Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 705: Mareya Ibrahim- One Simple Step to Improve Your Food Quality Now
Episode Date: February 12, 2018In this episode Sal, Adam & Justin speak with Mareya Ibrahim, the CEO and founder of Grow Green Industries, Inc. and the patented co-creator of the eatCleaner®, eatSafe™ and eatFresh™ line of all... natural and organic products that help offer cleaner, safer, longer lasting produce. In this episode Mareya dives into the challenges facing consumers when purchasing commercially produced foods. Even organic fruits and vegetables have residues that you are better off avoiding and Mareya and her company have created a very effective solution to keep your food as healthy and chemical free as possible. To purchase Eat Cleaner products go to www.eatcleaner.com/mindpump Come forth and be honest. Mareya talks about a conference she attended where the speaker was marketing lab meat as a health food. (4:00) “It’s become too expensive to do anything that is not subsidized.” Distribution is directly affected by the conditions. She uses the example of coca and it’s disturbing. (8:07) Life rotated around food. Mareya talks about her early days, her relationship with food and how having kids changed her perspective on the quality of food that she put in her body. (19:26) What else do you clean with water that comes out of the ground? She describes the Eat Cleaner product and why it works. (26:15) Organic doesn’t mean that you are buying something pesticide free. What fruits/vegetables have the highest pesticides? She talks about the strawberry study they conducted. (28:45) We are getting rid of what can carry the bacteria. Will you ingest antibiotics if I use this product? (32:45) Had to create a standard. Have a thirst to be educated. Mareya talks about how the industry has changed since she first started and why we label things. (34:34) The fluff around labels. She explains the labels out there and what they really mean. (46:20) The demand for fresh food has created demand for their products. She talks about how telling stories helps people understand things better. (54:33) The Real Dish. She mentions her upcoming book and the power of conversation at the dinner table. (1:00:15) Eat as close as to nature indented and be aware of the risks. (1:01:45) We do not realize the importance of food when we are young. She talks about being the child of an immigrant family, her eating disorder and how it impacted her life. (1:04:23) Links/Products Mentioned: Impossible Foods Can Food be Addictive? Public Health and Policy Implications Did You Know The Amount Of Food India Wastes Annually Is Enough To Feed A Country Like Egypt For One Year? India is self-sufficient, but millions go hungry Child Labor and Slavery in the Chocolate Industry The Differences Between Organic and Sustainable Food The Truth About Organic: Sustainability, Practice, and Perception Sustainable Table | Animal Feed How the Food we Feed Farm Animals is Destroying the Environment While demand soars, less than 1 percent of U.S. farmland is certified organic. So why don’t farmers switch? Why Glyphosate Is So Bad Ep 680-Dr. Zach Bush on Restoring Gut Health - Mind Pump Media The impact of glyphosate on soil health - Soil Association Misgivings About How a Weed Killer Affects the Soil Thrive Market (MP sponsor) One FREE month’s membership $20 off your first three purchases of $49 or more (That’s $60 off total!) Free shipping on orders of $49 or more Alfalfa's Market RISKIEST FOODS: Leafy greens are the biggest source of foodborne illness, while poultry causes more food-related deaths, gov't study finds Leafy Green Vegetables Rank Among Top Causes Of Food Poisoning Pesticide Half-life What's a GMO? Natural Products Expo West 2018 What is High Pressure Processing (HPP) Once Upon a Farm Featured Guest/People Mentioned: Mareya Ibrahim (@EatcleanerFood) Twitter Mareya Ibrahim | Facebook Eat Cleaner – YouTube Grow Green Industries EatCleaner.com (@eatcleaner) Instagram Eat Cleaner Products Text “22828” – Type in “ECJFREE” to receive free E-book! Zach Bush MD (@DrZachBush) Twitter Dr. Joseph Mercola (@mercola) Twitter Would you like to be coached by Sal, Adam & Justin? You can get 30 days of virtual coaching from them for FREE at www.mindpumpmedia.com. Get our newest program, MAPS Prime Pro, which shows you how to self assess and correct muscle recruitment patterns that cause pain and impede performance and gains. Get it at www.mindpumpmedia.com! Get MAPS Prime, MAPS Anywhere, MAPS Anabolic, MAPS Performance, MAPS Aesthetic, the Butt Builder Blueprint, the Sexy Athlete Mod AND KB4A (The MAPS Super Bundle) packaged together at a substantial DISCOUNT at www.mindpumpmedia.com. Make EVERY workout better with MAPS Prime, the only pre-workout you need… it is now available at mindpumpmedia.com Also check out Thrive Market! Thrive Market makes purchasing organic, non-GMO affordable. With prices up to 50% off retail, Thrive Market blows away most conventional, non-organic foods. PLUS, they offer a NO RISK way to get started which includes: 1. One FREE month’s membership 2. $20 Off your first three purchases of $49 or more (That’s $60 off total!) 3. Free shipping on orders of $49 or more You insure your car but do you insure YOU? If you don’t, and you are the primary breadwinner, you will likely leave your loved ones facing hardship and struggle if you die (harsh reality). Perhaps you think life insurance is expensive, but if you are fit and healthy, you can qualify for approved rates that are truly inexpensive and affordable. To find out if you qualify for the best rates in the industry, go get a quote at www.HealthIQ.com/mindpump Have Sal, Adam & Justin personally train you via video instruction on our YouTube channel, Mind Pump TV. Be sure to Subscribe for updates. Get your Kimera Koffee at www.kimerakoffee.com, code "mindpump" for 10% off! Get Organifi, certified organic greens, protein, probiotics, etc at www.organifi.com Use the code “mindpump” for 20% off. Go to foursigmatic.com/mindpump and use the discount code “mindpump” for 15% off of your first order of health & energy boosting mushroom products. Add to the incredible brain enhancing effect of Kimera Koffee with www.brain.fm/mindpump 10 Free sessions! Music for the brain for incredible focus, sleep and naps! Also includes 20% if you purchase! Please subscribe, rate and review this show! Each week our favorite reviewers are announced on the show and sent Mind Pump T-shirts! Have questions for Mind Pump? Each Monday on Instagram (@mindpumpmedia) look for the QUAH post and input your question there. (Sal, Adam & Justin will answer as many questions as they can)
Transcript
Discussion (0)
If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go.
Mite, op, mite, op with your hosts.
Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews.
This was a fun interview.
Yeah, we met her when we were down in LA when you and I did the LA FedExpo.
That's right. We were scheduled to do a talk
on intuitive eating and then do some Q&A.
And there were a bunch of speakers there
and we weren't impressed with a lot of them.
Obviously it's a FedExpo,
so it's a ton of supplements and stuff like that.
And then this young lady comes out
and she's this petite, very fit woman, good posture.
Lots of charisma, she comes out, she starts talking
right away, me and Adam were like, oh shit, who's in. She comes out and she starts talking right away
me and Adam were like, oh shit.
Let me paint the picture a little bit better
because what I was so impressed with the way
she kept her composure because when we first got there,
they had all these tables out where that we were gonna
be speaking at.
So there must have been, I don't know,
roughly 20 to 30 tables.
And they're like the fold up ones that you get from Costco
or whatever that were all laid out.
So people could be sitting there
and they could have drink a food from.
Well, there's probably about 10, 15 people
that are sitting down already.
And then you see people starting to come in
because she begins talking.
Literally in the middle of her presentation,
the guys that work the whole arena
or whatever the hell that you call the place we are,
the expo that we are at, they come in
and they just, I guess they need the tables
for some other events and they just start like taking
the tables.
People are sitting down, tables are getting lifted up
over their laps and like, and she's like,
she didn't skip a beat.
