The Food Fix: Why Fixing Our Food Is the Most Sustainable Path to Better Health
It all begins with an idea.
Welcome to our blogs page. This first post is going to focus on the reason for starting Nuven. We will cover what led to this leap and focus on the specific problem our team is solving.
Where It Began
Raised in the traditions of Eastern culture, I grew up hearing that food is medicine. But as life sped up, food became less about nourishment and more about speed and comfort. Then, in my 40s, everything shifted—I became a parent. I found myself asking a lot of questions - about ‘productive’ aging; ‘productive’ being the operative word! How do I stay fit in my 60s and 70s to hike with my then 20-year-old sons? How do I prevent cognitive decline? What can I do - today, every day—to rewrite the fate my father and aunt couldn’t, and give myself the best chance at a life free from cancer?
All this led me down the rabbit hole of the health and food industry—and what I found was eye-opening.
Food, the Brain, and the Real Driver of Health
I found that there’s a deep connection between the mind and the body. What we eat, how we move, how we sleep; directly shapes our mood, focus, energy, and resilience. Understanding this connection isn’t just empowering—it’s essential to building lasting health from the inside out.
Research shows the right nutrition can reduce the risk of depression, anxiety, and cognitive decline. It turns out, the three pillars of health—physical, mental, and emotional—are all deeply connected, and food is central to all three.
But making better choices is hard in today’s food system.
A System Built to Fail Us
On one side, we have skyrocketing chronic disease and healthcare costs. On the other, a food industry built for profit, not for public health. And then there’s the food-fluencers. Everyone’s an expert on what to eat, and how to eat, but few are asking the most important question: Where is our food coming from—and what’s really in it?
The truth? Many of us are eating food-like products engineered in labs, filled with chemicals, pesticides, hormones, and GMOs. To give you an example from the U.S. food industry, over 10,000 chemical additives are classified as GRAS (Generally Recognized As Safe); which means these chemicals make their way to our plate one way or another. In contrast, the EU approves just 338. From ultra-processed snacks to everyday staples, Americans are unknowingly consuming substances that wouldn’t even make it onto shelves in Europe. The average American now eats more than 150 pounds of added sugar each year, while less than 5% of our population is consuming the recommended amount of fiber.
The consequences are staggering. Chronic illnesses are surging—not just in adults, but in children as well. Childhood obesity has increased by 400% in the last 40 years. Type 2 diabetes in adolescents has surged 200% in just two decades. 1 in 4 teenagers has prediabetes. None of this is normal. And it is not inevitable.
The Good News: Change Is Possible
So, how can we fix this? Where do we start? Turns out that one of the best ways to age productively is through diet and exercise. Studies show that even at age 60, shifting from a suboptimal to an optimal diet can add up to 8 healthy, productive years. Change doesn’t have to be extreme—it just has to be intentional.
While there’s seemingly a lot of conflicting advice around food, my research suggests that there’s more consensus than conflict when it comes to nutrition. Here are some principles you can follow:
Building Smart Food Habits That Actually Work
Educate Yourself; simplify the noise: create some core principles around food. Opt for whole foods over processed ones. Choose ingredients you can recognize and pronounce.
Choose Quality > Macros: Yes, Protein, carbs, and fats matter—but where they come from matters more. A gram of protein from a grilled salmon fillet isn’t the same as one from a highly processed ‘healthy’ granola bar filled with additives.
Eat home cooked: Cooking is not about becoming a chef; it’s about reconnecting with what nourishes you. Start small. One pan, a handful of real ingredients, 20 minutes. The more you do it, the more it becomes a rhythm—and soon, you’ll find that food made by you just feels better. Because it is.
Read labels; Choose wisely: Read the ingredient label of every product you pick off the shelf that comes in a box or a wrapper! Our bodies were not equipped to handle Food dyes, BHT, glyphosate, emulsifiers, modified corn starch, and more. These additives are known to lead to weight gain, disrupt endocrine function, cause inflammation, and behavioral issues. Oh, and in case you are wondering, all of these ingredients are what our easy-to-use cereal boxes contain! This is the stuff we are feeding our kids first thing in the morning!!
Go Organic!: I often hear skeptics argue that there’s no such thing as truly “organic”—and to some extent, they’re right. In today’s world, it’s nearly impossible to grow food without any pesticides at all. But organic isn’t about perfection—it’s about protection. Organic farming avoids synthetic pesticides, GMOs, and harmful additives, resulting in less chemical residue on your plate and less harm to the planet. It’s not an all-or-nothing choice; it’s about making smarter ones. Be strategic: prioritize organic for the “Dirty Dozen” that tend to carry higher pesticide loads. For thicker-skinned produce or shelf-stable items, conventional may be just fine.
Why I Started Nutrition Genie
All this brings me to the point of this post. Why I started this company!
Because I have been there. I have lived the overwhelm; standing in grocery aisles decoding labels, trying to figure out what to cook, what to buy, what to avoid. Researching what to give my kids so they feel energized as against hyperactive. Eating those (awful tasting) protein-rich granola bars just to get my protein in! That experience became the seed for Nuven—our soon-to-launch app that takes the guesswork out of healthy eating. Nuven will help users make smarter food choices, plan nourishing meals, and simplify grocery shopping—all grounded in science, not fads.
Better health does not have to start in a pill bottle. It should start on your plate.