HOW TO EAT FOR YOUR HEALTH AND THE PLANET "THE WELLZEST PODCAST" — WITH CHARLIE SZORADI

[00:00:04] Speaker A: Hi everyone and welcome back to the Wells S podcast. You are in for an absolute delight today because I have Charlie Cerrotti. I'm going to tell you all about Charlie here for a second. So Charlie Cerrotti is an entrepreneur, author and sustainability expert with over three decades of experience founding and leading businesses focused on clean energy, sustainable design and healthy superfoods. As the co founder of Only Kale, he's bringing kale powder to the masses, making daily nutrition accessible and eco conscious. His background spans led innovation, energy efficient retrofits, indoor agriculture, making him uniquely positioned to explore the intersection of wellness, sustainability, food systems and health oriented product design. Charlie. Charlie, welcome to the podcast. So excited to have you here. Such a treat. [00:00:57] Speaker B: Teju, thank you for hosting and love what you've been doing and really love the message and everything that you're, that you're conveying through the, through the podcast and the audience that you reach. [00:01:05] Speaker A: Thank you so much. And likewise, I can't wait to dig in. I was just saying your story is just endlessly fascinating. The more you know I was digging in, I'm like, wait, you did this and you did that and you traveled here. I mean, it's just so much excitement. So, you know, I want to just take a step back and actually have you narrate us through early. Charlie, who were you? What's your origin story? Like a superhero? Like what's your origin story? And talk to me about some of how your early influences led you to where you are now. [00:01:37] Speaker B: Super, super fun to share this story. Dad rolled over from Budapest, Hungary during the Cold war in the 50s. Had to escape from the Russians. Came to America as a young architect and my mom was involved with teaching and weaving and doing all kinds of things. Had a kind of a hippie vibe. And we'd go out hiking and biking and really active parents. Well, I sat at his desk and then at the foot of his desk, drawing and learning as a teenager, you know, even before that, like a toddler, practically 5, 6 years old, coloring in drawings and stuff about design and architecture, which I then pursued at the University of Virginia and later for my master's at the University of Pennsylvania. The sustainability all came early because he was involved with passive solar, active solar, and really influential in the 1970s with what was bleeding edge, right. Really the innovation back then. Jimmy Carter had just put solar panels on the roof of the White House. I was inspired. I lived in Washington D.C. growing up and built with two buddies from grade school. It was probably seventh or eighth grade. The Omega boat of the future. A Solar powered boat. And we won the popular prize for the science fair. Check the box. [00:02:50] Speaker A: Amazing. Yes. [00:02:52] Speaker B: And so I got the itch. And then Reagan, of course, took the solar panels off the White House. And we're like, okay, now we understand politics, right? [00:02:58] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:02:59] Speaker B: And I always hated from the beginning that the Earth days and the kind of Save the Earth message were about saving the Earth and not something that could be about saving people, those of us who live here on the planet with animals and plants. And that sustainability could be a cause for both the liberal extreme, a conservative extreme. Including the word conservative has, like, conservation in it. [00:03:21] Speaker A: Right. [00:03:22] Speaker B: It drives me absolutely crazy to this day, having had meetings and gotten to connect with Al Gore, you know, with the Inconvenient Truth. And he's a fellow graduate of St. Alban School for Boys, where I went to school in D.C. so it was interesting to just watch this unfold because I ended up at grad school with Kenya Mariyama, who is this unbelievable sustainability designer from Tokyo who ended up as my studio critic, but hired me to work in Tokyo for him. And it wasn't just about high tech. It wasn't like just solar panels and geothermal. It was about like passive things, cross ventilation, using local and natural materials, trying to stay away from the volatile organic compounds that were sometimes in like sofas and furniture and even sneakers. Right. New car smell, probably not that great. [00:04:12] Speaker A: No, not so much. [00:04:13] Speaker B: So I was learning not just from my father and from my mother, but also from teachers and specifically some real mentors. And it pivoted in a way for me in this origin story to lighting. Because all the work that I had done with a thesis on sustainable energy and clean energy was really, it was falling short. Because what happened is if you didn't look at the ceiling, the H Vac, the heating, ventilating and air conditioning was only going to take you so far to get to net zero. And so lighting was just on the merge with some of the early patents for the light emitting diodes, the LEDs. And way back now it's over 15 years ago, I had one of the early patents for the linear tubes, like replacing fluorescent tubes, and built the first US manufacturing operation here to make the most efficient lights in the world that first had a five year warranty instead of just one or two. And then we pushed it to 10 years, like lights that would just run 24, 7, 8760 hours a year with aluminum heat sinks. Really smart tech. And sold it to the US Military, Navy ships, Quantico, Marine Corps Base, National Facilities like the Walter Reed Hospital where they've weighed three presidents back to Obama and, you know, then, then Trump and then Biden. Obama administration had the. Basically it was the American Recovery Reinvestment act, about a $790 billion act. [00:05:44] Speaker A: I remember this. [00:05:44] Speaker B: And they needed one Republican vote. Happened to be Arlen Specter was on the fence because he was a more moderate Republican from Pennsylvania. [00:05:51] Speaker A: Right. [00:05:52] Speaker B: Obama put me on the green economy task force to take the train down to D.C. and convinced Specter and his minions right there at the Capitol to vote for this bill. It