Yeah, she's like mid presentation and I'm like,
oh my God, I'm so fucking mad.
But she's, I would have commented on it, you know?
But she's a bad ass, she had her kids with her.
And so she has this product called Eat Cleaner that is all natural, biodegradable, and
what you do is you use it to wash your fruits and vegetables with.
And according to the tests that were done on this product, it removes 99.9% of pesticides,
herbicides, and then of course bacteria bacteria and whatever, off of your vegetables and fruit.
And I thought, for me, I was very,
I was especially interested because I know
when you buy fruits and vegetables,
even if they're organic, they are sprayed with
non-synthetic, but still pesticides, right?
There's still stuff sprayed on these things.
And what do you do?
Like you wash it in water, do you use soap,
and now you need to soap?
And yeah, exactly, yeah, it's this vicious thing. And to get it that clean and to get all
those pesticides off, that's very interesting. That's right. So it also dissolves wax.
I think I think what I believe the numbers and you hear it in this episode, I think it
was 40% of what you still have 40% or more residue still left on even after you. Like if
you were to wash it by hand, because I mean, I was thinking the same thing like,
okay, so what we spray this thing on here, but how much more, what a difference is it if
I just rinse with water and what if I scrub it really good?
She knows, she talks about the statistics.
And she's very passionate about organic non-jMO foods.
She's been in the food industry for a while.
So fun, fun conversation with this lady.
Interesting product. We're all using it now. Again, her name is
Mariah Ebrahim. You can find her on Twitter at Eat Cleaner
Food on Instagram and on Pinterest. It's at Eat Cleaner. And
then we have a code. So if you want to get the product, you go
to eatcleaner.com forward slash mind pump, and then
you can check out what we're talking about.
What is the text you can, what did she say?
What is that for Doug?
Is that, we can text if can we actually text and do that?
Yeah, if you send a text to 22828 and you type in the ECJ free, you get a free book.
Oh, a very cool. Yeah, very cool. So free ebook doing that or use the code
that not the code, but the link right ecleaner.com forward slash mine pump. Very cool. So without any
further ado, here we are interviewing Maria Ibrahim. I spoke at the sustainable food summit this morning
and it is a gathering of people in the industry that really want to dive deep,
that understand the science behind food that are very pro, I would say pro organic pro non-GMO,
and a gentleman from Impossible Foods was speaking, and they have created a burger, which you may have seen, but it looks like a burger. And it's plant-derived, but it is genetically modified yeast
that simulates kind of a medium-rare looking burger.
And he got railed because he really
wasn't forthright with the understanding
that they're using a GMO, a genetically modified yeast in order
to do this, but yet they're claiming that it's FDA-gross, and it's not.
They have applied for the gross status, which is generally regarded as safe, but you can't
do an animal study on a mouse for 30 days and be designated as a safe product, especially as a replacement for ground beef.
I mean, you guys, you know how the beef industry, the cattle industry, they're going to snap
back on that fast.
Of course.
And then you're talking to an audience of people who really understand health and understand
ingredients and the source of these ingredients.
And they, so the lesson learned is, come forth and be honest.
And be upfront and don't, yeah, lead with that foot and don't play like you know the
answers, you know, because even if the consumer doesn't know the answer and they don't even
know how to ask the question,
you are then hiding something, and you're going to be exposed.
So, you better just be out front from the beginning.
You're, it's hilarious even to consider that they're taking, they're trying to make something
taste like something else, and it requires a ridiculous amount of science and engineering
to do so, and then they're going to put that forth as a health food.
To me, that's always been comical.
Like if I see something that's made from plants, and it's called bacon, and they've designed
it and engineered it to taste like bacon, you have to ask yourself, what were all the things
that they had to do?
What are all the steps and things that they had to do to change the flavor of this plant
to make it taste like a meat and vice versa.
There's a lot of engineering and processing that goes into that.
Even if the ingredients are healthy, you have this super palatability that you start creating
with foods which that also may not be too healthy.
Eating foods that are engineered to be hyper palatableatable can cause you to override some of these
natural systems of satiety,
where you just continue eating over and over again,
because it kind of overrides all that stuff, so.
I hear you.
I mean, I think, you know, at the end of the day,
we were at a sustainability conference.
So we're talking about how food, you know,
whether it be the packaging or the ingredients
or how they're sourced.
I mean, we dove deep and
They talk about insects at all there. Yeah, I'm sick cricket protein. No, but I did I did a
Trends report about it and we dove into the cricket that very sustainable by the way a
Great alternative to beef, but what I will finish with on that whole impossible food subject though, is if you can find an alternative for beef
that simulates beef that's safe and proven safe,
I think there's something there.
Because the amount of natural resources and water
and the methane gas emissions from beef,
yes, there is an environmental impact.
The problem is there are only a quarter of the way there,
but they're in restaurants across
the country. It's kind of like the planes flying already, you know, and they're trying to get
the groundwork underneath them. I think you need to slow down a little bit, make sure you've got your
data, your studies, you know, lay the groundwork the right way and then take off. Now did they talk about the distribution of food? Because I know
when I look at studies on food and the economics behind food and why, you know, if we look at how much
food, for example, if you look at the food of that India produces, total food produced actually is
enough to feed everybody in India. However, that's not always the case. Obviously, we have a lot of
people who starve or don't get enough food.
And so, economists have agreed that distribution
is one of the main problems.
Another example would be the Soviet Union
because they were essentially planned.
Obviously, they weren't as efficient as a market-based economy
where you could read all these different signals
in real time.
They had fields and fields of wheat that would go rotten
because they just didn't have the efficiency
and knowing where it needs to go at what time,
supply and demand tells you pretty accurately signals
to you what you need to produce
and what you don't need to produce by its value,
by its dollar value or whatever.
Did they talk about any of that?
Or was it mainly just producing things
that have a less impact on the environment
and then how to produce more of it to have a stuff.
No, distribution was definitely brought up.
And you have to look at what our natural resources cost and what farmers are compensated at.
I mean, we rely so heavily on farmers to create food that is inexpensive because I truly don't believe that we value it the way that
we should.
And so it's become too expensive for people to do anything that's not subsidized.
I mean, think about that.
Or else you have to command a certain price and it's often very hard.
And then all you need is a natural disaster, something to happen to your crops and
infestation and your
screwed.
So distribution is directly affected by the conditions, the growing conditions, what the
market will bear.
They did bring something up that was very interesting.
They talked about the cocoa.
And cocoa, believe it or not, is most of the Coco of the world is harvested in Ghana and the ivory coast.
And 90% of that is slavery.
I mean, it is these children, and I'm saying kids
are being held to do the work, to not get paid,
to treat it horribly.
And this is happening right now in our day and age.
This is not a thing of the past.
And huge companies, and I'm not gonna name them one by one,
but they totally know what's going on.
And we just go to the store and buy a candy bar.
And we have no idea what is happening behind the scenes.
Well, I've got 90% huh?
I don't know that last time.
90%.
I wanted to back up a second,
because you mentioned subsidies,
and a lot of people don't realize
that we subsidize a tremendous amount of our food.
Subsidies mean, it's basically like attacks,
like everybody, they take money from the government,
which comes from us,
and they pay farmers so that they can sell
their product for cheaper.
It's really crappy economics.
It makes no sense, but a long time ago, we did it as a way to either save the farmers
or because we thought wheat and dairy and these types of products were staples and we need
to...
So let's talk about that for a second.
You said something.
You said that farmers can't...
It's too expensive for them to try to produce things that aren't subsidized.
What does that look like?
