EIT Food model

EIT Food's innovation model

EIT Food has four Innovation focus areas fostering collaboration across the entire food system to develop innovative technologies, products and services. The innovation community is building an inclusive and innovative community where the consumer is actively empowered to take an active part in the transformation of the food system, as well as building and shaping the innovators of tomorrow.

The four innovation focus areas are:

Overcome low consumer trust

EIT Food is building an inclusive and trusted food system by working to increase consumer trust. This involves promoting an appreciation of the value of food, as well as addressing and overcoming concerns regarding authenticity, food contamination and safety by combining co-creation activities with clear consumer engagement. The innovation activities actively involve consumers as responsible co-creators. For instance, improving transparency by creating a toolkit to measure consumer trust in different aspects of the food chain, by using a combination of technologies to detect risks and surveying 1 500 consumers on their attitude to trust.


Create consumer-valued food for healthier nutrition

This innovation activity is helping to reduce the prevalence and diet-related risk of developing metabolic diseases through personalised nutrition services, including non-invasive tools, online information services and novel technologies, enabling people to make healthier decisions. These include:

  • Developing tools that enable consumers to make better nutritional choices by personalising consumer interfaces, support platforms, and novel monitoring devices as well as providing educational programmes and nutrition coaching.
  • Creating products with superior nutritional composition by reducing the amount of unhealthy ingredients, and developing new products and processes which include more healthy nutrients. 
  • Providing convenient individualisation at the point of consumption by enabling consumers to meet their nutritional needs through highly modular and convenient food concepts (restaurants, food services and home kitchen).

Build a consumer-centric connected food system

EIT Food is increasing the connectivity and transparency of the food system to improve the safety, real-time traceability, quality and sustainability of ingredients benefitting both the consumer and industry. The Innovation Community is working toward a fully connected food system:

  • Building a fully integrated digital supply network by creating a demand-driven manufacturing and delivery network, as well as reducing the complexity and improving the efficiency of the supply chain to save resources and reduce waste.  
  • Improving food system transparency and integrity by developing tools and digital solutions which provide information about authenticity, freshness, shelf-life, ingredients, environmental impact and nutritional content.

Enhanced Sustainability through Resource Stewardship

The Innovation Community is developing multidisciplinary approaches to encourage a circular Bioeconomy mindset, that reuses by-products and waste, and increases the environmental sustainability of our food system. To achieve this, the innovation activities are focused on the following key areas:

  • Tackling hotspots in the environmental footprint: using next-generation technologies to target reductions in food waste, energy and water consumption across the supply chain. 
  • Increasing market penetrations of ingredients from sustainable, alternative sources: addressing regulatory issues to support and enable science-based food innovations using new and sustainable ingredients, as well as enhancing sustainability of existing major nutrient and energy sources using biofortification, precision agriculture and sustainable intensification.
  • Driving circular excellence: exploring the integration of new efficient technologies for extraction, fractionation, conversion and purification of heterogeneous waste and side-streams into functioning value chains.