was about job creation. And my pitch was this level of enthusiasm. I don't know if Teju, my kind of demeanor today conveys that I like this conversation. [00:06:15] Speaker A: I feel the energy. That's amazing. [00:06:19] Speaker B: So, like I had these guys in the boardrooms and charts and we're just talking about job creation, all the things that could come from this recovery act, which included some incentives for smart buildings. [00:06:31] Speaker A: Right. [00:06:31] Speaker B: So the idea of a carrot versus a stick, 100% very appealing to me. You know, instead of a penalty for a carbon tax. And then everyone gets defensive about why, why, why. It was like, you know what if you do the right thing and you change the lights to these high performance LEDs, or you save money on the air conditioning with the higher seasonal energy efficiency ratio, the seer ratio, all the better, you're going to get a tax incentive. Maybe it's a credit, maybe it's deduction. I think, great, that's the carrot in front of the little donkey to pull him or her along. So that led to then with the lighting, a few calls from growers. Indoor agriculture was just emerging. And we worked with Penn State, got one of the first contracts to do it was diode adjustment with the nanometers with red, blue and purple wavelengths to optimize flowering of plants as well as different veg phases. And when it got released, the cannabis boys from your state, from California, called the weed dudes. [00:07:31] Speaker A: Of course. Of course. They must have been blowing up your phone. [00:07:37] Speaker B: If you're not in Maui, you're not in like, you know, whatever, some beautiful part of California that's ideal for the sun and the climate. You want to grow anywhere else in the world, you got to go indoors. [00:07:48] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:07:48] Speaker B: Because you can go year round. [00:07:49] Speaker A: Exactly. [00:07:50] Speaker B: And the lights were such a huge cost for their business model that the LEDs use 10% of the energy. So saving 90, not saving 10%. Right. 10% of total. So now we were in the game. And the roi, right, the return on investment for the buildings and dozens and dozens of high rises in New York City, including like the Morgan Stanley corporate headquarters. Like really breakthrough projects. Didn't care about growing plants, right? They cared about saving money. Very simple. So an old light bulb that could have been two or three dollars they didn't know was costing them 20 or $30 a year of electricity in New York because the lighting was buried in the utility bills. And so with the cannabis guys, with the building owners and the government, we would have to show the math. Very unemotional. Not a left, save the earth, not a right. You know, why are we wasting money? It was like math Excel file, right? And we would show that if you spend instead of 2 or $3, 20 or $30, it actually pays for itself in the first year. And we would sub meter the lighting. We did it for the farmers, we did it for the building owners. And then we would watch for the growers, the trajectory side by side in case studies with our lights versus the traditional ones and also against the sun. So we set up races, like horse races. [00:09:17] Speaker A: That's amazing. You're like, all right, who's gonna. [00:09:20] Speaker B: But it led to the only kale business because we realized that it wasn't just about growing marijuana. You could grow superfood and you could grow it locally near where people eat. So again, we're in California, beautiful crops, Central Valley. 90% of the veggies in the United States come from your backyard, right all the way over here, where I am now in Philly. Well, plants lose their nutrition value in transit and especially when they're refrigerated over time. Sometimes three, four, even five days of transit to get those plants, because you. [00:09:59] Speaker A: Cut them, they're dead, right? [00:10:01] Speaker B: And they're losing their nutrients. So I thought, maybe we can use these lights for indoor agriculture. And ended up with the Philadelphia Zoo as one of the pilots where. [00:10:11] Speaker A: How fascinating. [00:10:12] Speaker B: God bless them. Ben Franklin. You know, first zoo in the United States was right here in my backyard in Philadelphia. The first zoo in the world. Now that grows the food, the actual plants through for the herbivores, the giraffe and the chimpanzees growing with the LED lights in shipping containers at the Philadelphia Zoo. Not Ben Franklin. Charlie Serati. [00:10:34] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm high fiving you through the. [00:10:37] Speaker B: Not a lot of big news on that. But you know, guess what? It was pretty cool for me and our whole staff that we could set something in the ground. And it wasn't just then saving money for the buildings. It had a bigger impact on sustainability because now it was local and it was sustainable and it was smart. And those were the things that could make sense when we talk about affordability. And it came to then with the kale, looking at how we could take superfoods not just for animals, but for human animals. Right. We're not in the zoo. And I thought, let's look at some stats. 40% level obesity in the United States, rising issues with children, heart disease, diabetes, all tied to the obesity challenge. And I thought, my God, we're sitting on our ass. We're binging on the Netflix, which I will do. And then we're not eating enough veggies. And the center of the grocery store has the processed foods. And you know, they say shop the. [00:11:32] Speaker A: Perimeter, shop the perimeter. [00:11:34] Speaker B: Cost is an issue. If you don't buy the organic kale, then you're at risk because some of the kale, like blueberries and other superfoods, are sponges for pesticides. [00:11:45] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:11:45] Speaker B: So if there's a time to spend some money, you know, on the, on the organic, it's often, often with those kind of things that really matter for your, your core nutrients. And I realized if we, if we dry it up, I looked at hydration systems where we would dehydrate to be able to move it from California, if we had to, across the country, because it wasn't always going to be