On 22–23 October 2025, we held our final conference, ‘A recipe for trust: food, data and our choices’, in Brussels, Belgium, together with our sister project DRG4FOOD. Over two days, innovators, researchers, policymakers, and professionals working at the intersection of food and data came together to explore how digital tools can improve food systems while keeping citizens’ rights at the centre.
More than a final event, the conference became a celebration of innovation, collaboration, and shared ambition. Participants took part in interactive workshops, learnt about the solutions developed by our funded pilots, and discovered tools designed to support responsible digital innovation in Europe’s food and nutrition sector.
For FOODITY, the conference also offered an opportunity to showcase the achievements of our innovators from both Open Call 1 and Open Call 2. The three finalists from Open Call 2 presented their solutions live on stage, with ONCONOURISH, a personalised nutrition support tool for people undergoing cancer treatment, receiving the 2nd FOODITY Star Award.
Day 1: project insights, pilot pitches, and networking
FOODITY coordinator Samuel Almeida and DRG4FOOD coordinator Kai Hermsen opened the event by welcoming participants and presenting the two-day agenda. They highlighted how both projects have worked to strengthen trust, transparency, and user control in an increasingly digital food landscape — from creating a dynamic ecosystem of data-driven solutions for food and nutrition to running open calls and supporting pilot projects that demonstrate how digital food innovation can be both impactful and responsible.
Tasting session: the FOODITY & DRG4FOOD open call purpose and methodology
The first session, led by Samuel Almeida (F6S) and Milica Velimirovic (Inosens), offered an inside look at how both projects designed their open calls to foster trustworthy, data-driven food solutions.
At FOODITY, we invested €2 million in a support programme for twelve projects developing tools that help citizens make healthier food choices and contribute to more sustainable food systems. The programme demonstrated how data-driven innovation can deliver value while ensuring full user control over personal data. It followed a three-phase structure — pilot development, impact maximisation, and finally the FOODITY Star Award — with the two most promising solutions reaching the final stage.
DRG4FOOD awarded €1.9 million to eight pilot projects working across three areas: food tracking, targeted nutrition, and consumer food choices.
This session showed how open calls can help small organisations test ideas, strengthen their solutions, and adopt responsible data practices from the very beginning.
FOODITY open call pitches
The finalists selected in our Open Call 2 Midterm Pitch Contest took the stage to share their work.
ONCONOURISH: a personalised nutrition tool designed to support cancer patients during treatment — developed by Instituto IBIONS, Datipic, and TheMovemen.
SEBP — Sustainable Employee Benefits Platform: a digital platform that connects companies, employees, and local producers, helping organisations promote responsible consumption while empowering employees to make informed, eco-conscious choices — developed by The Good Club and Agriventures.
REDUCE: a tool helping catering companies cut food waste through AI-powered insights and active user engagement, developed by Behavix, Spritz Matter, and the TESAF Department at the University of Padova.
After careful evaluation by an independent expert jury, ONCONOURISH was selected as the winner of the 2nd FOODITY Star Award. The project was recognised for its strong impact potential and commitment to data responsibility, and was awarded a €7,500 prize, in addition to the €187,500 already received through our support programme, to keep driving their innovation forward.
DRG4FOOD open call pitches
The eight DRG4FOOD pilots also pitched their projects, demonstrating how they support healthier, more transparent, and more sustainable food systems. Their work spans three key areas: food tracking, targeted nutrition, and consumers’ food choices.
Food tracking: ATTESTED (Affordable and eThical TracEability SysTEms to support proDucer-consumer relationships in small and medium supply chains), and Cacao-Tech (Transforming the Cacao Value Chain in Latin America: Enhancing Transparency and Quality with NIR Technology and Whole Pod Automated Processing).
Targeted nutrition: SafeNutriKids (Safe Nutrition for Kids), NutriWell (Nutrition AI for Well-being and Social Inclusion), PINACLE (Personalised Individualised Nutrition using Available Community LeftOvers), GENIE (Genomic Evaluation and Nutritional Integration Experience), and DISH (Delicious – Individual – Sustainable -Healthy).
Consumers’ food choices: NutriSight (A window to food nutritional transparency).
The pilots shared practical examples of how the Digital Responsibility Goals (DRGs) can be applied in real-world food tech development, showcasing the value of responsible digital innovation.
