GLOBAL – Swiss multinational food giant Nestlé has launched a new online platform that consolidates and provides free access to global nutrition and health data for over 190 countries.
Launched in partnership with Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, the platform is a user-friendly, publicly available resource aimed at facilitating the easy sharing of nutrition and health data.
Powered by the Friedman School and Nestlé Research in Lausanne, the Global Nutrition and Health Atlas includes data from established sources including international agencies, NGOs, academic institutes, and peer-reviewed studies.
The data is divided into six key dimensions: demographics, dietary intakes, nutritional status, health status, health economics, and food sustainability.
Users can easily navigate, analyze, and visualize different metrics along these six dimensions.
According to Nestlé, the platform will support a wide array of stakeholders, including researchers, health practitioners, policymakers, as well as advocates for healthy nutrition.
Elena Naumova, Chair of the Division of Nutrition Data Science at the Friedman School notes that a common challenge with dashboards is they might show nice charts but are not easily used.
“Many data platforms are restrictive, isolated, or stagnant. But with the Atlas you can merge information from multiple sources to pull data from different demographics, locations, and years and get tips on how to use it,” Naumova adds.
The food conglomerate notes that these groups need to easily access reliable nutrition and health information for research purposes or evidence-based decision-making on the global, regional, and local levels.
“At Nestlé, in addition to our research partnerships, we draw on public health data to develop science-based nutritional concepts for people across life stages around the world,” said Eline Van Der Beek, Head of Nestlé Institute of Health Sciences.
“This platform makes it easy for Nestlé scientists, as well as academic researchers and other external stakeholders, to access reliable data in a quick, interactive and user-friendly way.”
Earlier, Nestlé joined other financial backers in a US$4 million seed round for Sundial Foods, a plant-based meats company mimicking chicken wings.
Sundial Wings creates fully plant-based skin, meat and bone chicken wings pegged as going “beyond meat.”
The California-based vegan start-up expects its chicken wings to be available in US restaurants in spring 2022.
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