Abergavenny parents who struggle for time trying to prepare healthy family meals need not worry after the launch of a new business providing ready-made healthy sauces.

Lotsa Goodness is a business that specialises in creating a range of healthy sauces packed with fruit and vegetables.

The business was created by school dietitian Rachel Margetts in April and has already proved successful having won two awards at this year’s Nourish People’s Choice Awards.

Lotsa Goodness’ website contains information on local stockists that Rachel uses as well as recipes and information on the ingredients that go into making sauces such as seven veggie pasta sauce, eightveggie Mexican sauce and six veggie pizza sauce.

All of the sauces are fat-free, vegan and low in calories, salt and sugar.

Having worked as a dietitian for three years, running her own cookery sessions with families, schools and communities, Rachel spotted that there was a gap in the market for healthy fruit and veggie packed sauces suitable for people of all ages.

Speaking about the business, Rachel said: “As a mother of two children I know first-hand the stress that many parents have finding the time to prepare healthy meals from scratch to provide their children with a healthy and balanced diet.

“I’ve always had that entrepreneurial spirit and noticed that there was something of a gap in the market for healthy convenient sauces and realised with my experience as a dietitian that I could help not just parents but people of all ages eat healthier.”

After an exhausting few years running her cookery sessions and having two children within two years, Rachel experienced a burn out and was diagnosed with a chronic illness.

Consequently, she was forced to take time off work to recover and it was at this time that Rachel decided to launch her business.

She said: “I wanted my kids to continue to eat healthily but because of my illness I just didn’t have the energy to stand up and chop anymore. Luckily I was able to fall back on a freezer full of batch cooked sauces as a healthy base for meals, and that’s when I suddenly had the idea to create Lotsa Goodness.”

She lovingly named her sauces after her daughter Charlotte, or as she was nicknamed ‘Lots’.

It was when Charlotte was born that Rachel became ill and so it was fitting that she wanted her little ‘Lots’ to have ‘Lotsa Goodness’ and get the same nutrition that her eldest daughter Sophia had received. As someone who lives in Abergavenny Rachel understands the importance of supporting local businesses, and uses a number of local suppliers for the ingredients to her sauces including Little Green Refills, Marlows Place in Abergavenny as well as the the Gardener’s Kitchen in Llanellen. Lotsa Goodness was recently rewarded at the 2021 Nourish Awards winning the Nourish Kids Award as well the Nourish People’s Choice Award in the category of healthy cupboard staple. Rachel has also started selling her produce online and is due to meet up with Amazon and Ocado to discuss selling her sauces through the food retailers. As well as running the new business Rachel is working part-time as a School Dietitian implementing special diet and allergy procedures in addition to providing healthy cookery sessions in schools across Wales for Compass Cymru. After just 6 months since launching, Rachel is delighted that her new business is proving so popular and successful and even has plans to expand and open her own store one day. She added: “I’m so pleased that the business has proven so helpful and popular to people, and receiving the awards from the UK’s toughest health awards is great recognition and hopefully moving forward I can continue to grow the business and continue helping create healthy timesaving family-friendly sauces.” For more information on a range of sauces available at Lotsa Goodness, visit their website http://www.lotsagoodness.com/ or Facebook and Instagram pages.