Meet the Real Maker
All of Blendid’s offerings are created by resident chef Kristen Rasmussen. Kristen is a culinary nutrition and food sustainability expert with a passion for real food. From implementing plant-forward, stem-to-root menu revamps at restaurants to teaching about and exploring food science at UC Berkeley and the Nordic Food Lab, she has a deep understanding of the benefits of natural ingredients on our overall well-being.
Kristen is adjunct faculty at UC Berkeley, past adjunct faculty at The Culinary Institute of America, and owner of Rooted Food, Inc., a culinary nutrition and food sustainability consulting company. Aside from Blendid, Kristen has worked on innovative projects with various organizations including Bon Appétit Management Company, UC Berkeley’s Brown’s Café, and The Culinary Institute of America’s Strategic Initiatives Group.
“I love creating real, delicious, nourishing food and I also love innovation, so I jumped at the opportunity to work with Blendid. Collaborating on an artificially intelligent process that delivers the benefits of real food to our frenetic world is immensely satisfying”.
Kristen’s passion for sustainable nourishment extends beyond the expected. She is a Co-Investigator of Berkeley Open Source Food, a non-profit dedicated to increasing the availability and consumption of wild edible plants through research, education, and outreach.
Through teaching, consulting, plant-advocating, and cheffing at her bespoke pop-ups, Kristen delights in inspiring people to care about what they eat.
The Source
"Our recipe development is driven by taste and we use only ingredients that I stand behind, such as whole fruits and vegetables and pure dried seeds, nuts, and juices. With Blendid, you can have a highly craveable, wholesome blend on demand, precisely created by a robot, customized to meet your needs."
Why Blend?
Blends are a convenient, delicious way to consume valuable nutrients. With the right ingredients, they are packed with a synergistic combination of minerals, vitamins, and fiber that simply can’t be replicated by any store-bought supplement. Here is some of the methodology behind our ingredients.
Nothing Artificial, Except The Intelligence.
Putting Your Best Plant Forward
While we do employ the rich probiotic benefits (and delicious tang) of dairy kefir, Blendid’s approach is otherwise all plant based. Our philosophy leads to more sustainable, nutrient-rich, multidimensional blends, that also happen to be on trend.
Juice Your Juice
It’s not all creamy textures and flavors. Sometimes there’s nothing like a refreshing fruit-sweetened blend to bring vitality to your day. Juices (100% juices with no added sugar, naturally) are also added to balance flavors, and just happen to boost the antioxidant levels too.
Singing Sweetly
The science extends to flavor profiles. While leafy greens, cocoa, and certain spices are nutrient-rich superheroes, they can be a bitter battle for some palates. We balance this with the natural sweetness found in fruit and the round mouthfeel of healthy fats. Sometimes, we turn to the sweet taste of agave. Whether you’re a bitter fan or need things sweeter, you can always customize to your liking!
Hi Fiber for Gut Health and Beyond
Whole fruits, whole veg, and whole seeds. We don’t need to alter anything about the goodness that nature already provides. A diversity of whole foods means a diverse array of prebiotics (fiber) to feed your gut and keep your microbiome healthy and happy. Fiber will also keep you (ahem) regular, reduce “bad” cholesterol levels, and keep you fuller for longer.
Creamy Without the Cream
Usually dairy products, or alternatives such as soy and nut milks, are go-tos for a creamy texture – but these aren’t the only way to get that delicious creamy effect. Fruits like banana, avocado, and mango will emulsify and thicken when blended. This creates that unctuous texture with the added benefit of a more diverse range of nutrients.
The Antioxidants
Berries, cocoa, cinnamon, turmeric, and matcha are just a few of our blend ingredients known to have very high concentrations of antioxidants. These beneficial compounds prevent oxidation in the body by neutralizing free radicals that would otherwise contribute to inflammation, disease, and other effects of aging.
The “Superfoods”
Our ingredients are nutritious, but some go above and beyond such as dark leafy greens, berries, avocado, seeds, nuts, chocolate, and matcha. Intensely varied colors and strong, sometimes bitter, flavors tell you that you’re getting a high level of micronutrients and disease-fighting phytochemicals. All this without trips to the pharmacy shelf.
The Alpha of Omegas
Flax and chia seeds are rich sources of essential Omega-3 fatty acids – nutrient superstars that improve cognitive skills and skin health while lowering inflammation and reducing risk factors for heart disease. Avocado is packed with healthy fats and our healthy fat-packed ingredients also include fiber and protein to keep you satisfied and energetic for longer.
Undiluted Freshness
Each blend is made fresh and cold. While other smoothie operators add ice to cool their blends (and lower costs), this just ends up diluting the flavor. Produce is frozen at the peak of ripeness, retaining its nutritional value. And stays that way right till the moment of blending. When added to the blend it naturally provides the chill while being blitzed into nothing but the goodness of fruit and veg.
Making it Yours
While Kristen’s core blends provide the ideal balance of flavor, satiety, and nutrition, we all need some wiggle room to match our mood. You may want more protein, crave more mango, or be worried about how much cocoa is really needed (The Blueberry Cacao is amazing) – all these can be customized to meet your needs.
Kristen has enabled a range of ingredient proportions that ensure the core tastes, textures, and nutrients are not lost when tweaking the blends. Everyone is unique, and whether you like things more sweet, or sour, or fragrant… you can add more, or less, of any specified ingredient without the blend losing its delicate flavor and nutrient balance.
