This World Food Day, the Food and Agriculture Organisation's (FAO) theme ‘Innovate Today. Nourish Tomorrow’, encourages us to think about how today's innovations can help create a healthier future.
When people think about innovation in food, they often imagine breakthrough technologies, cutting-edge research or entirely new ingredients.
But some of the most important innovations happen far more quietly.
They happen when nutrition scientists take emerging evidence, apply it to real-world challenges and help create foods that better meet people's nutritional needs. These changes may seem small in isolation, whether it's a few grams less sugar in a juice drink, more fibre in a yoghurt, or greater wholegrain content in a breakfast cereal. But when applied across products consumed by millions of people around the world, they can have a meaningful impact.
That is what ‘Innovate Today. Nourish Tomorrow’ looks like in practice.
Small improvements. Big impact
Nutrition scientists working in the food industry rarely see the direct impact of their work. Yet every day, they help shape decisions that can influence what people eat, how products are formulated and how the latest nutrition science is translated into foods people enjoy.
Innovation isn't always about creating something entirely new. It can be about:
- Choosing the right plant-based protein to meet the needs of different target age groups.
- Building nutrition research behind an ingredient to strengthen the scientific evidence available .
- Helping reduce sugar while maintaining the taste consumers expect.
- Unlocking new ways for familiar ingredients to support health and wellbeing.
These are the small improvements that, repeated at scale, help nourish tomorrow.
Making the healthy choice the easy choice
For Dr. Clare Leonard, our VP of Global Nutrition and Health Sciences, one of the most rewarding examples from her career was helping increase wholegrain consumption through breakfast cereals consumed in millions of households.
As Global Nutrition Manager at one of the world’s leading cereal producers, Clare worked on a long-term effort to improve the nutritional profile of popular breakfast cereals by increasing wholegrain content and making it a clear differentiator within the category.
On the surface, the ambition was simple: ensure a serving of cereal could provide a meaningful contribution to daily wholegrain intake.
But achieving that required far more than changing a recipe.
Behind the scenes, Clare and her colleagues invested in nutrition research to strengthen the evidence supporting the benefits of wholegrains for heart and digestive health. They also helped improve consumer understanding of wholegrains through collaborations with organisations such as the Whole Grains Council, supporting the development of daily intake recommendations and the now widely recognised wholegrain stamp.
What makes this example particularly powerful is that it demonstrates how innovation often happens through collaboration.
For Clare, this experience reinforced an important lesson:
"Innovation isn't always about creating something entirely new. Sometimes it's about bringing together science, partnerships and practical solutions to make healthier choices easier for people every day. Now, in my role at Tate & Lyle, I can apply my experience of boosting fibre across an even wider set of food and drink categories."
To hear Clare explore this topic in more detail, including why fibre remains one of the most under-consumed nutrients globally and the role industry can play in closing the fibre gap, watch her presentation from Tate & Lyle's event at the British Science Museum.
Clare's story demonstrates how collaboration can help improve diets at population scale. But innovation takes many forms. Across the nutrition profession, impact is also created through education, evidence and helping healthier products reach consumers.
Inspiring healthier habits for life
Alongside supporting the nutritional quality of school meals, Pippa's role focused heavily on nutrition education, helping children understand how everyday food choices can support their health and wellbeing.
For younger pupils, this included developing and delivering interactive workshops designed to make nutrition engaging and accessible. Through activities such as "Eat the Rainbow", children learned about the importance of eating a variety of colourful fruits and vegetables, while other sessions introduced the ‘Eatwell Guide’ and explained the role different food groups play in a healthy diet.
With older students, the conversations became more specialised, covering topics such as sports nutrition, female health and the importance of dietary diversity, including consuming fibre from a range of sources such as wholegrains, fruits, vegetables, legumes, seeds, herbs and spices.
For Pippa, what stood out most was seeing knowledge translate into action. Following classroom sessions, pupils often became noticeably more engaged with their food choices at lunchtime. Sometimes the impact was visible immediately, such as vegetables proving unexpectedly popular after a workshop. In one memorable example, a child began asking his teacher each day whether he had "a rainbow on his plate", applying the lessons from the classroom to his own food choices.
For Pippa, these experiences reinforced an important lesson. She shares:
"Whether speaking to consumers, customers or healthcare professionals, the principle is the same: nutrition science is most powerful when it can be translated into clear, actionable insights that people can use in their daily lives."
Helping better nutrition reach more people
For Melissa Kazmazyk, Nutrition Business Partner for the Americas, innovation often means finding ways to improve the nutritional quality of products people already enjoy.
Earlier in her career, Melissa worked closely with product developers and marketers to create food and beverages containing additional nutrients such as fibre, protein and vitamins, often through what she describes as "stealth nutrition" - improving nutritional profiles without changing the experience consumers know and love.
Today, her role focuses on helping our customers bring evidence-based nutrition solutions to market.
Recently, Melissa partnered with a leading customer developing a new beverage who wanted not only to add fibre, but also to communicate its prebiotic benefits. As a trusted advisor, Melissa guided them through the robust scientific evidence supporting Tate & Lyle’s fibre solutions and worked alongside them to build strong claim substantiation.
This is a great example of how innovating today leads to nourishing tomorrow. The science and research we invest in today help customers create products that support healthier diets in the future.
Melissa recalls:
“Every time I see that beverage on a grocery store shelf, I feel proud knowing that my work helped put more fibre into consumers' diets and make nutrition a little more accessible.”
Innovation in food is often imagined as the next big breakthrough. Yet some of the most meaningful progress happens through steady, evidence-based improvements that make healthier choices easier and more accessible.
Whether it's increasing wholegrain consumption, improving nutrition education, expanding understanding of fibre's role in health or helping manufacturers develop products with improved nutritional profiles, these advances demonstrate how science can create lasting impact when applied at scale.