Lucille: Revolutionizing Nutrition for Active Seniors

Lucille: Revolutionizing Nutrition for Active Seniors

Lucille Nutrition Shakes: Clean, Science-Backed Fuel for Active and Everyday Seniors

Season eight of Villages Vitality Life: Senior Life Unscripted opens with host Mike Roth interviewing Jess Haghani, founder and CEO of Lucille, a science-backed nutrition company named after her nearly 92-year-old grandmother. Haghani explains Lucille was created after seeing her grandmother dislike traditional “legacy” nutrition shakes due to taste, how they made her feel, and artificial ingredients. Lucille developed ready-to-drink chocolate and vanilla complete nutrition shakes from scratch with guidance from dietitians, senior living communities, and nutritionists from Harvard’s Chan School of Public Health, using 10 simple ingredients plus a vitamin/mineral mix, scoring 90 on the Yuka app. The shakes provide 20g protein, 5–6g fiber, 230–240 calories, and 23 vitamins/minerals, are lactose-free, use avocado oil, contain no refined sugar or sugar alcohols, and are shelf-stable 12 months. Lucille is sold on lucillehealth.com and Amazon, with retail planned next year, and a Villages discount code “TheVillages15” for 15% off first website order; future ideas include hydration products and cleaner, higher-protein desserts.

00:00 Season Eight Kickoff
00:41 Meet Jess Haghani
01:30 Lucille Origin Story
03:45 Clean Ingredients Explained
06:37 Founder Background
07:40 Why Seniors Are Ignored
09:39 Where To Buy Lucille
10:43 Fuel For Active Aging
13:01 Health Tip Break
14:45 Nutrition For Every Lifestyle
17:05 How To Drink And Store
20:09 Future Products Roadmap
23:43 Why Trust Lucille
25:45 Discount And Wrap Up

New FAN MAIL features TXT & Voice Mial

Transcript

Lucille: Revolutionizing Nutrition for Active Seniors

Nancy: [00:00:00] Welcome to Season eight of Villages Vitality Life, Seniors Life Unscripted. In this new season, we talk to leaders of clubs and interesting folks who live in and around The Villages. We also talk to people who have information vital to seniors. You will get perspectives of what is happening in and around The Villages, Florida. In addition, in this new season we will add more information for all seniors. We are a listener supported podcast. 

Mike: This is Mike Roth on Village's Vitality, Senior Life Unscripted. I'm here today with Jess Haghani. Jess, thanks for joining me.

Jess: Thank you so much. So great to be here. 

Mike: Good. Jess, why don't you tell our listeners a little bit about your background so they have an understanding of who you are and how you got here.

Jess: So I'm the founder and CEO of Lucille. It's a [00:01:00] science-backed nutrition company that brings joy, dignity, and better nutrition to older adults. It's named after my almost 92-year-old grandmother. And to create our products, we use tasty real food, high protein, high calorie. Ingredients to make complete nutrition shakes, and we partnered with dieticians senior living communities and leading nutritionists from the Harvard's Chan School of Public Health to create our business.

So really excited to be here and share more about what we're building. 

Mike: Sure. Jess, can you tell me a little bit more about your grandmother, Lucille, and the moment you realized that her nutrition options we're just not good enough?

Jess: So as I mentioned, she's about to be 92. She lives in New Jersey and is a total force of nature. She day trade stocks Every day, all day she wins her bridge tournament. She's super active. She drives a little red Cadillac and goes in and out of Manhattan by herself. But over the past few years she was recovering from some surgeries [00:02:00] and basically being told to get more protein, more calories, and used these kind of legacy shakes that have been on the market for a long time.

And it was pretty easy and we saw quickly to see how much she. Didn't like the taste, didn't like how they made her feel. She hated the list of ingredients that were art, artificial colorings and artificial flavors. And that was really the moment where things started to crystallize for me.

Here was a woman who had eaten well all of her life. She knew exactly what good food. Tasted like and felt and she had real nutritional needs that her body was asking her to meet and the entire industry's answer to those problems was basically through chalky shakes that she wouldn't drink twice.

