DrTalks Expert

Jennifer Maynard

https://www.nutri4longevity.com

Biography

Jennifer is the CEO and co-founder of Nutrition for Longevity, a nutrition company focused on improved health span and disease prevention and management through Food as Medicine. After a successful career and spending 20+ years in the Biotech and Pharmaceutical arena, she decided to shift pace and focus on Food as Medicine. This was after her job took her on a journey to live 3 years in Germany and 3 years in Switzerland, to travel to many countries in Asia, Europe, Middle East, and Africa. More than anything she was struck by the complete contracts in the food systems she saw around the world, when compared to the US food model. Access to fresh minimally processed food and fresh produce was completely different and was more of a baseline access with processed foods and meat being more of a luxury. The use of sweeteners, preservatives and additives was almost nonexistent, and she experienced a complete transformation of her way of eating. Jennifer had always considered herself a healthy eater, growing up on a homestead in Alaska and growing, foraging, and hunting a lion share of her food. She ate a lot of veggies, minimized meat consumption, ate diverse foods, but even at that it was nothing like the clean low processed foods she found everywhere she went across Europe, Middle East, Africa, and most of Asia. It’s not that processed foods did not exist in these areas, but it was not as prominent, even train station convenience stores had >75% of their footprints as fresh produce. During her time in Switzerland her father was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and after watching his health deteriorate within 2 years of his diagnosis, Jennifer decided to intervene. With a simple change of adding walking to his daily routine and adding 2 servings more veggies to his day, improvements in his health were already dramatic.

So, Jennifer decided the area of nutrition in the US needed more focus, more science backing, so she decided to take her science background and executive knowledge from Pharma and focus her efforts on bringing Food as Medicine to life in the US. Her first effort was to start a Regenerative Farm so she could understand the food system from the ground up – literally. With her microbiology background she fell in love with soil biology and the interconnectedness with our own gut microbiome and overall holobiome. She met Dr. Valter Longo and appreciated the extensive research he had already done and continued to do in Longevity and Food as Medicine and she wanted to be involved in that science and bringing it to life, and this was how Nutrition for Longevity was born. Since N4Ls launch in Q4 2019 the company has grown to national coverage of their online meal delivery service and has launched into the medical reimbursement space for their meals, supporting over 36 medical indications with their Medically Tailored Meals from Cancer to Type 2 diabetes. For Jennifer, this is only the beginning with lots of exciting developments in the works.