 back to why in the morning, if it's Tuesday, it's entrepreneurship Tuesday at Y254 Channel is where you can find us across all our social media handles at Michelle Ashira. Is where you can find me across all my social. In this particular session, we dive into an interview that looks at nutrition consulting, the whole, the professional aspect of it, the business aspect of it. This is a conversation you wanna stick around for. So, all right. So there's a quote, I want to quote Dr. Nancy Moldica. And she says that to eat is necessity, but to eat intelligently is a nut. All right. So sticking for this conversation, cause oh my, you wanna know way much more when it comes to nutrition. And in studio, I am joined by Jessica Wenjiko. She is the co-founder of Malkia Nutrition. And listen, she's a licensed nutritionist. Thank you very much, Jessica, for connecting with us. Thank you. I wish you would have just had high five but Corona is real. Yeah. So how are you doing? I'm fine. Happy new month. You too. All right. It's been great months. For someone who is watching us for, and they have had me throw in the way, you know, your title as a licensed nutritionist. So what does it entail being a nutritionist? Well, being a nutritionist is where I get the knowledge about the food we eat, how it affects our bodies, as well as all the, you know, all the processing and the functions that go in as you take the body, add the food into the body and how it's digested and all that. We also learn how it's produced, a little bit of food science, yeah, and all that. So for most of us, we want to live healthy, okay? We want to live healthy. We want to do everything the right way. Because we care about our bodies. Now the problem is what we are actually implementing is what we have studied in school, which is proteins, carbohydrates, vitamins. And at times it doesn't just follow that meal plan. So what is the proper meal plan looking like? Okay, a balanced diet, of course we'll have all those potions you mentioned to add proteins and carbohydrates and vitamins. Those are the vegetables, but it depends for a healthy person, you have like half of your plate will be carbohydrates, quarter will be proteins and the rest should be like vegetables or fruits. Then you need to have all through the day, like for those 24 hours, have different servings of fruits. You can have a fruit in the morning or at four or at 10 or at four, such that at the end of the day you will have seven to eight servings of fruit and vegetables. Oh, yes. In this, when it comes to the nutrition journey on a personal level, I tell you, because there's a difference between wellness and nutrition, how important is it to combine both of them and yes, how important is it to combine both of them if I move to the mental space? All right. So wellness is, it encompasses food and nutrition. It also looks into mental health wellness, but it also looks at exercising and how you carry yourself. So wellness is more of a, like a basket of different aspects, but nutrition is more about food, what you eat, how do you eat it? What time do you eat it? How often do you eat? What is it composed of? What is the food composed of? So nutrition is more specific. Well, as wellness is, it encompasses a lot more. Right. Yeah. When you speak about the mental awareness, because when it comes to this whole aspect, the wellness journey, it all starts from the mindset. And we have people who actually, when they are going through something, maybe depression, they're just being stressed, they had a long day, how can you shape the mentality aspect? Because there are people who over-endage when they are stressed. They just wanna get in and have your all. Then we have the guys who actually deprive themselves from eating. So when we come to malcare, so how do you change that sort of mentality of help? So mental wellness is actually one of the aspects we also deal with. We have a psychologist on board whom we work with, because we realize problems with food stem from, like your psychological aspect, like did you have a problem with food when you were young? Maybe you were forced to eat a particular food. Now you don't wanna eat it when you're grown, or you are deprived of a particular food item when you are young. Now you're over-endowed when you're old. There's also the aspect of stress and depression. So we have to solve that problem fast. And then now we can deal with the food that you're eating, because I can cancel someone who is depressed and just look at their meal plan and give them a meal plan, but they won't follow it if they have an aligned mental illness at the back of, like they have something else that is leading up to the problems with their food. For example, if you have someone who doesn't eat, someone who's anorexic, they don't eat because they have an issue that they are dealing with. So we have to solve that issue fast. Then now we can address the problem in the food. So it goes back to your childhood days. True, true, yeah. And that brings me back to this particular question that we have seen most of us back from our home. So in an African home set whereby our parents tell you, no, sit down, malize chakula. You are not going anywhere. So is that from a parent perspective, just speaking to parents, how wrong is that? It's wrong, because if the child is done, let them be done. Don't force them to over eat or over end out, because it might, you know, like, roll up to their adulthood or adolescence, where now if you