The Goddess Of Go-Gurt

By John Cloud/Minneapolis

Sheri Schellhaass is a scientist whose version of the Petri dish is a plastic tray displaying Galaxy Blast Fruit Roll-Ups. And she's a foodie, a culinary whiz, in fact, who prefers egg-salad sandwiches for lunch and wears a hairnet at work. If you're part of the foie gras set, stop reading. But if you want yogurt on a stick, you gotta meet her.

As a research executive for General Mills, Schellhaass doesn't create the most inspiring flavors (not counting Key-lime-pie yogurt), but she does make food that most of us actually eat. Like Go-Gurt, this yogurt-in-a-tube thing that has become a sensation among kids. It is the fastest-selling yogurt product ever released and one of General Mills' biggest market entrants in its 72-year history. (The key: Go-Gurt's tube means no spoon is required.) The company has sold $340 million worth of Go-Gurt, according to an independent researcher, and General Mills has dethroned Dannon as the nation's leading yogurt maker.

Schellhaass's secret? The know-how to process organic food into something that will taste good after weeks on a shelf, and a common touch. "Sometimes your consumer is a 12-year-old making dinner for Mom," Schellhaass says, "or someone who hasn't read directions on a box in 20 years."

She's now out to create healthier foods that taste good. It's tough. "In the '90s, the attitude was, 'Take the bad out--get out the fat, the salt,'" she says. But that removed taste. So Schellhaass is concocting products like Harmony, a cereal that's not as bland and healthy as All-Bran but has added folic acid and calcium, which women need. Schellhaass is finding ways for us to have our cake and beat fat too.

--By John Cloud/Minneapolis