Bio
Background
Alissa Barthel is a plant based chef, cheesemaker, and microbiologist. She is known most notably as an innovator in the plant based cheese space. Her work has been featured on NPR, the Today Show, the Guardian, and Bon Appetit.
Starting her career in biotech, her passion for plant based cuisine was revealed after developing an autoimmune disease triggered by a toxic exposure. She found relief for her symptoms by changing to a plant based diet. This inspired her to train with globally renowned plant based chef, Matthew Kenney.
Back To Her Roots
Recently, she has been called into an active duty role as an Asian Warrior Princess. After her father passed away, she became a 24 hour caregiver for her mom with Alzheimer's. Being a native of Japan, she had forgotten how to speak English making her a poor candidate for institutional care.
What seemed like a detour brought her back to her original intention supporting wellness. Even wilder, having to learn Japanese to communicate with her mom, she discovered that her ancestry was deeply rooted in the food business (a longer unfolding story). As the saying goes, all roads lead home.
Read more stories on her substack.
Plant Based Foods, Wellness, and Fermentation
If one were to summarize her platform in a simple tagline it would be ‘being a wellness warrior in a changing world’. Her work lies at the intersection of wellness, medicine, and functional food from the culinary, biotech, patient, and ancestral perspectives. Her point of leverage is with the technology of fermentation particularly in the realm of plant based cheese.
Fermentation is an ancient technology which predates recorded history. In recent times, a more modern practice of abundant sterilization devalued this and many other time honored traditions almost to the point of extinction. Evidence is now pointing to a breakdown of these connections being foundational to the epidemic of chronic disease facing the world today.
The intersection of plant based foods, wellness, and fermentation is a much broader topic which lies at a critical pain point in human health. This relationship has it’s own story and is at the crux of her work.