Ineke Nugteren, founder of Nourish, discusses the future of functional nutrition and the shift towards food as medicine.
How Nourish Is Redefining Clean, Functional Snacking In The UK Market
Former intensive care nurse Ineke Nugteren builds Nourish, transforming snacking through functional medicine principles, prioritising gut health, hormone balance, sustainability, and clean ingredients while challenging conventional protein-focused food industry thinking.
True entrepreneurship is measured not simply by commercial success, but by the courage to challenge accepted thinking and create meaningful change. Few business leaders embody that principle more convincingly than Ineke Nugteren. Combining the clinical expertise of an experienced intensive care nurse with the vision of an innovative entrepreneur, she has built Nourish into a pioneering functional food brand that is redefining what healthy snacking should be. Rather than following industry trends, she has remained steadfast in her belief that food should nourish, heal and empower, proving that commercial ambition and genuine purpose can exist side by side.
At a time when consumers are demanding greater transparency, cleaner ingredients and products that genuinely support wellbeing, Nourish stands as an example of principled entrepreneurship. From championing the nutritional benefits of coconut and developing foods free from unnecessary additives, to maintaining rigorous manufacturing standards and embedding sustainability and social responsibility into the company’s DNA, Ineke has demonstrated that integrity is one of the strongest competitive advantages a business can possess. Her commitment to donating a portion of profits to charitable causes further reflects a belief that business should create lasting value far beyond the balance sheet.
As the boundaries between nutrition, preventative healthcare and medicine continue to evolve, Ineke is helping to shape the future of the food industry. Her blend of scientific understanding, entrepreneurial resilience and unwavering commitment to quality has earned Nourish a respected place with leading retailers while inspiring a growing movement towards functional nutrition. In this exclusive Entrepreneur Prime interview, she shares the philosophy behind the brand, the lessons learned from building a purpose-driven business, and her vision for a future where food plays a central role in improving health and transforming lives.
You began your career as an intensive care nurse before moving into nutrition and founding Nourish. What inspired you to make that transition, and how has your medical background shaped the business?
The transition wasn’t sudden – it was something that built over years of watching patients become more unwell despite following conventional advice. Working in primary care, you see the consequences of poor health up close, and I kept asking why we weren’t addressing the root causes. My own experience with food intolerances showed me what a difference diet could make, but the alternatives available were full of artificial ingredients. That disconnect – between what medicine was telling people and what food was actually offering them – became impossible to ignore.
My medical background shapes everything at Nourish. It’s why we think in terms of ingredients that genuinely nourish the body, why we took a functional medicine approach long before it became fashionable, and why I care so deeply about the science behind what goes into every product. This isn’t a lifestyle brand. It’s food as medicine.
Health has become the biggest factor influencing snack choices in the UK. How has consumer demand changed since you launched Nourish in 2015?
When we launched, the conversation was largely about free-from – removing gluten, dairy, refined sugar. That was already a shift from the mainstream, but it was still quite reactive. Today, consumers are far more proactive. They’re not just asking what’s been taken out – they’re asking what a product actively does for them. Gut health, hormone balance, sustained energy – these are things people are genuinely researching and seeking out.
There’s also much greater scepticism about marketing claims. People read ingredient lists now. They question what they can’t pronounce. That’s a profound change, and it’s one Nourish has always been well placed for – because our ingredients have never needed hiding.
Coconut is at the heart of your range, yet it is often overlooked compared with ingredients such as oats, dates and protein powders. Why do you believe coconut deserves greater recognition as a functional food?
Coconut has suffered from years of misinformation around fat, and it’s taken time for the science to catch up with what many cultures have known for centuries. The medium-chain fatty acids in coconut are metabolised differently to other fats – they provide direct, efficient energy rather than being stored. Coconut also supports gut health, provides fibre, and works as a genuinely clean base ingredient without needing artificial binders or fillers.
What I love about coconut is that it does its job quietly. It doesn’t need a noisy marketing campaign – it just delivers. In a world of heavily processed protein powders and sugar-laden date-based products, coconut offers something real, functional and delicious. It deserves to be taken seriously.
Many snack brands focus on protein, whereas Nourish champions gut health, hormone balance and sustained energy. Why did you choose to take a different approach?
Because the body is not just a protein delivery system. The obsession with protein in the snack industry has oversimplified a very complex picture of what human health actually requires. Gut health underpins almost everything – immunity, mood, energy, skin – and yet it’s been largely ignored in mainstream snacking.
My background in functional medicine taught me to look at the whole system, not just isolated nutrients. Hormone balance and sustained energy are things people feel every day – in how they sleep, how they focus, how they manage stress. If food can support those things, that’s far more meaningful than hitting a protein target. We’ve always believed that snacks should do something genuinely useful for your body, and that’s driven every product decision we’ve made.
Nourish products are free from gluten, dairy and refined sugar, yet they’re designed to taste indulgent. How difficult is it to create products that deliver both nutritional value and genuine enjoyment?
It’s the central challenge of everything we do – and it never gets easier. When you remove gluten, dairy and refined sugar, you lose the things that conventionally make food taste good and hold together. The easy answer is to replace them with artificial alternatives, but that entirely defeats the purpose.
