MediaFile

Trust a start-up to be different.

We’d heard about the “Google 15,” the 15 pounds new employees are rumored to gain feasting off the sumptuous organic foods served at the Googleplex’s cafeteria .

Now comes the Xoopit 10, which is more of a de facto weight loss program. That’s thanks to Xoopit CEO Bijan Marashi’s devotion to fresh, low-carb, organic food. Most of Xoopit’s nine employees say they’ve shed about 10 pounds each in the past year feeding on such low-carb fare as kelp salad, goji berries and dairy-free mousse sweetened with agave. The lentil soup is a staff favorite.

“It’s food as fuel, as opposed to food as feast,” says 35-year-old Marashi, whose start-up aims to make your Gmail in-box more fun and social network-like, by letting you search for videos, files and pictures.

On the menu on Tuesday, when I visited their office in San Francisco’s Mission district: bean soup, toasted bagels with lox and tapenade, mixed greens and artisanal chocolate for dessert. The food was was all communally prepared in their loft-style office.

And when the Xoopit employees are not cooking together or washing up, they spend long hours figuring out how to spend the $5 million they raised last year.