Like what is subsidized and what isn't, in that case?
So corn, wheat and soy are the three biggest crops
that are subsidized.
And it's not a coincidence that those three crops
are also the most genetically modified.
Yeah, by far.
So you've got, you know, the evil empire
that is selling seeds and also getting, you know, it's creating
this rabbit hole of pesticide use.
So as these crops are becoming more and more immune, you need more and more pesticides.
And then we're seeing this crazy horrible drift happening from these pesticides that are
killing other crops. So it's really, it's an
endemic problem now. Are you talking about herbicides or pesticides?
It's pesticides. And herbicides. Yeah, because there's that too. Yeah, there's that too.
And so, you know, when you look at, okay, strawberries, for example, it used to be that you would,
you know, maybe pay six or seven dollars for a pound of organic strawberries.
Nowadays, you can find them and you can find them year round.
It's not even a seasonal thing.
So, you know, while we may be paying an exorbitant amount for these specialty crops, the truth
is the farmer is not
getting the benefit of that.
Like going back to the cocoa example, they may be buying it for $0.12 a pound from the
actual farmer, from the grower, and then turning around and reselling it for $0.12 a pound.
I mean, the markup is extraordinary.
So I guess the short answer to your question is,
there are no subsidies for green vegetables.
There are no subsidies for growing strawberries.
There are no subsidies for growing organic,
certified organic.
It truly becomes more of a farmer decision
if they feel like, okay, I'm going to go through this transitional
farming experience for three years and I'm going to pay all of this money to go organic
and they see the light at the end of the tunnel where they can get their investment back.
Yeah, maybe they'll do it, but there's a lot of steps, a lot of hurdles and a lot of money
quite frankly that they don't have.
The question I would have is, do we even want them to though?
Do we even want the government to get involved in that and create subsidies for green, for
green?
No, we want them to not give anybody subsidy.
Right, right.
That would be the ideal situation.
Yeah, because the subsidies, what they're doing when they're subsidizing these crops is
they're sending a distorted market signal that says, yeah public or the market demands or wants or places
to high value on these particular crops.
And so the market becomes distorted where it looks like we want more GMO corn, wheat,
and soy.
But in the reality, the market may not actually be the signal.
If you eliminated all those subsidies and prices reflected more accurately with the market wanted,
I think you would see a lot more investment in organic
and non, you know, those other three big crops,
you see more investment in the other ones
because people would buy more of those things.
You're already seeing that anyway.
Even with subsidized corn, wheat, and soy,
and all the genetically modified,
how genetically modified, how genetically
modified they are, you're still seeing, I tell you what, 10, 15 years ago, I didn't see
an organic section at Safeway.
You had to go to a specialty organic store, and now you're seeing organic everywhere,
and that's because the market is demanding it, but it's still distorted.
If they eliminated those subsidies, I think it would happen much faster.
Well, and it's a tricky thing
because a lot of the subsidized crops
are actually feed for animals.
So you're number one.
Cost the beef would go up.
Yeah, exactly.
And guess where a lot of that interest is.
It's, yeah.
So when you look at, and let me back up to,
less than 10% of the crops that are grown
in the United States are certified organic.
So it's still a very small piece of the pie,
even though it's gotten a lot bigger.
You know, at the end of the day,
I think what's really important is that farmers look
at raising
whatever they're raising in a sustainable way.
Sustainable to me can mean that they are using as few pesticides as possible.
Maybe they're not certified organic, but they are being mindful of the impact on the
environment.
Guess what?
Not all the organic pesticides are good for the environment, guys.
I mean, just because we hear the word,
and I'm gonna sound like I'm kind of side-stepping this,
but just because it says it's organic
doesn't mean that it's necessarily healthy.
Of course.
So.
We say that all the time.
Yeah, so I mean, I've got an avocado rancher friend
who's like, Maria, I would love to be able
to make my ranch fully organic. Because like, Maria, I would love to be able to make my ranch
fully organic because the amount of pesticides
I would need to use would be so expensive prohibitively.
I would have to charge $5 an avocado.
And not to mention the impact on the environment
would be horrible because of how much I would need to use.
So I think we need to encourage more local, more biodynamic, more, you know,
using a system that cultivates different crops in an area so that you have the benefit of nutrients
feeding each other and putting that back into the soil because what organic does is it feeds the
soil. It gives the soil the nutrients without eroding the top soil.
We need to keep feeding that so that we actually are able to grow food that's got some nutrient value.
I was talking to, I think it was Dr. Zach Bush who was actually talking about how the soil has been depleted for so long.
And there's these nutrients within soil that bacteria use to communicate with each other that we don't get as much anymore
and he thinks that's one of the reasons why we're seeing such an explosion of immune issues related to the gut.
And he talks about how that process first started, which was
I've got, in the early 1900s where we figured out that we could just put nitrates into the soil and plants would grow. And we wouldn't, so the soil became depleted of everything except for the one thing that
made plants grow big and green.
And we thought, well, that's okay, that's good.
Now we have plants that are dead, we have insects that aren't getting what they're supposed
to.
And you have these, we're creating these situations where, like you said, like we're creating
super weeds. super bugs, super
beaks and super similar to how antibiotics are doing. You know, we have people now that
are dying of infections that used to be able to be treated 15 years ago with simple antibiotics
and now they can't, it's very similar, you know, plants and insects, they evolve and if we
keep dumping, I know that like glyphosates, for example, the amount of glyphosates
that we dump into the soil is,
we would have to, if we stopped right now,
I think we'll like take like 30 or 40 years
before it cycles out.
That's how much is in there.
I would wager, even if anybody listening today
says I only eat organic, I would put money on it
that you would find glyphosate in your urine.
That's what's in the brain, yeah.
It's gonna show up and sometimes at really alarming levels.
So, I mean, and this sounds like Doomsday right now
because like, what the hell do you eat?
You know, you're telling me my plants are contaminated.
You're telling me the sea is, you know,
still got plutonium in it from Fukushima.
You know, you've got
antibiotics and steroids and meats. What the hell do you eat?
Right. Air. No, there's not clean.
Preciteria. I just use, yeah, I just, are you familiar with companies like Thrive Market?
Do you, do you know anything about Thrive?
We actually sell our products on Thrive Market.
Oh, no way. Yeah, excellent. I didn't know that.
Let's big fan of what they're doing.
Let's take a step back for it. Tell us a little bit about your background. Obviously, very passionate about food and food quality.
And Adam and I met you at the LA Fit Expo.
We actually went down there to talk about intuitive eating
and you spoke before us.
And we never bring a girl home on the first time
in the US.
This is totally out of the norm for us.
Just like, it's like, it's special.
Yeah.
Well, thanks, guys.
But we were really impressed with your presentation, how you talked to charisma, had some questions
about your product.
We wanted to invite you down.
But tell us a little bit about your background.
Why are you so passionate about these things and what are you doing in this industry?
Thank you.
Likewise, you guys were great and very compelling.
I believe so much in the concept of intuitive eating.
I talk about it a lot in my upcoming book too.
Awesome.
So I am Middle Eastern, and we grew up in a household
that was eating breakfast and talking about lunch,
and eating lunch and talking about dinner,
and what we were going to eat in between, and then shopping for it.
So life really rotated around food, and there wasn't a lot of convenience there.
I grew up in Egypt, and we would go to the market
for everything.
We would buy live chickens.
We would buy produce from the produce guy,
and herbs from the herb guy, and bring our bags to the oven
to get our fresh bread.
Nothing was packaged.
Everything came from the source.
And then when we immigrated here, I just saw such a huge shift we would walk into these
sterile grocery stores where nothing seemed really fresh.
