What if the future of nutrition labels went far beyond calories, sugar and fat, and revealed the full chemistry of our food? That’s the idea behind a new competition from the American Heart Association that’s calling on scientists, designers and policy experts to rethink how nutrition information is shared with the public.
The “Future Food + Nutrition Facts” challenge, open through January 30, 2026, asks participants to create new ways to visualize complex data from the Periodic Table of Food Initiative (PTFI), one of the world’s most advanced open-access food composition databases. The initiative catalogs thousands of foods from around the world, capturing their full molecular and nutritional profiles along with information on how and where they’re grown.
Selena Ahmed, Ph.D., global director of the PTFI and dean of Food EDU at the American Heart Association, said the goal is to turn scientific complexity into something useful for everyday decision-making.
“This is a translational competition meant to rethink what we know about food, how we share that data in compelling ways and how it informs action,” she said.
The challenge is designed to bridge food science, technology and design, encouraging collaborations between data scientists, public health professionals and visual communicators. Participants will have access to biomolecular data that links food composition with factors such as biodiversity, sustainability and health impact, and will be challenged to present it in new, meaningful ways.
“For the first time in history, we are able to detect the full richness and complexity of all the chemistry contained in the world’s food biodiversity,” said John de la Parra, Ph.D., director of Food Initiatives at the Rockefeller Foundation, which funds the challenge. “But how do we communicate that? How do we make it mean something, have impact and ultimately improve human and planetary health?”
The Periodic Table of Food Initiative is managed by the American Heart Association and the Alliance of Bioversity International and the Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), with support from the Rockefeller Foundation and several global partners. The project aims to build a new kind of nutritional reference, one that integrates food quality, environmental data and cultural relevance alongside traditional nutrient information.
Winners of the challenge will share $40,000 in cash prizes, with the top entry receiving $20,000. The winning visualizations will be showcased at the 2026 PTFI Science Symposium and across digital platforms. Entries will be judged on creativity, scientific accuracy, accessibility and real-world relevance.
Ultimately, the competition is about more than better graphics; it’s about redefining how nutrition science is translated for the public. By linking molecular food data with sustainability and culture, the initiative hopes to help people understand food not just as fuel, but as a complex system connecting human and planetary health.
The competition is supported by a financial grant from The Rockefeller Foundation and managed through the Periodic Table of Food Initiative.