Everyone thinks they understand food. Founders have opinions on ingredients. Investors ask about “clean labels.” But once you try to make a product, you realize how little of the conversation reflects how food actually works.
Hydroxide is a food scientist and content creator with over 450,000 followers and seven years in the industry, from plant-based meat and chocolate to food safety and quality. She translates the science, the myths, and the mechanics behind products people eat every day.
Because building food isn’t like building tech. Products change. Ingredients behave unpredictably. And the biggest mistakes usually start long before the product hits the shelf. We ask what founders should know before they step into the lab.
* Note: Text answers have been edited for length and clarity. Full answers are in video. (We highly recommend watching!)
When a food scientist says X, what they really mean is Y
We asked Hydroxide to decode the terms founders encounter most — and what they actually mean for your product.
Water activity: So, the number one thing you need to know is water activity is not the same thing as moisture content. They sound similar, but water activity is used to change both the safety and texture of your product. It’s critical for things like dried foods (beef jerky, for example) and sauces meant to sit on the shelf. A quick hack is to increase acidity, increase salt, or increase sugar. All of these lower water activity.
Salt is one of our oldest preservatives. And the goal of preservatives is often to lower water activity so products can sit on a shelf without molding, growing bacteria, or developing pathogens. A classic example is the McDonald’s hamburger that’s been sitting out for seven or eight years without molding. People ask what chemicals must be in it. In reality, it’s the water activity. If there isn’t freely available water, mold and bacteria simply can’t grow.
Maillard reaction: Probably the most common chemical reaction in cooking. It’s basically what creates browning and flavor in cooking. When carbohydrates and amino acids react under heat, they form hundreds of flavor compounds. It’s the reason bread crust turns brown and why cooked meat develops that rich flavor.
Natural flavors: Founders, write this down: 21 CFR. That's the Code of Federal Regulations, and it defines food labeling terms and ingredient rules. (Canada has the CFIA, Europe has the EFSA.) This is where you’ll find definitions for things like natural flavors. and it's as broad as you'd expect.
Natural flavors can include spices, oils, oleoresins, distillates, extracts, edible yeast, bark, roots… almost anything derived from a natural source. It’s basically a catch-all term, which is why companies often use it to group complex flavor blends.
Kill step: It’s pretty much what it sounds like. Heating your product until the bad stuff dies. Not every product needs a kill step. Hot sauce is a good example. Many hot sauces aren’t boiled or sterilized; the acidity and salt make them shelf stable on their own. In other words, a product doesn’t have to go through a kill step to be safe.
Dos and don’ts of working with a food scientist
Hydroxide has worked with startups at every stage. Here's what she'd tell every founder before they step into the lab.
My number one do is to give your food scientist time to play. Let them go into their little free range pen to experiment to their heart’s desire, to do stretch projects, like what if we made the product and twisted it in a certain way?
If you're pre-Series A and the product isn't done yet, don't put a tight timeline on it. Keep innovation loose and less on a tight KPI timeline. Your product is going to change from the idea in your head, and that's okay.
On timeline: four months minimum if you're starting from scratch. To me, ideally, it would be more like six months. I think that's like the most ideal timeline. And also depending on how high tech your product is. However much time you think you need, double it. Food does not scale like tech. It's not an app you're building in your garage.
My other do sounds sarcastic, but I really mean it, it’s to focus on making your product taste good. I know that so many founders in food CPG and even food service wanna change the world with this product. They want to add the fiber, the protein, the health, the function. But no one will eat it if it tastes bad. That doesn’t mean you have to make a deep fried Oreo, but you do have to make sacrifices.
And another secret is to focus on texture before flavor. A good texture can carry weak flavor. Good flavor cannot save bad texture. Have you ever eaten a perfectly seasoned egg and hit a piece of shell? You seasoned those eggs. They tasted pretty good right up until then. The texture ruins the experience. We’re incredibly sensitive to that.
Definitely don’t buy fancy equipment. What's so great about it is you can be really scrappy with just a few things. A basic blender, a basic oven, a SodaStream for beverages, that's enough.
Food has to be elastic to scale. If your product falls apart on the bench with cheap equipment, it will not survive a co-packer. If it holds together with $50 equipment, it'll hold together with $500,000 equipment. That's when you know you're ready.
My other one is don’t get married to your product idea. And I know this is so hard because as a founder and as an entrepreneur, you have this dream and you want your dream to be seen by the world. And that is great. You should not doubt your dream. Because a strong concept and a strategy is super essential to this business.
But food is such an ever-changing entity and always going to be more than the sum of its parts. When I was working in plant-based meat, we'd set out to mimic animal protein and end up with a secret third thing. Something that wasn't the vegan version or the animal version, just its own product.
Your formula will change. Ingredients get yanked. Supply chains break. Take the ring off. Be dating your idea, not married to it. Sometimes what it becomes is better than what you planned.
Hydroxide is a food scientist and content creator with seven years inside food manufacturing, spanning plant-based meat, chocolate, kombucha, and meat processing. She's built products from scratch, managed them through scale-up, and watched founders make the same avoidable mistakes at every stage. Now she shares that world for her 450,000+ followers online.