"The fact is that today people simply don't have time for preparing healthy meals. The processed food contains too much sugar and salt. More and more Slovenians are deciding on a healthy diet, however most people only when a health problem occurs."

Our first question to Nastja Kramer, the founder of the web shop for healthy food Malinca, was: do Slovenians eat healthy food, and which are the biggest problems we encounter.

"Every pantry should be always stocked with fresh fruit and vegetables, healthy sweeteners (coconut sugar, or agave syrup), oil of good quality (I always use coconut, and olive oil), freshly ground flour (I mostly use spelt and buckwheat flour), and all sorts of flakes (great for breakfast, for smoothies, and to replace flour when baking)," she advises. Their motto is "a pantry full of health", but we should obey other rules as well: "We should eat regularly (five meals a day), the quantity of food should be small, but diverse, and the food should be fresh and processed as little as possible. We should listen to our body, and eat the food which makes us feel good. But I still believe that a breakfast is by far the most important meal of the day. It should include proteins, carbohydrates, and healthy fats – and thus give us enough energy to start a new day."

Nastja and her friend Andreja entered the entrepreneur world in May of the previous year, and only a year later Malinca managed to become one of the finalists for the Young Entrepreneur of 2014 competition. The Malinca team was very happy with the nomination: "Being listed among the four best was a confirmation that Andreja Stopar (co-owner) and I are going in the right direction. It also gives us a great opportunity to increase our recognizability, and credibility in the entrepreneurial world."

The winner of the mentioned competition for the best young entrepreneur was Jana Fleišer, the founder of the Dobra teta kindergarten. In her recent interview she told MMC that she regularly follows the recipes and news by Malinca. And she is not the only one: there are a lot of customers and followers of Malinca, and almost 50,000 Facebook likes. In their first year they counted more than 1,200,000 views of their web site.

Malinca is a health food shop, and a web site for healthy recipes (they offer freshly ground flours, all kinds of flakes and seeds, products of coconut, cocoa, hemp, spelt, and many other superfoods). The Health Portal, as Nastja calls it, contains much more than only products for sale.

1,300 boys and girls wish to lead a healthy life
Among other things Malinca is the organizer of the Healthy 2014 project, for which they have connected with other bloggers, nutritionists, psychotherapists, and fitness trainers: "By this project we wish to encourage people towards a healthy life style. The response is excellent – 1,300 boys and girls from different parts of Slovenia regularly follow the project, and are doing a great progress. I am also working diligently to reach the goals – I believe that by the end of the year I will have succeeded in reaching the five goals set, including five meals a day. Nothing is impossible if you put some effort into it. Often you need to prepare the meals in advance, due to our busy schedules." We were interested in the types of questions the users address to her. "Mostly the problems are excessive body weight, increased cholesterol level, and diabetes."

Malinca (they chose this name, meaning a small raspberry in the Slovenian language, because it was one of the few free domains, and because both Nastja and Andreja love raspberries) was based on Nastja's hobbies (sport, cooking, marketing), and the change in her diet. "I changed my way of life after getting my first job in a wellness centre. At that moment I realized that I can have a quality, healthy and long life only by eating a balanced, healthy diet, and by practicing sport. After working for two years I realized I needed free hands for realizing my ideas, so I combined my hobbies, and Malinca was born."

Recently Malinca came alive in a physical form as well. "We opened a shop for two reasons – because more and more people kept coming directly into our offices/warehouse for their packages of healthy food, and because we needed more space because of our expansion. We are satisfied with our little shop, and the number of visitors is increasing. But the sale from this "real" shop presents only approximately 10% of all sales." They have no intention of opening other shops, as they intend to dedicate all their attention to web sale. The Malinca products are slowly gaining their place in other health food shops in Slovenia, through wholesale.