Hi, I’m Connie Weissmuller and I’m the registered dietitian at JOVA. The creation of JOVA has been such a fun ride, blending my passion for nutrition along with working with one of my all-time greatest friends, Jess. Inspired by her drive to create an easier solution to make people’s lives healthier (and happier), I worked to develop a nutritious smoothie kit that keeps you full for up to 5 hours. I'm excited to take you behind the scenes and share the research and development journey that led to the creation of JOVA.
Complete meal v. not / What makes us different?
When I was thinking about what would go into JOVA, I thought about including things that our competitors left out. There’s plenty of smoothie options on the market, but often times they count nutritionally as a snack, not a meal. A smoothie with frozen fruit, avocado, and protein powder seems complete enough but in reality, it’s lacking complex carbohydrates and enough total energy (also known as calories). I made sure there was enough carbohydrates, protein, and fat inside every JOVA pouch to make sure you stay full for hours.
"There’s plenty of smoothie options on the market, but often times they count nutritionally as a snack, not a meal."
The Science of Fullness
At the heart of each JOVA meal replacement smoothie is a carefully curated selection of ingredients backed by nutrition science. Each ingredient serves a specific purpose, whether it's providing essential nutrients, supporting your busy day, or just tasting really good.
The Power of Protein
Protein is a crucial component of any meal, as it helps support muscle repair and growth, overall satiety, and blood sugar balance. We chose high quality collagen peptides in all three JOVA flavors as it’s tasteless and blends well in a smoothie. While collagen is not a complete protein, it contains amino acids proline, hydroxyproline, and glycine that can contribute to collagen synthesis in our own bodies.
Fiber for Fullness
Fiber plays a vital role in digestion and helps keep you feeling full and satisfied between meals. Our smoothie incorporates fiber-rich ingredients like chia seeds, oats, and nuts. Plus, adding a banana boasts a bonus of 3g of fiber! Most Americans struggle to meet their daily fiber needs of about 30 grams. JOVA contributes to a third of those needs in just one smoothie.
The F word (Fat as a Friend)
Fat used to be feared - especially back in the 90’s and early 2000’s. But in 2024, we’re not scared anymore. We now know that fat is essential for fullness, blood sugar balance, and is a key factor in hormone balance and production. Nuts and seeds are naturally comprised of mostly unsaturated fatty acids helping promote optimal blood cholesterol levels and heart health. Fat is also essential to absorb the fat soluble vitamins, A, D, E, and K which contribute to the health of our skin, bones, and eyesight.
Essential Nutrients
The benefit of these carefully selected ingredients goes beyond their primary purpose to keep you full. The ingredients in JOVA like nuts, oats, and seeds, also pack a variety of micronutrients like vitamin A, E, and several B vitamins that aid in cellular protection against free radicals, metabolic functioning, and immune support.
We're not into restricting ourselves here at JOVA. We want to model intentional and adequate nourishment of our bodies. That means not eliminating a macronutrient just because you saw an influencer on social media say they were doing it. Eating a complete meal helps your body run efficiently. Life is hard enough, let’s not make our bodies work harder than they have to.
The Taste Test
As a dietitian, I know that flavor is one of the main drivers of satisfaction in a meal. If something doesn’t taste good, we won’t eat it or we will resent eating it. In order to get the benefits of JOVA, or any meal for that matter, you have to eat it. Over the course of a few iterations, Jess and I decided on a few ingredients additions that made a big difference flavor wise. We added salt to enhance the natural flavors and sweetness of JOVA and vanilla bean to add complexity to the already robust flavors that ingredients like peanut flour and cacao add to the pouches. We settled on three tasty flavors — Peanut Butter, Double Chocolate & Pistachio.
Lastly, the finishing touches for JOVA are a banana and milk. My personal favorite thing about smoothies is the thickness and creaminess you can achieve. We have suggested a banana as it provides additional sweetness and creaminess to the smoothie - bonus points if it’s frozen. Milk gives you the opportunity to customize JOVA with more protein and fat or just keeping it the same as the pouch with a low calorie milk like almond. Regardless of the milk, it adds a creaminess that compliments all flavors and allows you to customize how thick you’d like your smoothie to be by adding more or less than the recommended amount.
Conclusion
From selecting high quality ingredients to perfecting the flavor profile, we have made all the hard decisions for you. All you have to do is tear open the pouch, add a frozen banana and milk and blend! You can be confident that our RD created smoothies are giving you a nutrient packed meal.
Cheers to good health!