serve them a huge plate of food and then they remember that voice at the back of their head, mommy wants me to eat everything. And I don't necessarily subconsciously react. Yeah, subconsciously, because you have been trained like that. You have been trained to eat everything on your plate. So even if it's too much for you, you still eat it. So for parents, probably, if serve the right portion for your child and if they are full, let them be. Because I know one thing, a child would starve themself. They will always eat, yeah. So take us through, Jessica. Where did the passion start or all began for you when it comes to the nutrition market and how did you get into this industry? I think subconsciously it was because of my mom. She was very strict on what we ate at home. And also she made like hard dishes really well. So that was subconsciously, but I joined, when I joined university and I chose nutrition. And then I found it interesting, you know, to understand food, to understand how it's grown, where it's from, how it's processed and why you love a particular food over another. So that's from my background, from my mom. It is part of the aspect of wanting to understand food and nutrition. Then the reason why I went into consultancy, I think it was more because of my family, like my uncles and my aunties, most of them are having lateral diseases from obesity, kidney problems, hypertension. So I wanted to have an impact. If only I can start with my family, then reach out to more people in the community. I felt like I could have an impact. And how for how long has Malkia nutrition been running? We've been running since May 2019. So we were active, more active physically up to the lockdown. And then now we've been more online but we still operate at our offices in Westlands. And how was the reception into the market when you guys started? Initially it was a bit tough because some people, the target market that we had, they didn't realize that you should pay for nutrition consultancy, we know that. We can just talk and I'll pick tips and that's it. But nutrition... They don't realize it's a business, the name will be there. Yes, the business aspect where you tell someone, we'll consult for one hour and you have to pay, it was a bit hard to pass across. But now when you come to someone who is already having an issue, like a lifestyle problem, they are more willing to listen to you. They understand the value of what you're saying and how you're helping them to change their dietary habits, work with them to lifestyle coaching and transforming their habits. So those are more receptive. But for young people, to whom we want them to learn about prevention, it's a bit hard to get the message across. Okay, because they feel like we got all the time. And before you know it, you are at 35 years old. 40. Yeah, 40 is when you have kids and you're already struggling with your own lifestyle diseases. Yes, and speak to us about, because, okay, I read somewhere and they speak about the fact that you have so much control of your body before the age of 40. And how true is that? It's true because before you hit 40, but even before you hit 30, you're more physically active. You can be, you know, like your metabolism is higher, but with age it dips. Metabolism means like the rate at which food is being processed and used in the body. So when your metabolism dips changes or slows down and now you're more physically inactive, it means more of the food you consume is stored in your body. So now those underlying problems or conditions will start coming up. You might find your blood pressure has gone up, your blood sugar is a little bit on the high side, and you start developing those problems now at the age of 40. That's why you find most lifestyle diseases are discovered towards that age, but they could have been prevented from adolescence and like, I am addict. Yeah, so as Malkia, I mean, we're in that space where we want people to know about prevention before we start managing lifestyle diseases that are, most of them are preventable actually, most of them are preventable. Okay, so briefly, Jessica, take us through what the services that Malkia Nutrition offers. Okay. So Malkia Nutrition offers a nutrition assessment. This is where we'll come, our client will come and we'll take their weight and height and try to, you know, get their BMI body mass index, try to address any issues that they might have, like assessment, and then you also have screening campaigns. This is where we go out to the community and give people the services for free or for a small fee. We screen them for diabetes, high blood pressure, of course, their weight and height, that is their, if they are obese. You also have mental wellness, as I mentioned, lifestyle coaching where you work with a psychologist to help you now to deal with your issues and probably like, if mental wellness is what is causing your food problems, we get to address that. So yeah, that's... Do you feel like there can never be change when it comes to someone who is embarking on a journey of nutrition when their mental space is not changed? Yeah, it's hard, it's hard, because you'll come and talk and you'll pay for the one hour, but then when you go back home and you're facing the same issues, you will go to the fridge, get what is there, binge eat, and then next week when you come I assess you and I find we haven't moved. We are still at the same point and if you're honest with me and you tell me, but I didn't follow the