The NUTRIBOX project: a HEALTHY & SMART EATHINKING e-commerce platform for vulnerable consumers

Food has a paramount importance in the daily life since it is among the major factors accounting for a healthy physical state. Recently, the abuse of comfortable foods, the quarantine and physical inactivity, and the poor management of disease risk factors related have summed up to the general privations the population underwent during Covid-19 pandemics; this induced behavior has increased the incidence of Non-Communicable Disease (NCD) (Kluge et al., 2020). In addition, the constraints applied (social distancing and quarantine) has produced a direct effect on consumer behaviour in moving to online shopping (Bhatti et al., 2020; Safara F. 2020) and healthier options and personalized nutrition (Galanakis, 2020). To facilitate consumers' food selection protecting consumers' health with special regard to vulnerable and people under dietary restrictions, we developed under EITFood scheme the innovative and handy e-commerce platform and NUTRIBOX Eathinking (https://nutribox.store/index.php, fig 1). This platform proposes a "click and collect or delivery home" model, by pointing at the safeguard of food safety and health of the targeted categories consumers (diabetics, allergics to egg or milk, celiacs, fragile patients, obese, and children) and with specific needs or preferences (vegetarians); it promotes the quality of foods and nutritionally balanced food boxes/menu to push towards a healthy food choice and balanced diet. The platform has been developed in accordance with the recent guidelines issued by the World Health Organization (WHO, 2020) alerting consumers on the moderate intake of sugars, salts and cholesterol or saturated fatty acids. Each product list was obtained by examining the guidelines on nutritional needs reported by official sources, Departments, agencies, public bodies and societies. Further data were collected by questioning vulnerable subjects on own eating habits (e.g. vegetarians and diabetics), nutrition softwares and with the support of expert in the field (nutritionists, dieticians and doctors). To promote a balanced diet, nutritional values for each listed food were provided by official database (https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/); in addition, nutraceutical properties were highlighted and results with high impact from international peer review scientific papers were summarized to be understood by the different types of customers. Consumers are driven towards the more appropriate NUTRIBOX by a brief survey; alternatively they can select foods on the basis of specific and individual nutritional needs by entering the range of desired values for macro and micronutrients; in this case system will select foods matching with them. In conclusion NUTRIBOX is a combination of food commodities promoting well being and health advertising innovative and functional foods and food selections mirroring the guidelines of WHO and recent consumers trends; it fill the gap between food industry and healthy benefits during on line shopping by increasing trust of consumer in food system and becoming strategy for disease prevention and management.