Intrigue
Thursday, January 21, 2016
11 ThePlainsman.com
Intrigue
Lifestyle
Opelika teen invents million-dollar company
Ben Ruffin
Intrigue Writer
While many teenagers look forward to leaving baseball practice to go home, one Opelika teenager looks forward to going to work. Still in his baseball practice attire, Taylor Rosenthal, freshman at Opelika High School, enters the doors at the Round House in Opelika ready to work on bettering his business. As an eighth-grader at Opelika Middle School, Taylor devised the idea for first-aid vending machines in his Young Entrepreneurs Academy class sponsored by the Opelika Chamber of Commerce. Fast-forward a few months, and Taylor serves as founder and CEO of RecMed, a first-aid vending machine company that was officially granted its patent in October. “RecMed is a company I created where we make computerized and robotic vending machines that dispense first-aid supplies,” Taylor said. “It functions similarly to a Redbox machine, but instead of dispensing DVDs, it dispenses first-aid supplies.” Taylor, who has been around sports his whole life, began his business with the help of his parents, who work in the medical field. However, it wasn’t until he had a realization that the idea for the vending machines came about. “I started out sitting out at sporting events selling first-aid kits,” Taylor said. “Then I noticed how much it would cost to pay someone minimum wage to sit out at a tournament for six hours, so I had to find a way around that but still have the first-aid supplies there. So that’s how I came up with the vending machine.” Since the invention of the RecMed vending machines, Taylor has spent countless hours bettering his idea behind the doors of the Round House, an incubator for startup businesses. Since receiving his patent, Taylor has turned down an offer to buy the company for $30 million, instead choosing to close with a number of
partners and investors who helped him raise the funds for the prototype. Taylor, who won the opportunity to work with the Round House through a class competition, credits the incubator for kick starting his idea and bettering his business. “To graduate from the class, you had to go to a pitch day, and there were four judges that you pitched in front of,” Taylor said. “They picked one person to compete in the regionals, and I won that. Round House said that whoever won the class they would take in, get them what they needed like business cards, brochures and anything they needed to go to Boca Raton. They helped me get ready for it and get all of the things I needed. They helped a lot.” However, the Round House founder and Taylor’s business mentor Kyle Sandler said Taylor’s success stems from his drive, which Sandler said is exceptional. “We had to kick him out of here on Christmas Eve to spend time with his family, and every minute of fall break he was here at the Round House,” Sandler said. “When he’s not in school or playing baseball, he’s here working on anything from customer discovery to lead generation to where he can put his product.” Taylor’s hard work recently landed him an invitation to Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show, a global consumer electronics and consumer technology trade show that took place at the start of January. There, he had the opportunity to pitch his product to the producers of Shark Tank. The results from that pitch will be released in two months and will determine if Taylor gets an audition for the show. If Taylor makes it on the show Shark Tank, there is one shark in general that he said he would like to strike a deal with and who he recently saw in Las Vegas. “Mark Cuban, because he is a big sports guy,” Taylor said. “He walked by my booth in Las Ve-
Dakota Sumpter / Photo editor
Taylor Rosenthal, 14, CEO of RecMed, stands in front of Round House.
gas, but he was walking so fast and he couldn’t stop or else he would have gotten mobbed.” While Taylor described his experience in Las Vegas as “awesome,” he is already planning a trip of equal importance to New York City where he will try and promote his vending machines. “It’s not a done deal yet, but we are working on that,” Taylor said. “We are looking at a variety of different shows out there, and we’ve been talking to some of the shows about going on, so were just going to see where it goes.” While Taylor runs his business for the most part, his father helps out with the business and accompanies his son to the trade shows and promotion trips. While not many parents have the
opportunity to talk business with their children, Terry Rosenthal has welcomed the business and chance to work with and for his son. “It’s definitely something a lot of people don’t get to do, and actually I worked for him last week,” Terry said. “He had me at the booth all week talking to people. He was there most of the time, but he did get to go around the show and see some stuff. But it’s been amazing.” As for the future of the business, the 14-yearold founder and CEO said he does not have any immediate plans. “We really want to grow it for maybe six to 12 months and then just see where it’s at then, see what it’s worth and how it’s going,” Taylor said.
New year, new diet: How to combat some of the most addictive foods
Sterling waits / Graphic Designer
These include some of the most addicting foods for students.