meal plan, so we realize we want to make progress until we sort out your mental health issues. Being there, we're still in the face of the new year. I would just welcome February here. So people have their goals, body goals and everything, they're back to the gym, just trying to get the summer of booty. So take us through the process of losing weight, right? We have guys who are embarking on keto fasting, intermittent fasting, how effective are these fasting programs? Okay, for someone who's embarking on a weight loss journey, they should be keen on what they're eating. Don't just jump onto a diet program without, like, researching on it, knowing what you will eat and what you will not eat, because if you go, like, on a keto diet and you're just having lots of proteins, and maybe you still need energy, even if this protein at some point will be digested to release energy in the body, you still need some carbs. But if you go on a diet that you haven't researched well on and which you're not disciplined enough to be consistent on, you drop it at some point and then, of course, it won't work. And the problem, what happens is now, people come into a nutritionist and they say, these things don't work. And why is that? Because they don't, they're not consistent. You have made a goal in January, two weeks in, you have dropped it, you have picked another diet plan, like, two weeks in, you have dropped it. So those, if it's not consistent, if it's not guided, it might not work. So that's where our service is coming. You have, even if you want a keto diet, but if I'll guide you to know which foods to eat, when to eat them, and why you're doing it. Because if you just go into something without the knowledge, you're probably gonna drop it at some point. Yeah, so the why is important. Yeah, always begin with the why. Oh, okay. So what if I decide to go all the way fasting? I give myself like, as you mentioned earlier, before you started this conversation on the air, you said about 21 days. Is water fasting effective? If I choose 21 days, I don't know, 40 days, is it effective? If you're consistent for 21 days, it will be effective. Because at that point, the body will have adjusted, and the metabolism will have, the patterns will have adjusted. So that when you fast, your body breaks down what is already stored in your body. And then now when you eat, it is like, nothing might feel bestowed. But if you do it for two, you fast for eight hours, like during the day, then when you're going back home, you're like, I've seen a samosa there, I've seen an egg there, I need to grab a knife. That is the moment where you see all these things. Sure, sure, and it's so appealing, because you're hungry, but your body needs to form a pattern, which begins at probably 14 days, 21 days, and then now you're consistent. At 40 days, now that probably becomes like a lifestyle. Let's talk about discipline. Because if there's no discipline, you're not achieving anything in this journey. So how does any of your program at Malkia Nutrition deal with just ensuring that your clients follow up on a particular program, just discipline and follow through? So what we do is follow up. If someone is on a meal plan that, of course I have the copy, so if I give them the meal plan, I will either have them send me photos of what they are eating to see that they are, to keep you up on your toes. If we don't do that, I'll call you like after two days and see how you're doing. Is it tough? Did you feel pain during the day? Because maybe reduce the portion of carbohydrates you are having. So we do that follow up to ensure someone is consistent. Then you also have the in-person meetings probably like after two weeks, if you're on a meal plan. Yeah, so we meet up after two weeks. We observe the changes, the metrics. If they have changed your weight, you take measurements maybe of your waste circumference so that you can have those metrics to track the progress. What if I cheat? You can't cheat with like numbers. If you know it, you can cheat. You can tell me, but then in a quarter, I'm following this consistently. But when you come to the office and you take some measurements, and I can tell you probably haven't been doing it. Yeah, so that there's no way you can, you can't cheat yourself, but you can cheat the numbers. Yeah, and also you're doing zero work. Yeah, you're doing zero work. You'll be paying for something that you're not implementing. All right, so for the people who love coffee, how much caffeine is too much caffeine? I've had friends who take like four to eight cups of coffee a day, that's basically too much. Maybe two cups of coffee, that's like they recommended all their ranges for every nutrient that you consume. So that could be the recommended daily intake for coffee. But if you do four, six, 10, those are too much. When it comes to just breaking into the market space, whereby we have so many other nutrition companies, so the competition is there, what is your niche in the market space? We're targeting, okay, our niche is like the people we're targeting, we're targeting working class people. So these are people who are still, they're able to pay for our services, but they also need the knowledge because they have just, they are like maybe from 25 to 35 or 40. So they need the knowledge to know what meals do I prepare for myself, what meals do I prepare for my family if they're already having like a young family. So that's our targets. And when it comes to the marketing