We all make dozens of food choices every day. More than dozens, in fact: on average, each of us makes over two hundred food decisions. These choices add up over time to either promote health and wellness, or contribute to the development of chronic medical problems.

Nutrition-related chronic conditions (such as diabetes and heart disease) account for 76% of all physician visits and 91% of all prescriptions filled. Simply put, poor nutrition is a leading driver of disease in the US:

Not only is nutrition a key factor in reducing chronic illness, it’s also an indispensable factor in sustainable weight loss. In a 2014 study, The National Institute of Health compared diet and exercise programs to programs focusing on diet alone. They found that while exercise made a modest difference in a program’s effectiveness, diet was the chief driver of results.

It’s not hard to see why; exercise burns calories, but it’s all too easy to increase caloric intake to counterbalance the exercise. If you follow up a run on the treadmill with potato chips, you’ve already erased the gain.

This research points to why many corporate wellness programs fail to maintain improvements in employee health. Without a strong focus on nutrition, your program is missing the biggest opportunities to make a lasting difference.

Given these facts, it’s clear that wellness must include nutrition to have a measurable, sustainable impact. Granted, truly influencing not just the choices employees make, but also the way they think about nutrition, is a tall order. And it’s even more daunting given that people don’t like to be told what to eat. Once we sense the “Food Police” are coming, we dig in and resist.

It takes a new way of thinking about nutrition, partnered with novel uses of technology, to help employees navigate the hundreds of food choices they make each day. That’s where Zipongo comes in.

There are plenty of recipe sites, diet programs, and weight loss apps out there. These resources provide guidance on what to eat and what to avoid. But let’s be honest: Most of us already have a pretty good idea of what’s healthy. We know the difference between jelly beans and fresh strawberries. We’re not downing bacon cheeseburgers to up our vitamin intake.

Zipongo takes a different approach. Our platform is based on the principles of brain science as much as nutritional science. It’s about more than saying, “here’s what you should be eating”; we encourage understanding why you don’t eat that way already, and providing decision support throughout the day.

In other words, we make it as easy to eat super healthy as it currently is to eat unhealthily. By helping people understand the choices they make, and removing obstacles to making healthier choices, Zipongo encourages change over the long haul. Thanks to this behavioral approach, 75% of our corporate participants report they have developed healthier eating habits.

Here’s how Zipongo works.

To be truly effective, a nutrition program has to cover food choices throughout the day. A healthy meal or snack at work can easily be offset by a fast food dinner. So Zipongo works anywhere your employees are:

Helping people make healthier eating choices is an ongoing process. Your nutrition platform should make it easy to track progress and make well-informed decisions to improve over time. Zipongo provides a wealth of data to help you see how your program is performing and find opportunities to optimize. Here are the different types of data Zipongo manages:

Enrollment and Engagement

First, Zipongo works with customers to set ambitious but attainable program enrollment and engagement goals. We help you define what success looks like in the short, mid-range and long term time periods. Our customer marketing team uses this data to guide enrollment and onboarding efforts. In other words, our team uses Zipongo data to get your employees using the platform, and using it productively.

Usage and Dietary Improvement

Knowing how many users are signed up and whether or not they’re using the platform is a good first step, but what you really want to know is: are they eating better? That’s where NutriQuiz comes in.

NutriQuiz provides valuable insight into your employees’ current current eating habits vs. their ideal target. Employees take the quiz when they begin as part of Zipongo’s sign-up process. Through this tool, Zipongo learns about your employees’ eating habits to help personalize recommendations and identify where dietary improvements are needed.

Based on quiz results, employees are given a single NutriScore that provides employers with an incredibly simple way to track healthy eating habits of their population. As employees use Zipongo, they can check back in with the NutriQuiz at regular intervals, reporting how their food choices have changed. Checking employees’ NutriScore over time makes it easy to track progress.

On-Site Nutrition Analysis

Zipongo’s culinary analysis helps enterprises and their food service vendors optimize onsite cafe offerings to promote healthier meal choices at work. Conducting menu analysis allows us to recommend where offerings can be tweaked or swapped to improve overall variety and health.

If you choose to share cafeteria point-of-sale data with Zipongo, you can take your analytics to the next level. We can overlay cafeteria sales with program engagement metrics to show how Zipongo is driving healthier food purchases in your facility.