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Below you'll find a short summary of our chat with Meenesh Mistry of Wholey Moly. You can listen to the full episode on Spotify, SoundCloud & Apple Podcasts.
About Meenesh and Wholey Moly
Meenesh and his wife Parul founded their start-up Wholey Moly in 2017, with a mission to prove that "nutritious" doesn't have to mean "boring" or "bland".
Wholey Moly grew out of Meenesh's frustration that the only snacks around were either sugary and low in nutrients, or nutritious options that just weren't tasty.
With Wholey Moly, they wanted to create a more nutritious option for that afternoon sweet craving, one that's also good for you.
Wholey Moly and JustBite share a mission: offering a wide audience more nutritious alternatives to the usual less nutritious snacks.
What makes a nutritious cookie nutritious?
For Wholey Moly, it was important to understand how our bodies work and how what we eat affects them.
First, Wholey Moly wanted their nutritious cookies to be a treat you can genuinely enjoy — something sweet that's also good for you, without being packed with refined sugars.
A second key criterion was using only natural ingredients. Meenesh and his wife found it strange to eat ingredients they couldn't recognise or even pronounce. Many traditional snacks are full of a long list of unrecognisable ingredients.
So Wholey Moly cookies contain only natural, unprocessed ingredients and have a low sugar content (as low as possible compared to the standard in the food industry). But even more important: they taste absolutely delicious, because a wonderfully nutritious product means nothing if it doesn't taste good too. Taste is pretty much the most important factor in getting people to choose more nutritious food.
That's also why taste is one of the strict selection criteria JustBite applies to the snacks in its snack boxes.
Wholey Moly picked ingredients that don't just add delicious flavour, but are also incredibly good for you.
- Take cacao, for example, which contains 40 times more antioxidants than blueberries!
- Wholey Moly cookies also use oats instead of regular flour, because oats are a great energy source that also help keep your blood sugar stable.
- The sugar content is even lower than many other snacks labelled "no added sugar", thanks to date and rice syrup.
- On top of that, the cookies are gluten-free, since more and more people are choosing to skip gluten, even without having coeliac disease. It fits a more balanced diet.
The way the cookie crumbles
Why do Wholey Moly cookies contain date and rice syrup specifically? Because the cookies contain only natural ingredients and no preservatives or artificial additives, they tended to crumble easily. So they needed a sweetener that wouldn't just add sweetness, but also work as a binder.
In traditional snacks, a whole range of artificial ingredients, like thickeners and stabilisers, handle the binding. Wholey Moly didn't want these kinds of ingredients in their products, so they looked for a more nutritious alternative that could still bind the cookies together. People aren't used to cookies that crumble easily, and often don't realise that "no crumbling" usually comes down to less nutritious additives. That's exactly why JustBite puts so much focus on sharing information and raising awareness around more nutritious eating.
Right now, you can already find all 3 flavours in JustBite's range of snack boxes, with a new flavour coming soon. Wholey Moly is working hard to keep expanding its range with new, more nutritious snacks.
How many calories can a nutritious snack contain?
The number of calories in a snack actually says nothing about whether it's nutritious or not. The ideal number of calories per day varies a lot from person to person and depends on many factors, like genetics or lifestyle. If you're very active during the day, it makes sense you'll need more fuel than if you spend your whole day sitting at a desk.
On top of that, not all calories are the same. When the calories in your food come from empty foods that don't do anything for your body, your body won't get enough fuel to function properly.
But if those calories come from important nutrients that are valuable to your body, they'll be a great source of energy and protein for you.
Nuts are a good example of nutritious, useful food. They might be a bit higher in calories, but they give your body much-needed building blocks and are a great source of more nutritious fats, proteins and energy. They also help you feel fuller for longer and help keep your blood sugar stable. Plus, every nut tastes a little different, so your snack never tastes quite the same twice.
That's what a good, more nutritious snack should do for you: give you a tasty bite that's a great source of energy and much-needed nutrients, without leaving you with an uncomfortable feeling or blood sugar spikes.
What's in a name?
Where does the name Wholey Moly come from? The name is actually a mash-up of "Holy Moly!" and wholesome. Holy Moly is often used in English when you're pleasantly surprised by something. People who tried Wholey Moly cookies were often pleasantly surprised by how tasty they are — and by the fact that they're good for you too.
Add wholesome to that, a word used to describe something nutritious and good for you, and the name Wholey Moly was born!
Conclusion
The number of calories in a snack doesn't necessarily determine whether it's nutritious or not. A more nutritious snack always contains enough useful nutrients for your body and tastes great too. That's why JustBite focuses so strongly on sharing knowledge about more nutritious eating, helping people learn not to be too guided by the calorie count of their snacks.