We have performed in vitro digestions of most consumed foods and in vitro fermentations of such digested foods with healthy adult feces, as well as fermentations with children feces celiac, obese, allergic and lean. We have studied how different foods affect the composition and functionality of the gut microbiota.
We have also build food composition databases with information from Germany, Greece and Spain. The boiled databases contains nutritional information about common fresh and processed foods, images, barcodes and a long list of recipes from each country.
The iDiet app has been finished, to allow the development of the human nutritional interventions. This app now includes all the food composition databases. In addition, the Toleda T9 smart band can be connected to iDiet to check physical activity and other health parameters of the consumer. In addition, different partners have been gathering information about consumer potential to engage in personalised nutrition, in other to allow a long-lasting effect of the app use.
The companies involved in the project have been developing different food products enriched with tannins (cereal bars and cocoa rings), tannins capsules, powder formulations for physically active adults and also a nutraceutical to improve energy use. In addition, a metabolomics test (performed with urine dried in a paper strip) has been tested in adults and children, finding very useful metabolites (derived from the metabolic activity of health-related gut bacteria) to follow modifications in the health status and correlations with gut microbiota composition and functionality.
The research groups of Spain and Greece obtained permission from the corresponding ethics committees to perform the nutritional interventions with adults and children. The interventions have been successfully performed and the Smart Personalized Nutrition service validated. We have found that the use of the app improves the intake of healthy foods (vegetables, fruits, nuts, etc.) while decreasing the consumption of unhealthy foodstuffs such as processed meats, sugars, etc. In this sense it has been found a higher production of healthy short chain fatty acids by the gut microbiota, including the presence of some health-promoting bacteria in the gut.
The colleagues in charge of the communication and dissemination activities did a great job, distributing the work done through social media and press releases. In addition, 33 scientific papers have been published so far.
