Page 14 - Food&Drink magazine July 2022

✷ RISING STAR
A functional mind and body
Clinical nutritionists Hayley Robinson and Lynsey Koch are passionate about helping people heal. Their start-up C-Biogenics Nutrition is allowing them to do so at scale. Kim Berry writes.
LYNSEY Koch’s interest in food as medicine began with her first job working in the local health food store. It became her focus when a life-threatening accident at age 18 had her in hospital for what was expected to be at least three months.
Every day, her mum, a “hippie at heart”, brought all of Koch’s meals to the hospital including “green sludgy drinks and organic food”. Koch was discharged after three weeks.
“At that point my life basically made my career decision. I had just started an undergraduate degree in biological sciences, so
I swapped to nutritional medicine and became a clinical nutritionist,” Koch says.
Clinical nutrition and nutritional medicine examine the therapeutic and biochemical aspects of foods and how they interact with the body.
Meanwhile, Hayley Robinson was finishing her nutritional medicine degree when she met Koch while completing her clinic hours at Koch’s practice.
“I always wanted to produce my own supplements and have my own supplement company.
“Working with Lynsey I witnessed her knowledge and understanding of biochemistry, and we aligned on our compassion and care for people, but I knew clinical practice wasn’t for me,” Robinson says.
The timing was perfect. Robinson with fire in her belly to build a business and Koch, after 15-plus years of clinical practice, needing a new project, the pair founded C-Biogenics Nutrition.
Koch says, “As a practitioner, you can burn out. You can’t switch off, thinking about your clients at all hours of the night. Starting C-Biogenics has been a blessing, I’ve stepped back a lot from the clinical side and regained balance.”
“We have an innate drive to help people heal and C-Biogenics allows us to do that on a scale not possible in a clinical setting. This way we can help thousands, and working towards hundreds of thousands, of people,” Robinson says.
FOOD FOR THE GUT
The company launched with Gut Food, a prebiotic and postbiotic formula developed to help soothe, repair, and nourish the gut while feeding the microbiome.
Koch developed the functional powder over the years for her clients, using it for health conditions from pre-diabetes, hormone issues, and cholesterol problems.
“We thought, why don’t we take that recipe, and fine tune it with more nutrients for healing the epithelial cells of the gut. That was the birth of Gut Food,” Koch says.
Epithelial cells cover the whole body, line body cavities and organs, and form the main tissue in glands. They perform a range of protective, filtration, absorption and sensory receptor functions.
Robinson adds, “From Lynsey’s foundation, we added in a whole range of other ingredients and then worked on dosages, taste, and texture. To help with the epithelial tissue, we added slippery elm and marshmallow, and made sure they were at the right therapeutic dosages.”
For Robinson and Koch, their driving motivation is that every product they develop has a profound and noticeable effect. For that to occur, each recommended serve needs the right blend of ingredients for maximum efficacy.
“There are plenty of products out there that look amazing and have a tonne of ingredients in them, but none at a therapeutic dose to make a difference.
“Our top priority is for every one of our formulas to meet the criteria it needs to be effective,” Koch says.
SOOTHING THE BRAIN
The adaptogenic and neurologic wholefood formula Calm Food, was developed to help the body build resilience to stress and restore a sense of calm.
“You can’t fix someone’s gut if anxiety is a key factor because it affects your nervous system, which then affects digestion. The reason we wanted to launch Calm Food and Gut Food is because the gut and the brain are a duo. If you only treat one component, you only get halfway there. To get big shifts in health, you can’t ignore either one,” Koch says.
Developing Calm Food had
C-Biogenics’ Gut Food and Calm Food contain therapeutic doses of functional ingredients for maximum health benefits.
14 | Food&Drink business | July 2022 | www.foodanddrinkbusiness.com.au