Health Benefits Substantiation

Health benefits and nutritional impact of food
Consumers are increasingly making food choices based on perceived health benefits and health impact. This means food and ingredient producers can create a distinctive and successful position for themselves in a crowded market by offering healthy food options – for example through novel bioactive ingredients, alternative proteins and milder processing.

While the impact of diet on health is well-accepted in general, any specific claims must be meticulously validated. And that can be a big challenge. Effects are often quite subtle and only apparent over long periods. Moreover, there is huge biological variation between people in terms of what is considered “normal” and how we respond to specific nutrients.

End-to-end health and nutrition support 
NIZO has developed an innovative approach to health benefit substantiation that allows you to thoroughly assess the health impact of specific foodstuffs  in an affordable manner and timescale. We can support you at any stage of the process of exploring health impact, from selecting and optimising ingredients to explaining and demonstrating health benefits.


Our offering includes: 
Scientific advice and study design 
In-vitro and in-silico health benefit analysis 
Human intervention studies including challenge models 
Microbiome and biomarker analytics 


Science-driven substantiation and storytelling  
Our extensive expertise in all areas of food development means you can start your health impact exploration with us at any stage. And thanks to our pilot plant and food analytics capabilities, you can carry out health benefit investigations in parallel with process development and sensory experience investigations. 

At every step, you can be sure that our support is guided and driven by rigorous science – from how nutrients are absorbed in and affect the gut environment, to how those local changes translate to systemic health impact. We use that science to develop novel approaches that enhance your ability to detect and communicate health benefits – for example, using our E. coli and rhinovirus challenge models to speed up investigations into the impact of nutrients on the immune system. In this way, we help you both rigorously substantiate health claims and tell compelling stories to your market.