Long-time StartUp Health community member Victor Penev, CEO and Founder of Edamam, is on a mission to organize the world’s food knowledge so everyone can make the right food choices and live long, healthy lives. With AI and a surge of GLP-1 adoption, he sees food becoming central to how we prevent and manage chronic disease.

🌍 The mission: Edamam is organizing the world’s food knowledge to help people make everyday choices that are right for them, that they enjoy, and that support long, healthy lives. Victor believes people can live to 120 without chronic conditions, with prevention and food at the center.

💊 The GLP-1 shift: Diet has long been recommended alongside chronic condition management, but often as lip service. Victor says GLP-1s are changing that, because patients now need to maintain muscle mass, making food an essential part of treatment for conditions like diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and kidney disease.

🤖 The virtual nutritionist: Edamam is building a personalized AI nutritionist that is there at 2 a.m. when you wish you hadn’t eaten that pizza, gently nudging you in the right direction and suggesting what to do the next day.

🌐 The AI moment: Victor compares AI less to the mobile revolution and more to the advent of the internet, a fundamentally different way to interact with technology. For Edamam, it made a 50-year vision a reality.

⚖️ Optimist and realist: Victor says entrepreneurs have to be optimists, but should also plan for what happens if things go wrong. For Edamam, the fallback is data.

Watch Victor’s Moonshot Moment above to hear more on how AI and food can work together to extend healthy life.