easy to grow near where people eat in cities like Manhattan. Right. Not a lot of extra real estate. [00:12:13] Speaker A: Right. Right. [00:12:14] Speaker B: The dehydrating takes about 30 to 40% of the nutrients out of the vegetables. Even if you put the dehydrating right on the farms. [00:12:24] Speaker A: Wow. [00:12:24] Speaker B: Freeze drying, 97% retention. [00:12:28] Speaker A: Wow. [00:12:30] Speaker B: So we put the freeze drying machines right on the farms and we grow the 100% organic kale. So the food that has the highest nutrient density of vegetables on earth, kale, is 100% kale powder. Now through the freeze drying right on the farms. And this is the equivalent for, you know, whatever between 50 and 75 cents of a serving of veggies that you can put in everything from just straight water. Or in the morning, I'll sometimes put it in with like a whey protein or an organic protein if you don't like the, the animal, you know, kind of, you know, products and creatine and maybe some collagen powder. No blender. [00:13:12] Speaker A: Right. [00:13:12] Speaker B: Shake it up. And the final close to this origin story of how we got to kale today is if you move it and it's 10% of the weight, so it's saving 90 over 90% of the nutrients. But it's only 10% of the weight. No refrigeration needed in transit. [00:13:29] Speaker A: Right. [00:13:30] Speaker B: It's the most eco friendly way to move food ever. Less weight, no refrigeration. And food and the moving of food is over 20% of the greenhouse gas emissions. The entire forestry, food industry, everything we grow and do things with, has such an impact on the environment. I have a solar house here that I built, solar house at the beach, electric car, all those things, they don't make as big of an impact as eating local or freeze dried food as part of your diet. Not the whole shift, but a spoke on the wheel. To roll that bike forward in our lives there. Took longer than I thought. [00:14:11] Speaker A: But you know, I love it. I love it. And I think that that's something that's really interesting. People don't talk about the movement of food and the transport of food. And I was watching this documentary where they were talking about apples and the life cycle of an apple. So growing up on the east coast, my favorite thing during the fall is to go to an orchard and just like pick the apples off the tree. There's nothing that tastes better than an apple picked off the crispy. [00:14:32] Speaker B: And this was Connecticut or up in New England, right, where you live? [00:14:35] Speaker A: In Connecticut? Yes. Yep. In Connecticut. My favorite thing to do. And it's crazy to think about the transport of something like apples. They were saying like, you know, sometimes by the time you get an apple, it's like actually months old. It's been scary. [00:14:50] Speaker B: Or truck ripened. You're exactly truck ripened. The inside of the tomatoes is like this tan color. [00:14:56] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:14:57] Speaker B: Inside of the strawberries. No time in human history, hundreds of thousands of years have we had food that has grown so far from where we eat it. [00:15:07] Speaker A: Exactly. [00:15:07] Speaker B: No time. And since the second World War, basically we started to really see that industrialized farming change. So I'm on the movement not just with kale, but through controlled environment agriculture called cea to work with underserved communities, to train people as agritechs to work with veterans. So the underserved community and the veterans interestingly have the highest level of issues with income and health. [00:15:37] Speaker A: Right. [00:15:38] Speaker B: Sad. Right. So we need to help our veterans and we need to help those people from the, from the ground up work and be part of an active community and their choices in, in food deserts. Tasu are terrible. [00:15:50] Speaker A: Terrible. [00:15:50] Speaker B: Corner grocery is not a grocery. They're. They're Slim Jims and Pringles. [00:15:54] Speaker A: Exactly. [00:15:55] Speaker B: Not great. [00:15:56] Speaker A: Soda. Yeah. [00:15:57] Speaker B: And soda. [00:15:58] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:15:58] Speaker B: Okay. I didn't know if you had more Than one question for today. [00:16:04] Speaker A: I feel like you already kind of. You, like, wrapped up. You already hit it home. That's gorgeous. [00:16:10] Speaker B: I'm here. You got me for another 20 minutes. [00:16:12] Speaker A: I love this. I love it. I'm actually curious though. What do you think someone could do? You living in a food desert, you're in a situation where income is of a concern. What can a consumer do to shift their habits to, you know, kind of create a system, even if it's in a small apartment where they're consuming food that's fresh, that they're able to grow. Walk me through that. [00:16:35] Speaker B: Okay, so there's. There's three answers that go from most complicated to least. [00:16:41] Speaker A: Right. [00:16:42] Speaker B: And the most complicated is an indoor grow tower that has some LED lights and you actually water it. And some of them are automated now. And I grow 60 heads, leafy greens each week just for myself and family. But that is like a commitment to like, you know, you plant in the little grow cubes and you have to keep an eye on it a little bit. The next one is a windowsill tray of something like microgreens, where we're just using the sunlight. If you have a window, it's a tray that might be 10 inches by, you know, 12 or 20, depending on the size. And the microgreens are the seeds where they look like bean sprouts or alfalfa sprouts. [00:17:22] Speaker A: Yes, yes. [00:17:22] Speaker B: Super nutritious. And you just start to incorporate something that is local, hyperlocal, meaning it's at your own home. Like reach from windowsill to table and you clip those, they grow within four to five days. Beautiful story there. Studentfarmers.org is our, like the nonprofit which is all about the microgreens and empowering people and their parents and families to help do something. It's, it's 10 cents of seeds can create multiple dollars of food. Okay, then the least complicated one of all is to find through the Internet local farmers that might have a market. It could be a pop up. It