Cardiovascular and metabolic diseases can be prevented, delayed or reduced by improving our eating habits. Increasing the consumption of plant foods rich in a range of compounds with potential beneficial effects (‘bioactive compounds’) is an important strategy to fight these chronic diseases. However, the translation of many promising preclinical results into human clinical trials has so far proven challenging mostly due to the large heterogeneity in individuals’ responsiveness to the intake of these compounds. Building a European multidisciplinary network, POSITIVe specifically addressed this issue by tackling: 1) the between-subjects variability in human absorption and metabolism of these compounds (working group, WG1); 2) the variability in the response (bioactivity) of humans to the intake of these compounds (WG2) and 3) the translation of the results from WG1 and WG2 into applications relevant to the scientific community, food industry, public health regulatory authorities, and health care professionals.