strategy, as per when you started and right now, so how does it look like when it comes to marketing strategy? So when you started, as I mentioned, I started with my family. I realized the immediate need, but we realized we need to go beyond. So we went on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and tried to create awareness of who we are. Yes, social media to create awareness of who we are. For example, for the event we did last year, we had to create a lot of posts and a lot of awareness so that people come for the screening, which was a free screening, but if people don't know about it, they won't come. So the free screening had to be like broadcasted on social media platforms. And also now platforms like this also helped us to get the one out. Okay, yeah. What is the conversation you're not having about sugar and sugar intake? Sugar, okay, people think of sugar like what you put in your cup or yeah, basically like the sugar that you find on your table, but every food type has sugar. You find sugar in cake, you find sugar in bread, you find sugar even in arrow roots. They still have carbohydrates that can be processed to a form of sugar. So sugar intake should be limited. That's not just what you put in your cup, but overall, like all the carbohydrates you're having, if you want to limit sugar intake, you have to limit all the carbs that you're having. So people should know that it's not just that teaspoon you're adding to your cup of tea, but it's the overall intake of carbohydrates that you're having in a day. Yeah, so when I say reduce sugar intake, which I can use because it's more of what people know, I mean reduce your carbohydrates intake overall. Okay, so these two, the carbs actually play a role when it comes to adding extra weight. Yeah, yeah, they play a big role. Okay, so another question that we have here from one of our viewers, but she's called non-save from Karatina, she's asking, what is wrong with drinking water while eating? Am I supposed to drink water while eating? How should I drink water first or after? Like at the same time? Yeah. Okay, water should be drunk like 30 minutes before or 30 minutes after. The reason being, you might find that as you eat the food, some of the vitamins, most of them are, some of them, not most of them, are water soluble. So those ones will be digested even in your mouth before you consume them, you die before you, like they reach the stomach. So when you're taking your food with water, you're like, can I say watering down? Like you're diluting some of the nutrients in the food and then the digestion processing in your stomach will be a bit disrupted. So maybe 30 minutes before, take some water or 30 minutes after, that the food can be, you give space between water intake and food intake. Yeah. No, that's the reason I say now you know. Okay, let's look at fruits. What is the right time to have your fruits? Is it after, is it before? Well, the Kenyan way is like you see at events, people have them all together. You have your mcele, watermelon there, pineapple, but basically you should also separate them. You know, like, have them probably at 10 and then you're lunching two hours time, such that these fruits, the vitamins and minerals in them will be, will have been absorbed before the food comes. Why, so it's before? Yes. So how, okay, I see it in events and you can't tell everyone, but you know this should be served probably before the people are coming in, serve the fruits, then have the food afterwards. All right, let's go back to the business aspect of malcian nutrition and take us through your, how do you, the monetary value aspect of it also on how you actually monetize? Oh, so when you have a consultation, you pay for it. Okay. And you know, we have some products that we sell alongside the consultancy services. So those ones also bring in income to our business and we're moving also to the food production space but we'll have products like chia seeds and ground nuts on sale, but that's still in the near future. For now, we make money through the consultancy because you pay for every section and also the products that we sell alongside. Fantastic. And also let's look at the aspect, the financial aspect of it. So far since you guys started in 2018 till now, do you guys regret it and how has the financial books been looking like? Is there a space whereby you can actually make money? Yeah, it's a space where you can make money because you realize many people now are realized especially after the COVID pandemic. Oh yeah, that's very true. People are a bit more health conscious. They wanna know, hey, I've been like this, I've had like COVID is affecting more people who have like pre-existing conditions are affected more than those who are healthy. So there's something I need to calibrate. So right now people are more perceptive to pay for nutritional services, which it was like a blessing in disguise during the COVID period, because you find now people are picking up nutrition consultancy services more. So no, we don't regret it. And we're gonna continue with the services because we're passionate about it and also we are making money as we do it. All right, you're in a business space, you have by interacts quite so much with your clients and communication skills is quite very important. So how do you guys ensure that also your employees are well equipped in ensuring that there's a rapport between the clients and now the profession, the profession that is that