could be in a city like a food desert where there's a townhouse that might have been demoed or some public community garden or park and often offer to participate or just buy those things that are often pretty affordable with maybe it's a plot of land where you're outside. Right. So we go from high tech LED lights, low tech windowsill, and then outdoors, which is, you know, more traditional. But. But basically think about going beyond the corner grocery and the processed foods to find things that are local and are fresh. [00:18:38] Speaker A: Right. [00:18:39] Speaker B: Not complicated, but hard In a rhythm where the ad, the billboard is for some McNugget deal. You know, buy two, get one free soda and fries. It's like, you know, we have to challenge potentially big corporate food with the agriculture because the messaging is hundreds of millions of dollars in the wrong direction. [00:18:59] Speaker A: 100%. [00:18:59] Speaker B: They banned, they banned billboards for cigarettes all across the United States and TV commercials and ads. At some point, we will see what happens with all the food that we know is hurting our children at some level. And it's a political challenge to do that. But the reality is Charlie and his message cannot compete with the big boys on the billboards. [00:19:19] Speaker A: For sure. Yeah, the billboards. Marketing. The marketing, so seductive. I mean, I'm a marketer. That's my first business. I run an agency. So I would say I want to teach a course on ethical marketing because it can be really psychologically manipulative and lead consumers down a wrong path. I'm curious, were you always into health and wealth and kale like? It sounds like it in your story, but I don't want to make any assumptions. [00:19:43] Speaker B: No, no, don't make an assumption. So I went through the National Academy of Sports Medicine recently to get certified as a personal trainer because I had seen so much online about the, let's just say the vegan diet and then the carnivore diet and the keto and the fitness techniques. Because now that I'm not the same age as my 19 year old and 15 year old kids, like, I can do the push up challenge and mess with them. Like, you know, I'm, I'm in shape. Biking, hiking, running, running, training for the Olympic triathlon, kayaking, surfing, all the good stuff. Played lacrosse in high school. [00:20:20] Speaker A: Me too. [00:20:21] Speaker B: Always good. Have always been, been active. But it came as a wake up call, turning 40 and then 50, like, wow, things now have changed. The metabolism level has changed. Yes, I'm gonna look at, okay, let's talk about Greek yogurt, let's talk about chia seeds, let's talk about food and intake. And so I was always active. And I think it was a balance then to look at the fuel. How can we put the smartest things in our body and at what time of day makes the most sense? So I did the training not to be a professional, like trainer, but for my own sanity. Because the noise on the Internet with every YouTube video could convince you to literally stop eating meat or to eat meat. And they sound wildly convincing. [00:21:06] Speaker A: Totally. [00:21:06] Speaker B: It's insane. And so the balance is Mediterranean, grass fed. If you can get it and, you know, the pasture raised, you know, meats and fresh vegetables, reduce a whole bunch of the dairy and the kind of the simple carbs, you know, go for more of the complex grains and the other things than just the white bread. And basically eat the way people did before the Second World War all over the world, not the way we eat now, where things are coming in boxes and bags. [00:21:38] Speaker A: Right. [00:21:39] Speaker B: So that's the challenge. But it was really also looking at fitness in terms of training to be able to keep up with the kids down at the beach this summer. [00:21:48] Speaker A: Yeah, I love that. I love that you talked about superfoods. I heard you talk about blueberries. What are some other superfoods that you love? And. And how can consumers beware? I feel like people are claiming things are superfoods and they're not fair. How can consumers be aware of that? [00:22:02] Speaker B: The big six to think about are kind of three and three with the veggies and the fruits. So kale at the top of the list comes with some friends called spinach and broccoli. Great. The key with all of these is not to really cook it, because, like, with the kale powder, when you've captured those nutrients, you can put it in the drinks or the food. If you buy the actual leaf, you are probably getting it multiple days old because it had be grown somewhere not next to your house. [00:22:31] Speaker A: Exactly. [00:22:32] Speaker B: Or it's been in the grocery store even for a day or two is not to overcook it. So with the veggies blanching I sometimes take, because when I grow the leaf kale here, just the scissors, and I cut it up. And then if I've grilled some chicken or something, I just put it on and it, like, warms it all up together instead of like. It was kind of like a bachelor lazy move for me because I didn't like cooking and having to clean a whole nother pan anyway. [00:22:58] Speaker A: Right. [00:22:59] Speaker B: I eat a lot of stuff in bowls. [00:23:01] Speaker A: Right. That's my secret, too. [00:23:03] Speaker B: Adding in nuts, you know, all that stuff. [00:23:05] Speaker A: That's what I do too. [00:23:06] Speaker B: Those are the big three. So the kale, the spinach, and the broccoli are the big green ones. And then the fruits start with blueberries, raspberries, and strawberries. [00:23:15] Speaker A: Right, Right. [00:23:16] Speaker B: That there's a path forward. And again, be careful with the superfoods. And I'll define a little bit why they're superfoods is they are the place to spend money on the organic. Because in the life of karma, when they're really good things, then they often have Some little sort of downside? Well, it's not unusual that the really good factor, the superfoods, means they're going to give you something. Antioxidants, the level of vitamins as a percentage of calorie and a percentage of total weight makes them super. So because they have that ability to give us something, they've in my brain opened themselves up, which means when humans come and put a pesticide near them, they're