Hack your Tastebuds to Make Eating Healthy Easy
My name is Daniel Getman and I’m the founder of Miracle Nutrition. We make eating healthy easy and enjoyable by enhancing the taste of nutritious foods with miracle fruit.
I started working on this when a fun experiment with my nephew led to interesting implications. I brought over some miracle berry tablets to try over winter break and we started off with lemons and strawberries. When I offered him a tomato, however, he replied “No, I don’t eat tomatoes. I hate them.” After some coaxing, he tried it and his face lit up with a smile. He was thoroughly enjoying a healthy food that he had previously hated. Next, I offered Greek yogurt and received a similar response, “I refuse to eat Greek yogurt. It makes me gag.” I reasoned with him: “Well if you didn’t like the tomatoes and now you do, just try the yogurt and see how it changes.” As the Greek yogurt hit his lips, his hesitation turned to revelation and he exclaimed, “Wow this tastes like a milkshake! More please!” From that moment, I realized that this natural compound could be harnessed to create an all-natural supplement that promotes healthy eating habits. I believe this berry has the power to help individuals transition from a gratifying, but unhealthy diet, to an equally gratifying healthy food regimen.
Interest quickly became an obsession. The more I looked into it, the more this fruit lived up to its name: a step towards curbing obesity, a treatment for type II diabetes (95% of diabetics), a solution for a prominent and debilitating side effect of chemotherapy*. I wondered why this potentially disruptive natural solution was so underutilized and discovered 2 issues: 1) there is a limited supply of this exotic fruit 2) the current delivery form of the miracle berry was highly inconvenient: the only available products on the market are pills that require 10 minutes to dissolve before consumption is possible. Few people have the luxury and patience to wait 10 minutes before having breakfast while rushing to work or school; I believed it was possible to create a product that was fast and effective.
Given the fact that I was in a BME lab at Duke University, I decided to use my resources (while I still had them) to tackle issue #1. This caught the attention of Daniel Gross (a prominent angel investor) and I was thrilled to receive an offer to join their Pioneer accelerator. After graduating Summa Cum Laude, Pioneer gave me the validation to keep working on this problem (HN, can you give my mom the validation she needs to stop giving me shit about destroying her dreams of having a doctor in the family ;) lol). When my lab access expired, I decided to tackle issue #2 . After 20+ iterations, I achieved a formulation that dissolves 10x faster than the leading competition, finally making the miracle fruit a practical tool for daily use.
You can check out my 19th prototype and the incredible behavioral transformation here.
Some more videos if interested:
I’ve transitioned more to a sales role now on an expedition to find product-market fit. My initial interest involved helping the 75% of chemotherapy patients who suffer a side effect that makes food taste metallic, bitter, rotten, or completely tasteless. There have been some small studies that have demonstrated how this fruit is particularly effective in treating this issue (with no other known remedies), and the author of one of the articles agreed to partner with me on the mission to improve the quality of life and nutrition of these patients. Unfortunately, the costs of the necessary clinical trials and the bureaucratic red-tape were prohibitive for such a path.
I went on to explore possibilities for weight loss and picky eaters. Everyone praises San Francisco as the startup hub of the world, so I was shocked that I happened to stumble by pure chance on the “Dieting Capital of the World” — Durham, NC (the city of my alma mater). By some sort of divine intervention, I met a serial entrepreneur involved in the weight loss industry at a Whole Foods while doing product demos. Soon, I had some warm connections lined up to dieting clinics that have treated the likes of Elvis Presley and fortune 500 CEO’s…. And then coronavirus hit.
TLDR: I think I have a simple, natural, and cost-effective solution to create lasting behavioral change towards a healthier future. I’m looking into ways to test that hypothesis and use my time productively in spite of Coronavirus. Cold calling dietitians and pediatricians sucks (but what can you do?). Can anyone make some suggestions for ways to efficiently test PMF while we still have no clue how long Coronavirus will last?
*For those of you who are interested and those of you who want to cut my head off, here are some studies you may find interesting that back my claims: https://drive.google.com/open?id=14uLJoa5_p1WZnS9WhbOoGbO451qahNUi
