Alongside the growth of health and wellness in the food industry, the idea of personalised nutrition for each individual has also gained a great deal of traction, though this has been severely limited by both technology and cost challenges.
Building on this idea, Calbee has introduced Body Granola, a personalised granola concept that customises granola toppings for each individual based on their own physical needs, mostly focusing on the use of different prebiotics.
Very basically, the system involves a self-testing kit to analyse a consumer’s gut microbiome, after which it tailors the granola with the most suitable ingredients for individual needs according to the resulting gut type.
“Body Granola was launched in April 2023, and over 50,000 people have used this service to date in Japan,” Calbee Managing Executive Officer and CTO Masae Nakano told the floor at our recent Growth Asia Summit 2026 in Singapore.
“The launch of this system is based on advances in nutrition and microbiome research, where we have learned that different people respond differently to the same foods so even ‘gut-friendly’ foods can affect each individual differently.”
This is due to the presence of over 1,000 types of bacteria living in most individuals’ guts meaning that the gut microbiome, defined by the types and quantities of these bacteria, differs from person to person.
“Different gut bacteria prefer different types of food or prebiotics, which is where the granola can come in,” Calbee Body Granola Overseas Development Lead Naoko Onishi added.
“The self-test results will reveal the individual’s gut microbiome type for which the granola toppings can be customised. There are 57 potential gut microbiome types a person could have.”
The granola base will then be customised with the prebiotic toppings recommended by the system according to the types and quantities required, and sent to the consumer for consumption.
Calbee currently provides six types of prebiotic toppings that it uses to customises each order: Inulin, super barley, galactooligosaccharides, resistant starch, high cacao and fructooligosaccharides.
“Each bacteria has their own preference, e.g. bacteroides prefer inulin and Bifidobacterium prefer fructooligosaccharides, so we will provide the relevant prebiotics accordingly in the appropriate amounts,” Onishi said.
“Each microbiome type will be determined by the presence of six main bacteria types producing beneficial SCFAs (Short-Chain Fatty Acids) that can have various benefits from immune boosting to anti-inflammation, and the prebiotics will be provided to boost the impacts of this and maximise health benefits.”
Other than bacteroides and Bifidobacterium, the other four major bacteria types involved here are Prevotella, Faecalibacterium, Ruminococcus and Blautia.
Barriers not fully removed
Calbee believes that this system is able to breakthrough some of the traditional hurdles to achieving personalized nutrition, such as the fear of investing in the wrong prebiotics or potential inconvenience of incorporation into daily routines.
“Body Granola gives consumers a sense of security that they know the right solution and shortens the time towards this due to the test kit,” Nakano said.
“It also incorporates the most appropriate ingredients into one’s daily routine such as breakfast, making it easy to continue without changing habits.”
That said, they also acknowledged that there are currently still several challenges lying in the way of widespread adoption.
“One thing we have found is that a lot of education is needed: People tend to think improving the gut is just improving bowel movements, but of course it is much more than that,” Onishi added.
“There is also a high barrier to trial currently as the cost per kit is not exactly cheap currently, and granola is also not a main staple food for most Japanese consumers.”
Calbee’s Body Granola has just been launched in Singapore, and the test kit is currently retailing at S$248.00 (US$191.92) on an offer pricing on its website, not including an additional one-month supply (20 servings) of personalised granola that costs S$49 (US$37.93) and a flat shipping fee of S$19 (US$14.71) as the granola is shipped from Japan.