like, they're kind of like a socially gregarious. Yeah. [00:24:06] Speaker A: Exactly. [00:24:07] Speaker B: Well, you don't want that. You don't, you don't, you don't want the chemicals. So now the ratio, for example, with the antioxidants and the vitamins for say the kale is so much higher than like a iceberg lettuce, which is like 90% water. Right. If you can see it. And it's sort of almost clear, like when you buy the, the fast food burger, you're like, like. And they think they're having a vegetable. [00:24:34] Speaker A: Exactly. Not even close. [00:24:35] Speaker B: You're supposed to have three servings of vegetables, which is like a cup, like an actual cup. It's not even close. So think of it as richer, deeper colors are an indicator often of the superfoods and the level of the antioxidants and the vitamins. And that's the richness of them makes them super. [00:24:54] Speaker A: You know, I'm going to ask a very macro existential question. Like, we know this. Like, we've heard this. We know we need to eat richer, leafy green vegetables, antioxidant, rich fruits. Why is our narrative about healthy eating so skewed in a different direction, as you're saying, like, there are the people jumping on these fad diets, pushing these treatments, telling people to take pills versus actually doing the work and eating food and exercising. What is actually going on? [00:25:20] Speaker B: So I'll tell you the short answer, and I don't have all answers. This is my speculative answer, is doctors do not spend enough time studying the fuel we put in our bodies because they have to learn so many other things, right? So when you have a psychiatrist that's studying the brain and a nutritionist that's studying the gut biome and the health and then a medical md they are all separate. And we will look in terms of their practices and in terms of their, their education. We will look back in 100 years if AI hasn't, you know, taken over to basically think we were fooling ourselves, that this idea of holistic medicine, imagine that the stereotype of like the medicine man in the Amazon jungle, like knew all these little tricks with like, you know, how to get rid of a rash with some special leaf or some juice from the flower, the nectar. It's not crazy to me to think that what you put in your body will impact the machine of your body. [00:26:18] Speaker A: Exactly right. You know this with cars, like I. [00:26:21] Speaker B: Don'T understand why it doesn't change with architectural buildings. Right. The furnace and the system runs, the mechanical systems. So it's a crutch to use a statin like a Lipitor that helps reduce cholesterol is after the fact that you've gotten a bunch of potentially clogged arteries. [00:26:41] Speaker A: Right. [00:26:41] Speaker B: It's the largest selling drug I think in the history of the world. So it gives us an excuse to continue some bad behavior in terms of eating. Now there are some people that can really benefit early because they have genetically some, you know, it's a difference in their pipes and how they collect cholesterol. But the reason this is so interesting is we haven't taken the idea of food as medicine to heart. And this goes back to the Greeks. There was some, you know, I don't know whether it was Aristotle. There's a great old quote about food is thy medicine. Well, if we don't focus on that, then we're just going to be playing catch up teju for years, decades. And the cost in the trillions for healthcare is so high in the United States. Mostly because we have an obesity issue which needs to be taken care of. We got fat. And when you get fat, it starts to slow the machine down. It starts to disrupt all kinds of functions in your, in your body and lead to chronic disease like the diabetes and the heart failure which kills more people than anything anything else. So there is the short answer. Got to start at the beginning with the medical practitioners. Health and wellness starts with the fuel and the exercise. Not necessarily the, the visual look of, you know, the trillions on skin care. And all those things can actually come with the eyes, hair and the skin from the, even the antioxidants and the vitamins in the kale as opposed to potions and lotions. [00:28:13] Speaker A: Potions, I know, exactly. It's what you put in your body that's, that's key. It's integral. You know, what do you think food sustainability looks like in 2030? [00:28:23] Speaker B: I think it's going to be freeze dried because I am going to lead the charge Teju that we're going to take a bunch of food like astronaut and we're going to start to look at how we can balance whole food that is made locally with things that we love that are exotics that could be literally freeze dried on farms. And think as a food supply chain that we took what was a model that had basically worked where a farmer outside of a town would come in, in a cart. So before even cars and trucks would come in on a cart on whatever days were market day and they would bring their vegetables or they would bring their eggs and they would barter and trade. They didn't all live right next to each other. So if you didn't have eggs because you were growing veggies and the poultry guy had a whole bunch of chickens, you would literally barter and trade at the market. [00:29:16] Speaker A: Right. [00:29:16] Speaker B: And if you were a cobbler fixing people's shoes, you would just use the dollars or the coins, whatever you had to buy what you needed. So then we got the trucks and we got the ability to move the food further and where it was produced to where we eat and sleep. And then we got to rail and then we got to refrigerated trucks and refrigerated rail and then we got to airplanes. And now we move food all over the world, including avocados, which are awesome, you know, from a whole other country. So what happened is efficiency and transportation gave us the ability to do something that was super illogical. Move food so far. And local, local, local is the, is the name of the game for the, for the future where we will find indoor farms. To your question about what will future food look like similar food but grown in, you know, how with post Covid people work at home more. Imagine office buildings where every third floor, it's like law firm, architecture firm grow farm. We are