Nesta is seeking expressions of interest from organisations to develop a viable solution to accurately predict the calorie content of dishes across 1,000s of SMEs in the out of home food sector.

The ‘out of home’ (OOH) sector includes any food or drink that is prepared or cooked away from the home, including takeaway or home-delivered food. It contributes on average ~340 calories per person per day to our diets.

Independent/small to medium-sized OOH businesses account for ~40% of calories sold in the OOH sector. There is existing government regulation aiming to track and reduce calories in the OOH sector, for example calorie labelling which mandates larger businesses to publish the calorie content of meals. SMEs are currently excluded from this regulation largely due to the administrative burden of measuring the nutritional content of dishes (currently a manual process of itemising ingredients and often outsourced by large OOH businesses).

If we can solve the issue of data availability and quality in the SME sector, it makes their regulation more feasible and could enable government to expand the scope, type and impact of existing regulation and also enable other interventions, like planning restrictions, industry sales targets and taxes.

Increased regulation of this sector could lead to a reduction in calories consumed per person per day. This would lead to a corresponding reduction in obesity across the UK and would create a significant amount of social value.

We wish to explore if machine learning could be used to create a solution which would produce accurate enough estimates of the calorie content of meals sold by out of home SME businesses. We are open to solutions which estimate wider nutritional content but recognise the additional complexities of this over and above calorie content and it is therefore not our primary focus. This solution would need to reach a policy-appropriate level of accuracy (for the current calorie labelling regulations in England, the acceptable margin of difference between actual and declared calorie values is 20%) without placing a significant burden on SME businesses.

Nesta is looking to work with another organisation to develop a proof of concept in the form of a prototype which achieves the required accuracy on an agreed subset of data, and that has a clear and achievable roadmap to be scaled and used by businesses to accurately predict the calorie content of dishes across 1,000s of SMEs in the medium term.

Nesta is seeking expressions of interest from organisations that are able to assist with developing a viable solution to this research problem statement. We anticipate selecting one organisation to work with on this prototype and providing financial support for the development.

Deadline for submissions is midnight Sunday 13 July 2025.

Download the full expressions of interest information which includes a link to the online submission form

For questions and information please contact:

Frances Bain, Mission Manager, A Healthy Life, at [email protected]

John Barber, Deputy Director, A Health Life, at [email protected]