Female Founders We Love: Krista Maas De Villiers
If you haven’t already heard of Nunona, you’re going to want to listen up! Nunona's bite-sized postpartum snacks are formulated by moms & scientists to support breastfeeding mamas with the essential nutrients babies need for a lifetime of health. Offering you healthy lactation snacks, you can feel good about!
There may not be a science to being a mom, but there is science behind health. We are all on this journey together and by nurturing minds, nourishing bodies and living a sustainable lifestyle with plant-based foods to reduce our impact on the environment, we will be able to collectively create a generation of healthier humans for a healthier planet.
We sat down with the owner and founder behind Nunona, Krista Maas De Villiers, to learn a little bit more about her company.
Q: Can you tell us a bit about what you do?
A: Nunona is a plant-based maternal and infant nutrition company. We translate science into solutions to help create healthier humans, for a healthier planet.
Q: How would you describe your brand in three words?
A: Nurture, Nourish, Nature. It's the foundation of our brand (Nu, No, Na), the reason behind everything we do, and why we do it.
Q: What do you want M+A marketplace shoppers to know about your products?
A: Nunona is working to build a movement around maternal nutrition. New moms are often overlooked with so much focus on the baby. However, mom needs nourishment to recover from childbirth and to breastfeed. Healthy babies start with healthy mamas, so we put mama in the center of all we do. Our debut product, Mama Balls, won Good Housekeeping's 2021 Parenting Award for Practical Postpartum Care and we are so excited to see the market understand that we need to do more to support women postpartum.
Q: What about the future of your brand are you most excited about?
A: We've recently updated our recipe to include a full day's recommended intake of Omega 3 in our daily dose of 4 energy balls. Omega 3 is an essential nutrient that breastfeeding moms need to include in order to pass it along to their baby via their breast milk, and there is also research suggesting that consuming enough omega 3 postpartum can help prevent postpartum depression. To be able to offer this important support to women through our nutritional products absolutely invigorates me! We also have so many innovations yet to come.
Q: What's your day-to-day like - being a mom and running an amazing business?
A: It's tough! Having a baby and a business baby is difficult, but it's also a blessing to both be able to understand the challenges of motherhood firsthand and be in a position to be able to help solve them. Now that my daughter is a little older, I'm inspired by the example I can set for her, modeling for her to go after her dreams through witnessing me living mine.
Q: What is something that expecting mamas might not know, but is crucial to maternal healthy eating?
A: Your nutrition is their nutrition. Healthy eating needs to extend past pregnancy for the health of both yourself and your baby. Postpartum is challenging because you are so focused on the baby, that it can be difficult to care for yourself. That's why we made Mama Balls, to help you get the energy and essential nutrition you need postpartum so you and your baby can thrive.
