Course information

When you join our Food Solutions programme you will benefit from entrepreneurship and product development education to produce an innovative, tangible food solution. Throughout the programme, you will be working within a multi-disciplinary team and be supported and mentored by experts from industry, research and science.
In this Food Solution, Health trough food, you will design and develop new health- food products answering to the nutritional and/or health claims approved within the EU for the food industry.
At the end of the programme, you will be able to:

1. Analyse the food system and identify a problem that can be addressed by a sustainable solution
2. Collaborate with a multi-disciplinary team and mobilise resources to develop a solution to a food system problem
3. Evaluate a target market and competitors in order to assess the commercial potential for a product innovation
4. Critically assess alternative product concepts to craft and communicate a sustainable value proposition
5. Iteratively design a prototype using MVP (minimum viable product) principles
6. Adopt technologies and techniques to deliver an innovative product and viable business case

University students from B.Sc, M.Sc and PhD are invited to create teams and join the program.
Students must be enrolled at a participating University.
The programme is open to all disciplines, including: food engineering, nutritional, pharmacy, any agro-food, business, marketing and economics disciplins.
Other disciplines are invited based on your knowledge and interests.
Students from different disciplines within the team can better meet the Food Solution’s challenge.

By following this programme you will:

• Part of an international network of like-minded students, experts from the academic and industrial partners and the EIT Food network
• Great networking opportunity.
• Study in a project-based learning approach.
• Extending your knowledge in the fields of food product development, processing, food safety, business modelling, marketing, entrepreneurship and more.

Career opportunities

• Connections with food industry experts in Europe
• Co-creation and collaboration competencies (including problem solving and critical thinking)
• Leadership, networking and communication skills
• International teamwork
• Entrepreneurial innovation skills
• Extending knowledge in relevant topics, such as food product development, processing, food safety, circular economy and more.

Structure & Modules

Nowadays consumers expectation are higher than ever before: food should not only provide the energy and the nutrients the body needs to properly functions, but also promote good health and overall wellness.

In addition, the recent COVID-19 outbreak increased people awareness toward preventive health and the role that dietary choices and “real” food (instead than supplements) play on overall mental and physical well-being.

As a consequence, consumers look more and more at food that offer health benefits that extend beyond their nutritional value (also called functional food) and with proven health benefits (ex: support a well-functioning immune system, support mental and digestive health).
To stay relevant, food industry have to develop new products which fulfill nutritional and health claims approved by the EU and, as such, answer consumers demands for functional food and help people to take a preventive approach to health.

As a consequence, the students teams that will answer the call will be asked to design a bakery, chocolate, patisserie finish good concept that fulfill one or more EFSA approved nutritional and/or health claims requirements and as such fill the existing functional food market gap.

Throughout the program, the teams will be supported by their University mentor(s) and the industry partners. In addition, you will benefit from elite innovation and entrepreneurship training through the Entrepreneurship Spine learning blocks.

Join a team of students to tackle this challenge and develop your food solutions!

Programme Structure:
The programme takes place over 7.5 months and will require you a few hours a week on average.
Four joint specific Health through food events are planned:
Kick-off event: March 2023
• Introduction of the teams, mentors and challenges.
Check-in event: June-July 2023
• The teams present their initial ideas to the university mentors and industry partners.
Final event: 9th-10th of November 2023
• The teams present their product concept to the international jury.
• Before the final event, each team has to submit their annotated slides and further required information on their product concept. The templates, requirements will be shared in advance.
Four live Entrepreneurship Spine workshops will take place on the first Wednesday of May, June, July and September at 17:00 CET.
An international jury will judge the final product concepts and submissions, and the best solutions will be awarded prizes by EIT Food Education.

Programme Lead

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