose a primary diet profile from many choices that include vegetarian, paleo, keto, kosher and more. They can also add various dietary preferences such as low-salt, gluten-free, low-carb, egg-free, and more.

I tried out What to Eat on my Echo Show. After asking Alexa, a screen popped up with a Blue Apron meal recommendation at the top and then buttons for restaurants, recipes, and prepared food recommendations.

Once I clicked a level down from each topline option, I got more choices from Alexa. For example, under recipes, I chose a shoppable recipe from Amazon partner SideChef. Once there, I had my choice of step-by-step instructions for the recipe, adding ingredients to a shopping list or directly to my Amazon Fresh cart.

When choosing restaurants, a ‘nearby restaurants’ screen popped up with three options less than a mile from my home. From there, I could filter by delivery, pickup, reservations, or open now.

When I clicked on prepared foods, a screen popped up with Whole Foods chicken tortilla soup as the featured item, as well as the option to filter by Amazon Fresh, Whole Foods, or food type (salad, soup, vegan, etc.).

This evolution of Alexa’s meal personalization capabilities gives Amazon monetization opportunities through a user filling up their e-commerce basket with ingredients via a shoppable recipe, selling prepared foods from Amazon Fresh or Whole Foods, or by gathering a spiff for a restaurant recommendation. While not all of these opportunities are created equal – Amazon obviously gets a bigger share of the spend when customers add a recipe to their Amazon Fresh basket as compared to when a user eats out at a local restaurant – What to Eat entrenches Amazon deeper into the decision-making process of the consumer.

It also shows the uneven playing field for Amazon’s kitchen commerce efforts compared to other voice assistant players. After helping to create the category in 2015, Amazon continues to be the runaway leader in the US smart speaker market share, logging 69% of all installed speakers as of mid-2021. A good chunk of those smart assistants resides in the kitchen where users often will ask for recommendations, add things to a shopping list, and more. All that activity enables Amazon to profile us and, now, make money at every step in the meal journey.

The head of Alexa’s kitchen team, Mara Segal, talks about the new feature and how it allows Amazon to touch the meal journey from end to end in her interview for Amazon Devices’ blog:

“Customers consume roughly 20 meals for the week,” Segal said. “Finding a recipe, getting groceries, picking restaurants, and cooking a meal—it all takes time. We think customers will be excited to break out of their routines and get quick, personalized assistance. With What to Eat and our suite of Alexa Kitchen features, we can make the food journey easier end-to-end—getting that great idea, saving favorites from different food and recipe providers in one place, adding ingredients to the Alexa shopping list or cart, and cooking meal kits or recipes hands-free with Alexa’s assistance.”

COP26 Spotlight: Eagle Genomics and the New Frontier of Microbiome Data

The microbiome is the collective genetic material of all the microorganisms that inhabit an environment, like the human gut or a particular soil. Eagle Genomics, an England-based company, is developing a platform that uses data about that genetic material to drive innovation.

At yesterday’s special COP26 session on nutrition and health (hosted by the U.N. Climate Change Global Innovation Hub) speakers discussed technologies that could help to address food and nutrition challenges while limiting climate change to 1.5 degree Celsius of warming. In his talk at the session, Eagle Genomics CEO Anthony Finbow made a case for microbiome science as a future driver of food system transformation.

“We don’t need to go into space to discover the new frontier,” Finbow said at the session. “We need to look within ourselves and within the soil to really understand how we are going to solve for climate change.”

That new frontier is in the human gut, where trillions of bacteria interact with human epithelial cells, sending signals to each other across a layer of mucus. And it’s in the rhizosphere, the dynamic space around a plant’s roots where microorganisms come to feed on nutrients produced by the plant, and provide protection from pathogens in exchange.

Symbiotic relationships between microbes and larger organisms are fundamental to life as we know it. According to Finbow, the importance of those relationships has long been overlooked. Now, however, “we’re seeing major enterprises across the world acknowledge the contribution of the microbiome and recognize its importance,” Finbow said.

