I did not go to nutrition school. I did not get a degree in biochemistry or spend years in a clinical setting. What I did was open a juice bar on East First Street in New York City in 2010, stand behind the counter, and pay attention. And somehow, through a combination of effort and extraordinary luck, the universe sent me the two most important teachers I could have asked for.
The first was Fred Bisci.
Fred walked into Juice Press sometime in 2010 and stood at my refrigerator case like a man who knew exactly what he was looking at. He asked if I was the owner. I said yes. He asked me to recommend a juice, I did, and then he proceeded to interrogate me about every ingredient and every vendor I used for organic produce. Then he asked about my philosophies on nutrition and juice cleansing. Before he left, he told me he loved the shop and thought I was going to do well. He came back a week later with advice.
As soon as he started talking, I knew. He had a depth of knowledge that was both scientific and experiential, the rarest combination in any field. He had been fully raw vegan for decades. He had completed two forty-day water fasts. He had maintained a nutritional practice for most of his adult life. He was, and remains, one of the most extraordinary examples of human longevity and dietary integrity I have ever encountered. Fred is now in his late nineties and he is still sharp, still generous, still willing to pick up the phone.
He taught me the most important thing I know about nutrition: it is what you leave out of your diet that makes the biggest difference. Not what you add. What you remove. That single idea reorganized everything I thought I understood about food, and it became the philosophical cornerstone of everything I have built since.
I mentally made Fred my food father. That is the only word that fits.
The second was Jeffrey Mechanick.
I met Dr. Jeffrey Mechanick over a decade ago when I was invited to speak on a panel as the food guy. I am not sure I earned that title yet at the time, but I did not embarrass myself, which felt like a victory. After the talk we shook hands, he gave me his number, and over a series of phone calls he began amplifying my understanding of nutrition science in ways that took years to fully absorb. Where Fred gave me the philosophical and experiential foundation, Jeffrey gave me the molecular and clinical architecture to build on top of it.
Jeffrey is a Professor of Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Medical Director of the Marie-Josee and Henry R. Kravis Center for Clinical Cardiovascular Health, and one of the most credentialed endocrinologists and metabolic medicine specialists in the country. Past President of the American College of Endocrinology. Past President of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists. A former member of the President's Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition Science Board. The list is long and it is earned.
When I was building goodsugar, I called Jeffrey many times. This project required me to surpass everything I had done and communicated at J-u-i-c-e P-r-e-s-s, and I needed to know that my knowledge base was current, rigorous, and defensible. Jeffrey made sure it was. When I began raising money to grow the company, I asked him to take a seat on my advisory board. He said yes, and that decision has shaped the intellectual integrity of this brand in ways that go far beyond any single product decision. He has been a focusing rod, a thinking partner, a critical listening ear, and an advisor who has helped me navigate the genuine complexity of building something from scratch that actually means what it says.
I mentally elevated Fred to food guru the day Jeffrey became my new food father. Both titles are given with complete sincerity and total gratitude.
Together, these two men represent the cornerstone of my research and my understanding of food, health, and wellness. I have spent years studying alongside that foundation, reading everything I could get my hands on, ten thousand other sources, papers, books, conversations, clinical studies, ancient texts, and practical experiments conducted on my own body and chemistry over decades. But Fred and Jeffrey are where the solid ground is. Everything else gets filtered through what they taught me.
I do not take lightly the fact that the universe connected us. Fred walked into a juice bar. Jeffrey shook my hand after a talk. Neither of those moments was planned or engineered. They just happened, the way the most important things usually do, quietly, without announcement, in the middle of an ordinary day.
I am grateful beyond what I know how to say.