Collaboration Networks for Information Empowerment of Food Consumers

The growing popularity of social networking platforms and recent advances in the internet of “things for food” open the way to conceive new information solutions to assist food consumers in their consumption activities. This paper deals with an egalitarian and bottom-up approach, where food consumers and stakeholders of the food supply chain interact to create and share valuable and reliable food information possibly coming from food instrumental measurements performed by consumers via smart food things. In particular, we propose a model of a collaborative network where members manage food information in a collective and distributed way (in terms of information generation, validation and delivery). Moreover, we highlight the outcome value of this new collaborative way of food information management under a consumer perspective.