And so the gap between what she deserved and what she was being offered was just enormous. And the more I spent time with her. Was looking around the products and the category more generally in terms of older adult nutrition. The [00:03:00] more I realized that she wasn't an outlier, she wasn't an unusual case.

She was. Really the rule, like millions of people in her stage of life were either trying to get down products that felt like a chore or just opting out and undern nourishing themselves because at least, eating a plain piece of toast just tasted like toast. And so Lucille, both my grandmother and the company, is built really on the conviction that. Older adults deserve food that respects 'em. They deserve innovation just like everybody else has been getting. They deserve food that tastes like something that we would all choose, not something that we need to endure. And food that really meets our bodies where they actually aren't. 

Like everything we do really comes back to her and everybody just like her.

Mike: Now. In past shows we've had people talk about food and the problem with processed food and convince me to start using an application on my phone called Yuka to measure in the grocery store based on the bar [00:04:00] code, the value of the food, and on a scale from, poor to excellent, zero to 100.

I know, so when we were planning this podcast, I had a copy of your barcode and I scanned it and Wow. You guys scored, way up in the eighties,

Jess: Yeah.

Mike: 90 it was quite amazing. There was very few foods that I scanned come anywhere near that. Is that something that you intentionally did when you were constructing what was gonna be in your product?

Jess: I'm just looking at our Yuka rating now, both on the chocolate and the vanilla. Were 90 excellent, and every category is all green, so that's really exciting. The general idea was to. Really revolutionized the existing options. And when I was working with the, experts at the Harvard Chain School of Public Health, the first thing they said to me was just, you can't fix these existing products.

You need to completely start from scratch and start over. And so that was really the mentality that we [00:05:00] absorbed and took. And so we put the incumbents to the side. We started on our own journey. We knew that the macro and the micronutrients needed to be at least as good, but from an ingredient perspective, we started over.

And what that kind of resulted in was we have 10 simple ingredients and a vitamin and mineral. Mix. And out of the 10 simple ingredients, the only overlapping ingredients with the existing legacy shakes are water and salt. So I think that contributed a lot to what we see on the Yuka app with the excellent rating for Lucille. Have lactose free protein. We use avocado oil as our fat source. We have no refined sugar or sugar alcohols. We're sweetening the product with date and agave. Really took a whole new, fresh approach to developing the product, which is why I think that's reflected in the rating. So it being so high.

Mike: How long ago did you start the company?

Jess: The company about a year and a half ago at this point. Everything that was happening with my grandmother was, happening prior to that, maybe over the past three to five years, and then really [00:06:00] started being much more focused on actually getting the product off of the ground about a year and a half ago.

It's definitely taken a long time, but officially in market now and it's just such an exciting chapter.

Mike: So is she living in an adult senior care facility?

Jess: Living independently. She lives in a small town in the suburbs of New Jersey. She's doing really

Mike: Oh, that's good.

Jess: So many friends in her community. As I said, she plays a lot of bridge and just stays super active. And she doesn't have a lot of like close family nearby.

Like her son and daughter. Are a little bit further away, but we all try and get down and visit her a lot. And being in New York is really easy for a lot of us. We see her quite often.

Mike: And what was your business career before you left to start the Lucille Food Company?

Jess: I actually started my career in senior housing. That's where I started while I was in college. And then after that. A lot more into traditional real estate investing, both in senior living and other asset classes like office and multifamily and hotels. But I have always just had [00:07:00] such a deep passion for food and nutrition and the power of food to, to help the body and left the investing world to really try and build something in the space or maybe not build something I wasn't like. I need to be an entrepreneur. Whereas my idea, I think I just wanted to join a really fast growing startup that was making a really big impact on people, whether that was older adults or kids or, some, something else in the middle. But really just felt so compelled to start Lucille when I started spending a lot more time understanding the category and just how under innovated it really is and has been for the past 30, 40 years.

Mike: And what did you discover about the senior population that the food industry seems to be completely missing?

Jess: I generally think the food industry is missing something so fundamental that. Older adults are the most underestimated consumer in America. I think the food industry has treated people over [00:08:00] 65 like an afterthought. We see that through limited R & D budgets, lack of innovation, limited marketing dollars, the design talent, all of it flows towards.

