Why I'm building this
A cancer diagnosis and a pre-diabetes warning made me really focus on my health. I realized that what we eat every day is medicine — and I found that my 80-year-old mom had already been living this, making her own version of this superfood mix-in every morning for years.
I'm from Hawaii and "Ono" means really delicious. Every product I make has to hit that bar, and nourish me too.
This isn't only about me, either. My college-age daughter is usually out the door early with class, work, and barely a minute to eat. If this can give her (and anyone else running out the door) a genuinely complete breakfast in the time it takes to grab a granola bar, that's just as much the point as my own reason for starting this.
Here's the part I don't usually lead with: after my pre-diabetes warning, I focused hard on protein and it really helped with inflammation and some of the perimenopause symptoms I'd been experiencing, like brain fog and low energy.
Then a follow-up blood test showed my cholesterol markers were still high. So I tried to get more fiber into my diet. However, drinking two glasses of Metamucil a day, or swallowing ten capsules, was not something I could sustain.
That's the actual origin of this pouch. It wasn't a business idea, just a problem I was solving for myself and my family, one bowl of yogurt at a time.
One more thing, purely out of curiosity: I've started wearing a continuous glucose monitor just to understand my own patterns. One morning I had my usual stir-in with yogurt and it didn't even register as a detectable meal on the tracker, glucose stayed essentially flat. Another morning I had yogurt with a store-bought granola instead, and it triggered an actual spike alert.
One person's CGM data, not a clinical study — but it's the exact reasoning behind this recipe. Real protein, fiber, and healthy fat behave differently in the body than refined carbs and added sugar.