The Spoon recently sat down with Supergut CEO Marc Washington to hear about his company’s mission and the inspiration that drives him.
To call Supergut Marc Washington’s passion project is a gross understatement. The former Princeton University football player and Harvard MBA built on his background in the health and fitness industry to create a company whose sole aim is to improve our health through our stomachs. It was more than a noble mission that inspired Washington to start this now two-year-old company; his work is inspired by loss.
“Her name was Monica,” Washington told The Spoon. “She had an unbelievable personality. You know, she was the party and an amazing mom, I’d say, you know, hilarious, even inappropriately. But she was like the life of the party. And she was my little sister. And the biggest challenge throughout her adult life was health.” As Marc Washington said, battling several chronic conditions, Monica died during childbirth, a tragic event that shook him to the core.
And so, the idea for Supergut (formerly Muniq) was born. And the term “resistant starches” (starches such as green bananas that feed your good gut bacteria by fermenting in your large intestine) became a mantra for Washington. Available through its website, Supergut is a proprietary blend that contains unripened green bananas, resistant potato starch, oat beta-glucan, and soluble vegetable fiber. Currently, it comes in the form of a shake (four flavors), bar, and fiber mix.
How did Monica’s death lead you to start your company?
It lit a fire that just never has never been extinguished. It’s like this didn’t have to happen. There had to have been better ways to get better control of her health, which could have let her down a different pathway. And this kind of built up over time. And there’s a point where if you want to make a difference, it’s like ‘If not you, then who? If not now, then when?’
Looking at the masses, it’s not as though we’re getting healthier. And despite all the advances in science and technology and food, there’s got to be a better way to move the needle and bend the curve of health outcomes and actually potentially impact public health, and things like that could have changed Monica’s trajectory. And so, yeah, that was my inspiration to throw my hat in the ring, and I started this company a couple of years ago.
How did you get from the desire to improve our health to an actual product?
I like to describe it as the moments in the Matrix where Neo has decisions to make. I think it was an awakening to see just how pervasive the impact of the gut is on our overall health and that it was actually a pathway to activate this vision that I had. You could reorient your body more healthily, and the gut could be that pathway. So I credit some scientific and medical experts, along with my original investors, for helping me with the approach taken with resistant starch.
How do you use resistant starch to formulate Supergut?
We do have our proprietary blend that is resistant starch and other prebiotic fibers as well as other plants. And a lot of that was based on clinical evidence, like literally looking through close to 200 different studies to show what kind of impact that you can have and what form factors, what dosage levels, what concentration levels, what other things you to combine with it, etc. to get to what we felt like was the most productive.
The first thing was, let’s put it into a shake, which was our first product. We had a prototype within a few months, but it tasted like shit. So, for the next year, modulating the taste work with our suppliers or flavor experts, etc., to get to a shake that would work and that you could enjoy. So we did lots of iterations to get a shake that we’re incredibly proud of and our customers love the taste of. And we now find that in bars and other products.
What was behind the name change from Muniq to Supergut?
Muniq is a combination of Monica and Unique. We looked at many names, but one of the benefits of Supergut is that it just reads as if people get it right away. Since we’ve introduced it, I talk to people like, what do you do? I founded this product that creates nutrition for a super gut. With today’s attention span and the shorter and shorter range, you’ve got like 3 seconds to get across. So (the name) Supergut is helping us open doors and open conversations because it says we are all about gut health.
Your website proudly states that Supergut is a Black-Owned business? Is there a message there?
My aspiration for what we aspire to do is to impact public health significantly. We want to move the needle; if we do that, we can play an important role in closing health disparities disproportionately affecting black and brown communities. When you look at all the factors that make up our public health crisis, 70% of people are overweight or obese. You know, 50% have some form of diabetes or pre-diabetes. 50% some form of cardiovascular health risk. Keep in mind the, African American, Brown, and Latino communities have a 50% higher incidence of almost every single one. This health disparity gap has been something that has led me to create a solution from the very outset. My goal is to help close that gap.
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