15 to 35 year olds that's where the bulk of innovation has been. As well as in kids as well as in pets, everyone else, but older adults, they get the version of the product that was reformulated with a senior label slapped on it, or they get really nothing at all. And so the assumption is that. This group is set in their ways, doesn't try new things, and isn't really worth the investment, and I believe that assumption is just totally wrong. The people that I've spent the past year and a half talking to truly some of the most discerning, intentional, willing to pay for quality customers that I've ever encountered.

They read labels, they want high quality things that taste really good. They have super high standards for that, and they actually have. Decades of experience knowing what works and what doesn't work for their bodies. And the [00:09:00] other thing that's really interesting is that. 65 plus, quote unquote, is not one group.

Someone who's 65 and someone who's 90 are just as different from each other as someone who's 15 and someone who's 45. But the industry for some reason has just treated them like one demographic and serves them one product, and it's lazy. And I think that's what kind of leaves enormous amount of value and opportunity on the table.

Lucille exists because I think this population deserves what every other consumer takes for granted, which is products that were actually designed for them by people who took the time to understand them just as the customer they are. And that's what, we really hope to be bringing.

Mike: We have a lot of people here in The Villages 165,000 and growing. A lot of people are incredibly active. A lot of people think very well and very intentional. So there are two questions here. One, if an active senior was looking for the Lucille product where would they find it?

Jess: Yeah, [00:10:00] definitely. A few places they would find it on lucillehealth.com which is our website, and you can go learn more about our product, learn more about our ingredients, our story, all on there. And then we're also on Amazon. So if you type in. Lucille Nutrition Shakes or Lucille drinks, it will also pop up.

So on both places online. And then we'll also, hopefully be in retail stores for people to purchase boots on the ground at their local shops starting next year.

Mike: All right. Publix seems to almost monopolize the food industry here 

Jess: Yeah.

Mike: in The Villages. And I confess, I don't go into Publix very often. My wife does that. She says when I go in, it costs us an extra a hundred dollars. I just pick up stuff that I want to try. So could you tell us how Lucille fits into a active lifestyle for seniors here in The Villages?

A lot of 'em don't want to slow down. We have. 3,500 clubs and activities. People are always busy. How does the Lucille product fit in?[00:11:00] 

Jess: I love, that question because honestly, it gets at something that drives me a little crazy about how this whole category is talked about. I would say most quote unquote, senior nutrition is built around the assumption that you're in decline and you need something to help manage that descent. But what we're seeing over and over is how so many people are thriving as they age, the Villages is a really clear example of that. The more time I've spent getting to know everything that's happening at The Villages, and as you pointed out, it's so clear that people are not declining there.

They're active, they're energetic, they're exercising a lot. They're competing in pickleball and golf and dance in their own morning workout group. They're so active and anyone who's active. Needs fuel that matches what they're doing. I'll give you the example of think about a 25-year-old marathon runner doesn't eat the way that an average 25-year-old does.

They eat for what their body is actually being asked to do. And so we have built Lucille on the same principle. If you're someone who's playing three sets of tennis at [00:12:00] 8:00 AM and then walking nine holes of golf in the afternoon. Your body has real demands for protein, for recovery, for sustained energy that no product has really delivered on before for this population.

And so what Lucille actually does is deliver complete protein in a form your body can actually absorb at this stage when protein synthesis gets harder. And it also supports joint and muscle recovery. So you can show up tomorrow as ready as you did. Today and it also, again doesn't use refined sugar, so you're not experiencing that afternoon sugar crash as well.

So I'd say that Lucille. Not about slowing down, it's not about being careful, it's the opposite. It's for people that decided that they want their seventies to look a lot more like their fifties than what their parents' seventies look like. They understand that the food choices you make every day are pulling you towards the future. And so we feel like we're the fuel for people who refuse to coast and who refuse to slow down. So it feels really in line with a lot of how you're describing. [00:13:00] The group at The Villages.

Mike: Good. I've got a couple more questions for you, but before we go on, we're gonna take a short break and listen to Dr. Craig Curtis talk about. Alzheimer's or give us some Alzheimer's tips. 

