TNO and Unilever announced that they have entered into a three year collaboration to explore the links between diet and health. Unilever’s wealth of scientific knowledge in nutrition and health, and in depth understanding of consumer behavior will be combined with TNO’s innovative approaches in human health research. The collaboration has received a grant from the Dutch governmental innovation program Food and Nutrition Delta.

Conditions such as obesity, stroke, heart disease and type 2 diabetes are responsible for over 60% of deaths worldwide. It is widely recognized that specific dietary approaches can help prevent these disorders at an early stage. Emerging scientific evidence suggests that gut bacteria, interacting with diets, play an important role in this process. However, the underlying mechanisms are largely unknown and complex, hence the need for new research. With the acquired insights, new meals and diet plans could be developed that may contribute to helping consumers maintain and improve their health.

The Netherlands Metabolomics Centre will also contribute to this partnership through the provision of their specialized data-analytical expertise.

“TNO is delighted with the collaboration with Unilever because it strongly confirms our leading position in the development of innovative approaches to understand diet and health relationships,” says Niek Snoeij, managing director TNO Quality of Life. “The governmental grant emphasizes the relevance to develop breakthrough knowledge and solutions for optimizing health”, Ben van Ommen, TNO’s expert in nutrigenomics adds.

“Unilever has high expectations from this collaboration which addresses a very important global health issue,” says John Casey VP Bioscience, Nutrition and Health. “This collaboration fits perfectly in Unilever’s strategy to work with leading external partners to speed up our innovations and we have identified TNO as our ideal partner to help us address the challenging questions that we need to answer in this field,” adds Rob Hamer VP Discover Vlaardingen.