I recently had a fantastic opportunity to speak to the Food Product Development class at UC Davis.  It is an upper division Food Science class of mostly seniors who hope to create the foods of the future.

I spoke briefly about my more than 40 years creating new food products, both at large companies, and as a consultant.  But mostly I talked about my experience a few years ago when I began to wonder if any of the thousands of products I have developed actually help anyone.

“Healthy food” has been a big buzz word for quite a while.  But in my experience, some companies are much more interested in selling food than they are in making it nutritious.  So often, foods in the marketplace have a “healthy halo”, to make you THINK it is better for your body, when probably it isn’t (sorry sugar frosted cereal is still sugar frosted cereal, even if it is organic or natural).  I admit, there are some companies providing truly nutritious health-promoting foods.  But these are almost always expensive and targeted toward affluent consumers (don’t ordinary people deserve healthy food too?).  And then there are a lot of healthy snacks and beverages.  But, sorry, you can’t make up for a poor diet by consuming healthy snacks and beverages.  I realized what was needed is healthy meals.  That is when I came up with the idea to develop Yumbini.