Dr. Craig Curtis: When we talk about the causes of heart attacks and strokes and peripheral vascular disease, we all know about things such as diabetes, smoking, and poor diet choices. Those are all called modifiable risk factors. You can change those and you can lower your risk. And then if we talk about non-modifiable risk factors, things you cannot change.

There's a cholesterol that has been labeled. The ghost cholesterol. 

Mike: I've heard of good cholesterol and bad cholesterol. Now I have to worry about a ghost cholesterol. 

Dr. Craig Curtis: That's right. There is a cholesterol known as lipoprotein A, that cholesterol has been known about for a long time. [00:14:00] However, scientists over the last decade have discovered that this is one of the major.

Risk factors for heart disease, cardiovascular disease, cerebral vascular disease, such as strokes and peripheral vascular disease, such as problems in the legs. And what they've discovered is that this is a genetically linked lipoproteins. What that means is it runs in families, and unfortunately we've had no way to modify this.

Warren: Dr. Curtis's goal is to educate The Villages community on how to live a longer, healthier life. To learn more, visit his website, CraigCurtisMD.com , or call 3 5 2 5 0 0 5 2 5 2 to attend a free seminar.

Mike: Thank you, Dr. Curtis. Jess. You were talking about the

formulas that you have. Are there any that are specifically tailored to people who have. A more sedimentary lifestyle. They go out to [00:15:00] shows, okay? They go to parties with their friends or they attend clubs where they're not as active as a golfer or a tennis ball player or a pickleball player, because not everyone plays those things.

Jess: Definitely. I think that, so we have two pro.

Mike: In fact, I don't think your grandmother probably plays

Jess: No she

Mike: or golf.

But, a healthy drink, maybe even a meal substitute that someone's more sedentary in their lifestyle.

Jess: perhaps, people who are more sedentary in their lifestyle need even more some of these additional nutrients that they might not be getting through. Traditional food, if they have a loss of appetite or just not eating as well. Balanced of a diet. So our two products and the chocolate and the vanilla complete nutrition shakes, they provide 20 grams of protein, five to six grams of fiber, 230 to 240 calories, 23 vitamins and minerals, and pretty low sodium and low sugar.

Anyone who's really, whether you're active or you have a more sedentary lifestyle, you're still benefiting [00:16:00] from the higher protein to help support muscle. You're still be benefiting from additional calories to maintain weight and, not move so towards frailty. And

Mike: How,

Jess: ahead.

Mike: yeah. I was curious how much calcium is in the drink compared to a glass of milk.

Jess: a good question. I can get back to you on that.

Mike: Okay. But it does have calcium in it.

Jess: Yeah. we really took the approach of in terms of the 23 vitamins and minerals that are in there, equivalent to a multivitamin in terms of what you're getting but with an extra emphasis on what older adults might need more of. And so again, working with the experts at the Shands school to really help guide a lot of that understanding. But really focused on vitamin D, calcium levels, B vitamins. And think that, for our future products, we even have the opportunity to incorporate, many more of those essential vitamins that are diff more difficult to absorb as you age.

Mike: Is your product manufactured here in America?

Jess: A hundred percent of our ingredients are sourced from US suppliers, and the product is [00:17:00] fully manufactured in the US which we're super proud of being made in America through and through.

Mike: Now the package is sold as a powder or liquid.

Jess: A liquid, so it's sold as a complete, ready-to-drink nutrition shake. So we have two ways that you can drink the product. The first is using the straw that you extend, wait for the click, and then stab into the top. And that's if you're just on the go or you're just drinking it as is.

And then the silver part of the pull tab on top of the bottle, you can also. Pull up and pour that over a glass of ice or make it into, mix it with pancake mix to make high protein pancakes. I've been really enjoying both the chocolate and the vanilla, but yeah, either one of them mixed with a scoop of peanut butter, some ice. A banana in a smoothie. And it tastes so good. But I have all sorts of people writing in with all different things that they're using the product for. Some people are mixing it with matcha, people are using the vanilla as a coffee creamer. I'd say it's pretty [00:18:00] versatile in terms of its applications, but it is a ready to drink liquid, not a powder, to reduce that additional step.