You didn't know who you were buying it from.
You had no idea what the source was.
You had no idea how long it had been sitting on the shelf.
And everything was in these packages.
And it was such a stark contrast for me.
So early on in my career I decided to go into the culinary world and I studied,
I went to culinary school in France and I started working for a chain of natural food stores
in Colorado called Alphalpha's Markets and did, I was their marketing manager for a while and started writing and
I knew I wanted to use my love for food and understanding where our food comes from,
but not sit in a kitchen all day. So kind of to bring it full circle, I cut my teeth in that
grocery industry, but writing, doing the research, interviewing farmers for our store, writing
stories about them, sharing that with our customers. So they understood where their food came
from, and doing events in store where people could experience that food. And then, I kind of,
so I've dabbled in different areas of food marketing PR writing cooking and about
I guess 10 year no little more
12 years because my son is 12 it happened right when he was born I think we met when you're one or two years
You did yeah, you met both of them. Yeah, I drag them everywhere
Like mom god really another event
But I'm a single mom and I think it's really important for my kids to see how hard it is
to build a career, to do what you love, but at the same time find satisfaction in that.
So yeah, I cart them along with me.
But what really was a huge game changer, just in how I perceive health, was number one
having my kids.
And understanding that everything that I put in my body
affects their health.
It imprints their DNA.
So that crappy lunch that I had,
that I was just like, that's not a big deal,
that doctor was actually telling me
to be careful of what I was eating.
For the first time ever,
I had never heard that message before. You know, don't drink diet soda. Watch out for raw, you know, uncooked fish. Watch out for,
because of the mercury. You know, watch out for preservatives and colors and things like that in
your food. I had never heard that message. I grew up with it in the natural foods industry, but no health professional had ever said to me,
be careful.
And then my dad got cancer.
My dad was diagnosed with bladder and prostate cancer.
And my son was just born
and my dad had to have his bladder removed.
And he uses a catheter.
He has an open stoma in his bladder area
where he literally inserts a tube every time he has to relieve
himself.
And it was devastating.
It was devastating to see how it affected him, how it
impaired his lifestyle, how it really affected his well-being,
and how he saw his life, his mortality. And what scared
me the most was what the doctor then told him. The doctor told him to avoid raw produce,
all raw food. So not only sushi and things like that, but avoid eating raw salads, especially avoid eating raw greens.
And I was like, was this because you've afraid of bacteria or something for you?
Yes. So when you have somebody that's that immune compromised,
we don't even think about it because we're like, it's greens. But greens are the number one
cause of foodborne illness. They're the number one cause of E. coli, cell manila,
the number one cause of E. coli, cell manila, and some variation of those,
Listeria, and Neurovirus,
and all of the myriad of other foodborne illnesses
that it's not a sexy conversation,
but the truth is it can kill you.
And at the very least, it can put you in the hospital.
I have customers who call me literally on the phone
and say, I am so glad you created this product.
But let me back up for a second.
So after that happened, and my dad recovered,
I was like, we've got to find a cure
because knowing what I know about nutrition,
you have to be able to eat salads.
You need to be able to eat foods that provide you with enzymes
that are uncooked that are in their whole state
and not feel like you are playing Russian roulette every time.
You know?
So we created a formula.
My dad's an environmental scientist,
and I have no idea anything about chemistry.
I was just like, you lead the way,
and I'll let you know what ingredients can't be in there.
And we tested nine different formulas, everything from vinegar, because I know a
lot of people out there listening right now are like, I use vinegar, and I'm going to
tell you something that's not enough. Vinegar is only about 80 to 85 percent effective,
and we wanted to create something that was 99.9 percent effective, which would be a log
three reduction in the world of bacteria to log 5,
which is 99.999.
Because if I tell you, you only have a 0.001 chance of getting sick,
don't you feel a little bit better than me saying you've got a 20% chance?
So it took us almost two years to develop the formula that we have now
and it's called Eat Cleaner.
And it's non-toxic, plant-based, very simple science.
There's seven ingredients in the formula that's lab proven to remove up to 99.9% of the
pesticide residue that's on the surface of your produce, wax, which can't be removed
with water. And the contaminants that can carry bacteria that can really make you sick or kill you.
So this is a wash that you use on produce, vegetables, fruits, and it rinses all those
things off.
Does it leave its own residue on the vegetable plant?
No.
So it's completely biodegradable.
And what it does is you're basically
key-lating, sticking to the residue that water can't remove.
And you're giving it a quick rinse afterwards with water.
And what I would always tell people is, what else do you clean with just water that comes
out of the ground?
I mean, have you guys ever farmed anything or grown plants?
They're shitting there. I mean, it's guys ever farmed anything or like, you know, grown plants?
They're shitting there.
I mean, it's manure, it's fertilizer,
it's, you know, you're talking about environmental
or ecological waste, you know.
So if you think that you're just gonna put your hands in it
and then give it a quick rinse
and it's gonna be okay to eat your crazy.
And how many people have touched it?
Where was it trucked from?
How dirty was that truck?
Was it sitting on the floor or the back,
of the retailer?
How many kids sneezed on it and picked their noses
and then picked it?
You know what I'm saying?
Like you just don't know what your produce
has come into contact with.
Yet we're being told to eat 50% of our plate produce.
And for the vegans and vegetarians out there,
I hope they understand like when you are ingesting that,
for everybody, when you're ingesting that much produce,
it builds up in your system.
So you might not get sick from it today.
It may incubate in your system.
And 24, 48 hours from now, maybe even longer that
bacteria can manifest itself. I'm more interested too in just
rinsing off the pesticides because you know I mean immune systems pretty strong
I do wash things in water but you're right doesn't do much but it's the
pesticides I really don't like because that builds up over time. I'd be curious too
of how much pesticides are actually on the surface and how much of
it are actually in the plant because it's in the soil.
So pesticides are interesting.
I learned a lot from my father about this.
So a pesticide is usually, it's applied topically and it can become endemic, which means it
goes up into the root system.
But most pesticides have a half-life, which means by the time they're harvested,
there is a cooling off period
where pesticides are not supposed to be applied.
So in theory, most of that pesticide residue that's endemic
has literally evaporated.
It's deteriorated to the point
where it's not effective anymore.
It's degraded.
So really the majority of it is on the surface.
Really?
Wow.
Yeah, and they even talk about how certain vegetables
like avocados or whatever, because the skin is so thick,
if you wash it, yeah, you're probably,
okay, I think bananas are.
Bananas are also absolutely bananas, melons,
anything that potentially has a skin or a thick peel
that can be removed.
We always say, choosing organic, and by the way, organic does not mean they don't use pesticides.
It just means they use organic or approved pesticides.
I think that's a big misnomer.
People think they're buying organic and they're buying something that's pesticide-free, and
that's just not true
But you can wash the vast majority and I mean wash with something that is a solvent
Because think about it when it rains if they were using pesticides that were
That were water soluble right they would just wash right off
So the really crappy ones, the really scary ones
are not water soluble.
They need to be removed with something that can dissolve them.
What are the worst berries?
What would you say is the worst?
Let's get the worst.
Strawberries.
Strawberries.
Strawberries and apples and peaches are the top three
that generally top the list of pesticide usage.
The statistic is like 54 to 55 different pesticides can be used on an apple,
more on strawberries about the same on peaches.
Now during this whole process of creating this product, did you guys find anything crazy in the studies
or find anything when you're going through this? Yeah.
Yeah, I actually, our strawberry study was shocking to me
because I was, okay, people were like,
okay, you can remove 99.9% of the pesticide residue
from an apple, but that's got a firm surface.
