Taste Steering

Taste steering, developed in the university city of Leuven, is a core component of Leuven's hyper‑personalisation model HP‑TNT (Hyper‑Personalisation – Taste & Nutrition & Texture). This model offers an integrated approach that precisely aligns taste, nutritional value and texture with the needs of patients who have impaired dietary intake due to, among other factors, sensory dysfunctions. Such disturbances often arise as a result of illness, surgical interventions or treatments such as chemotherapy, and they undermine the basic precondition for recovery: sufficient and safe nutritional intake. When taste, smell or oral perception change, a form of clinical collateral damage frequently emerges that extends far beyond the plate. Patients lose their appetite, avoid food or experience eating as unpleasant. What may seem trivial at first glance can grow into a cascade of clinical problems — a butterfly effect that ends in a storm.

The consequences are profound. Reduced intake quickly leads to disease‑related malnutrition, with an increased risk of complications, functional decline, longer hospital stays and even higher mortality. The impact is not limited to the individual patient: malnutrition increases the care burden, slows down rehabilitation processes and generates considerable societal costs. In this context, it becomes clear why taste steering is more than culinary refinement. It is a targeted, scientifically grounded intervention that responds to the sensory needs of vulnerable patients and thus breaks the negative spiral of malnutrition. By strategically steering taste, texture and nutrition, food once again becomes accessible, appealing and safe — and thus once again a lever for recovery.

Taste steering does not stand alone. It fits within a broader, structural shift in healthcare: away from the traditional large‑scale kitchen model and towards personalised, multidisciplinary and needs‑driven nutritional care. In this evolving landscape, taste steering is an essential element of an integrated "culi‑clinical" framework in which culinary expertise and clinical science reinforce one another. It brings chefs, dietitians, clinicians, speech therapists and care teams together around one shared objective: to reposition nutrition as an active therapeutic tool.

This integrated approach restores meaning to food in terms of recovery, comfort and dignity. It acknowledges that eating is not only a physiological necessity, but also a source of identity, autonomy and quality of life. For patients with impaired dietary intake, taste steering opens the door to systemic and patient/client‑centred nutritional care. The HP‑TNT model offers a scientific and practical framework that makes hyper‑personalisation possible: no longer one meal for everyone, but a tailored, sensory‑driven intervention based on the needs of the individual patient.

In this way, a new standard of nutritional care is emerging — one that no longer merely feeds, but supports, restores and gives back dignity. This is precisely the direction in which nutritional care must evolve by 2030: care that is scientifically grounded, sensorially intelligent, multidisciplinary in nature and deeply patient/client‑centred. Within this development, taste steering is not a detail, but a strategic key.