Vita Mojo: Restaurant lets you design your own meals — and choose how healthy to be

It will also soon launch an app that acts as a personal nutritionist
Slide to decide: Pick how much of each ingredient you want by using the sliders on your phone or an in-store tablet
Ben Norum23 March 2016

A restaurant which allows you to personalise your meals according to your nutritional and dietary needs has launched in the City.

Vita Mojo, which has opened near St Paul’s Cathedral, serves a daily-changing selection of salads to eat in or take out for lunch through to 9pm — and allows customers to choose the exact amount of each ingredient which goes into them.

Using in-store iPads or Vita Mojo’s website — and soon via a bespoke app — diners can choose the quantities of each component by sliding bars up or down. As they do, charts automatically show how this affects the meal’s nutritional breakdown as well as the price.

This means that depending on how virtuous you’re feeling — or perhaps how much exercise you’ve done — you can opt to up your portion of kale by 20g and reduce the amount of slow-cooked beef.

The Vita Mojo team, from right: nutritionist Helene Patounas, co-founder Nick Popovici, operations director Eli Nadel, chef Paul Davies and co-founder Stefan Catoiu

Founders Nick Popovici and Stefan Catoiu — a former finance worker and an organic farm owner respectively — have teamed up with chef Paul Davies, previously of Ham Yard Hotel in Soho, and nutritionist Helene Patounas to make it happen.

Patounas usually works with famous F1 drivers, elite athletes and big business CEOs, but is excited to offer this guidance to a wider audience: “People want to be healthy and eat well, but not everyone can afford nutritionists or personal chefs,” she says. “The idea with this is that everyone can get the experience of a personal nutritionist in their lunch break.”

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She adds: “People come with different genes, lifestyles, digestive systems and goals — there is no such thing as one perfect diet that fits all, it has to be personalised.”

Vita Mojo is currently taking its first steps towards offering this service, with the big next move being the imminent launch of its own app — this has already been in development for a long time, Patounas tells us, and is now in the final testing stages.

Mojo to go: A lunch packaged for takeaway

Users will be able to input their weight, height, dietary requirements and fitness goals into the app to receive personalised nutritional advice and recommended lunch options. Down the line, factors such as blood pressure and cholesterol could also be incorporated, says Patounas.

Work is also underway to allow the app to integrate with wearable devices such as Fitbits, to create a fuller picture of the person’s health, activity and nutritional needs. And there are even plans to incorporate nutritional advice for activities such as marathon training.

Patounas adds: “What Vita Mojo is offering is definitely unique in London, and in my experience I think it could be a global first.”

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