Businesses are now unlocking microbial knowledge to improve human health, create safer products, and grow food crops more sustainably. DayTwo of Israel analyzes individuals’ microbiome data to provide personalized nutrition recommendations. Joyn Bio, a collaboration between Ginkgo Bioworks and Leaps by Bayer, is engineering improved microbial strains that can deliver more nitrogen to plants, cutting down on the need for fertilizers.

Eagle Genomics wants to become a network for businesses like these—as well as farms and research establishments—to collaborate and share data. The company’s cloud software platform uses network science, AI, and causal analysis to analyze microbes and their relationships to each other.

The company is currently working on its Series B raise, which Finbow estimated will amount to $30-50 million. They’ve received contracts from large enterprises for the use of their software platform, and have recently begun offering access to research establishments at a lower price point.

Throughout his presentation, Finbow was optimistic about the potential for microbial science to reconfigure our relationship with the environment and the way we think about human health.

“It is possible, by integrating the way we farm animals and grow plants in a way that nurtures the microecology in the soil, to actually reverse climate change—to actually start to capture more carbon and maintain that carbon within the soil,” Finbow said at the session. “It is possible for us, by engineering the microbiome of animals and ourselves, to live healthier lives and to subsist in a more sustaining environment.”

Viome Launches At-Home Test Kits in Nordstrom

Personalized nutrition and health company Viome Life Sciences announced today that it will now offer its Health Intelligence Test in the department store chain Nordstrom. The wellness product will be a part of the store’s beauty category.

The test measures microbial, human, and mitochondrial gene expression through samples of blood and stool. As a result, insights are offered on the individual’s cellular health, biological age, immune system health, and gut health. The company claims that these insights can help someone better understand their digestion, energy levels, sleep patterns, skin, weight, and hormones.

While a precision health company selling an mRNA test in a fashion retailer seems unlikely, this news might signal that personalized nutrition is moving into the mainstream. Personalized nutrition is expected to change the way we eat, and the global personalized nutrition market is forecasted to grow from being $3.7 billion in 2019 to $16.6 billion by 2027.

When Viome founder and CEO Naveen Jain spoke with The Spoon earlier this year, he talked about how he’d invested heavily in automated production to scale the company’s personalized nutrition testing. With the deal with retailers like Nordstrom’s, it looks like that investment may be paying off.

“Precision nutrition is the future,” said Jain in the announcement. “This partnership is a giant step towards making our technology more accessible, so people can understand what’s right for their unique body.”

Viome isn’t the only company in personalized nutrition to offer an at-home testing kit. Genopalate uses information from DNA swabs to create personalized nutrition plans for the user. DayTwo focuses on the gut microbiome to provide customized diet recommendations, while Sun Genomics develops probiotics specifically for the user based on their gut health. According to Viome, it offers the world’s first at-home mRNA test that is commercially available.

Viome’s Health Intelligence Test is now available on Nordstrom’s website for $199 USD, and starting in 2022, will be stocked at select store locations.

Precision Nutrition Startup DayTwo Raises $37M

Precision medicine startup DayTwo announced over the weekend a $37 million fundraise for its app that provides users customized diet recommendations based on their gut bacteria. New investors participating include Poalim Capital Markets, La’maison Fund and Micron Ventures. They were joined by existing investors including the aMoon VC fund, 10D, and Cathay Innovation Ventures. To date, DayTwo has raised $85 million including this round.

The new funds will go towards Israel-based DayTwo’s technologies that help those with diabetic and metabolic diseases. In particular, the funds will go towards further enhancing the company’s first product, a platform that uses artificial intelligence, microbiome sequencing, and other clinical measures such as surveys to provide customized food prescriptions for users with these diseases. Doing so will help users manage their blood sugar levels, which is critical for those with diabetes. 

Speaking to the Times of Israel, Adi Lev, DayTwo’s deputy CEO for Research & Development, said that the new funds will allow the company to continue its research on the links between bacteria in our bodies and diseases. DayTwo will also continue to develop the algorithms that are an essential part of the company’s platform. 

