Christiana Zhu proudly calls herself a ‘Chiwi’ (a kiwi of Chinese ethnicity). A New Zealand expat from Auckland, she was exposed to the Asian market while working in the NZ tourism industry. She moved to China in 2014 to explore the Chinese market, was hired by WildChina for a project and eventually stayed on as head of marketing with WildChina.The move to Beijing hugely impacted her physically; she developed allergies and severe eczema, while her body adjusted to the air quality, different environment, and foods. In an effort to manage her allergies, triggered by severe lactose intolerance amongst other factors, she tried various solutions, and that’s how she discovered coconut milk based yogurt, which has really helped reduce her skin related issues.

“When I realized how beneficial it was, I wanted to share it with friends, in the hope of opening their eyes and minds to new healthy options for people with food allergies, who might have difficulty finding certain foods here in Beijing”, Christiana tells us.

“My friend made coconut yogurt for me and taught me to make it for myself, as it wasn’t available anywhere in China, including Taobao! I started taking it to parties and gatherings. It slowly got popular and then, urged by my supportive friends, I tried selling it at Farms to Neighbors farmers market. I really did not expect it to be such a huge hit. I sold out every single time and started getting WeChat orders for the week”, she adds.

From there, the business developed naturally. There is a huge demand in Beijing for dairy free products, especially yogurts. Expanding to the Hatchery has helped with wider visibility. Since it’s still a part time venture, she continues with her day job and is somehow managing to keep up with this fast growing business as well.

Yeyo is only six months old and very much in its infancy right now. However Christiana is taking it one step at a time and enjoying the steady growth, while entertaining further expansion ideas. “The most challenging part is to find the time and energy to keep it going! Yet, every time I feel tired and get tempted to scale back, I get a message or feedback from some client telling me how much they enjoy my yogurt, how they’ve not had yogurt for years due to allergies and can’t thank me enough for making it available for them.  They send me pictures with their yogurt! That re-energizes me and helps me plow through, to keep going”.

There’s no competition for her in the Beijing area, especially because it’s also unsweetened yogurt, which is hard to find in China. She offers dairy free yogurt, with the consistency of a Greek style yogurt, in three flavors every week. Two are standard, the pure yogurt and yogurt with honey. The third flavor varies every week, with a seasonal fruit compote at the bottom to make it interesting. You can find her yogurts at Farm to Neighbors Farmers Market, at the Hatchery and through WeChat as well. They come in 150ml glass jars for RMB 30, or a pack of four in a cooler bag for RMB 100. You can get a discount for recycling glass jars to reduce wastage. The delivery fee varies based on your location, and the yogurt needs to be delivered to your door within an hour, for it to be fresh. It’s usually around RMB 16 for CBD area and RMB 24 for the hutongs. And that name? It’s simple. Yeyo comes from the Chinese words ‘ye’ for coconut and ‘yo’ for yogurt!

Photo: Courtesy of Christana Zhu, Yeyo Yogurt.

Via Slate.com:

Parenting forums are teeming with moms discussing their babies’ so-called dairy and soy “sensitivities” (one mom helpfully recommends gummy bears, oreos, and potato chips as dairy-free snacks), and many of my friends swear that after giving up certain foods, their unhappy babies turned into cooers overnight. But anecdotal reports are one thing; what does science have to say? The research on this issue is complex, but the consensus is that, most of the time, a baby’s crying—even when incessant—isn’t caused or exacerbated by what you or he is eating. Babies cry, and it sucks, but it’s normal. Moreover, mothers who give up foods while breast-feeding can put themselves or their children at risk for nutritional deficiencies.

That said, a small percentage of babies are indeed allergic to food proteins—somewhere between 2 to 8 percent are allergic to cow’s milk, but among babies who have only ever been fed breast milk, the risk is only about 0.5 percent; an infant’s risk of being allergic to soy is estimated at 0.7 percent—and these babies, who usually have other warning signs in addition to crying a lot, do fare better after dietary changes. Food allergies and intolerances are notoriously difficult to diagnose in young kids. (An allergy is not the same thing as an intolerance: The former usually involves an immune-mediated reaction, whereas an intolerance can involve different physiological responses, not usually immune.) Some children do not respond to skin prick tests when they are allergic, while others who aren’t allergic do. Blood antibody tests (which look for evidence that the body is primed to react to certain proteins) aren’t always useful either, in part because some food intolerances don’t involve antibodies.

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