Tuulia and Kesko participate in the Government Institute for Economic Research (VATT) project examining consumers' possibilities to impact climate change. The main objective of the project is to find out how to reliably determine the carbon footprints of food products. The one-year project also pilots an Internet service providing K-food store customers with information about the carbon footprints of the products they have bought. Making the new service available for customers using the K-Plussa card will be decided after the pilot stage.
Read press release Juhani Keinonen, Senior Physician in charge of rehabilitation, believed that his family followed a balanced and healthy diet until he got acquainted with the Nutritioncode service. The results took him by surprise.
Read article on page 16 Kesko Food has signed an exclusive agreement covering Finland with Tuulia International Ltd on the introduction of the Nutritioncode service to all K-food stores to provide detailed information and recommendation on the contents of the shopping basket. The customers using the K-Plussa card can choose to receive concrete information about the health aspects of their purchases via the Internet service.
Read release Half of the experts: At least 30% of households follow regularly information of their home diet collected by Nutritioncode service in the year 2015.
Read report (English summary page 47-68) Life Science aims to improve the quality of living. Health-orientation is a reigning megatrend in the world; people exercice more and watch what they eat. A HBSP company Tuulia International Ltd has developed a service where the consumer can follow the nutritional quality of his/her food basket in relation to nutritional recommendations.
Read article The Nutritioncode service provides all K-supermarket customers with access to the nutritional content of their groceries. Nutritional therapist Hanna Partanen thinks the invention is splendied: any innovation to improve nation´s health is welcome.
Read article Nutritioncode –service is a system which helps the consumer to estimate the healthiness of his/her food basket in the same way that the Heart Symbol helps him/her to make better choices when buying food.
Release 15.6.2006 Recent innovative collaborative initiatives in Finland for promoting healthy nutrition to counteract obesity and nutrition related health problems
EU/US Conference 11. & 12.05.2006 "Good practices: Action on diet, Physical Activity and Health" Kesko Food's K-supermarket chain offers its loyal customers an opportunity to monitor the healthiness of their food purchases from their home computers. K-supermarket is the first food store chain in Finland to launch the service throughout the whole chain.
Release 3.4.2006 Nutritioncode.com helps to survey the nutritional values and healthiness of purchases and home-made food.
Article Dagligvarekunder kan sjekke næringsinnholdet i handlekurven sin på nettet. - En spennende idé, mener Norgesgruppen.
Article Nutritioncode has filed an international patent application for its invention to monitor and control the supply of nutrients. The application has been made under the ECP to obtain international patent protection simultaneously in over one hundred countries.

Nutritioncode enables food retail to provide their loyalty card customers with nutrition information and guidance. Nutritioncode is now available for retailers which act for the benefit of their clients.


English Nutritioncode Platform Brochure


Chinese Nutritioncode Platform Brochure

The project assesses the possibilities and effectiveness of a bonus system for households which incites them to favor reduction of green house gas (GHG) emissions in their consummation and also incites retailers to offer a product portfolio that advances the choice for low GHG solutions by households. In due course the project serves other purposes as well. The development of the information and knowledge system is expected to enable future collaborations for the purposes of e.g. climate policy monitoring, public health policies, etc. The key issues to be reviewed are the ecological effectiveness, the economic efficiency, the commercial viability and the social acceptability of the bonus system.

A central task is to conceptualize how the consumer and the product retailer accesses, browses and registers the use of the product data. A leading principle is to make the registering of product usages as automatic as possible and allow for a variety of interaction methods. Some are more familiar with the PC, whereas others like the mobile phone. Tuulia contributes the project with Nutritioncode and Hyperfit systems that are used to obtain and presenting purchasing data. Nutritioncode’s automatic registering of product purchases is combined with manual registering in Hyperfit, where the consumer registers the product use by entering data on his PC, mobile phone or by reading the package barcode with the mobile phone.

The user will be able to monitor his/her cumulative emission “footprint” with corresponding bonus rewards and penalties over time intervals, one day, a month or a year. Preferably even simple projections can be generated. The system will show how the realized emissions footprint of the household relates to the agreed target. Alternatively or additionally, there will be comparisons to other references, like the typical footprint of comparable households. Possibly, a virtual “trainer” will advice the user on how to better reach the targets.

