Light Heart LLC, a rice ingredient company specializing in fortified rice bran and gluten free ingredients is pleased to announce the association of Dennis J. Reid technical sales specialist for Food Ingredient Technologies LLC in St. Louis, MO for technical sales and service in the bakery arena. Dennis formerly with dynamic multinational companies such as New Zealand Milk Products Inc., Pfizer Inc., Rhone-Poulenc Inc., Ashland Distribution Co., Gallard-Schlesinger Industries, Inc., and Sensient Technologies, Inc. has held positions ranging from Food Technologist/Product Development to VP of Sales and Marketing. Dennis holds B.S. degrees from Pennsylvania State University in Biology and Food Science and a M.B.A. with a focus on marketing & innovation management from Syracuse University. He will be working with Light Heart, LLC R&D and management for technical sales of their line of bran based ingredients including heartbran ®, gutbran ®, & nutrabran ®.

Diane Wright Hoffpauer, founder and managing director, formed Light Heart in 2003 after working in the food industry for 25 years. Diane formerly with nutraceutical and encapsulation business, The Wright Group in Crowley, LA, has started several successful businesses and has acquired invaluable experience with nutraceutical sales and technical service/product development for global food and nutraceutical companies. She has published articles for trade journals, books and newspapers. She and her father, S.L. Wright III hold the patent, issued in August, 2002 for Light Heart’s proprietary ingredient, heartbran ®. Diane has a B.S. in Food Science and a M.F.A. in Creative Writing from LSU in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Creativity is being used to bring the Light Heart, LLC ingredients to R&D departments in a food system that will be consumer acceptable. Much of the flavor and stability work will be done before presentation to companies so that the taste and shelf life has already been proven, lessening the burden on product development teams. A double blind, placebo controlled clinical study has been completed by the Pennington Biomedical Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana that explored the scientific claims of the products.