When I was diagnosed with IBS about 12 years ago, there was hardly any information about the low FODMAP diet. My symptoms greatly reduced my quality of life and put a strain on my professional and personal life. Since I discovered the low FODMAP diet, I feel much better.

Unfortunately, it is quite difficult to stick to this diet all the time, as there are hardly any suitable ready-made foods. Even a simple pasta sauce contains onions or garlic. My vision is that anyone suffering from IBS or food intolerances can put together a meal just as easily and quickly as others.

As a mother, balanced meals with lots of vegetables and plant protein are important to me. Organic, local and animal-free are values that have been close to my heart since my youth. Of course, food has to taste good and contain all the nutrients that adults and children need.

With Froyda, we strive to put all these values into practice.

As a child I had the good fortune of being spoilt daily by my mother with a variety of delicious vegetarian dishes. When I left my native India at the age of 18, I felt a great longing for the flavours of home food. With the help of my mother, I learnt the tricks of Indian cooking.

Over the years, the health and environmental aspects of food became more and more important to me, which led me to write a doctoral thesis on sustainable food consumption.

More recently, I witnessed the remarkable positive change a low-FODMAP diet had on my wife's wellbeing. Interestingly, I grew up in a household with a cooking tradition that is similar in some ways to the low FODMAP diet. For example, onions and garlic were not used there. In Indian Ayurvedic cooking, a variety of other spices are used to give the dishes a rich flavour.

This knowledge and experience flows into my product development at Froyda.