Mike: Sure how shelf stable is it?

Jess: It has 12 months of shelf stability right now, but it's in extended shelf life test to hopefully get up to 15 months. So no need to worry so much on expiring product if you order it.

Mike: Okay, so let's pretend I wanted to drink it on the go. So I assume I'm going to use the built-in straw mechanism. 

Jess: Yeah,

Mike: the best way?

Jess: be the best way. Or you could pull up the tab and throw the bottle up in the air to drink it that way. It just depends on what your preferences are, but giving people the option.

Mike: Okay. After you've opened it, is there any life expectancy on it?

Jess: hours once

Mike: Once I open it, I've got to consume that whole package in 48 hours.

Jess: It's only eight ounces. So especially when you drink it with a straw, you can drink it honestly in a matter of 10 or 20 seconds. It goes down really easily. It's a pretty smooth kind of thicker [00:19:00] consistency, tasting more like a milkshake.

But I would say that we haven't had so much feedback that. If anything, like the product is probably too small. It's just in the eight ounce, like 237 milliliter bottle. Pretty easy to be able to drink that amount of product in one sitting. But yeah, if you haven't finished it or you're snacking on it throughout a couple of days, the recommend the,

Mike: Is it resealable? 

Jess: Yeah,

Mike: resealable

Jess: if you

Mike: in the bottle?

Jess: tab back down, it's, not a perfect reseal, but it's resealable enough to stay in your fridge safely.

Mike: Oh, but not driving the car with it.

Jess: No, I, yeah, driving the car would be fine with it, and if you have the straw, it's not it's not like the product would go everywhere.

Mike: Okay. So you get it home. You put it on the shelf because I assume it doesn't need to be refrigerated, does it?

Jess: but it's definitely best served cold. So if you're about to drink it or you know you're gonna be drinking it all week, I would definitely recommend putting

Mike: I,

Jess: the fridge before that.

Mike: Does it need to be shaken up before you, try the [00:20:00] beverage.

Jess: if you don't shake it or you forget to, nothing will be too different.

Mike: Okay. So it doesn't separate out like oil and water.

Jess: No it doesn't.

Mike: Jess, what is the next step in your product line?

Jess: so we're really excited to build out a full suite of products, specifically designed for older adults and their needs. And so we have a lot of really exciting new products in the product roadmap. One theme that I can chat about is this idea of hydration. People, no matter their age, just struggle with dehydration.

And so we're really excited about hydration products specifically for older adults that have a little bit less sodium and a slightly different composition than all of the hydration products that are out there. That's one area that we're really excited about. We're also looking forward to just reformulating some of the classics.

A lot of people love chocolate and vanilla pudding as an example for dessert, but they're filled with the same kind of artificial low quality ingredients that have been out there [00:21:00] forever. And so we're really excited to reformulate and reimagine. Potentially higher protein or much cleaner ingredient chocolate and or vanilla pudding and exploring different flavors with that could look as well.

We have really big dreams and aspirations in terms of what this product roadmap could look like. I think what's really interesting is if you go to the grocery store right now. you go to the adult nutrition aisle, it just looks like shakes and supplements and beverages, and that's just how it has always been thought of.

Whereas at Lucille, we think that's so narrow minded. Older adults are eating so many things, they're experimenting with new things, they know what they like and we think that there's just an opportunity to bring much better products truly like reimagine. Hopefully in five years you go to the adult nutrition aisle in CVS or Publix or wherever it is, and it looks completely different than it does today. So we're really excited to be leading that charge.

Mike: I've never seen an adult nutrition aisle

That's something now I have to go look for, [00:22:00] to see if it actually exists.

Jess: Depending on the store it's labeled different things. But it's where your kind of legacy shakes are usually housed, whether it's called adult nutrition, sometimes it's called sports nutrition. It just depends on the store. But yeah, a lot of them are labeled adult nutrition.

Mike: Now can the Lucille beverage be used as a dessert?

Jess: When I was saying that I love to mix it with peanut butter and ice and a banana, that's typically what my fiance and I are eating for dessert after dinner. Absolutely hits that dessert

Mike: 240 calories, it's not that much, but it's also not that little. Are you planning to come up with a dietetic version?