going to start to potentially use parts of real estate that we'd never thought of to grow food. And then we're going to engineer some things inevitably like the impossible burgers. You know that it sort of looks and tastes like meat, but is not. So there's going to be hopefully local first and then some genetic innovations. Genetic meaning to the way that they are messing with the GMOs. The genetic modified organics is going to be part of the future because AI will tell us some little magic sauce of how we can do something which scares the pants off of me because you, you mess with nature and you, you open a door to a future discovery about something we didn't know that was toxic to the human genome. That's, that's what scares me a little bit that if we get, if we get two Frankenstein right We, we risk it the freeze drawing I love because you take something super good like kale and you just freaking collapse out the, the, in a vacuum. The things you don't need, like the moisture, which doesn't help you to preserve all the nutrients. And you can literally feed the world in a smarter way. [00:31:34] Speaker A: Right. You know, are there things in the plant nutrition? So you talked a little bit about like the impossible burger. I've seen a lot of like genetic synthetic meats in the plant world. Is there research and innovation that you're, you've talked about freeze drying. But is there anything else that you're really excited about that you're looking forward to? [00:31:53] Speaker B: So I love diversity in so many ways that if you think back to the Native Americans, there were something like 300 different strains of corn, the maize, right now with the genetic modification for drought tolerance, hyperspeed growth, there's like a handful of strains of corn. The risk of that is if one gets sick, you can have catastrophic, catastrophic impact. As opposed to one of 300. Right? One of three. We saw with the eggs and all of a sudden there was the egg prices. One shooting right up because a bird flew. So I am hoping that what will happen with some of the intelligence is we will find a way to reintroduce diversity in strains and not end up with monoculture of the similarity. So all these patterns that have existed felt like we were moving towards efficiency, right. We were finding the top corn and then we made more of it and we kept going. There is a point when it becomes asymptotic. Meaning. Meaning that the, the benefits start to taper off. So it looks in the beginning like there's a lot of great benefits. But when we see those health disadvantages and we see for crops the inability to have regenerative agriculture, meaning we're not changing the soil out in the nutrients. Because what happens is different. Plants feed back some nutrients when they, when they biodegrade into the soil. There's a huge issue with, with soil quality. Like they think now spinach has less nutrients than it did even a decade or two ago because the quality of the soil isn't there. So we're hurting ourselves in ways we don't even know about it yet. And that's why diversity in how we grow crops and plants, you know, with, with livestock even instead of the, you know, the kind of the factory farming, having cattle graze and just eat the top of the grass, versus tilling soil, tilling all the roots up for harvesting is a way that farmers for hundreds of thousands of years not Hundreds of tens of thousands would manage crop fields because they were including livestock with growing vegetables. So that's that diversity play that I hope we get back to. [00:34:20] Speaker A: Right. You've done some work with the military in your career. Correct. And you know, what did you feel like you learned about performance nutrition from working with the military that civilians often miss? [00:34:31] Speaker B: So it's interesting, the short answer is the majority of the military work was with the energy efficiency first and more recently as an advisor for 98 Octane, which is a nonprofit that helps for food and wellness as well as exercise veterans. And what we're finding with the, with the team at 98 octane is the, the rationing and the proportions and the kind of the government food sets people sometimes on a pattern of packaged goods because when they deploy soldiers, things are in, in boxes and bags. It's hard to get the fresh veggies into the field. Right. It's hard to get the, the freshly cut fruit or the butcher's meat that has been just raised and killed. So it's interesting that usually the military leads with something like NASA and Velcro. We get a byproduct from the military. We get the Internet was funded initially so government could have a secure non phone conversation in communication. So interestingly, the volume of numbers in soldiers is so high and the need to deploy and have shelf stable products is not the model for civilian life. In fact, we're working with the military to try and figure out how to bring in, you know, more of the freeze dried and the superfoods than what are the defaults. So I like the balance in the, in the question of what did we learn. There's nothing I can point to specifically other than the pretty impressive efficiency. If you want to move 100 million tons of something, you can go to the US military and that food will show up in some form. Bags of grain, all those things. But the reality is we need to be smarter at the civilian and the military level. [00:36:29] Speaker A: I'd love your take on this too. Switching from the military to corporations. So you've worked also with a bunch of Fortune 100 companies. I've worked at Fortune 100 companies myself. I actually created wellness incentive programs for a lot of Fortune 500 companies. And, and I think about the push about wellness programs. It's like wellness drink your water. There's this app, there's a step challenge, whatever it may be, but their employees are still incredibly stressed, unhealthy, the food choices. I remember I went to this hospital once and the food at the hospital, they Were serving fried chicken, buttered whatever it may be. And I'm like, wait, what is happening? We're at a health and wellness fair, and this was the options available. So I would love your anecdotes and what you see these companies getting wrong about health. [00:37:19] Speaker B: So it's interesting