Proper nutrition is essential for good health, well-being and the prevention, mitigation, or treatment of several non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Food is not only a source of calories, but also a complex mixture of dietary chemicals, some of which are causally related to cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, allergies and some types of cancer. Food, diet, and nutritional status, including overweight and obesity, are also associated with elevated blood pressure and blood cholesterol or even resistance to the action of insulin. These conditions are not only risk factors for non-communicable diseases, but major causes of illness themselves. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), non-communicable diseases are responsible for the death of 40 million people each year, equivalent to 70% of all deaths globally (17 million people die from a NCD before the age of 70). Cardiovascular diseases account for most NCD deaths, or 17.7 million people annually, followed by cancers (8.8 million), respiratory diseases (3.9million) and diabetes (1.6 million). These four groups of diseases account for 81% of all NCD deaths and could be avoided if the major risk factors for NCDs were eliminated.
"Unhealthy diet and lack of physical activity, in conjunction with tobacco use or harmful use of alcohol, may lead to raised blood pressure, overweight/obesity, hyperglycaemia (high blood glucose levels) and hyperlipidaemia (high levels of fat in the blood), which are the main metabolic factors that significantly increase the risk of NCDs" (Source: WHO - Non-communicable diseases, 2017). Despite these risks, today's diet is characterized by irregular and poorly balanced meals. Unhealthy eating habits in our daily life are not only risk factors for non-communicable diseases, but also major causes of stress and tiredness, i.e. lack of energy. Knowledge about our dietary habits based on the analysis of different types of information, including individual parameters, e.g. physical and psychological characteristics, lifestyle, preferences etc., can contribute greatly towards answering key questions to respond to societal challenges regarding food and health. New advances in ICT technologies and, especially, in wearable sensors, big data analysis and machine learning techniques, as well as in direct-to-consumer genetic testing, blood and gut microbiome analysis, open new opportunities for researchers to monitor and collect information related to our dietary behaviours. This analysis can constitute the basis for the development of innovative solutions for personalized nutrition advice and support helping consumers achieve long term healthy and sustainable diets.
Motivated by these facts, the PROTEIN project aimed to develop an end-to-end ecosystem for engaging people to a healthy, pleasurable, nutritional, and sustainable diet by offering dietary and physical activity programs adapted to their needs and driven by their personal preferences, physical and physiological characteristics as well as their health status. Specifically, the main objective of PROTEIN is to create an ICT-based system for providing personalized nutrition based on the collection and analysis of large volumes of data related to users' dietary behavioural patterns (e.g. food choices, calories, macronutrients and micronutrients intake etc.), physical activity (motion, exercise etc) and individual parameters (electronic health record, genetic information, blood parameters, gut microbiome analysis, preferences and socio-cultural aspects). PROTEIN proposes a radically novel approach to advice and support consumers in everyday living, while ensuring users’ privacy protection i.e. data will be anonymized and securely stored in the Cloud for processing.
By creating such a novel and complex ecosystem and using it in extensive piloting activities with real users (always supervised by appropriate experts), the PROTEIN project revealed significant insight related to our dietary behaviours, our food choice drivers, and their relation to our personal profile.
