Why I Made Prequelle. A Dietitian's Story

I've been a registered dietitian since 1998. For the last six years, I've worked with people whose lives are quietly organized around their gut - where they'll sit in a restaurant, whether they can get on a plane, which foods they've learned to fear.

I know that life because I've lived it. But let me start at the beginning.

Where it all started.

I was born into a family that loved food. It was the center of every gathering - the thread running through our culture, our holidays, our celebrations. Food was how we showed up for each other. It meant love.

When food became something I couldn't trust

Then I got sick and diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis.

High school graduation - on prednisone, and uncomfortable in my body for the first time.

I was diagnosed in my senior year of high school - already a tender, self-conscious age - and put on prednisone. You could tell something was wrong with me just by looking. I gained a lot of weight, quickly, and people wondered why. For the first time in my life, I felt uncomfortable in my own body. The thing that had always meant love and connection had turned into something I couldn't trust.

And yet food kept pulling me toward it. My life in the food world actually started at fifteen, behind a fast-food counter - "Would you like an apple pie with that?" Somewhere in those years, my own struggle quietly turned into a real curiosity about the link between what we eat and digestive disease.

In 1994, I applied to university without really knowing what I wanted to study. I was living on my own and paying my own way, getting by on part-time work and student loans. What I did know was that I wanted a profession where I could actually help people, so I studied Nutritional Sciences at McGill despite never having met a dietitian at that point.

My illness was being managed with medications and clinical trials, and I was suffering in silence. I didn't join a community of people going through the same thing. I made excuses when I couldn't go out in public. I just carried it quietly for years.

I've had the trip I almost didn't take because I didn't know where the bathroom would be. I've been the person cobbling together three different products before a single meal. I don't share this to be dramatic - I share it because so many of the people I work with have their own version of it, and almost no one talks about it.

Becoming an entrepreneur

My career has been a zig-zag. After McGill, I spent years in the foodservice world - meal preparation, menu planning, food systems consulting, retail and institutional foodservice management, and nutrition counselling - and then went back for a Master's in health administration at the University of Ottawa to add the healthcare and business side. I never planned to become an entrepreneur, the same way I never planned to have four active boys. But I've come to treat every zig and every zag as a gift.

In 2015, I took my first real leap into entrepreneurship, stepping away from government work to build something of my own. I started Eating Evolvd, a ready-made meal company built around a simple idea: make it easier for busy families to put nourishing food on the table. It was my first experience turning a problem I saw in everyday life into a practical solution, and it planted a seed I would come back to years later with Prequelle.

How I became a digestive health dietitian

In 2018, I moved into private practice, where I began working one-on-one with people struggling with digestive issues, food intolerances and the low FODMAP diet. Over the years, I've listened to hundreds of people describe how much planning, restriction and worry can go into simply eating a meal. My own experience with digestive disease helped me understand what they were going through, but my work as a dietitian showed me just how common these struggles were.

Today, I'm a registered dietitian, married to a family physician, and mom to those four boys - so I know firsthand just how much effort it takes to put a healthy, balanced meal on the table. If there's one thread running through everything I've done, it's this: I want nourishing food to be simpler and within reach, for everyone. And I still get genuinely excited every single time I hear that I made a difference in someone's life.

Why "just avoid the food" wasn't good enough

And here's what took me years to understand: for a lot of us, it was never as simple as "just avoid the food." I tried the solutions on the shelf myself - Beano, lactase, the usual suspects. They didn't work for me, so I wrote off the whole category. But they weren't failing because enzymes don't work. They were failing on the details. The dose. The combination. How the whole thing was put together.

Why I created a before-meal digestive enzyme

So I stopped waiting for someone else to get it right.

Prequelle is the product I wished existed: one discreet capsule you take before a meal. A digestive enzyme designed for the kinds of meals that can contain combinations of garlic, onions, wheat, dairy and beans, foods that contain carbohydrates such as fructans, lactose and GOS.

No powder to sprinkle over your food while the whole table watches. No juggling multiple supplements and hoping you guessed the right amount. It's built on the science, the evidence and formulated to cast a wider net, so you're not left doing the math.

What I want Prequelle to make possible

I want to be honest with you, because I'd want the same in return: this isn't a miracle, and it isn't a cure. I was a skeptic myself. What Prequelle is designed to do is give you a little more confidence at the table - so you can stop bracing for how you'll feel afterward and get back to enjoying the meal, the trip, and the people around you.

Because in the end, this was never really about food. It's about not missing your life over it.

I didn't set out to be the face of a brand. I'm a dietitian, not a marketer. But I couldn't shake one thought. This is such a simple thing, and too many people are suffering without it. If I can help even a fraction of them feel free around food again, it's worth stepping out from behind the counter.

That's why I made Prequelle.

- Keren