What about a strawberry?
And I was like, hmm, what about a strawberry?
Let's test it.
So we worked with a third party lab
and they incubated the straw bear or they injected
the straw berries with the pesticide. So they actually applied it internally and on
the surface. So we would be testing both. And then they macerated the straw berries.
And they, excuse me, they used the product on the surface and then they massorated the strawberries.
So they would have to test if there were any pesticide residues left over inside.
And what we found was we reduced the load by over 98%.
So total on the total strawberry.
So what that said to me is, okay, the products is actually absorbing to some extent
to the inside of the strawberry because it's porous.
And again, I feel pretty good saying,
we can remove over 98% when,
if you do that on a regular basis,
you're getting the benefit of the pesticides going away,
the bacteria being reduced significantly,
and one thing that we created was
the ability for a to extend shelf life.
So you've got a product that's,
if you're doing meal prep,
or you're one of these people that's like,
I don't buy fresh produce because it goes bad
before I can eat it,
you never have to throw it away again
because it's helping it last up to five times longer.
So one question that pops up for me with this is,
you know, because not all bacteria is bad,
obviously we have an internal microbiome
that's very important to our health.
If I'm washing my vegetables and fruits
with this product that kills bacteria
or eliminates bacteria,
and when I ingesting something that has any type of an antibiotic property that may
affect my gut bacteria.
No.
So think of it this way.
When you wash your face, for example, you're removing what's on the surface and you're
removing basically dirt and debris and things like that.
So that can carry the bacteria.
So what we're doing is we're getting rid of what can carry the bacteria.
It's not antibiotic.
It's not an antibiotic.
It's allowing it to get rinsed off.
Correct.
Got it.
Because it's getting under what water can't.
And this is a very important thing for people to understand.
About 80% of our produce is waxed.
So they're using an oil-based wax,
and you can't remove that.
So if it's getting waxed before it's getting washed,
guess what, it's trapping all of that crap
under the surface.
It reminds me of like when you clean your shower
and you get that, you know, the scum or whatever,
that won't come off with water,
so you have to use a special spray that allows it
to become soluble with water, so you can rinse it off.
Kind of like that, it's all though, it's different, right?
Yeah, I mean, that's a good analogy.
I always say like, when you, maybe you guys don't do this,
but for the ladies out there, when you use like a facial mask,
maybe you guys do.
You guys do masks?
All of the time, we do each other's masks.
I wanna see that.
I do what I'm asking. But, to see that. I do want to know.
But, you know, when you use a mask and it kind of sucks out the impurities, it's basically
the same idea.
Interesting.
So you've been in this industry now for a little while, right?
You started back down in that grocery store chain, which was how long ago was that?
If I say I'm going to just...
She's not going to date my child.
You know what?
You can do that., you look fantastic.
You obviously work out, you're obviously very fit.
So I think it would be an attribute anyway.
25 years.
Okay, so you've been in the industry for over a couple decades.
What are some of the trends and things that you've seen
have changed since you started versus now?
And do you see, you know, a different trajectory
or what do you see moving forward with this industry?
Because I've seen a change dramatically over the last 15 years,
and I've heard that we're 15 and 20.
So it's always interesting to talk to somebody who's got
as much or more experience in the field as we do.
Yeah, there are a lot of changes.
It's a fast-moving train.
I'll kind of take you guys back to,
when I first got started, is when the whole organic certification was just getting
started. Really? Yeah. And there was a lot of confusion, especially in the scientific community,
because for anybody who is science-based, the term organic doesn't mean anything. It means
made of carbon. And I remember my dad saying, that's just bullshit. What are they trying to sell with organic?
What does that even, everything is organic?
But, you know, what they felt they had to do
was create a standard.
So that there was something to comply to,
because otherwise it's like the Wild West.
But I, okay, so that in and of itself is a good thing,
because I think it helps to create
a standard of sustainability and to some extent health, but not always.
The problem with that is people don't understand it.
Here we are 25 years later, and I would wager you to ask somebody what certified organic
means and have them give you a proper definition.
So with that non-GMO, there was a really funny Jimmy Kimmel
thing where he was out on the street
and he was asking people, do you know, do you eat GMO products
and people were like, no, no, non-GMO, non-GMO.
And then he was like, what does GMO stand for?
And they were like, I don't know.
You know?
So we want to be, I think we have a thirst to be educated.
I think we are so connected with social media, you know?
We want to stand up and millennials out there are like,
I have a right to know where my food source is
and where my food is coming from.
And that's the right place to be.
The problem is, I don't know if anybody really understands it.
Just like the use of pesticides.
Well, there's so much smoke and mirrors in it too,
like even the organic game.
I mean, that's like the game now is just to say
that it's organic free or what we're just talking
about right now, when gluten comes out bad,
I'll send you a response.
I don't know if you're water,
I'm free and water.
I'm free, why not?
I'm like, I'm putting down the label. Grapes are gluten free, dude. You know, like'll send you a response. I don't even free water. I'm free water. I'm free wine. I'm like.
I'm putting down the label.
Grapes are gluten free, dude.
You know, like what are you talking about?
So you wonder why?
I mean, that's why people are so confused, because you get all this stuff that comes out
with marketing, right?
And then you have fitness professionals, you know, who are like personal trainers and nutritionists
who are trying to talk to people about losing weight or because that's a very common goal.
And people are like,
but I only eat organic, you know,
organic donuts for breakfast.
Right.
I have organic cereal for lunch.
I was like, okay, it doesn't necessarily mean
you're gonna lose body fat.
So, but you've seen it from when it became a standard,
a new standard to now, has it changed
to the organic certification process?
Or what does that even look like?
Like how, if a farmer wants to be organic, that changed the organic certification process? Or what does that even look like?
Like how, if a farmer wants to be organic,
what does the process look like?
What do they have to do?
How often do they get looked at by officials
like, is that hard or is it right?
That's a great question.
That would be a good question.
Oh yeah, that's a great question.
So there are standards in the upfront, okay?
And it's a three year transition process. So if you standards in the upfront, okay, and it's a three-year transition process.
So if you're a conventional farmer, and you know, at the end of the day, I think it's the
right thing to do because a lot of these conventional farmers don't really have, they're making
the change because there's something that's happened. Their family's gotten sick,
or their employees have gotten sick.
I met an organic farmer in Watsonville
that decided to go organic because he had three of his workers that got cancer.
Whoa.
So there is an impetus there to clean up your act.
It costs money, you know, tens of thousands of dollars,
which sometimes they don't
have. But the hope is that they can command a better price for an organic crop. But I think
that's the right thing to do. But then I come back and say, okay, so organic Oreos, like
seriously, organic, you know, products that are full of sugar,
or full of organic white flour,
like that doesn't mean crap to me.
And I said it today.
I said it in front of, I was like,
by the way, just because it says organic
doesn't mean it's healthy guys.
And you could hear the mic drop, you know?
But I had to say it because I get tired of the term being abused.
Yeah.
Eat whole food, eat lots of plants, eat lots of greens,
eat high quality foods.
Tell me what you don't eat, tell me what you eat.
I think that's where we get really bogged down
is we like these, okay, coming full circle, sal, labels.
We want a label. We want to say organic. We want to say non sal, labels. We want a label.
We want to say organic.
We want to say non-GMO.
We want to say gluten free.
We want to say vegan.
We want to say paleo.
We want to say keto.
But how about we just, we eat balanced real food?
You know, I just wonder why we feel so strongly
that we need to label ourselves.
