It’s a moment many parents fear — their child has developed a nut allergy and now the most innocuous foods have to be eyed with suspicion. Was that food cooked with peanut oil? Was that snack made in a facility that also processes tree nuts?
But an Atlanta husband and wife team is trying to change that reality. Catherine and J.J. Jaxon want to end what they call the food allergy epidemic through their startup, Mission MightyMe. They have created nut butter puffs to expose children early to peanuts and tree nuts and hopefully prevent them from developing allergies in the future.
The startup recently reached a major milestone: Target has started stocking its products.
Credit: Miguel Martinez
Credit: Miguel Martinez
Peanut allergies are the most common food-induced cause of a dangerous allergic reaction known as anaphylaxis, which can cause a constriction of airways, swelling of lips, fainting and more, according to the Mayo Clinic.
The Jaxons have firsthand experience with food allergies — their eldest daughter is allergic to most nuts. When their first two children were born, pediatricians advised parents to avoid giving young children nuts, but their daughter still developed an allergy.
“We sort of just adjusted to being a food allergy family,” Catherine Jaxon told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “Made sure we were prepared, had an EpiPen (which delivers the drug epinephrine to counter the effects of anaphylaxis) in every backpack and assumed our whole family will just have to avoid nuts (in) the future.”
But by the time their third child, James, was born, the guidance started to change. A landmark study published in 2015 found giving children peanut products early in life actually reduced their chance of developing an allergy. In 2017, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases officially changed its stance and encouraged parents to feed peanut products to young kids.
In a follow-up study published in May this year, children fed peanut products from infancy to the age of 5 were 71% less likely to develop peanut allergies.
As the Jaxons looked to feed their youngest son peanuts and tree nuts, now they had a new problem: how to introduce the food in a way that wasn’t a choking hazard because no baby food contained nuts. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends mixing smooth peanut butter into a puree or feeding foods made with peanut butter.
“Catherine had this light bulb moment one night,” J.J. Jaxon recalled. “She was holding up this container of (rice) puffs that had just come in — that James ate all the time but do nothing for him — and this jar of mixed nut butter, and she said, ‘Why can’t somebody just put these two together?’ And honestly ... I looked right back at her and said, ‘Yeah, somebody should, but it’s not us.’”
In 2018, after years of waiting for big food brands to make a nut butter puff, the two decided to do it themselves. They brought on Dr. Gideon Lack, one of the researchers behind the landmark study that helped change pediatric peanut guidelines, and business executive and food allergy nonprofit founder Todd Slotkin as co-founders. Dr. Lack also serves as the company’s scientific adviser.
They spent about two years developing Mission MightyMe’s first puffs. In March 2020, the company went to market and now have four flavors of puffs, all manufactured in the United States: organic peanut butter, organic peanut butter banana, mixed nut butter and organic peanut butter strawberry.
Puffs have become very popular snack foods for kids. The Mission MightyMe puffs are made with nuts mixed with rice flour, peanut or other nut flours and fruits, depending on the variety.
Credit: Miguel Martinez
Credit: Miguel Martinez
After four years of only being sold online, two Mission MightyMe products — the organic peanut butter puffs and mixed nut butter puffs — are now available at select Target shelves and on the retail giant’s website.
“Our original plan wasn’t to launch in Target nationwide. We had a plan that built things out a little more slowly, but the opportunity came to us in a really organic kind of way where they showed significant interest,” J.J. Jaxon said. “We saw it as a very clear opportunity to get our products in front of more and more people at a reasonable price, and so we jumped at it.”
The founders funded the business entirely themselves until March of this year, when they raised $2.35 million from investors. Most of the company’s financial backers are based in Atlanta and are primarily family offices, though the Jaxons did not disclose specific investors. They are using the funding to add employees, and increase production and marketing.
Ultimately, the Jaxons hope Mission MightyMe becomes a mass market pantry staple for the whole family, not just a niche snack. Being stocked in Target is an important first step.
“This is really the fruition of so much work and so much of our early dream about this company and these products,” Catherine Jaxon said. “Our goal was to normalize having foods that contain peanuts, tree nuts and other common allergens on the baby aisle, because we know until that process is normalized, the food allergy rates are not going to come down.”
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