The Business of Blends

Meet three entrepreneurs charting new territory in the commercial blended whole-foods space, each from their own corner of the globe, all inspired by their tube-feeding child.

Line Pedersen, founder of Bellyfood, Denmark

When did tube-feeding first become a part of your son Otto's life?

Otto was 13 months old when he got his feeding tube. This time of his life was, without doubt, the most sorrow-filled period in my life. Otto had several diagnoses and more kept coming. When he got his feeding tube, I remember thinking: “My kid is now so sick that he cannot even eat.” That said, the feeding tube was necessary and, after a while, we were happy that we didn’t have to spend hours struggling and forcing him to eat by mouth.

How did you discover the option of blending real food for Otto?

Otto was not thriving on the synthetic commercial formulas. When asking our healthcare professionals for help, the only advice we got was to give the formula over a longer period of time or give less of it with more calories. None of that advice helped and in the end my husband and I did our own research.

We got inspired by the community in international groups and, when Otto started having blended real food, his vomiting stopped almost immediately.

Why was Bellyfood a business you needed to create?

In our network we had quite a few parents that wanted to do blended food for tube-feeding but none of them had the knowledge or the energy to develop recipes and prepare the food. At that time I decided that everyone with a tube – no matter what background – should have access to healthy, organic, real- food blended meals.

How has Bellyfood developed since you got started?

I founded Bellyfood in 2019 and so much has happened since then. Our first meals were frozen, today they are shelf-stable. In the beginning, our main focus was to develop ready-to-eat meals for tube-feeding but over the years we’ve written articles and developed our

Bellyfood platform that contains tips and tricks, information on equipment, stories from people who have a tube, recipes and much more. I’m proud that we chose to develop this database of knowledge and today it means almost as much as our products.

What challenges have you come up against as a maker of real- food blends in the enteral feeding market?

First of all the regulation, which has been written for products consisting only of food isolates/ powders. Secondly, not a lot of healthcare professionals have been taught about real-food tube- feeding. In our experience, those who are aware of it had heard that it is unhygienic and not safe.

It’s one thing to develop a product in a niche category with limited knowledge – and quite another to re-educate an entire industry. Relatives, communities and tube-fed people have raised their voices and we are seeing a positive change in what is recommended in Denmark.

Today, communities for blending food for tube-feeding are growing rapidly and recently, the largest hospital in the country published a book on how to make blended tube-feeds. This is a huge acknowledgment.

What are your hopes for the future of Bellyfood?

I hope we can provide even more diversity in the food that we offer people with a feeding tube. They should have the opportunity to choose between different meals – as all other people do.

Also, I hope that real-food tube- feeding in general will be recognised as an equal – and even better – opportunity for people with a feeding tube. Real food is for real people and should be a first choice.

Gareth Birkett, founder at Wilbo’s Blends, UK

Why was blended real food the right option for your son, William?

William had very complex needs from birth but feeding was perhaps one of the most stressful. He failed to gain weight and was given an NG tube due to failure to thrive. His diagnosis was unclear and we were just trying to get through each day and meeting multiple specialists as his condition changed.

For feeding, commercial formula through a pump was presented as the only option and, at the time, we did not think about questioning the medical team. When William was a baby, formula felt quite natural – and we then moved on to a Ketogenic diet to try and manage his seizures.

As William reached an age where most children would be eating real food orally, I was unpacking boxes of formula and had a moment of realisation that I wouldn’t consider this okay for myself or anybody else as the only ‘food’ I had for every meal.

I then started researching alternatives, discovered the real-food blended diet and very soon after this, we started introducing real food as part of William’s diet.

At what point did you start to build your business, Wilbo's Blends?

William really began to thrive when he started with real food and as a result, I became incredibly passionate about the blended diet and was meeting more people in similar situations. I also started to experience and understand the many barriers that existed to using a blended diet.

I started Wilbo’s Blends to increase the awareness, access and knowledge around the blended diet – although I was probably a little naive, at the beginning. I didn’t realise just what a big undertaking it was to get Wilbo’s Blends from a concept to something that delivered material change to the people that mattered to me.

Launching our meals was a great moment, but there were plenty of times I didn’t think it would happen along the way. We are now involved in a number of projects working with clinicians, researchers and other medical industry professionals to continue to make real food a real alternative for enteral nutrition.

