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Innovation and Entrepreneurship

These healthy, affordable meals taste great

“We’re trying to solve several problems at one time,” says nutrition professor Alice Ammerman, founder of Good Bowls.

Product shot of mixed vegetables served over brown rice.
All of Good Bowls' meals, from chicken burrito to Big Al's big BBQ to sausage pepper grits, are locally sourced and made in North о. (Equiti Foods)

The scene in  kitchen is part business venture, part public health experiment, part friendly culinary competition. That’s because Ammerman’s home also serves as a test kitchen for , the startup company she founded. It’s where she and colleagues tinker with recipes for the company’s product called , healthy frozen meals locally sourced and made in North о.

“I joke that I have the distinction of having created our most popular and our least popular recipe,” laughed Ammerman, the Mildred Distinguished Professor of Nutrition at UNC-Chapel Hill’s  and director of the . “The most popular is the , and a lot of it came from doing taste testing and experimenting on my children over time. The least popular — although it’s hanging in there — is what we call the ”

The Wintry Mix bowl epitomizes Equiti Food’s multi-faceted company mission: Provide everyone access to healthy, good-tasting and affordable food — while helping small local farmers sustain a living. “We’re thinking about farm sales in the winter when produce availability is a lot less,” said Ammerman. “There are some hardy crops you can use — cabbage, sweet potatoes, kale, onions — and I wanted to come up with a recipe that put them all together.”

The bowls come in a dozen flavors, ranging from  aԻ  t  aԻ  The issues Equiti Foods addresses are as diverse as the ingredients in its bowls.

“We’re trying to solve several problems at one time, such as nutrition security — which includes access to food and the fact that it’s healthy,” said Ammerman. “Preventing chronic disease, offering economic development opportunities for small farmers and reducing food waste are things we work on, so our focus is multipronged.”

A longtime nutrition professor, Ammerman has seen the converging nature of food, health and economic challenges surface in her academic research. Those findings led her to launch Equiti Foods as a startup company in 2018.

“I’ve focused on chronic disease and health disparities in low-income populations. And over and over again the problem comes up that people don’t have good access to healthy food that also tastes good and is culturally familiar,” she said. “So our team has been working on what we call the Med-South Diet, which is the Mediterranean diet adapted for Southeastern taste preferences and food availability.”

Good Bowls’ Med-South frozen meals use generous amounts of fruits, vegetables and whole grains, while infusing healthy fats and oils. “We do taste testing and develop recipes that aren’t perceived as weird,” Ammerman said. “Our favorite compliment is when people say it doesn’t even taste healthy.”

Ammerman faces the challenge of offering affordable, locally sourced and tasty food. Achieving this goal involves strategic partnerships, such as the one with Weaver Street Market, which prepares the bowls at its Food House Market in Hillsborough. Equiti Foods taps into Weaver Street’s network of local farmers and producers in North о. This enables Equiti Foods to get most Good Bowls ingredients within the state, promoting local employment while maintaining high standards of quality and flavor.

Customers can buy Good Bowls directly at all four Triangle  locations and at the . The bowls are also available on the Good Bowls website, via Ի , and at markets, cafes and vending machines on several North о university campuses, including UNC-Chapel Hill.