Our Story
Mitzi Dulan, RD, CSSD
Founder + Chief Fueling Officer
As a registered dietitian with degrees in both nutrition and exercise science, Mitzi Dulan, has always had a passion for delicious and nutritious food. After completing the highly competitive dietetic internship at UCSF Medical Center in San Francisco, Mitzi immediately became a nutrition entrepreneur and started her own nutrition consulting company at age 25. She started getting many media requests for nutrition segments on television, was hired as a nutrition spokesperson for several food brands and was frequently quoted as a nutrition and fitness expert. She launched NutritionExpert.com in 1999 and then became the first team sports nutritionist for the Golden State Warriors. Mitzi won the Outstanding Young Dietitian of the Year in California and also the Entrepreneur of the Year by Kansas State University.
After moving back to her home state of Kansas, shortly after 9/11, with her husband and new baby girl, Mitzi became the team sports nutritionist for one of her favorite childhood teams, The Kansas City Chiefs. A few years later, she also became the sports nutritionist for her other favorite team, The Kansas City Royals. She wrote a few books, including one with future Hall-of-Famer, Tony Gonzalez, called The All-Pro Diet and also The Pinterest Diet.
HARD WORK + A LITTLE LUCK
In her 10th season with the Kansas City Royals, Mitzi decided to make her protein ball recipe that went viral on Pinterest for the players. She created the recipe to have an ideal ratio of protein, carbs, and healthy fats for sustained energy with a satisfying and yummy taste. The players LOVED them. She doubled, tripled and quadrupled the recipe and the guys would gobble them all up and they also kept winning and winning. In baseball, we are very superstitious so the players kept asking for more protein balls. Six weeks later the Kansas City Royals won the World Series for the first time in 30 years.
simplyFUEL IS BORN
The requests to buy Mitzi’s protein balls started during the MLB playoffs when all the local television stations did stories about Mitzi’s balls helping to fuel the Royals’ success. After encouragement from her other nutrition entrepreneur friends, Mitzi decided it was time to make the balls a business. She started getting orders from other sports teams and engaged the help from some of her mom friends who would come over to Mitzi’s kitchen and help roll balls until they had to pick their kids up from school. They are no longer in her kitchen. It’s been a wild ride and we are so grateful for all the protein ball love and how so many families and sports teams love fueling with simplyFUEL. We are excited for our future.
WHAT WE BELIEVE
We believe that life should be fun and a big part of a fun life is eating great tasting food with others we love. We also believe that delicious food can be nutritious and we are committed to creating yummy on-the-go snacks with whole food ingredients. We want to help you fuel your fun!
GIVING BACK
Mitzi has always enjoyed giving back but simplyFUEL has allowed her to align with a social mission that is close to her heart. Mitzi is partnering with Big Green which helps build Learning Gardens for underserved schools around the country. Learning Gardens are dynamic outdoor classrooms and edible gardens so kids get to grow their own food. simplyFUEL is donating 1% of profits to Big Green to help build more Learning Gardens. There is also a personal connection with Big Green as it was founded by Kimbal Musk, who is the son of dietitian, Maye Musk. Maye is a longtime friend who helped mentor Mitzi as a young nutrition entrepreneur when she lived in San Francisco. Yes, Maye is also Elon’s mom.