Meet our UPF expert - Yanaina Chavez-Ugalde

Cherrypick has literally handpicked you one of the best in the business. Introducing Dr Yanaina Chavez-Ugalde and all things UPFs on our mission to help the world eat better, effortlessly.

Yanaina is not only fantastic company to be in, she also happens to be a leading expert in the field of UPFs, working at Cambridge University, and has helped us come up with a way of identifying The Cherrypick Nasty Nine UPFs and co-written our first UPF Blog, UPFs: What are they are why do we care?. She is a huge advocate of sharing with members of the public what we know about ultra-processed foods and how they affect human and planetary health. Her latest mission is aboard the Cherrypick boat, set to reach millions of you in the UK.

Introducing Yanaina👇

A little bit about Yanaina’s background in her own words… 

“I have an interesting background and my passion for understanding the food system has grown and developed over the years. I trained as a Food Engineer in Mexico and worked in the food industry for four years. After realising the change in dietary patterns my country was going through, I started to become more interested in how I could contribute to population health by facilitating healthier behaviours. It was then that I decided to change careers into Public Health. I hold an MSc in Nutrition, Physical Activity and Public Health and a PhD in Population Health Sciences from the University of Bristol.

I have held different roles to enable people to adopt and maintain healthy lifestyles, including as a Physical Activity Project Officer at Macmillan Cancer Support, as a Health and Wellbeing Coach for the NHS Diabetes Prevention Programme, and as a Research Assistant at University College London.

In my current role at the University of Cambridge I have a programme of work that is dedicated to explore the complex dynamics of the commercial food system and health, in particular the effects of ultra-processed food consumption on human health and their environmental impact. The findings of my research are contributing to finding collaborative and effective ways to create healthy and sustainable nutrition for all.

I believe that advising tech startups like Cherrypick is key and can have a huge impact to help change household habits and improve health. Cherrypick and I are working together to help you understand the implications of UPF consumption and enable you to reduce the consumption of UPFs and increase the consumption nutritious food by cooking from scratch, one meal at a time”.

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