Emily Esleck
Managing editor
With the onset of a new year comes celebration, a new start and for some, it’s the time to start new resolutions. Losing weight hit No. 1 on the top 10 New Year’s resolutions for 2015 list, according to Statistic Brain Institute. Dieting and health are two main concerns most people have, and with the new year they try to get on track, but there are some foods that make it seem impossible to succeed. Onikia Brown, assistant professor of nutrition and extension specialist, said people who diet this time of year are looking for a fresh start. “They’re looking to change, looking to improve themselves,” Brown said. “So it’s not always a diet to lose weight, but it’s just a better diet to be healthier.” In 2015 the University of Michigan conducted two studies. Results from both studies varied, but pizza, choco-
late, cookies and ice cream were in the top five of each study. The study concluded highly processed foods were most associated with addictive eating behavior. Michael Greene, assistant professor of nutrition and dietetics, said salt, sugar and fat are three key ingredients in processed foods. “There’s an abundance of them [processed foods],” Greene said. “You go to the grocery store, you go anywhere, and they’re just all over the place. So we’re bombarded by them.” Food companies can change the amount of sugar, salt and fat in processed foods to get the right balance, according to Greene. Sugar and fat are the driving ingredients of the three, and by reducing either one, more salt is added, Greene said. Salt acts as a balancer when trying to eliminate sugar and fat, according to Greene.
Greene said most addictive foods will have high fructose corn syrup or another simple sugar such as glucose and fat. Pizza hits all three addictive ingredients, according to Greene. He said pizza is made to be more salty in the U.S., with the cheese having the fat and the sauce containing the sugar. When eating pizza, Greene said he treats it like dessert. “So I would never have like a piece of cake or something after having pizza, because I’ve already had my dessert — it was for dinner,” Greene said. Greene said companies that make fat-free items are putting more salt and sugar in the product to overcompensate for the reduced fat. “That’s how [food companies] get away with it,” Greene said. “And I think that’s why people have a hard time stopping when they eat those types of foods because the brain real-
ly does like it.” Consuming these addictive foods activates opioid receptors in the brain, according to Greene. These receptors are also triggered when abusing drugs such as heroin. Greene said to combat these addictive foods, people should strive to be healthy by eating a variety of fruits and vegetables, balancing nutrition such as carbohydrates, proteins, vitamins and minerals and moderating the types and amounts of food consumed. Moderation is where people tend to fail the most, according to Greene. Brown said meal planning is important when trying to avoid addictive foods and maintain a healthy diet. Getting enough sleep, exercising and choosing a diet low in fat and sugars and high in fiber can contribute to a healthier lifestyle, according to Brown. “If every meal every day is a high fat, high sugar, low fiber food then you
should probably rethink your diet and your meals,” Brown said. Dorothy Dickmann, senior in accounting, said people don’t normally maintain their New Year’s resolutions, especially when losing weight. “The first couple of weeks in the rec center, like right after Christmas break everybody’s there, and a few weeks after that, everybody’s gone,” Dickmann said. Dickmann said people don’t necessarily have to make a healthier lifestyle change at the New Year, but instead re-asses their eating habits during the year. Although Dickmann said she personally doesn’t have cravings for addictive foods, she said she understands how one can be addicted to those specific foods. “Say you have a package of Oreos, and you just end up eating a whole side of it without even thinking about it,” Dickmann said.
featured app
Meet Peach, the new combined social media app taking students by storm Amanda Myles intrigue Writer
Peach, an app created by the cofounder of Vine, Dom Hofmann, was released on Jan. 8 and already seems to be taking mobile users by storm. Talked about by numerous bloggers, websites and eager users, Peach was able to get its name out there and have increasing numbers of downloads. Acclaimed for encompassing a variety of methods for users to connect and update each other, Peach allows users to be more efficient and creative in their sharing. Peach is an engaging and innovative app in terms of creating and sharing content and can be seen as a combination of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat. Peach has the layout of a text-messaging app, so when the friends of a user post something, it appears chron-
ologically on the user’s feed, and the user has to go to each friend’s profile to see what is posted. Also, users only share content to people they approve, which makes Peach a more private app. One of the main aspects of the app is “magic words,” which allows users to create many features by typing in phrases that act as commands. For example, by typing “GIF,” a search bar will appear for GIFs. Other features let users message one another, share pictures and videos, loop videos, sketch and post drawings, rate anything with a one to five star rating, send messages in large sizes, share their iPhone battery, current weather and events from their calendar, share a song that is playing, identify a song that is playing, tag the name of a television show or book, share the number of steps walked that day and more. Logan Huerta and Leanna Flowers,
freshmen in music education, said they would definitely get the app. “It’s a really good combination of a lot of social media sites, especially with like Shazam, and I like the way you can rate a post,” Huerta said. Flowers said she likes the idea of just using the one app instead of having to use multiple social media apps at once. “It seems like it would save a lot of Internet data, and it would also be great because it would save text messaging minutes,” Flowers said. “And you can interact with your peers and possibly use it for school purposes or getting in contact with people around you and bring them closer together.” However, to John David Phillips, freshman in music education, Peach just seems like another similar app trying to gain popularity. “I already have stuff that does everything it sounds like this app does. It
Peach -- a space for friends
The new app peach makes communication easier.
sounds like a good idea, but if it came out years earlier, then it would probably [have] taken off better than it would now.” Phillips said. For the moment, the app seems like
a new and fun way to update friends, but only time will tell whether Peach will grow to have a major impact in social media. Peach is available for iOS devices.