Users access food recommendations and meal plans via the DayTwo app. In the U.S., they can also scan the barcodes on food to find out more about the item in question.

This kind of precision nutrition, as the name suggests, offers consumers more granular food recommendations and diet plans that are based on factors unique to each individual’s body. Instead of drawing on data from outside sources (e.g., a wearable fitness device), these programs and solutions gather data from inside the human body. Genopalate does this through DNA analysis, while Sun Genomics and Viome are a little more like DayTwo in that they focus on users’ microbiome.

DayTwo, however, is currently the only company of this pack with a specific emphasis on those with diabetes and metabolic diseases. Currently, the company’s platform has about 70,000 users across the U.S. and Israel. In the U.S., the DayTwo is working with large employers and health plans. In Israel, a collaboration with Clalit Health is underway and one with Maccabi Health Services is expected for the future. 

To Make Truly Personalized Nutrition Products, Naveen Jain Realized He Needed to Build a Robotic Factory

Back when we wrote about Viome for our DNA-based personalized nutrition report last year, the company primary product was a personalized nutrition plan based on what they had learned from the DNA and RNA of a customer’s microbiome. Viome would then use this information provide nutritional guidance and meal plans for the customer.

While this is valuable and markedly different from traditional nutrition planning, it’s still the largely the same in one significant way: Viome’s nutrition plans still required the user to then go out and assemble a hodge-podge of supplements at the store or through Amazon that would help them take action on the information in the reports.

Naveen Jain, the CEO of Viome, realized that was a problem.

“We will tell you that here are the nutrients that your body needs, and what we found was that there was no way to give people the precision nutrition,” said Jain in a recent interview on Clubhouse. “The problem was they contain 10 other things that went with that. And other nine things were actually harmful to you and only one was beneficial.”

“We couldn’t figure out how to actually tell you what you need, and nothing that you don’t.”

Jain decided that what his company needed to do was provide highly personalized vitamins tailored for each person individually. In order to do that, however, the company would need to solve a massive engineering question: How do you create personalized supplements tailored for a particular person’s biomarkers at scale?

The answer was to build a robotic factory.

“We decided what if we could create completely automated robotics, where every single capsule is made for each individual based on every ingredient that the person needs in the precise dosage.”

Jain emphasized how the precision created by automation was key to assemble tailored supplements with up to 75 different nutrients.

“We literally see ‘take from the bins 17 milligrams’ and ‘take from the bins 13 milligrams’ and we literally make those powder, encapsulate them and ship them on that date. This has never been done.”

Jain believes other companies that claim to offer personalized nutrition supplements today aren’t really personalized nutrition, but more just matching categories of supplements to consumers on a closest-fit basis. To build a truly personalized nutrition consumable product is a massive engineering challenge.

“No one has figured out how to do these things at scale,” said Jain. “And that was our biggest challenge to build this massive robotic form to do it at scale.”

I talked with Jain in The Spoon’s Clubhouse room, FoodTech Live, last week. If you’d like to listen in on these conversations live, make sure to follow us on Clubhouse. And of course, you can listen to this conversation and others on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favorite podcast app.

And, as always, you can just click play below.

MyFitnessPal Adds AI Scanning Technology to iOS for Tracking Calories

MyFitnessPal this week announced the launch of its new AI-powered scanning feature that automates some of the process of identifying and tracking the ingredients in a user’s food items. The company has partnered with Passio, which provides computer vision for companies through its AI platform, to develop this new feature.

If you’ve ever tried using a food tracking app or website, you’ll know what a pain it is to enter every single ingredient of each meal and snack you consume. With MyFitnessPal’s scanning feature, a user selects the Meal Scan feature in the app, then holds their phone’s camera over the food. The AI scanning tool is able to identify the food, both the type and the amount of it, through the combination of Passio’s food recognition technology and MyFitnessPal’s massive database of 14 million foods.