But when it comes to the certification of being organic, is that I've heard, and I don't
know if you know this or not, I'm asking you because I know you're in the industry,
so I'm not sure if this is something you can answer, but I've heard people tell me that
the process of being organic can be, once you get it, it's almost like nobody really
checks and it's not that strict, and I don't have heard that from people who've worked
on farms.
Is that true?
Or is it a standard that you should aim for and then go further like other independent
sources that will tell you, yes, this is organic plus it's also certified by the non-GMO
organizations.
I mean, what do you think about all that?
I'm not as intimate with the auditing of the farms.
I can tell you that one of our products is omery certified.
So it's a type of organic certification
where it's certified for use on organic produce.
So we have a product that inhibits enzymatic browning
on apples and cotton.
Oh, she sprayed it in turn brown.
Right.
OK.
Or you soak it.
Like we, people that make cut apples that can last 21 days use our product.
It's all natural.
I mean, there's nothing in it that's not plant-based.
And we, I'll be honest, they never came out to the facility to check it.
We provided them with all the documentation for our producer, our co-packer.
They checked the labels on the ingredients, but nobody actually came out to check.
And every year we have to get recertified and pay a fee.
Guess what?
That's all they want.
You know?
I never got shit.
So I worked on one of the first three ever organic dairies in California back when I was a kid and when I didn't even know what organic was.
And I remember that all they did was so they would come and when they pick the milk up,
they would do a test and we had like ABC or D grading.
And in order to, you know, I had to pass, if it was going to be all the tests passed,
then they could be A, which is they could turn around and sell it for organic.
And if for some reason something got contaminated
or got in it, it would degrade it to like a B,
and then we'd have to sell it for a cheaper per gallon.
But as far as like regulations
and paying attention to what we're doing there,
and it's just the main stuff that they're looking for.
So for us, I remember it was like hormones,
because that's in the dairy industry,
that's the big thing is to pump the cows with hormones.
So they're producing four or five times amount of milk.
But I mean, I was there for three years
and I never saw any sort of,
anybody come down to audit or to do it.
Yeah, some of the arguments for local are,
obviously it doesn't need to travel as far,
so that that's better on the environment.
Yeah, let's shelf life.
And because it's closer, maybe you can keep an eye on
a little bit and you know the people you're getting the food from.
So there's that level of, maybe an extra level of security
and knowing that there's some integrity with your food.
So interesting.
Well, and that contributes to the nutrient content too,
because the longer it's in transit, the more you're seeing,
like vitamin C, for example, six days after an orange is picked,
it's lost a lot of that vitamin C up to 40%.
So always going local, I think,
is really a great way to go.
And it connects you with your food source.
You get to talk to the farmer,
you get to understand, you know, ask questions,
you get to be part of a communal shopping experience,
which I think has a ton of benefit too. And even growing a little bit of your own,
I mean, so one big trend, I think that we're going to see as people, you know, ask the question,
where do you go? Where do you go to get sustainable foods that are not completely tainted?
And I think what you're going to start to see is more people
growing some of their own, raising some of their own. I mean, I talk to people who have chickens and
you know, yeah, chickens, eggs, you know, growing a little bit of produce. You can do it in a vertical
growing system with no land. Just so that they can feel some sense of security, that they're taking a part of
that. And even my son's school, you know, they have six gardens on their property.
My kids too. Yeah. It's so interesting how much has changed because it used to be, if
you were poor, you grew a lot of your food. Now it's like the middle class and upper who
have the chickens that are growing things. It's a different dynamic. It's totally different.
And, you know, the landscape has changed a lot.
I mean, when you go, you know, pre-industrial revolution, a lot of the country was farmland.
And today, it's like a fraction of the country is farmland, but it produces so ton of food
through efficiency and through, even through GMOs and stuff like that and figuring that kind
of stuff out.
So it's an interesting problem to tackle
because the first issue was,
can we get enough people enough calories?
That's really what it was all about initially.
Like we need more food.
And so quality wasn't even,
it wasn't even something that really anybody thought about
because it was just food, nobody thought about that.
Now we've got the food production,
we're looking at better distribution,
which markets are really good way of doing that.
And now we're looking at quality where people
are willing to pay a little bit more
to get better quality where, yeah, 15 years ago,
if you saw two stakes and one was organic and one wasn't,
but it was $5 more, you're not gonna buy the more expensive
one who cares, what does that mean?
I'm just gonna get the cheaper one.
Whereas today now, whole foods is becoming a,
they made their mark that way by putting these kinds
of foods out there.
So I find it very fascinating and very interesting
how the market is starting to shift.
Well, and I think when you look at some of that,
there is some misleading term, terminology happening.
I mean, grass know, grass fed, grass finished, you know, it has the cattle really been grazing
on grass the whole time or was it grass finished where basically at the end they were, you
know, eating what they were supposed to.
What is free range meat?
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, back up there.
That's a good point right there because grass fed beef is marketed like crazy.
So you mean to tell me that someone could put grass fed beef on there, but then the whole time it was being grain
fed, but just for the last bit of its life, it gets grass fed.
It can be. No, same with chickens.
Okay, you got to give them more of these. I did not know that. That's fascinating.
So the whole idea of free range, okay. Yeah, you can command a much higher price, right,
for free range, chicken, free cage free.
Okay, what does cage free mean?
Does it mean that the chickens are roaming around all day long?
It means you let them out once a day.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
I'm not joking you.
So again, I go back to what you want.
Pastor rays, right?
Pastor rays.
That's where they're actually out in the grass.
Cage free really doesn't mean much.
I mean, I've seen it with my own two eyes.
Like, they'll let them out for a little walk,
five minutes, 10 minutes, they're back inside the cage.
Let's talk about all the terms that don't mean shit then,
because there's a lot of those.
There's a lot of fluff out there on labels
that people pay an extra dollar to
because they think it sounds better
because they see it on the label
or they heard some buzz term.
Right.
What are one of the biggest culprits with that?
Well, I think we just named a couple.
Right.
I think to some extent organic,
only because I think we touched on this,
but you can get organic certified,
and then who's auditing the process?
Right.
I think the whole idea of additive free,
or...
All natural.
All natural doesn't mean anything.
Well, all natural doesn't mean anything anymore.
And they're starting to crack down on companies that are using that label anyways, but additive
free, preservative free.
What do you classify as a preservative?
Is it one of the, is it considered gross or is it, you know, salt, salt's a preservative.
And I think, of course, the word healthy means nothing.
Right.
I mean, who wants to take a stab to find, to find healthy?
I mean, that's like a shit show.
I think it used to be that healthy meant nutritious, but it's definitely not used that way anymore.
So when somebody says, I eat healthy,
I'm always like, okay, what do you eat?
If you're eating just gluten-free bread
and you're eating, I don't know.
Vegan chips.
Yeah, I mean, there's the vegetarian cheese
and cracker people that I just,
what I encourage people to really, you know, what I,
what I encourage people to really look at is what are you eating?
So I think healthy, full of air.
What do you think about a company like Whole Foods?
Do you think that's a company that takes advantage
of the buzz term organic and doesn't really pay
that close attention to some of these details
or what are your thoughts on them as a company?
This is mind-pumb, by the way, you can say what the fuck you want. She's like, they carry my products.
They don't anymore, actually.
I don't have a vested interest in supporting that.
It's a business, okay.
I think that if you walk the natural products expo, which is the largest
natural foods trade show in the country, maybe the world, it's right here. Well, it's in
North Southern California and Anaheim. You will see more packaged products than you could
ever imagine exist. And where are they sold? They're sold at places like
Whole Foods. Now, I always say convenience begets laziness. Okay. The more you can find like,
seriously, do I need to buy a hard boiled egg that's been cooked for me? Like, has it really
come to that? You know, oh no, don't tell me.
