I didn't find nutrition. Nutrition found me.

Grandma's kitchen

Before I knew what a macronutrient was, I knew the smell of good food heating up. I was that kid mixing every condiment into my ramen noodles — curious, chaotic, and fully convinced I was a scientist.

Where I grew up, it wasn't exactly cool for a boy to love the kitchen. Cooking was "for the girls," and my dad didn't really get why I was so drawn to it. But my grandma? She didn't care about any of that. She slid me a spoon, taught me how to season with love, and told me:

She taught me that food isn't just a recipe — it's a relationship. That teaching someone to cook is one of the highest forms of love, because you're handing them freedom, creativity, and confidence in a single meal. Every class I teach and every plate I build is her lesson, reborn.

Learning the science of what I already knew

College taught me plenty — including how to stretch a food budget like it was doing pilates. But grad school is where everything clicked. At Kent State I earned my B.S. and M.S. in Nutrition & Dietetics and fell into behavioral nutrition: the psychology of why we eat the way we do.

For my thesis I surveyed over a hundred college students about identity, confidence, and food — and the data kept pointing at something my grandma already knew: the food of your culture isn't the obstacle. Students with stronger cultural pride rated their diets as healthier, and the more confident people felt in the kitchen, the better they ate. Capability and pride — the two things she handed me with one spoon — held up under the statistics.

Inside the machine

Then I went to see how food actually gets made. As an R&D scientist at Nestlé, I worked reformulation and research on a major plant-based relaunch — ingredients, analytical methods, sourcing, the regulations wrapped around all of it.

I came away with two things: real respect for the craft of feeding millions of people, and a permanent conviction about the gap between what's in our food and what people actually know about it. Closing that gap, one way or another, is what I've been doing ever since.

The whiteboard years

For six-plus years I've taught at the university level — nutrition science, biology, research statistics. And somewhere between the lectures and the office hours I figured out what my actual gift is. It isn't knowing things. It's translating them — taking something complex and handing it back so it's impossible to forget.

It's why my students learn about "the glow-up nutrient" and "the drama mamas of nutrition" instead of memorizing definitions. Health doesn't have to be boring to be rigorous.

Walking people across

Which brings us to now. I founded FG Kids Inc., a nonprofit teaching high schoolers nutrition through the food of their own heritage — with spatial computing making it stick. I founded Spatial Apex, helping food brands get ready for the day every barcode becomes a doorway. I wrote Take CTRL and Spatial Computing: Volume One. And every week on YouTube, I make all of it make sense.

Different lanes. Same move. I stand at the edge of what's coming — the technology, the science, the shift — and I walk people across: students, brands, families, you.

Because the thing my grandma taught me with one spoon is the thing I now believe about everything: where you come from isn't what holds you back. It's your way into what's next.