Optimeal
Defining sustainable nutrition

One of the biggest global challenges is making food production and consumption healthier and more sustainable. The global challenges are diverse and concern the growing world population, malnutrition, and high contribution to climate change.
Balancing the full potential of nutritionally and environmentally sustainable diets
Defining healthy and sustainable food patterns is complex and should be based on a systematic investigation and sound data.
Optimeal is a software solution that applies optimization to dietary questions involving sustainability and nutritional parameters. This tool helps identify new opportunities and elevate the conversation on food habits that cater to a healthy and sustainable future.

Optimeal supports you with:
Scenario studies aimed at defining policies and strategies
The strategic position of specific foods
Developing food-based dietary guidelines
How does it work?

Optimeal is a tool that uses optimization to solve dietary questions that involve sustainability and nutritional parameters. Optimeal lets you choose from multiple optimization algorithms based on linear or quadratic programming.
Data-driven optimization
Optimization requires data. Optimeal comes with a default dataset for Europe, mainly based on European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) data. The EU dataset consists of a reference diet, nutritional constraints, nutritional properties for the products in the reference diet, and environmental properties (Life Cycle Assessment impacts) for the products in the reference diet.
Meeting nutritional and environmental constraints
Optimization aims to identify a diet that meets all nutritional and environmental constraints with as few changes to the current diet as possible. In this way, it takes the attainability of dietary interventions into account.

Features of Optimeal
Optimeal has several attractive features that make the tool broadly applicable.
User-friendly & intuitive interface
Default dataset: European focus
Sound environmental data
Additional datasets available
Many functionalities
Free demo version
Impression of Optimeal

Publications & reports
Companies, non-profits, research institutes, and policymakers use Optimeal to think about sustainable diets. Since its release in 2014, the use of Optimeal has resulted in more than 16 reports and scientific publications.
Optimeal Licenses

We have the following Optimeal licenses available:
- Academic license: you can use an academic license for educational and scientific research purposes. It includes the default EU dataset and access for 1 user.
- Class room license: you can use a classroom license for educational purposes. You can only utilize the carbon footprint functionality relating to environmental impact. This license includes access for 20 users.
- Business license: a business license is the default Optimeal license for businesses. It includes the default EU dataset and access for 2 users.
Prices are available upon request.
What is included in a license?
An academic or business Optimeal license will give you many benefits:
EU dataset
A license will include the EU dataset based on the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) data and the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology.
Updates & inspiration
We will keep you updated and inspired! You will receive information about new applications of Optimeal.
Tailored advice
We will offer you personal advice on using Optimeal in your specific case or relating to the issues you want to address.
Curious about Optimeal? Interested in how Optimeal can help you and your organization? Or do you just want to see how the tool works?
We've developed a demo version to help you understand how Optimeal works. You will be able to discover the tool's possibilities and how it can benefit your organization and work.
Demo: Healthy & sustainable lunch
In the Optimeal demo, we use a simple lunch as a reference diet. Its composition and constraints are hypothetical and help you understand how Optimeal works. We set nutritional constraints for a healthy lunch and nutritional and environmental properties for its ingredients. We include possible alternative products to add to the lunch.
We've created a document to guide you through the demo and grasp the purpose and possibilities of Optimeal.

Some examples of projects related to Optimeal
More information
Get in touch

Megan Jasson
Please contact Megan if you want more information on Optimeal and its uses, or if you are interested in a license.