FuD - About Heidi Van Pelt

About Heidi Van Pelt

Heidi VanPelt began her food career as a hobby cooking for her professors while attending Stephens College and then later the University of Missouri. She found an apprentice position under a French provinçal chef de cuisine and maitre patissier where she spent long hours honing her skills. She continued her education in the culinary arts when she moved to Seattle to attend the University of Washington working at various restaurants to experience line kitchens and their ethnic cuisines.

In 1989, Heidi’s culinary skills took a turn when she abandoned eating animals and their by-products. While in Seattle she became vegan fostering a new frontier for her palette. She moved to Los Angeles and discovered raw foods in 1993 opening even more doors to her expanding cuisine. Spending countless hours in the kitchen creating raw delicacies and animal-free meats, Heidi created the world’s first cashew cheese in 1996. She launched this cheese from her home entertaining many guests with raw delights covered in this new raw cashew cheese. One such notable guest became her partner - they launched Playfood Inc. in 2002 and opened the manufacturing facility in 2005 in Parkville, Missouri. Playfood can be found at most local grocery outlets and now the national chain, WholeFoods.

After becoming conscious of her eating habits, Heidi became more curious about human health. She took courses from the American Academy of Nutrition now known as the Huntington College of Health Sciences in Corona, California. She completed her coursework becoming certified as a Nutritional Counselor. With this knowledge she was able to volunteer most of her time to various organizations. She worked part time for The Watts Family Health Clinic in Watts, California, teaching medically and economically impaired individuals how to thrive on a budget while eating a vegan diet. She specifically tailored their meals according to their ailments. She also volunteered with Justiceville USA, a dome community in downtown Los Angeles that provided shelter to otherwise homeless individuals. She taught workshops for the community on how to eat completely healthy on donated food. In Inglewood, California she taught nutritional and culinary workshops for the HeadStart program.

More volunteer work brought her to South Dakota where she worked with the Lakota tribe on Pine Ridge Reservation. She worked with children making playful raw food without the use of knives or blenders. Heidi also taught adult workshops for the parents on how to make simple sun baked recipes with their native foods such as wild rice, sage, local vegetables and berries.

By 1997, Heidi had a radio show on KPFK 90.7 FM called “Raw Health”, where she was comedy relief known as nutritionist “Miss Huffman”, (her mother’s maiden name), her co-star was Dr. DeAndrea, M.D., her co-worker at the Watt’s Family Clinic. Through their radio show they were introduced to Woody Harrelson and within a year, the doctor, Woody Harrelson and Heidi created O2, an oxygen bar that served raw food. Heidi moved on from this project to further her volunteer work and eventually create the company Playfood.

Throughout the years of research, teaching and volunteering, since 1994, Heidi has catered hundreds of events in the entertainment industry, served as a private chef to several celebrities and taught many private and personal chefs vegan and raw culinary tricks being one of the pioneers of a new generation of “conscious chefs”. Heidi continues her path of nutritional study and forward business thinking in her hometown of Kansas City where she is pushing the nutritional envelope for the locals by soon opening FüD, an all organic, vegan restaurant.