Day 1 ended with a networking session, giving participants the chance to explore the projects more closely, meet our innovators, and exchange ideas in an informal setting.
Day 2: digital responsibility, citizen engagement, and future roadmaps
Appetite for more: towards a digitally responsible food system
This session explored how innovation and responsible digitalisation are reshaping Europe’s food systems, addressing emerging challenges around data ownership, privacy, transparency, and trust.
It opened with a policy presentation by Wim Van Haentjens, policy officer at the European Commission’s DG Research and Innovation, who explained how initiatives like FOODITY and DRG4FOOD contribute to the European Strategy for Data, the Farm to Fork Strategy, and other key EU priorities. He also outlined how the projects’ results can help shape future policy directions and regulatory frameworks for digital governance in the agri-food sector.
The DRG4FOOD coordinator then reflected on the project’s progress in developing governance frameworks that support digitally responsible practices across the food value chain. The FOODITY coordinator followed with an overview of the project’s approach to building consumer trust in food system digitalisation, with both coordinators emphasising how the two projects have worked together to develop a comprehensive framework for digital responsibility in food systems.
The session closed with a brief discussion exploring the synergies between FOODITY and DRG4FOOD and their commitment to fostering a digitally responsible, transparent, and inclusive food ecosystem.
The agony of choice: what’s for dinner
In this session, experts Ferdinard Ferroli (Identity Valley) and Lorna Goulden (Twinds Foundation) from the DRG4FOOD team introduced the seven Digital Responsibility Goals (DRGs), a framework designed to support the creation of digital tools that are transparent, inclusive, and respectful of users’ rights. They introduced how the DRGs can form the basis for practical tools, assessment frameworks, and implementation guidance for organisations developing digital food and nutrition applications.
The secret ingredient: digital responsibility
Moderated by Kai Hermsen, this session brought together Hans Houf (DataU / Jibe Company) from the FOODITY team, Marie Brueser (EIT Food), and Pierre Slamich (Open Food Facts). They explored the balance between transparency and innovation, privacy and usability, and openness and commercial value. Their insights underlined how essential digital responsibility is for building trust in modern food systems.
Cooking it all up: insights into the DRG4FOOD scenarios
In this session, Filippo Sevi (Enea) and Wiktor Capela (Premotec) presented DRG4FOOD’s roadmap, policy briefs, and their map-and-gap analysis. These materials aim to support future research, guide policy development, and encourage the wider adoption of responsible digital principles.
Citizen feedback for smarter food solutions
In an interactive workshop led by Raquel Carro (AUSTRALO) from the FOODITY team, participants explored two pilot solutions, GENIE and REDUCE, using the IF-AT (Immediate Feedback Assessment Technique) methodology. The session gave project teams the chance to reflect on their work, gather participants’ feedback, and discuss key topics such as transparency, usability, sustainability, and citizen-centred design. The activity highlighted the importance of citizen engagement in shaping digital tools.
How to implement the roadmap
This panel, moderated by Alessandra Bagnato (Softeam) from FOODITY, featured Nicola Fiore (EGI Foundation) and Marie Amman (Agrifood Tech Venture GmbH). They explored how organisations can apply the roadmap in real settings, sharing examples, challenges, and opportunities for innovation in the agri-food sector.
Harvesting Insights: The Future of Digital Responsibility in Food Systems
The conference concluded with a joint session featuring the coordinators of FOODITY and DRG4FOOD, alongside Eloy Miranda and Siavash Farahbakhsh, coordinators of the SOSFood and FoodDataQuest projects within our Data4Food cluster.
Together, they reflected on the key insights from the event, celebrated the strong collaboration built across our projects, and announced the continuation of the cluster, which will ensure that the community we have created continues to grow and evolve, supported by the newly launched projects.
The FOODITY & DRG4FOOD final conference offered a clear and inspiring picture of how we can build trusted, data-driven, and citizen-centred food systems in Europe.
We congratulate ONCONOURISH and all our FOODITY innovators, and we extend our thanks to DRG4FOOD for a fruitful collaboration! While our projects may be coming to an end, the knowledge, tools, and community we have built together will continue to guide responsible digitalisation across the food sector.
Thank you for joining us on this food & data journey!
Watch our event recap video, featuring interviews with the FOODITY and DRG4FOOD coordinators and some of the innovators driving both projects:
Dive deeper into the conference: watch the Day 1 and Day 2 recordings and access the full agenda.