when you have the access to a cafeteria at a big corporation. Imagine the glam stereotype of like corporate Apple or Google. And you can envision they have like the bowls of like the unsalted almonds and the power bars, and there's the fresh bowl of the fruit and all that stuff. And that's the kind of like the tech stereotype of like the ideal work environment. And there's not catered, but like salad bars and things. Most of corporate America, as we've looked since the second World War, to like turn people loose on the street is like, go get your lunch. [00:37:58] Speaker A: Right. You know what I'm saying? [00:37:59] Speaker B: The vast majority of workers are using what is out on the curb. Now in Manhattan, it might be a food truck. Fine. You know, that's all you could get your access to. There's falafels. There's not just always the hot dogs. There's stuff you can choose from. But when you look at the convenience of fast food, it's often processed in some way that's not great for health versus going to an actual restaurant where they may have bought at a market, something for a salad. The veggies may be fresher, the meat may be fresher. So because of the speed, the rest of the world admires our efficiency and our work ethic in the United States to just get a lot of stuff done. No question. What they don't admire is how we eat at our desk and in our cars. [00:38:49] Speaker A: Oh, 100%. [00:38:49] Speaker B: It's fast culture. [00:38:50] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:38:51] Speaker B: We're rushing. And instead of. You think of the stereotype then of the Google headquarters with Apple, and you think of like the Italian having a little cafe, a lunch, and some espresso, like for two hours. Or the Spanish having a longer meal. Enjoying the meal, not as a bridge to get from the first half of the day to the next as fuel, but as part of their life. This is work to live, not live to work. [00:39:18] Speaker A: Right. [00:39:19] Speaker B: And so there's a. There's a line in Italian, it's about l' arte non farinula, the art of doing nothing. Just relaxing, enjoying the time with your friends, and eating slower meals where you're taking time in. The tapas, for example, are individual portions. When I lived in Tokyo and worked in different parts of Japan, the bento boxes, the boxes were shared. There was no meal that showed up in a plastic go clamshell box. [00:39:50] Speaker A: Right, Right. [00:39:52] Speaker B: So the answer to your corporate question is infusing something in the culture that. Is it a. A Tuesday where someone comes in that's a local restaurant owner, Right. Oh, as a marketing play, for them to offer something, maybe it's not totally for free. Maybe the company helps pitch in or pay something, but introduce the staff. In this case, imagine it's an office that could have two dozen in a conference room. Not 3,000, you know I'm saying? [00:40:23] Speaker A: But. [00:40:23] Speaker B: But pods, right? And include local. Is there a farmer's market that the corporation would partner with to drop off veggies in a break room? And there's a cutting board, and you chop them up, you make a little salad. Maybe you. Maybe you bring in. Or there's some. Some. Some proteins there that you could have as a. As an option. But the idea of inclusion. And I broke into the other conversation about diversity, it's not like, go take your lunch break. Good luck. Yeah, we're gonna put a bunch of things out on the counter, which most CEOs are like, I can't afford putting things out on the counter. And half the staff's at home anyway. [00:40:58] Speaker A: Right. [00:40:59] Speaker B: But this idea of making it a mission, like, as if it was your family, like your children, you wouldn't just say if they were six. Good luck. [00:41:06] Speaker A: Yeah, good luck. [00:41:07] Speaker B: Hopefully the PB&J, the smart moms, would use a whole wheat bread versus Wonder Bread. I can pick a wonder bread, but just guessing, you know, it doesn't have the nutrient content of some whole grain. So the point is, be active, proactive and active to engage with diversity. Different types of foods. Is it a food program where every Tuesday there's a different type of restaurant? Different Indian, Asian, Italian, who know, who cares? It's like, just bring in something that's made other than from a fast food vendor. [00:41:41] Speaker A: It's so true. I love what you said about the cultural shifts and the differences too. Like Japan, France. I spend a lot of time in both places, and it's. For me, it's almost. It takes me like a week to undo my cultural programming of like, let me grab my coffee to go. Let me run here. Especially in France. I remember I was in a French school, and, you know, everyone's sitting out, drinking coffee, eating, you know, fresh stuff, and I'm like, we gotta, you know, keep it moving. They're like, what's wrong with you? [00:42:10] Speaker B: We've gotta be the country that eats more food in cars. [00:42:13] Speaker A: Exactly right. [00:42:15] Speaker B: And so I went out, it was just last week with my girlfriend, we found that there's a creek where we go hiking. And it was like the middle of the day. Brought out some prosciutto, some gouda cheese, some whole grain seeded crackers, and some fruit. And it wasn't a big lunch, but we're out there just for that 40 minutes, soaking it in, relaxing. You mentioned the stress and the mental health. Hearing that water, watching it go over the rocks. I learned in Japan at a Buddhist monastery. Doing some meditation training is the ultimate simple way to calm your mind and your body. The stream is your life force. The rocks are the stupid phone bill you got to pay when you get back or that the, the auto pay didn't go through and you forgot to call Carol. You know, you're old, your roommate from college, you're like, so you just let that stuff. And one of them is like the divorce lawyer. You know, it's like, trust me, there's some big ones, you know, like, let's just pretend. Not for me, but that's way past. But the, the idea of the creek is your life force. Enjoy it, listen to it, smell it, see it. Grab some food, fresh stuff if you can. Couple drinks, I think we brought in, we probably had like one of these, you know, 30G, like protein drinks, you know, threw that in the