Research Consortium: VATT, MTT, SYKE, TEKES, VTT, National Consumer Research Centre, Kesko, Elisa, HK Ruokatalo, Stora Enso, Tuulia International, Nokia
Domestic and foreign advisors: Oxford University ECI (UK), Foundation ‘Milieu Centraal’ (NL), Manchester University SCI (UK), Motiva Finnish energy agency The goal of NUADU is to explore the opportunities for providing healthcare and wellness services and applications that facilitate more cost effective and efficient solutions. Interesting approaches to create opportunities are:
• Allow patients to be discharged earlier from the hospital,
• Early detection of health problems to avoid hospitalization,
• Motivate people to stay healthy by adapting their life-style
• Management of health risks such as obesity
• Management of chronic diseases such as hypertension or diabetes

The scope of the applications to be investigated will vary across the usage and age categories.

Tuulia contributes to NUADU with Nutritioncode and Hyperfit and complements the health monitoring of other NUADU partners by bringing automated dietary guidance for more comprehensive health management. Nutritioncode is an easy-to-use on-line platform to monitor and guide to healthier home diet by automatically analyzing groceries bought by the user. Nutritioncode can be complemented with Hyperfit. Hyperfit is a personal food and activity diary to support healthy living accessible through the web service via a PC or a mobile terminal. Nutritioncode and Hyperfit support personal life stage nutrition goals and they form together a platform for effective self management and prevention of common food and life style related health risks with possibility for professional dietary guidance for e.g. obesity and diabetes.

More information about the project at www.nuadu.org. The focus on the Espoo pilot is on health promotion and health (and disease) management through occupational health services - development of methodology suitable for management of the most common health risks, especially obesity, lack of physical exercise, work stress, sleep and vigilance problem. The pilot tests ICT-based solutions for these issues and for improving the quality of healthcare by improving management and communication of the services and improving the quality of life of patients treated at home. FIOH (Finnish Institute of Occupational Health) will provide medical and occupational health service expertise for the definition of the service concept to be applied in Espoo Pilot and take care of the running of the pilot in the city.

Espoo is the second largest city in Finland with a population of 235 000 inhabitants. City of Espoo employees 13 464 (79.6% women) are requested to fill in a web based health screening questionnaire and each respondent will get automatic personal feedback on his/her health based on the questionnaire. 360 subjects will be selected to the study and randomly divided into three groups: two intervention groups and a control group.

The two intervention groups will participate in intervention meetings organized during the first six months of the study. In addition, the first intervention group will get traditional support from specialized group instructor and written information on health promotion. The second intervention group will be provided with Nuadu ICT tools including Nutritioncode and Hyperfit. Mobile and web tools and sensors are provided to the target group and the collected data will be passed to a common server, which will serve as the source for research of the data. The project designs, implements and field trials prototypes of novel ubicom applications that combine context-awareness with personalization in order to provide a better user experience in everyday tasks in public spaces. The public space used for consumer applications and social mobile media as test environment is a shopping mall in Helsinki and shops in the mall.

The main research innovation in the project lies in the combination of complementing viewpoints: statistical user models and user experience studies provide information and capability to better take into account the needs and desires of individual users, whereas business models allow balancing this with the businesses’ point of view. From a technological viewpoint, the aim is on the one hand to evaluate some new ideas in a platform independent way, which enables to reach a critical mass for meaningful user studies; on the other hand, where available, prototypes utilize novel technological features (e.g., mobile chat, WLAN and Bluetooth based positioning on mobile phones) that are likely to be widely available with next generation devices. The research consortium includes a wide range of stakeholders: phone manufacturer, operator, retail chain, as well as various SMEs that provide the project with key technological capabilities and services.

More information at www.hiit.fi/ada/pups. The Finnish Student Health Service (FSHS) and Tuulia International have agreed to provide Tuulia’s Hyperfit Service to students enrolled at universities and tertiary-level science and art schools. The aim is to start with a pilot and develop the service and its implementation into healthcare processes. The service is field tested and feedback collected from obese students and students with eating disorders.

FSHS is a nationwide organization with offices in 16 Finnish cities. In towns where universities have ancillary branches, the services of FSHS are purchased from local providers. The operation of FSHS covers more than 140,000 students. In addition FSHS works actively to promote student health. FSHS employs more than 600 health-care professionals, including GPs and specialists (such as gynecologists and dermatologists), public health nurses, nurses, practical nurses, dentists, dental hygienists, dental nurses, psychiatrists and psychologists. The central administration of the foundation is based in Helsinki.

