About us

Story of Metabolic Balance

In the early 1980's, when Dr. Wolf Funfack was writing up his doctorate at the Free University of Berlin, one of Germany's most distinguished universities, the medical world was in transition. Dr. Christiaan Barnard had just become internationally recognised for performing the world's first heart transplant. At the time, although slightly less fashionable, Dr. Funfack was working on the more down-to-earth and practical dissertation topic: "Obesity in Infancy and Early Childhood". Instead of posing the question 'How can I treat disease or replace diseased organs?' Dr. Wolf Funfack committed his whole life with the notion of how to stay in and maintain good health.

After working for ten years in the cardiology unit at Moabit hospital in Berlin, he took his family to Isen in the foothills of the German Alps. Here he set up his own medical practice. Dr. Wolf Funfack began to notice how a number of his patients were gaining weight. 

At that time, his wife Birgit Funfack was training to become a Naturopath. She gave Dr. Funfack new insights, such as the theory that all physical processes should be seen as individual processes that are influenced by a multitude of factors. They began exchanging information and experimenting to see how small changes in their own habits could have an impact on their wellbeing. In developing their new theories, they brought in another expert, Silvia Bürkle. As a food technologist, she viewed foods and their effects from a different perspective, which immensely enhanced their discussions.

These events marked the beginning of Metabolic Balance. Silvia Bürkle classified all foods by their individual components. The three founders discussed and revised their evaluations and finally checked the accuracy of their methods by testing their meal plans on themselves. Their success was nothing short of impressive and word soon got around. Soon everyone wanted to take part in this successful program and Metabolic Balance became well-known. Within a short time, the workload become so much to handle, that the founders developed a program to allow them to create the individual meal plans on a larger scale. 

The exclusive Metabolic Balance software program is based on the German national food database. This program is continually refined and adjusted to reflect current research.