Page 26 - Food&Drink July 2019

HEALTH & FUNCTIONAL FOODS
Finding the healthy path
Teresa Cutter was a well known chef and media identity before she realised a gap in the market for ‘clean’ health and wellness products. Doris Prodanovic spoke with
The Healthy Chef about her self-titled product range.
Teresa Cutter is passionate about bringing her health and wellness range to as many people as possible.
26 | Food&Drink business | July 2019 | www.foodanddrinkbusiness.com.au
TERESA Cutter has held
the title The Healthy Chef since her late 20s. From a weekly newspaper recipe column, to a cafe in Sydney’s northern beaches and now to a range of functional foods, The Healthy Chef identity has shapeshifted over three decades of Cutter’s career.
Cutter’s own health needs were the catalyst for her developing the Healthy Chef range of prebiotics, probiotics, matcha green teas, smoothies and collagen powders. When she couldn’t find a protein powder without chemicals, preservatives and additives that caused digestive discomfort, she developed her first product, Pure Native WPI (whey protein isolate).
“When you choose the right product, you don’t need to add any extras to enhance or balance flavours because its the quality of the product that shines through. For us, less is more,” Cutter tells Food & Drink Business. “You’ll find on our all labels, there’s maybe two or three ingredients, but they’re put there for a reason, not to enhance taste. It’s like picking from a garden or when going grocery shopping, you always pick the best fruit and vegetables – people aren’t going to eat it if it tastes bad or makes them feel bad.”
GOING GLOCAL
To achieve the desired taste and quality for her products, such as for the Naked Chocolat hot chocolate range, Cutter brought in cocoa and cacao powders from around the world – West Africa, France, South America and beyond. For the collagen protein it was no different.
“The Healthy Chef Marine Collagen protein is the only wild caught marine collagen available in Australia,” Cutter says. “It was a few years in the making. Our approach was to see what other companies were
doing around the world, source products from everywhere – Norway, Japan, America – and then ask ourselves, ‘Ok, what do I want in a collagen?’”
Collagen protein emerged as one of the biggest wellness trends in 2018, with claims
it supports skin, hair and
the digestive system as natural collagen reserves deplete with aging.
For Cutter, her final product is derived from snapper and sourced from the Pacific Ocean, transforming the skin, scales and bones of wild caught fish – traditionally a waste product – into a fine-particle sized powder. “It’s tasteless, odourless, completely dissolves clear in hot and cold water and, unlike most proteins, doesn’t denature if mixed in hot liquids,” Cutter says. Marine based collagen is also the most effectively absorbed type by the body, absorbed twice as much as bovine or porcine collagens.
“For a lot of manufacturers it’s about price point, but we’re one of the few companies that will pay the money to make the wild caught marine collagen. Companies are worried about how to make a product cheaper because they think people aren’t going to pay for it, but you only need half as much of something if its a good quality product,” she says.
There’s no doubt people are taking more control of their own health – and paying for it. A market report by IRI says the supermarket health food aisle is currently worth $624 million and growing by eight per cent each year. Cutter says it is all about going back to traditions, where choosing your own ingredients and cooking for yourself is the first step to shifting habits. “People are taking a more proactive approach to their health,” says Cutter. “The change has happened because the desire has come from the individual person to take control and improve their own