And they're peeled.
They're coming like a bag of like four, yeah.
But the problem is they're soaking in preservatives.
You know, so I don't know.
I, it's really hard.
You know, do we sacrifice our ability to get foods
because we're, they're convenient.
I mean, look, there's only a few things we need to survive
and food is one of them.
I think we owe it to ourselves to put it on the front burner.
I think we owe it to ourselves to say,
I'm gonna take half an hour or an hour every week
and I'm gonna get some food prepped
and it doesn't have to be fancy and I can eat a lot of raw food,
I can make salads, I can, you know, we don't have to complicate the preparation if we don't want to.
But I think we owe it to ourselves to eat as close to his nature intended.
The more we buy food that is in the center store that stabilizes, that's, you know, and there's some good advancements.
HPP, high pressure, pasteurization is becoming
a big technology advancement for a lot of different things,
like hummus and other things that used to be,
you know, you had to use other means.
What exactly is that?
So they use a high pressure liquid water form of pasteurization.
So it does help to preserve the integrity of the food more and the nutrient content.
So you can get more shelf life out of some of these products.
You know, I go back.
So it's not heated up or correct.
Yeah, so it's not killing the enzymes like you would get with heat.
But I just, I go back and say, if you really what do we need to survive?
Is it a full store, full of packaged goods?
Whether you're a whole foods or a mainstream grocer, I mean, the mainstream guys are doing
organic too.
They have huge sections that are dedicated.
Does it mean it's bad? It doesn't mean it's bad. It just means I don't think we should be
bulking up on packaged foods period.
It's all consumer driven. So for me personally, the reason why I think the industry is changing
and shifting and there's a lot of good things that I see, especially compared to 15 years
ago, is because the consumer is just demanding more. So I think the answer is more, just continue to educate the consumer so that the consumer
starts to make these educated choices.
And then the producers and the distributors have to follow the market.
They have to make more of these products.
I was in, I'll tell you what, it was impossible to find a non-artificial sweetener that wasn't
sugar in coffee shops, you know, five years ago.
You didn't. You went to any coffee shop and it was either sucralose,
aspartame, or sugar. Now you're seeing stevia.
Yes, stevia, raw sugar, you said.
Yeah, stevia in particular, like, although some of those are super high-processed
themselves aren't necessarily great options, it's funny because it's the market. Now, I mean,
gatorade, organic. Now they
have organic Gatorade. Yeah. You know, and so I think it's the sugar on that.
Hi, 30 grams or whatever. Yeah, so it's the really it's the consumers that are driving
us. So as we become more educated and make different choices, then we'll see more money
getting put into giving us what we want. And the problem is people for a long time
wanted convenience and they wanted taste.
And that was it.
So this is a two areas that most of the money went into.
I mean, you go into some of these companies
that make some of these processed foods
and the vast majority of money that goes into the food
goes into how palatable they can make it
and how long the shelf life is, and market it.
And that's it.
Very little goes into the actual nutrition.
Can I microwave it?
Yeah, the nutrition basically is,
okay, this is gonna kill anybody cool.
Now, how do we make it taste as good as possible?
So that's where all the money goes into,
because people value taste and convenience,
but as people start to value quality and the source,
and I'm even starting to see now people are valuing the way that
companies just their ethics.
I'm starting to see now soaps that are fair trade certified and stuff like that and they
cost more and the only reason why it's on the bottle is because people are looking for
it now.
So I think we're moving in a pretty positive direction although you've always got the
side shows where we're moving in a pretty positive direction, although you've always got the side shows, right?
We're talking about earlier, gluten-free organic candy.
It's not healthy at all, but how long have you been
in business now with your company?
We are going into our eighth year now.
Oh, wow.
And we have expanded our distribution
so that we're not just selling to consumers,
but we also have a B2B play
so that processors, retailers that are doing fresh cut programs can use our products to
put forward a cleaner, healthier, you know, convenience item but that's still fresh.
So eight years, how's the business growing? How's it been moving in that entire period of time?
It's pretty incredible to see how the demand for fresh food
has also increased the demand for our products.
Have you seen a change in the whole period of time
of eight years where all of a sudden it was like boom.
Yeah, especially on the B2B side.
Really?
Yeah, where the larger processors are looking
for cleaner alternatives that are non-toxic,
that are non-corrosive to their equipment
that are good for worker safety.
So I think that's where manufacturers are stepping up
because they see the value of taking care of their employees.
I just wanna touch on, you brought something up
that I think Whole Foods does a great job.
They tell the story.
They give a venue and an outlet for telling the story. So if it is fair trade or if it is a local
farmer, I think they have done a pretty laudable job of that. And you know, at the end of
the day, maybe some of these terms are a little bit full of air, but at least we're getting
a little bit more of an education. Yeah, I see that when they rank their meat and tell you what that rank means, how far
they've checked and all the sources and stuff like that.
I personally like that.
I'm wondering, based off your background, if you've seen any sort of technological advancements
and I know me personally, I've talked to somebody, Iran, who works for
this company called Neutrino, but they have their hands on a lots of different ground breaking
sort of disruptive technology that will help the consumer themselves actually evaluate
the quality.
Oh, you mean like scanning just like a spectrometer type of a device where it's handheld,
and they can actually scan through like, have you seen anything in that direction and
what do you speculate as far as what that will do?
Yeah, well, I mean, we touched on HPPA, which I think is a huge technological advancement
and being able to control bacteria without compromising the nutrition of the food itself.
And I think you're going to see a lot more of that. Actually, there was a company that spoke at the summit,
the founder of Annie's started a company called Once Upon a Farm.
And believe it or not,
there is no fresh food category for babies, for baby food.
All the baby food that you find on the shelf is,
shelf stable.
And they are creating-
Loaded full shipping.
Yeah, that's true, I haven't seen anything.
And they're creating the first fresh product for babies.
Oh my God, that's so money.
That's HPP, you know, because of HPP.
So I think those innovations are going to go far.
You know, in terms of, I don't have as much contact to the types of tools and things like that
that you're talking about because I think for me, our products have been so focused on
helping people enjoy fresh food.
When I started the company, my commitment was to give my father a way to be able to eat
a salad without being hospitalized.
And he loves salad.
So at its base level, I wanted him to be able to enjoy it without feeling risk.
I also wanted to be able to address the whole raw seafood situation, which people eat sushi
like crazy, but you have no idea.
Parasite can put you out for the rest of your life.
I got a call from a woman.
We sell our products on home shopping network.
So she saw me on HSN.
She called and I picked up the phone.
She was like, oh my gosh, I can't believe I'm getting a talk to you.
I'm like, hey, if you call, I'm going to answer the phone.
I really believe in that with our customers.
That's number one for me.
But she told me about getting a parasite
and how she had been hospitalized
and really thought that she was going to die
and she said she had never been
in that much pain in her entire life.
She's in her 70s.
And you can easily get a parasite from raw seafood.
So we created a wash for seafood and poultry, where you can still enjoy something that's
considered pretty raw.
I mean, it's kind of cured a little bit because there's citric acid in it, but at least
experience a healthier version of sushi by treating it with our product.
So that's been really my focus. And, you know, just as a chef and somebody who tries to encourage people to eat cleaner
with our cooking show and our recipes and videos and things like that, I want to show
people that it's not cumbersome.
It doesn't have to be time consuming.
It doesn't have to be expensive.
You can do this economically.
If I can do it on a single income for my family of three, you can do this economically. If I can do it on a single income for my family of three,
you can do it.
