Three bites into his turkey sandwich on their fourth date, Rob Dalton turned to Nicole Ledoux and said, "I need to get to a hospital as soon as possible."
It had happened to him a handful of times before — enough to know that he was going into anaphylactic shock.
His throat began to close, his lips began to tingle and he had trouble breathing. Somehow, the sandwich and pasta salad he was eating had come into contact with nuts.
"This was the first time I had ever seen an allergic reaction," said Ledoux, who was 31 at the time. "I didn't know how serious it could be."
The incident in December 2009 frightened her enough that after she got Dalton home the next day from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, she began to scour the Internet for foods they could both eat safely.
Although Food Allergy Research and Education estimates that there are 15 million people in the United States with food allergies, what Ledoux found were scant healthy snack options for them — few enough that she and Dalton began tinkering with different recipes for granola bars in her kitchen.
Soon, they began to share them with friends, who raved about them. So in the fall of 2012, they gave out 1,000 samples at Babson College's Food Day, where celebrity chefs Andrew Zimmern and Gail Simmons tweeted about the granola bars to their 800,000 followers.
"That," Ledoux said, "is when we knew we were on to something pretty special."
Later that month, the couple founded 88 Acres, naming the healthy snack food company for the 88-acre farm she had grown up on in North Brookfield.
Last April, they won $20,000 in the Babson BETA Challenge, and the next month, they were named finalists in the $1 million MassChallenge accelerator and competition.
This fall, the couple formally will launch the company with three flavors of bars — triple berry, apple and ginger, and dark chocolate and sea salt. And they expect to have them on store shelves by the end of the year.
All three bars are made from natural ingredients such as sunflower, pumpkin and flax seeds; sweeteners such as maple syrup; fruits; spices; and gluten-free oats — "no crazy, unpronounceable ingredients," Ledoux said.
Amid the whirlwind of the past year, the couple were married on July 13.
"It was a slight distraction from getting the business off the ground," said Ledoux, a former options trader at State Street. "This is essentially my dream job. I get to start a business that improves the life of the guy that I love. I'm pretty lucky."
Anda sedang membaca artikel tentang
Love leads to nut-free snacks
Dengan url
http://warnakelabuabu.blogspot.com/2013/09/love-leads-to-nut-free-snacks.html
Anda boleh menyebar luaskannya atau mengcopy paste-nya
Love leads to nut-free snacks
namun jangan lupa untuk meletakkan link
sebagai sumbernya
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar