LIST wins FoodTech Award for WikiFood®

On February 7, 2017, at the Food Summit, LIST won the FoodTech Award. The Food Summit was held under the patronage of Fernand Etgen, Minister of Agriculture, Viticulture and Consumer Protection.

This prize is awarded to a structure for its technological expertise and the innovative character of a service made available to the agri-food sector, aiming to improve a specific aspect.

WikiFood® is a collaborative platform that facilitates the exchange of information on food products between producers, retailers, nutritional experts and consumers.

Created by LIST, WikiFood® was originally launched to guide people suffering from food allergies when learning their new diet. Today, the mobile application and website www.wikifood.eu help consumers to purchase food products and provide them individualised nutritional information and recommendations. Thus the system enables consumers to easily follow a diet suiting their specific needs and preferences.

The involvement of citizens, producers and sellers has helped gathering information on more than 35,000 food products. In addition, local food retailers like Cactus and food producers already also took advantage of the food information service offered. They can open new business options such as personalised home delivery services, improvement of customer relationship programs by promoting dietary products, local production, fair trade, or eco-responsible practice. LIST's experts in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) use WikiFood® as a field bench to experiment and innovate in recommendations systems and human-computer interaction.

This award demonstrates LIST's ability to innovate for the benefit of Luxembourg citizens and residents, hence improving the quality of life in the Grand Duchy. These objectives are in line with the axes identified by the Rifkin study on the Third Industrial Revolution.

In his opening address of the Food Summit, Minister Fernand Etgen had highlighted some the objectives formulated by the Rifkin study for Luxembourg, in particular the establishment of new relations between consumers and food producers and the promotion of better behavior consumption in the food sector.

With WikiFood®, LIST contributes to make good on this promise and invites citizens, food producers and retailers to keep on sending information on WikiFood®. It will help make the platform even more reliable and useful.

Photo credit: ©Dominique Gaul