A gut-friendly ice cream served right from Santiago, Chile? Sign us up, please! Long before she began pursuing her dairy-free business dream, Anastasia Gutkevich, CEO of BIFIDICE, grew up surrounded by scientists in her father’s laboratory. In Siberia, 30 years ago, Eugeny Gutkevitch, a biophysicist and professor, researched the mechanisms of how microbiota and the immune system relate to one another on a molecular level. He studied enzymes in human intestines and found that bifidumbacteria bidifum produced many more enzymes than any other bacteria. “I remember being so inspired by his work and studies,” Anastasia recalls. “I was still a child back then, but when I began to see the impact and results my father was achieving in people, I wanted to do exactly that with my life, too.”
She was shocked when she saw the data: 150 million Europeans are suffering from chronic allergic diseases, and the current prediction is that, by 2025, half of the entire EU population will be affected (EAACI, 2016). “I started to dream about the possibility of a world without allergies and chronic diseases, you know, in a fun way,” her story continues, “combining the potential of ice cream flavors with the high efficiency of powerful probiotic bacteria. That’s how we created Bifidice – the first functional plant-based probiotic ice-cream that actively combats allergies and long-term illnesses.”