This feature can help users avoid having to search for each ingredient and food within the database, but it is not yet fully automated. After scanning the food, the user must confirm the foods and amounts the app has identified. After confirming, calories, fat, protein in the food is calculated and this information will be automatically added to the user’s food diary.

That being said, using computer vision for tracking food can still save a user a lot of time, and MyFitnessPal is not the only company using something like this. Bite.ai is another company that has a free food tracking app, and it uses a similar technology that applies computer vision to identify food that is then added to the user’s food diary.

MyFitnessPal’s scanning technology is currently available on iOS, and it will be made available for Android phones in the near future. The MyFitnessPal app is free, but only those who are premium members for $9.99/month will have access to the scanning feature.

Founders of PeaPod Launch Sifter, a Grocery Site for People with Dietary Restrictions

The founders of one of the earliest online grocery sites, PeaPod, announced this week the launch of a new grocery platform called Sifter (hat tip: Grocery Dive). The new platform is essentially an online shopping cart that allows customers to put together grocery lists based on dietary preferences, allergens, and medical conditions, and send that list on to partner retailers for fulfillment.

On Sifter’s website, shoppers select different “SiftTags,” which allow them to select different dietary and allergen filters. If you are managing a health condition, like IBS or diabetes, for example, the site then populates items that are identified as acceptable for these conditions. The RecipeSifter feature on the site enables a customer to paste in the URL of different recipes, and the site will determine if the recipe is acceptable for your dietary preferences, allergens, medical conditions, etc. Sifter will then show all of the ingredients listed in the recipe, and allow you to add these items to your cart.

Once grocery items are selected on the Sifter’s site, the customer is then directed to the retailer’s site to complete the purchase. As of right now, Sifter has partnered with retailers like Stop & Shop, Giant Foods, Walmart, and Amazon to fulfill the grocery orders. Though, it should be noted, a single retailer might not be able to fulfill all of the items on a particular list.

Since the start of the pandemic in early 2020, the use of online grocery shopping has seen a spike, and it is predicted that by 2024 that online grocery shopping will be adopted by 55% of consumers in the US. Sifted is one of a crop of new companies looking to help people with dietary restrictions get their food. Through Dinner Daily, customers are offered personal meal planning and can shop for ingredients through stores like Kroger, Ralph’s, and Fred Meyers. eMeals partnered with Albertsons and Safeway to fulfill groceries needed for the meal recommendations it provides.

Sifter is available now throughout North America.

Video: Genopalate’s Sherry Zhang on the Past, Present, and Future of DNA-based Nutrition

If the first wave of precision nutrition was all about wearable devices tracking information like weight and exercise regime, the second wave relies on far more granular information about the individual. Companies can now (with a user’s permission, of course) pull and analyze information from our own DNA sequences and gut microbes to make food, health, and lifestyle recommendations based on actual biology, not third-party data. 

Genopalate is one such company helping this second wave of precision nutrition to rise. By analyzing a person’s genetic markers, Genopalate’s technology can understand how an individual’s body digests and processes foods as well as whether a person is predisposed to certain diseases.

Over a video session recently, Dr. Sherry Zhang, Genopalate’s founder and CEO, explained how these diet-gene interactions have shaped the whole of human biology and how we can leverage the information they provide to live healthier lives overall.

View the video below to catch our full conversation, in which we cover, among other things:

  • The role of diet-gene interactions throughout human history and biological evolution
  • How our DNA can determine our susceptibility to different chronic diseases (e.g., obesity, autoimmune disorders)
  • The kinds of data precision nutrition tools and services must analyze in order to understand biological needs at the individual level
  • How we can put that data to better use in order to help individuals change their health habits

As well, the goal of precision nutrition is in part to help the average person analyze the way they shop for, cook, and eat food. Our conversation below digs into how Dr. Zhang, Genopalate, and other companies working in the precision nutrition space are now making this level of personalization possible for our everyday diets.

