About Us

Gregory Churcher is a founder and operator of several businesses in Wellington, New Zealand. He discovered Konjac in 2003 while he was travelling, when he was recommended to increase his dietary fibre intake for weight loss.

Greg's personal experience as a consumer of Konjac spans over a decade. As a result, he has an in depth understanding of its uses as a food and the basis of some of the beneficial health claims. His interests in the ecology of the Konjac plant and the refinement process into Konjac Glucomannan have lead him to not only grow the plant in New Zealand, but to also build trade routes from south east Asia where the plant is native.

“Considering Konjac has been used as a food and medicine for many

centuries in the east, we are a bit late, but are finally at the Konjac party.”

Gregory Churcher

Not all brands of Konjac powder are the same. In recognition of this challenge, Kapiti Health Foods stands as a source of trusted food grade Konjac Glucomannan for the local market, as well as a way to share knowledge and demystify some of the medical research around its use in the western diet.

Our Articles

New Zealand’s Food Standard 1.2.7 was developed by the Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ). This standard is enforced by the Ministry of Primary Industries (MPI) and explains the elements of a legitimate health claim. There are 2 kinds of health claims:

General level health claims are claims that do not reference a serious disease
High level health claims are claims that reference a serious disease

A health claim is defined as when there is a direct link between a food and a certain health effect, whether in labelling or advertising. There are more than 200 relationships between certain foods and their health effects that are already approved by the FSANZ. For example, an approved claim regarding dietary fibre states that dietary fibre contributes to regular laxation. Therefore, dietary fibre can help relieve constipation. A food can meet the standard for making such a claim if it is up to the right standard.

Other general health claims, although not high level health claims, can be established with supporting evidence. Establishing a health claim involves collating scientific evidence that shows a correlation between a food and a certain health effect. This evidence should also include high quality studies, such as double blind placebo-controlled randomised trials. These kinds of studies help to eliminate bias and therefore aid towards the credibility of a health claim.

We have done our best to include as many high quality studies as possible in our articles. However, more research trials regarding glucomannan and gut health need to be undertaken to cover gaps in knowledge. We acknowledge that in order to ensure credible health claims, we need more studies in these areas as well.