Jess: Definitely something in the roadmap.

Mike: A lot of people have diabetes or pre-diabetes here 

Jess: it's, something that we're absolutely in the roadmap looking at, but right now we're really excited about how versatile this product can be for all sorts of people and, different things that people are dealing with.

Exploring more of a diabetic line is definitely in [00:23:00] the roadmap. But for right now, these are our two main products.

Mike: Now you said it's best if it's refrigerated. Does it have to be refrigerated?

Jess: 12 to 15 months and does not need to be in the fridge at all for that period of time. I just mean when you're about to drink it or. Are going to mix it into something further. It's best enjoyed cold. Especially I'm thinking of everybody at The Villages, just in the Florida sun and the heat. It'll be so much more refreshing drinking it cold or with ice or blended into a smoothie than drinking it warm, although. People are really enjoying it warm too. So just depends on your preferences, but my recommendation founder tip would be to drink it more on the cool side.

Mike: Have I failed to ask you any question that you really wanted to talk about?

Jess: Yeah, one question that I definitely wanted to chat through was just as idea around. Trust and why people should choose Lucille over what's currently available. I know that a lot of people just trust the same food brands. They [00:24:00] like what they like for decades, and so why do you think people should choose Lucille over what's currently available I it's a, it is a super fair question and I have that loyalty. I think it's a very normal thing to be very loyal to brands. If a brand has shown up for you for 30 or 40 years, you've earned the right to be skeptical of anyone new asking for a shot like we are would say this, I would say that we're not asking anyone to throw away what's working.

What we're saying is that there have been huge advancements in food as medicine, in longevity, in the aging process, and we would've expected that new food and beverage products. Keep up with that science and yet largely what we see for older adults just hasn't changed since the 1970s and 1980s when a lot of these legacy products have come out.

And so Lucille was built from the ground up for the body that you actually have at 65, 75, 85. That means protein levels that actually help you hold onto muscle mass, a lot less sodium, a lot less [00:25:00] sugar, no refined sugar. Or sugar alcohols at all, and textures and packaging that is just much more friendly and actually works.

And so the other thing that I would say as well is that taste matters. And I alluded to this a little bit in the beginning, but a lot of quote unquote healthy aging food has historically been awful. And we.

Mike: Bland at best. Yes.

Jess: To make anything that doesn't taste like something that you'd want to eat again and again, because the best nutrition plan in the world does not work if you don't enjoy the food.

And so that's a real leading pillar for us. I'm definitely not asking anyone to be disloyal to what they love. I would just say to try it. And if it earns a place at your table, great. And if not, you've lost nothing.

Mike: Great. And if they want to contact you after hearing this podcast, what should they do? Jess?

Jess: LucilleHealth.com, and if you go to the contact us page at the bottom, you could submit a request. I read all of the emails and would love to chat and [00:26:00] get back to you

Mike: So Jess, is there a discount code that Villagers who listen to this podcast can use?

Jess: We are thrilled to give a 15% discount to anyone ordering through our website, so go to LucilleHealth.com and type in TheVillages15 15 to claim 15% off your first order.

Mike: Good. And I assume that won't work on Amazon.

Jess: on Amazon. Just on LucilleHealth.com.

Mike: 15%. Great. Thanks a lot, Jess. Bye. 

Jess: Thank you.

Nancy: Remember, our next episode will be released next Friday at 9:00 AM. Should you wanna become a major supporter of the show or have questions, please contact us at mike@rothvoice.com. This is a shout out for supporters, Tweet Coleman, Ed Williams, Duane Roemmich, Paul Sorgen, and Dr. Craig Curtis at K 2 in The Villages.

We'll be hearing more from Dr. Curtis with short Alzheimer's tips each week. If you know someone who should be [00:27:00] on the show. Contact us at mike@rothvoice.com. The way our show grows is with your help. Text your friends about this show. If you enjoyed listening, use the fan mail button on our homepage, VillagesVitality.Life to leave comments, be sure to include your name, email, and phone number. We thank everyone for listening. The content of the show is copyrighted by Roth Voice 2026, all rights reserved.