The new meal delivery service, Habit, has taken the bold step of using a science-based approach to dieting. Customers will have to prick their fingers and send blood samples to a lab where they are used to identify a series of biomarkers that look for genetic variations in the DNA that affect how foods are broken down and metabolized.
Habit will also collect basic body metrics, such as height, weight, and waist circumference as well as lifestyle habits. All the data will be used to personalize a meal plan that works best for the individual customer.
Touting the new venture as being the “future of food,” Campbell Soup is taking the plunge in investing $32 million in the California-based startup.
“The entire food industry is being transformed by the fusion of food, well-being, and technology,” said Campbell CEO and president Denise Morrison in a statement, according to Fortune.
There may be some truth to diets that focus on an individual’s specific dietary needs. The new dietary guidelines put out by the government specify that what constitutes a healthy diet is dependent on people’s specific health needs. In other words, one size does not fit all.
Will this new company find a niche in the multi-million dollar diet industry? It’s hard to tell at this time and Habit won’t start launching the first of its customer DIY blood test kits until early in 2017.
In the first place, diets come and go, and there are more of them than you can shake a stick at, and some of those diets are really strange, sometimes.
Quartz suggests that the investor may be more interested in the meal kits than customers, pointing out that the vast majority of customers that do sign up for “meal kit” diet plans drop their subscription within six months of signing up.
