Nima: Detecting gluten in food: anywhere, anytime

HealthRedesigned

Today’s guest is Scott Sundvor the co-founder and CPO of Nima a portable gluten sensor that tests your food and detects whether it contains gluten. Scott and his co-founder both have food issues and sensitivities. The two of them bonded over the idea of giving people more information about what is in their food. They started focusing on gluten, but they have a long-term goal of helping people connect the dots between their food and health.

In the US, there are about 3 million people with celiac disease along with about 20 million with gluten intolerance. Plus, about a third of the population is trying to avoid gluten. The awareness of gluten and issues revolving around it are increasing. Incidences of allergies and intolerances are also increasing. Scott shares how they started their business and product and a lot of great information that revolves around food, diet, allergies, sensitivities, and health.

Episode Highlights:

• How Scott and Shireen bonded over the thought of connecting people to food and health.
• How being exposed to things early in life can help. The importance of the microbiome and autoimmune diseases.
• How food allergies usually manifest in childhood, but it can happen later in life.
• The difficulty of knowing whether there is gluten in your food without a sensor like Nima.
• Often times there are tiny amounts of pervasive gluten and cross contamination.
• How food intolerances and allergies can actually affect your social life.
• The problems of having to know where the bathroom is and constant fear of getting sick and playing Russian Roulette with our diet.
• How the Nima device gives you an instant test result plus sends the results to the app.
• It’s a complex device that is simple for the user.
• 95% of the time restaurants are accommodating and try and create gluten-free items.
• The wonderful reactions the Nima device is getting and how it is helping restaurants change their practices.
• How the device is super accurate and sensitive and it can detect small amounts of gluten.
• The capsules for the device are one-time use capsules.
• How user testing has helped with tweaking features and user interaction.
• How Scott and Shireen spent about a year researching in preparation for creating their product.
• One of the big questions they had was whether people wanted to test one item at a time or the whole meal.
• People wanted to test each thing individually. If there was any gluten on the plate, they didn’t want it.
• The feedback has been positive and it is one of Scott’s favourite part of the job
• How the Nima team is working hard on feature requests and honouring what their customers want.
• How they are certifying gluten-free restaurants and want to show places that have good Nima scores and Nima verified stickers.
• The app is also helping to supply data to crowdsource the information.
• The amazing Nima team and the difficulties of running a startup.
• Including the entire team on customer calls and feedback reviews.

Resources:

• Nima
• Nima Facebook
• Nima Twitter
• Nima Instagram

Listen to this HealthRedesigned podcast episode on Hanno's website