Artificial Intelligence for Nutrition and Product Development
Artificial intelligence (AI) can undoubtedly play a pivotal role in the nutrition and product development process.
One of the modifiable reasons for developing lifestyles and disease management is eating habits. Changes in diet are considered to have an impact on the progression of chronic illnesses with an increasing concentration, such as obesity, heart disease, and many more. Precision medicine is an illness management and prevention strategy that takes into account human differences in genes, climate, and lifestyles. The recent development of a huge biologic database, effective tools for characterizing patients and the use of advanced and smarter technology have all helped to advance precision medicine.
It’s crucial to think about the analytical resources for evaluating broad data sets, as this will enable medical practitioners to rely on electronic medical decision support to make fast health choices. Artificial intelligence (AI) has gradually gotten more attention because it can understand and construct linear and nonlinear relationships among variables by developing an interface mapping that exposes and interprets previously undisclosed and hugely beneficial knowledge for decision-making. While AI is not yet commonly used in the field of nutrition, it has been discovered that modern tech, such as information technology, a variety of instruments, including use of nanotechnology, and the emergence of computers and smartphones, are conducive to the application of AI, since these innovations collect a massive amount of data, and AI could be quite useful in their extraction.
According to Nutritional Outlook, AI technology is not new, but it is a newer prospect in the nutrition and supplements industry. Life Extension is one company that’s now using AI to help make discoveries that will yield the next generation of the company’s supplement products. The company’s goal is to develop supplements that support longevity and healthy aging. As it says, “For 40 years, Life Extension has pursued innovative advances in health, conducting rigorous clinical trials and setting some of the most demanding standards in the industry to offer a full range of quality vitamins and nutritional supplements and blood-testing services.”
Nutritional Outlook mentioned that it recently spoke to Life Extension’s Director of Education and Spokesperson Michael A. Smith, MD, to discuss why the company believes AI will not only help supplement companies create products faster, but create products that are better. For instance,
“AI is especially useful in the longevity work that Life Extension is doing. Would it be as useful in other health-supplement markets like joint health, brain health, etc.?” Smith responded, “It has applications for all of that. I mean, even just take a new nutrient that, based on some current research, some clinicians think might be good for arthritis. Now, it’s much cheaper, and it takes a lot less time and a lot less people, to do a joint-health study. You could set all that up—but it’s still costly. It’s still time-consuming. Where AI technology could help—and, by the way, the human medical centers, pharmaceutical companies, are starting to look at AI technology for this—is that you can almost simulate a clinical research study within the AI environment, within the AI algorithm, and it could predict whether that nutrient is really going to be good for arthritis, before you even spend the money on a clinical trial.
So, it has application across all product categories in finding potential new nutrients and helping you decide if that nutrient’s even worth spending time and money on researching. That can be quite powerful for the health industry across the board.”
AI in Product Development
Artificial intelligence (AI) can undoubtedly play a pivotal role in the product development process. Businesses aim to enhance their product portfolio on a constant basis by promotional activities, product enhancements, lower costs, and innovative products that better suit customer tastes and can be introduced quickly. Furthermore, customers prefer normal, modified, and additive-free ingredients, raising the stakes for a useful and efficient product production process to bring products to the market.
To keep up with changing customer tastes, food companies must continuously update their goods. These changes in customer tastes are increasingly happening faster than the traditional product development process. This is where AI enters the frame. Evolving AI applications offer significant opportunities to overcome this issue and bring goods to market quicker while retaining “appropriate to be used.”