And I think it's just giving that a little bit of attention,
giving it a little bit of a priority.
I mean, think about our grandparents.
They didn't have the luxury of going into a grocery store
or having a pizza delivered.
Like, how did they strategize?
There was a simple strategy.
It wasn't rocket science.
And I sure hope we don't get so disconnected
with our food that we just give it up
to somebody else to take care of it for us.
Well, that's the scary part is that
all the signs are pointing that we are.
All the signs are pointing that we're becoming
more disconnected for us.
I mean, how often do you see people
looking at their phone while they're eating?
I mean, that mindless eating right there
is kind of showing that there's definitely a division.
We've got this side of us that are, like you said,
millennials that wanted to demand,
I want to know where my food's coming from,
I want to know what's in it this,
so you have that, then you have the other side
who I don't give a shit, a mindlessly eating
while my phone, my face is in my Instagram the entire time.
Totally.
Totally, and my book that I'm working on, it's called The Real Edition, mindlessly eating my phone, my face is in my Instagram the entire time. Totally.
Totally.
And my book that I'm working on, it's called The Real Edition, it's coming out early
2019, I totally addressed that.
You know, while we're eating real, let's have real conversations.
Let's have our family around us.
I can't tell you guys the conversations I have with my teenager, just wait until
you have a teenager. I got one coming. You know what I'm saying? If you don't want your
teenager to stray or to not know what's going on with them, get them to sit with you
at the dinner table. It's amazing what they'll tell you. And you know, I even let her bring
our boyfriend over. I'm like, hey, come have a seat at my table. Let's talk, you know.
Or you give him a ride. This is one of the best things you could ever do is take your kids
with their friends somewhere. That's like a 20, 30 minute drive. Totally.
And they come, they come, they totally for whatever reason. They think you can't hear them.
And they're the back of the car. And you just drive and you hear everything that they talk about.
It's so funny. So are you, is this, are you the sole
preparatory of this company or do you have partners?
We are currently in transition on a partner.
We're bringing a new partner in actually.
And the goal is really to grow our B2B distribution so that we are
being used by every processor.
That's processing fresh food that we are also working with
manufacturers that are looking for clean label preservatives. We have a clean label preservative
that extends shelf life that inhibits the growth of yeast and mold. And you know, my goal is to make
sure eat cleaners on every countertop, every sink.
You know, if you're, if you were, think about this,
remember when hand sanitizers got really crazy,
you know, H1N1, everybody was like sanitizing every,
like slathering their body with Purell.
I don't think it has to be like that,
but I do think that we need to mitigate risk, you know. So I don't want people to
come away from this thinking, oh my God, she's told us like not to eat anything. No, just
the opposite. I'm just saying eat, eat as close to his nature intended and take care
of mitigating your risks. So you don't get sick. If anybody's ever gotten sick, I got sicker than a dog once eating a salad.
And I wanted to die.
I mean, I have never felt so horrible as that moment
where you throw up more than you think
you're humanly capable of throwing up.
I can only imagine these children that eat something
that's contaminated
and get hospitalized.
What, what does that put your family through?
Oh, I got, I did it in Thailand.
I was in Thailand and I had, I don't know what I ate,
but it was something and I had a fever of 104,
almost 105, which for an adult is super high.
Oh, I was seeing things.
It was, it was crazy and they had to And they had to pay for a doctor to come
to my hotel room to give me an IV and you know, it took me like three days just to get better.
Do you know I had a similar experience? Did you really? I'm not even kidding you. And it was on my
honeymoon. I figured that was like the precursor to what the wedding was. Yeah, it wasn't meant to be.
I should have met your sign right there.
It was, dude, it was.
It was like two and a half weeks of pure hell.
But in Thailand too.
In Thailand too.
Oh my God.
Yep, that's crazy.
Beautiful country by the way.
Yeah, it was great.
It's just so great.
Not actually.
So you're, I mean, you're, you seem very driven.
Obviously you're very driven, motivated person.
Where does that come from?
Survival, passion.
We always like this?
Family.
We like that when you were a kid too.
Totally.
But it was misguided.
I know I look like the picture of sweet, nice,
but I was a pain in my parents' ass.
Like I was a pain in my parents' ass. Like, I was a total rebel. Um, always, like,
because when your mind works all the time and you can't stop it, you find yourself in
a lot of trouble. And my judgment factor was not great when I was a teenager. Um, I was
telling my dad, but I came out okay, right? He's like, uh, yeah.
What, how old were you when you immigrated here?
I was young, I was two, but we went back every year
and spent the full summer there.
So were your parents like, oh my god, we moved to America
and now we have a rebel kid who wants to?
I'm sure.
I'm sure they felt that way, but I think I was, you know,
not to digress, but being the child of an immigrant family,
it's an interesting place to be. You know, you're trying to digress, but being the child of an immigrant family, it's an interesting place to be.
You're trying to fit in, you're trying to be cool,
like all the other kids and your parents have an accent,
then they do things different, you know?
And my mom's screaming at my dad,
and my friends are like, what's going on with your parents?
I'm like, he's just asking, if dinner's ready,
like it's not a big deal.
Same experience here.
Yeah, all the crazy customs that you try and get used to and they were, you know, trying
to do the best that they could and I don't fault them for that, but at the same time I was
trying to figure it out.
But you know, for me, this mission about getting people to eat better, it's because it came from a place
where I had an eating disorder for over a decade.
And I was really misguided about what I should do, and I was trying to control something
in my life that, you know, a behavior that was not about the food, but it was the only
way I knew how to control it.
And I got, I really skewed the way I looked at food.
I got emaciated.
I was losing hair and clumps.
I was hospitalized.
I mean, it was bad.
And, but when I figured out how to eat in a balanced way and get my strength back, I
became an athlete.
I was racing bikes,
running, playing competitive soccer. Everything changed. My self-esteem changed. The way I manage stress
changed. My relationships with people changed. Ain't nobody like a hangry person. If you are not,
angry person. And if you are not, we don't realize the importance of food, you know, in our well-being when we're young. But then something bites you like that, and you just realize,
like, my life is too short to feel like this. So when I got it together, I just felt an
onus to be able to pay it forward to people, to help people come to terms with maybe a not-so-great relationship with food.
And unfortunately, I think a lot of the restrictive diets
that we're seeing are coming from a place
of actually having an eating disorder.
A hundred percent.
Absolutely.
You know, and so I think it's just really important
where we heed caution.
Our girls, especially, got guys too, my daughter's age are on chronic
diets.
16 years old, and they're just like, oh no, I don't eat that.
I'm this, I'm that.
And I'm like, babe, you need to eat.
Don't be like this.
You're going to kill your metabolism.
If one person can take this message and say, I get it.
I understand that food is my life force.
It's what gives me the ability to do what God created me to do on this planet.
And it's not about restriction necessarily.
I, there's a section of my book where I talk about the 90-ten rule. I think there is something to be able to say you can enjoy some of the things you love
within this moderation, but not feel like you're a martyr to your food.
I think there's this crazy martyrdom syndrome that we're experiencing right now.
I don't think it has to be that way. I think you should eat and enjoy,
do it with the people you love and do it often.
Cool, very cool.
Well, I can't wait to try your product.
We have yet to try it out.
Yeah, I'm excited.
I'm excited to have you down here.
We hit it off right away when we all met
and we love the message that you're given right now too,
which is great.
There's not enough people like yourself
that's putting out a message like those.
Excellent, thanks for coming by. Thank you guys. So check it out. Go to YouTube,
Mind Pump TV. We have new fitness videos up there almost every single day. Thank you for listening
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