More info about FSHS http://www.yths.fi/netcomm/default.asp?strLAN=EN.

Eero Toivainen
CEO

Helsinki Science and Business Park
Viikinkaari 4
00790 Helsinki, Finland

tel. +358-9-3252900
mobile +358-40-5589944
eero.toivainen (a) tuulia.fi
Pirjo Toivanen
Senior Consultant

Finpro Region Europe
177-179 Hammersmith Road
London W6 8BS, United Kingdom

tel. +44 208 6007274
mobile +44 78 66 77 5613
pirjo.toivanen (a) finpro.fi
Pietro Karjalainen
Senior Consultant

Finpro France - Finland Trade Center
Ambassade de Finlande, Section Commerciale
66 rue de Miromesnil, F-75008 Paris, France

tel. +33-158565306
mobile +33-631690113
pietro.karjalainen (a) finpro.fi
Birgitte Kankaro
Consultant

Finpro Region Europe, Italy
Ufficio Commerciale/Ambasciata di Finlandia,
Via F. Ferrucci 2
I-201245 Milano, Italy

Phone +39-02-319 1071, Dir. 319107218
birgitte.kankaro (a) finpro.fi

Tuulia’s company mission is to help families and individuals towards healthier eating habits. Our research focus is in relationship between nutrition and health, food consumption and environment and in developing internet tools to guide to healthy eating.

We have developed from consumers’ point of view a fully automatic system, Nutritioncode, for collecting and analyzing the nutritional properties of foodstuffs bought by consumers. The system transmits the information via internet to the consumer in order that she can select food contributing to and maintaining her health.

Nutritioncode is used to identify malnutrition, to prevent type II -diabetes and in weight management. It helps to alter the user’s own diet the most suitable way: from her own food purchasing habits and according to her personal food preferences and life stage.

Nutritioncode weight management tool is based on solid science - the concept of low-energy density and high nutrient density, the key features of a healthy eating pattern. It is consistent with any national Dietary Guidelines, it emphasizes on nutrient dense foods to provide substantial amounts of vitamins and minerals with relatively fewer calories.

Nutritioncode has filed an international patent application for its invention to monitor and control the supply of nutrients. The application has been made under the EP to obtain international patent protection simultaneously in over one hundred countries.

Climate Bonus: A carbon bonus/credit system for households
A central task is to conceptualize how the consumer and the product retailer accesses, browses and registers the use of the product data. A leading principle is to make the registering of product usages as automatic as possible and allow for a variety of interaction methods. Some are more familiar with the PC, whereas others like the mobile phone. Tuulia contributes the project with Nutritioncode and Hyperfit systems that are used to obtain and presenting purchasing data. Nutritioncode’s automatic registering of product purchases is combined with manual registering in Hyperfit, where the consumer registers the product use by entering data on his PC, mobile phone or by reading the package barcode with the mobile phone.

Nuadu project (www.nuadu.org)
We contribute to NUADU project with Hyperfit, a personal food and activity diary to support healthy living accessible through the web service via a PC or a mobile terminal. The Hyperfit service can be complemented with Nutritioncode, an easy-to-use on-line platform to monitor and guide to healthier home diet by automatically analyzing groceries bought by the user. Nutritioncode and Hyperfit form together a platform for effective self management and prevention of common food related health risks with possibility for professional dietary guidance for e.g. obesity and diabetes.

PUPS: Personalised Ubiservices in Public Spaces (www.hiit.fi/ada/pups)
The project designs, implements and field trials prototypes of novel ubicomp applications that combine context-awareness with personalisation in order to provide a better user experience in everyday tasks in public spaces. In contrast to most of earlier research, our focus is outside the home and workplace. Our showcase is the Itäkeskus shopping mall, but the research results can also be applied to other public spaces. Our application areas are consumer applications and social mobile media. We aim at ideas that could be commercialised in about five years time.

Professor Antti Aro, Ph.D. (Dr.medicine) Ph.D. Honoris Causa (Food science), University of Helsinki, has a long career in food science as Research Professor and Head of Department of Nutrition in National Public Health Institute of Finland and Scientific secretary of Finnish National Nutrition Council. He has written 185 original articles and 115 review articles in scientific journals and numerous writings in Finnish medical journals and lay journals and editor of two textbooks of Nutrition.