What are the biggest challenges you've come up against since launching into the enteral feeding market?

The biggest challenge is change. While enteral feeding has not changed for 40 years, healthcare has changed dramatically. More patients are using enteral nutrition and for longer. Change in healthcare is slow and people are rightly cautious, but anecdotal evidence for the benefits of blended diets now has a lot of clinical research to support it.

We have seen professional bodies and healthcare institutions starting to change their attitudes and policy toward a blended diet. This has removed much of the professional resistance as many myths have been dispelled.

We’re having more conversations on ‘how’, rather than ‘if’, blended diets should be used. There’s still a huge amount more to do – especially in adult services – but I’m optimistic for the future.

On that topic, what are your hopes for Wilbo's Blends?

Our main priority right now is improving equity of access. We have been working for a long time on getting Wilbo’s Blends prescribed on the NHS [National Health Service] in the same way commercial formula is today, which would be a huge step forward, but we still have a long way to go here.

We have recently launched our dietetics services and I want to grow this and continue the work we do in training other dietitians and medical professionals. I would also love to do more research into the use of real food and how it can improve a wider group of people’s health and wellbeing in the future.

We have two new meals coming out very soon and I want to continue to expand the variety and create more options. We certainly have plenty to do!

Sarah Thomas, founder of Wholesome Blends, Australia

Photography credit: Debi Brett Photography

When did your son, Lewis, start a real-food blended diet?

By the time Lewis got a permanent feeding tube at age nine – after having multiple NG tubes across six years and being told he would “grow out of his eating issues” – I had that lived experience.

I was more empowered, as a medical mother and Lewis’s advocate, to push for what he needed. I think if Lewis had had a permanent tube put in at three years old, when he had a stroke that impacted his eating, I would have done what I was told. But after all of those years, I couldn’t comprehend why Lewis and his identical twin brother, Cohan, needed a different diet.

Why did you go that next step – or giant leap – to creating a real-food blend product?

When you have a child who is medically complex, you do whatever we can to improve things for them. I often say that I don't have a medical background, but I have a PhD in Lewis. And for me, that passion to create a natural product started selfishly – for my son – because he needed it.

I also knew that if Lewis needed this product, somebody else might too. And I really wanted the community to come along on this journey with us.

In the very early days of Wholesome Blends, I had a booth at a kid’s disability expo to see whether or not parents wanted a real-food blend in a pouch. I discovered that they very much did – but what I didn’t expect was the flood of allied health professionals who kept contacting me after that expo saying, “when is it going to be ready?”

The big driver for me was – and will continue to be – that I don’t ever want anybody else to feel shamed, scared and threatened for putting real food through their child’s tube, like I was.

What are the biggest business challenges you've faced since launching Wholesome Blends?

The first major challenge was getting someone to make my products. When I would tell manufacturers that I wanted them to create a product that had never been made before – a food for special medical purposes with no need to focus on taste or smell – they couldn’t understand why someone would want to do that.

Because of the “medical” element, manufacturers felt the risks were too high and put it straight in the too-hard basket. I got 19 no’s and on the 19th one, I put my foot down and challenged it. When I was able to get face-to-face with that manufacturer and explained what I was trying to do, they understood and got on board. But it was trial and error for a long time.

Then came the challenges from the medical sector that, at the time, wanted to stop this kind of product being available in Australia. But I knew, as the end user myself, that the families had the power to make that decision. My focus was on showing the community that I wasn’t a big pharmaceutical company just trying to make money – I was one of them and I was trying to help.

I am incredibly lucky, now, to have more support from tube- feeding families and people than I ever thought I would have in this business. Our community gives me the confidence to not doubt myself – and push for them.

What are your hopes for the future of Wholesome Blends?

We’re very lucky to have the support of the NSW state health system. Wholesome Blends is a registered product on their enteral-feeding contract and we’re trying to secure more tenders across the country, within hospital settings and in the community with Home Enteral Nutrition (HEN) programs. We were also thrilled to win the 2024 Telstra Best of Business Awards for Accelerating Women in Queensland.

We’re going to continue to advocate for the community and educate clinicians and, since launching our blended-feeds cookbook, Blended: Sharing Recipes for Love & Stories for Life, we’re working on more recipes. It’s all about sharing information and knowledge. We want tube-feeding families and people to be fully informed so they can have a choice about what they put in their bodies, with the full support of their medical teams.