Impact

The PTFI will address global challenges and revolutionize the human health, agriculture, and food sectors.

With explicit analysis of macronutrients – which represent 99% of the foods we eat – the PTF will enable the global community to replicate nourishing diets to improve health and wellbeing, advance sustainability, and provide economic opportunities. Once in place, this publicly accessible database will be the greatest single knowledge asset in the history of food.

In addition, the analysis of trace phytonutrients will provide an unprecedented catalog of chemical diversity in our foods. New insights about the composition and function of food will allow food production and processing to be optimized for selected nutrients and mitigate the impact of nutrients with negative effects on health. We expect a high-resolution description of the foods we eat will enable us to:

  • Personalize diet guidance to reduce heart disease and obesity
  • Identify solutions to end stunting
  • Enhance childhood nutrition
  • Ensure safety from allergens and intolerances
  • Create new market and profits for producers and farmers
  • Understand how processed foods affect our health
  • Improve our understanding of how diet modulates the efficacy of drugs and treatments
  • Understand the important role of the microbiome for health
  • Provide scientific data on how soil health contributes to the nutritional value of food
  • Create alternative protein sources to shift diets to plant-focused products

… and much more. Stay tuned for upcoming case studies on these topics, which will explain how the PTFI can help address these issues.

Case Studies

These short papers describe how the Periodic Table of Food Initiative (PTFI) can help address the issues above. These Case Studies provide a vision for the potential impact of the PTFI, informed by experts and key stakeholders. If you are interested in developing a Case Study, please contact us.

All case studies written and edited by Tania Fitzgeorge-Balfour