Director Seppo Heiskanen, M.SC., Research Director of Finnish Food and Drink Federation has a long experience in food industry and he is the Secretary General of Finnish Food Research Foundation.

Docent Osmo Kuusi, Ph.D is docent in futures and innovation studies in the Technical University of Helsinki and the Scientific Adviser of the Futures Research Centre, permanent Scientific Adviser in the technology assessment in the Committee for the Future of the Parliament of Finland, especially focused on the prospects and problems of gene technology and the future of Finnish health care system.

Authorized nutritionist Hilpi Linjama, M.Sc. (Health Sci., Nutr), is working in South Ostrobothnia Hospital District in Seinäjoki. She works in the Implementation Project 2003-2007 of the Programme for the Prevention of Type 2 Diabetes (D2D) and have experience of preventive health-care and clinical nutrition therapy.

Professor Pertti Mustajoki, Ph.D.(Dr.medicine and endocrinology), is chief physician in the Department of Medicine of Peijas Hospital, which is part of the University Central Hospital of Helsinki. International clinical research on the treatment of obesity. Chief editor of a textbook on obesity and popular books on weight management.

Toxicologist Pirjo-Liisa Penttilä, Ph.D, Head of Development Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, Department of Agriculture Finance and Development Unit has been working with food control and risk assessment over 30 years nationally and internationally. Her wide international experience (FAO, WHO, EU, PHARE, TAIEX, Twinning and Nordic projects) has given possibilities to enhance food safety in many countries.

Professor Caj Södergård, Dr. Tech. is a permanent Research Professor in Media technology and Manager of The Media Research at the Technical Research Centre of Finland (VTT). His expertise is in media technology, especially methods for hybrid and integrated publishing in various media including mobile media. Caj has 130 publications and several patents in these fields.

Pia Ylhä, Ph.Lic.(Chem), is the Managing Director of Helsinki Business and Science Park Ltd. Earlier in her career she has worked as an investment analyst covering over 15 public companies, e.g. pharmaceutical and life science industry as well as biotechnology and trade companies. She has published several scientific papers and also developed the R&D, trial design and business strategies for number of life science companies in the Technology Centres of Turku and Helsinki.

PRESS RELEASE 7.6.2006

Nutritioncode –service is a system which helps the consumer to estimate the healthiness of his/her food basket in the same way that the Heart Symbol helps him/her to make better choices when buying food.

Finnish Heart Association and the developer of Nutritioncode –system, Tuulia International Ltd, have agreed on cooperation. The goal is that as many people as possible are aware of the heart healthiness of the food they buy and make healthier food choices and choose food items bearing the Heart Symbol –label for their food basket.

The goal is to promote food choices that are healthy and follow the nutrition recommendations by giving the consumer an estimate of the nutritional content of his/her food basket. In this way we can promote the recognition of heart healthiness and the consumers’ awareness of the healthiness of the food they are buying.

The goal of the Finnish Heart Association is that, in 20 years’ time, cardiovascular diseases will no longer be a significant health problem among working-age adults and that people experience more healthy and active years in their lives. A healthy diet and weight control are central factors not only in the prevention and care of heart diseases but also of all vascular diseases.

Tuulia International Ltd has developed a service where the consumer can follow the nutritional quality of his/her food basket in relation to nutritional recommendations. Finnish Heart Association and Finnish Diabetes Association have developed and manage a Heart Symbol –system to help the consumer to make choices which meet the demands of the recommendations made by the National Nutrition Council. The right to use the symbol can be granted in six product groups to products which meet the Heart Symbol –criteria. The aim of the system is to help the consumer to make better choices regarding fat and sodium when shopping for food.

Currently a person interested in Nutritioncode –service can get a bar code sticker on his/her K-Plussa Card, which then transmits the information of her shopping to www.ravintokoodi.fi – web service. As far as possible the service is widened into other grocery store chains. One working day after food shopping customers can check on their home computer whether the food they bought correspond to the recommended proportion of foods from each food group, how it influences the total energy intake and the proportions of nutrients in home cooking. The service suits all interested in their health and also helps weigh control.

Additional information:

General secretary Tor Jungman, Finnish Heart Association, + 358 9 752 7521, tor.jungman(at)sydanliitto.fi

Managing director Eero Toivainen, Tuulia International Ltd, + 358 9 325 2900 or + 358 400 558 994, eero.toivainen(at)tuulia.fi