nutritionist. Okay, so there's a way you can tell someone, something is not good for them in a polite way. You can just tell someone, hey, you're dying. You tell them, if you don't watch this, it might lead to this outcome. So knowing how to word the message that you're passing across to a client is important for us. Because we don't wanna scare away people, but we also don't wanna lie because some of these conditions are life-threatening. So if you don't tell a client that they need to change, they will not change. So what we teach, or what we embrace as an organization is like communicating, can I say kindly, to their clients, but making sure you pass the message across. Don't be too nice such that they don't take it seriously but make sure you pass the message in a way that they understand, but they also feel like comforted in knowing I have a problem but I can solve it, or we can solve it together. All right, as we look at, before you look at a couple of achievements, since you guys started, let's talk about challenges that you faced in the business. Okay, I think the major challenge we faced like last year was transitioning because consultancy is one-on-one. It's face-to-face. But now clients are a bit afraid to travel to come out, okay, especially with the lockdown. There was limited people outside and traveling and all that. So we had to do it virtually. But there is an aspect you can't achieve when it's on a screen, because someone can lie to me on a screen and tell me, because we take like history of your diet maybe for two days, for the last two days. They can tell me, you know, you can tell me the good things. I had ugali and some veggies, whereas you had maybe a few pieces of cake and ice cream and whatnot. So it was not easy to have that human connection virtually. So that was the main challenge. Also, the working clients reduced, of course, because we weren't at the office for a few months. So those were, it affected also our finances. And at points, but we are recovering. And what are the measures that you guys are taking to scale up your business in this new year? All right, for this new year we want to do, of course, we are still strong on social media. We also want to plan another screening campaign. Probably maybe people in the community so that they can know that we are here for them to help them with this, creating awareness, knowledge dissemination. We are planning on that, because we find it's a free event. You find clients now come for a second session or a first consultancy session after the screening. So we are doing that and also being strong on social media. Okay, let's look at major achievement that you made since you guys started off. And looking back, you'll be like, yeah, don't regret it. Don't regret it going all private practice. Yeah, private practice is, it's interesting. But one of the major achievements was holding the public screening campaign at the University of Nairobi, Kibete campus last year in March. So that we attracted almost 1,000 people. It set us on the trajectory for having many clients. We've also had several online webinars, which we also take pride in that. So the flow of customers has been kind of steady since then. All right, as we wind up, give us three tips. Three nutritional tips that are going to help us when it comes to our meal plan. Okay, why? As we leave healthy. Always have veggies on your plate. Don't just have Ugalinyama and that's it. What about the flavors we can put to, you know, the spices, if you can have natural spices, that's good. Like if you can get the ginger itself and grate it for your flavor or the garlic. Add those natural spices to your food. Avoid processed foods. Something about processed food that we want people to get off processed foods. So one, yeah, have veggies, avoid processed foods. In a day, take a fruit here and there, you know. Take a fruit maybe at break time instead of going for a cake, go for a banana, go for an orange. So yeah, those are the three tips I can say. Veggies, natural spices. Natural spices and food. Take a fruit, yeah. Take a fruit. Okay, before. Yeah, before you eat, before you eat. This is at snack time. So in a day, you can have two or three snacks that you mean at the end of the day. I'll be a happy person if you tell me, I had three bananas today. Oh, why? Okay. So thank you very much, Jessica. And how can you guys find you on social media? All social media platforms, yeah, at Malkia Nutrition on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and even LinkedIn and also our website at Malkia Nutrition. Malkia Nutrition. As simple as that. As simple as that. Thank you very much, Jessica, for creating time today. Thank you for having me on the show. That's having this conversation around nutrition. I'm glad to be here. It's been a good time. Okay, we'll see you to choose the next time round and discuss way more when it comes to matters pertaining nutrition. Thank you so much, Michelle. All right, that is Jessica Wangeru, the co-founder of Malkia Nutrition and she's also a licensed nutritionist. Make sure you follow them across all the social media handles that is Malkia Nutrition to get much more when it comes to matters pertaining nutrition. So make sure you don't touch that dial. We'll be right back with so much more right here on why in the morning I try to find as you can find us across all our social media handles at Michelle as she raised her hand for me across all my socials. So make sure that that dial will be right back.