Developing Innovative Varieties of Foods to Better Serve People with Nutritional Disorders

Clients & Their Goals

Our Client, a leading producer of frozen foods in Europe, had several successful meal products for customers in the healthcare and care home markets. However, some of their customers’ patients suffered from medical conditions—such as dysphagia and other nutritional disorders—that made eating conventionally-prepared meals difficult. Based on their internal research, our Client had tried to accommodate patients’ needs by developing their meals to better serve these people with nutritional disorders. Their efforts were unsuccessful, however, as our Client’s R&D team lacked a detailed understanding of the ways that specific nutritional disorders cause difficulties for patients. Additionally, investigating the full varieties of innovative food processing technologies that they could use to produce more appropriate meals was a challenging task for their internal team.

Our Client asked us to quickly provide them with expert, actionable advice regarding ways that they could create new meals that would better serve patients with nutritional and clinical needs.

CamIn’s Solutions

We assembled a project team including seven world-class experts—including scientists, food technologists, and clinicians—to research and address our Client’s specific challenges and help them achieve their goals. First, our team worked with our Client to identify the medical conditions that were most important to address in new meal products. We also worked with our Client to understand their meal production processes, ensuring that any technological solutions we recommended could be effectively integrated with their current approach.

Next, we researched recent scientific findings on food-related technologies that could help patients suffering from the medical conditions that were identified through discussions with our Client. For each condition, CamIn investigated the relevant technologies, including specific ingredients, formulations, and food preparation techniques that could be beneficial for patients with specific nutritional disorders. We also assessed each technology’s readiness for implementation and suitability for integration with our Client’s existing production processes.

Our analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of innovative food processing technologies gave our Client a straightforward way to determine the most suitable technologies to invest in.

The Impact

We provided our Client with the actionable takeaways from our research in a final report and workshop session. Our analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of innovative food processing technologies gave our Client a straightforward way to determine the most suitable technologies to invest in. Additionally, our comprehensive assessment provided direction for their future research and development work on this challenge. Our Client was impressed with the depth and clarity of our analysis. Because of our Client’s initiative and our research and guidance, their new products will more effectively accommodate patients with nutritional disorders.