About Research Diets

Our Mission

Our mission is simple: to provide pre-clinical researchers with the best scientific support and lab animal diets in the industry.  Being scientists ourselves, we understand how important it is to be able to rely on diet to be defined, consistent from batch to batch and modifiable as experiments evolve.  Our science team has extensive experience working with lab animals, a strong nutrition background and a genuine interest in ‘talking science’ with you about your research goals. 

Our Approach

To fulfill our mission, one of our scientists will have a scientific conversation with you and your research team to learn about how diet plays a role in your study.  We use data from the literature and our own research experiences to ask questions, offer alternate viewpoints and ultimately suggest a diet formula that we think will help you best test your hypothesis.  We’re not interested in simply fulfilling orders; we want to understand your needs, provide science-based recommendations and share our knowledge of nutrition and diet with you.

Unlike many other diet companies, we insist on a transparent, open-source approach to diet formulas.  Our formulas are not secret or proprietary and it’s in everyone’s best interest for you to know exactly what is, and isn’t, in your diet.  Over the past 42 years, we’ve formulated over 30,000 different diets for a variety of research areas.  Ask a lot of questions – we welcome them!

We are quite proud of the quality of our diets and speed with which you receive them.  Our production team members have been here on average for 12 years, and over a third of have 18 or more years of experience.  We know how to produce complicated formulas and our goal is to ship stock diets within 3-4 business days and custom diets after only 5-7 business days of placing an order.

Our Story

More than 40 years ago, our founder Edward A. Ulman, Ph.D., started Research Diets in his kitchen, with the vision of delivering excellent scientific support and high-quality diets to pre-clinical researchers. That vision drove the development of who we are today: the largest and most experienced scientific and production teams in the industry, providing custom diets and food intake monitoring systems to researchers from academia to industry, in 60+ countries around the planet.

In 2024, looking towards the future and longevity of the company, Dr. Ulman decided to sell Research Diets to those he knew would continue to carry out his vision: his employees.  Since October 31, 2024, Research Diets, Inc. is 100% employee-owned and is known as an ESOP (Employee Stock Ownership Plan).  We thank him for this unique and wonderful opportunity.

Why Employee Ownership Matters

Research into employee-owned companies shows that employees at ESOPs are more engaged and have higher productivity. As employee-owners, we have ‘skin in the game’ and understand that our work ethic has a direct effect on our individual success by making all of us, as a company, successful. When are we successful? When our customers are.