Every product goes through rigourous development to get the texture, taste and nutritional profile right using only 100% natural ingredients. The bar we hold ourselves to is simple: if someone without any dietary requirements picks up a Nourish product, it should feel like a genuine treat – not a compromise. That standard takes time, investment and a great many batches that don’t make it.
Your latest product is the Matcha Coconut Cookie, created in collaboration with OMGTEA. What made matcha the perfect partner for coconut, and what has the response been so far?
Matcha and coconut share the same philosophy – they’re both ingredients that deliver real, functional benefits without needing anything artificial to support them. Matcha offers sustained, calm energy through its unique combination of caffeine and L-theanine, without the spike and crash of coffee. Paired with coconut, it creates something that genuinely supports how you feel throughout the day.
The collaboration with OMGTEA felt very natural because we’ve made the same pledge to quality and provenance. And the response has been wonderful – everyone who has tried it has loved it. That’s the best validation there is.
You’ve chosen to manufacture much of the range yourselves to maintain quality and ingredient standards. What advantages does that give you, and what challenges does it bring?
The biggest advantage is agility. When you manufacture in-house, you can respond quickly – scaling up when demand grows, pulling back when needed, and making changes to recipes or processes without waiting on a third party. For a brand where ingredient integrity is everything, that control is invaluable.
The challenges are real though. Staff are your biggest cost, and having the right team is absolutely critical. Equipment, overheads, accreditation – it all adds up, and the margin for error is small. But the alternative – handing that control to someone else – has always felt like too great a compromise for us. You can’t build a brand on real food and then outsource the part where the food gets made.
Nourish has secured listings with retailers including Ocado, Abel & Cole and Fortnum & Mason, as well as airlines, offices and independent retailers. Which partnership has been the most significant for the brand’s growth?
Ocado has been transformative. Five years with the platform, now across seven lines – it’s given us reach and credibility that extends well beyond what a single physical retailer could offer. The Ocado customer is exactly who Nourish is made for: informed, health-conscious, willing to invest in quality. This partnership has been the most significant in regards to steady growth.
But if I’m honest, Daylesford was the partnership that truly validated what we were doing. When a brand synonymous with uncompromising organic quality chooses to stock – and eventually white-label with – you, it tells you that your standards are real, not just marketing. That relationship has stood the test of time because it’s built on genuine shared values.
Sustainability and ethical sourcing are clearly important to Nourish, as is your commitment to donating 10% of net profits to Water for Good. Why was it important to build social impact into the business from the outset?
Water for Good resonated deeply because it goes far beyond providing access to clean water – it empowers communities to own and sustain that access themselves. Women who previously spent hours each day collecting water can now start small businesses and earn an income. Children can spend more time in school. Communities learn to maintain and manage their own water systems, creating genuine long-term independence.
That model of empowerment rather than dependency mirrors what Nourish is trying to do in food – not just give people a better product, but help them understand why it matters. Without water, communities cannot survive. Without real nutrition, neither can we. Building social impact into Nourish from the beginning wasn’t a marketing decision – it was a values decision. Business can and should do more than generate profit.
Your customer base has traditionally been female, but you’re seeing growing interest from men. Why do you think more men are embracing functional nutrition and healthier snacking?
There’s a broader cultural shift happening. Feeling well through lifestyle – through food, movement, sleep, stress management – is becoming a mainstream aspiration rather than a niche one, and men are increasingly part of that conversation. There are far more men speaking openly about health and wellbeing now than there were even five years ago, and that openness is changing purchasing behaviour.
I also think the language around functional nutrition has evolved. It’s less about restriction and more about performance – and that framing resonates across genders. When people understand that what they eat directly affects how they think, feel and function, the motivation to make better choices follows naturally.
Refrigerated snack bars are much more common in the United States than in the UK. Do you think chilled snacks represent the next big opportunity for the British market?
I genuinely do, and I think we’re behind. In the US, chilled and frozen snacking is completely normalised – it’s everywhere. In the UK, there’s still a level of consumer education needed, and that’s something we’re actively working on.
The key message is simple: food is meant to go off. When a product doesn’t need refrigeration and has a shelf life of months, it’s worth asking what’s keeping it that way. Our frozen products contain nothing nasty – they’re frozen because the ingredients are real and clean, not because they’ve been loaded with preservatives. Freezing is nature’s own method of preservation, and once people understand that, frozen and chilled snacking becomes not just acceptable but preferable. That’s the conversation we need to be having at scale.
Looking ahead, what is your long-term vision for Nourish, and what innovations or trends in functional food excite you most over the next five years?
The vision is to make genuinely nourishing food accessible to everyone – not just those shopping at premium retailers. Within the next year I want to see our multipack format on shelves in Waitrose, Sainsbury’s and Tesco, at a price point that makes a real difference to everyday choices. Beyond retail, I want Nourish in the spaces where people currently have no good options — airports, café chains, travel hubs — because those are the moments when habits are formed or broken.
What excites me most over the next five years is the convergence of food and medicine. As the NHS faces increasing pressure from preventable conditions, I believe we’re moving towards a world where food is genuinely prescribed alongside — or instead of — medication. Functional ingredients that support the microbiome, balance hormones, reduce inflammation – these are no longer fringe ideas. They’re where the science is heading. Nourish has been building towards that world since day one.