The Spoon Conversation with Genopalate’s Sherry Zhang from The Spoon on Vimeo.

GenoPalate Raises $4 Million Series A for its Personalized Nutrition Platform

Personalized nutrition company, GenoPalate, announced yesterday that it completed a $4 million Series A round of funding. In the press announcement, the Milwaukee-based company said the new financing came from local investors. This brings the total amount raised by the company to $5.7 million.

GenoPalate was founded in 2016 by Yi Sherry Zhang, Ph.D, who described the what the company does for The Spoon last year, saying:

Through a simple swab test, GenoPalate’s nutrigenetic home test analyzes 100+ genetic markers that determine a person’s specific needs for 24 vital nutrients such as carbohydrates, vitamin D, and sodium, and sensitivities to lactose, gluten, caffeine and alcohol. The company combines genetic results with millions of nutritional variables to recommend the foods a person should eat more of. Then each client receives a report that includes their genetic results, what they mean, and a personalized list of the 80+ foods that benefit that specific client the most. Using its genetics-based personalized nutrition technology, GenoPalate is changing how people choose, shop for and eat food for better health.

Former Spoon writer, Catherine Lamb tried GenoPalate for herself earlier this year, and wrote about the experience, saying:

What I found was surprisingly . . . unsurprising. I was told I should eat a diet that’s moderately high in carbohydrates, high in fiber, and has low levels of sugar and saturated fat (but is high in “healthy” fats). I’m likely lactose intolerant (can confirm: yep) and likely not sensitive to gluten. I’m a fast caffeine metabolizer and a normal alcohol metabolizer. I have gene variants that indicate I might need to consume higher levels of Vitamin A, E, and D, among others.

Personalized nutrition is certainly a trend we’re following at The Spoon, covering other players in the space such as Viome, Sun Genomics, Genopalate, DNANudge, DayTwo and Nylos. You can check out our market report How Microbiome and DNA-based Personalized Nutrition Will Change the Way We Eat on our Spoon Plus membership service for a deep dive on the personalized nutrition market.

Heali Launches its AI-Based Nutrition and Meal Planning App

Heali, a Los Angeles-based startup that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to create more personalized nutrition advice and meal planning for people, announced today the beta release of its mobile app.

The Heali app helps people adhere to their choice of 30 different diets (Vegan, Low FODMAP, Paleo, etc.) through recipes as well as grocery shopping and restaurant meal selection guidance.

Heali uses a number of features to help people with their nutritional choices. It has optical character recognition (OCR) so a user can take a photo of a menu description or a product’s nutritional label and the app will understand what ingredients are in that item. There’s a barcode scanner for use on products at the grocery store. Heali also has a meal planner, which analyzes the nutritional makeup of hundreds of thousands of recipes, products and meals to provide its nutritional guidance.

But the Heali app isn’t just for people wanting to eat fewer carbs. I spoke with Heali Founder and CEO Kyle Dardashti last month, who explained that his app can also provide guidance for people with certain medical conditions. For example, if a user has Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), they can use the app when grocery shopping to see if products contain certain emulsifiers that exacerbate their condition.

Heali is part of the personalized nutrition/food-as-medicine movement, and there is certainly no shortage of players in that space. There are other mobile apps like Yes Health and Foodvisor, hardware devices like the Mixfit, and meal delivery services like Kaigo. All of these are looking to help you eat healthier.

When asked what separates Heali from all the other competitors in the space, Dardashti told me, “Others have taken 10 diets or so, they have their subset of recipes in their app. They’ve tagged those few hundred recipes for how it adheres to those 10 diets.” He added that Heali has “built the engine that can do it all programmatically. Now it’s not just one of 10 tags. It has been done programmatically with AI.”

This, according to Dardashti, makes Heali, the most personalized dietary engine on the market.

The proof, as always, will be in the (diet-approved) pudding. The Heali app is free on both iOS and Android, and those interested can join the waitlist. Beta users will be admitted in cohorts.