backpack. [00:43:33] Speaker A: Yep. [00:43:34] Speaker B: You know, as well. But the idea was take the time to enjoy your life and stop rushing and buy some of the foods that you think might be a treat or something for a friend. Invite them someplace, surprise yourself, surprise them. And. And they go, oh, my God, that made me think of this restaurant. And then we can go and we can support local businesses as well as the corporate superstructures. [00:43:57] Speaker A: Love it, love it, love it. You know, I love. I heard you say this. You said, you know, if it's not scalable, it's not sustainable. How do you think that this applies to the way that we think about, you know, food consumption, health, and our just, well, being in general? [00:44:10] Speaker B: Okay, so I've got to say that scalability was always on my mind. This goes back to undergrad days. If you have a great idea and it's so expensive, like the very, very first solar panels or some of the first electric cars, then it's not going to be sustainable because only the richest or the most conscientious will do it. So the goal is to find that balance between affordability and function. So it has to function well in the balance and be affordable. Right. It can't just be cheap and not work well. And if the third sort of part of that is good for you and the planet, then you hit that, then you hit the big three. Those are, those are the key now to get it to scale. Musk, whether people like, you know, Elon Musk and Tesla or not, figured out a way to scale, to make the batteries in the packs to make the car more affordable. China's now doing it. We're going to see an unbelievable drop in the cost of electric cars over the next few years. Right. Because it went from an exotic to a commonplace thing. You had to scale the charge stations. [00:45:18] Speaker A: Right, Right. [00:45:19] Speaker B: I don't love it when I ever see the electric cars that say, you know, zero emissions, because I can say it only having a solar house where I plug the car into the sun. Most of the electricity in the United States is still made through some non sustainable resources. Burning coal, burning natural gas, something else. So the idea of scale means we got to stay focused on the end game, which is the most impact per capita if we can do it. I looked with this for scalability, where the freeze drying can be done so efficiently at the farms. It can be packaged and powdered and moved so efficiently. We can make it work for the richest of the people that want to be on the gym circuit and travel to go hiking one weekend, throw it in their backpack, or the underserved community to get the nutrients that they literally cannot afford or have access to somewhere else. That to me was scalability in the, in the only kale path. And there's some more and more of those examples coming on, on board with, you know, the aluminum canisters instead of single use plastic. [00:46:26] Speaker A: Yes. Yeah. [00:46:27] Speaker B: Well, it is insane that we're producing. It's over 9 billion of the single. You use plastic bottles for water. I hate, hate, hate at the big box stores that they sell cases of 30 for like 6 bucks or whatever. It is like shockingly affordable compared to paying a dollar at the, at the convenience store, $1.50. So we've seduced people in. [00:46:48] Speaker A: Exactly. [00:46:49] Speaker B: And it ends up in our gut because we're gonna dump it in the ocean sometime. Whether we think we sell it to China or Taiwan, it ends up in the ocean. Fish eat the microplastics and we eat the fish. [00:47:00] Speaker A: Right, exactly. [00:47:01] Speaker B: So I told the kids, the trash does not go anywhere. Like even if you burn it, it goes in the air. Like the thing does not disappear when the, when the garbage truck zips down the street. [00:47:11] Speaker A: Yeah, It's a forever going somewhere else. Right. [00:47:14] Speaker B: So the idea of scalability is to make the affordability of the aluminum and the canisters commonplace. You talked about the corporate and sustainability. Get the filter. Get the water filter. Get the most expensive water filter you can find with the greatest tasting water ever. And maybe you give people, like, the little flavor packs instead of the vending machine. It sells the water bottles. [00:47:39] Speaker A: It's so true. [00:47:40] Speaker B: I mean, Dasani, I'm not picking on any brand. It's just filtered. Most of them are not spring water. And honestly, in a taste test, if you have the right carbon filter on the systems, you can't tell the difference with the spring water. [00:47:53] Speaker A: Right. [00:47:53] Speaker B: And the spring water for carbon is being driven from what, Vermont? [00:47:59] Speaker A: Right. Yeah. [00:48:02] Speaker B: Like, and there's a river called the Schuylkill in the Delaware river on either side of Philly with plenty of water. [00:48:07] Speaker A: Right. [00:48:07] Speaker B: It can be filtered. So, like, we're not doing the smart things. We're doing what seems fast and easy, you know, to like, make it work. So there's, there's your answer there. [00:48:17] Speaker A: Wow, wow, wow. You know what I want to do? I want to move to our true or false section. I love this section. So we're going to fire a bunch of questions. [00:48:25] Speaker B: Is there a score? Is this a graded test? [00:48:29] Speaker A: Yes, it's a graded. We're going to have the audience type in whether or not you win the test. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yes. Gear up. It's going to get wild here. So I'm going to fire these questions at you. Feel free. If you feel like you do need to explain something to make sure that the answer is in integrity, feel free to do so. But I'm going to fire these off and let you tell us whether you think they're true or they're false. So the first one is sustainable food practices can reduce chronic disease rates. [00:48:59] Speaker B: True. Example, obesity can lead to diabetes and heart disease. So if you eat better, you're less fat, you die less. [00:49:07] Speaker A: Done and done. Wellness trends don't influence real world food production. [00:49:13] Speaker B: False. Consumer demand has started to make the impact. They're selling salads at McDonald's. We can, as a human race, impact corporate culture by telling them what we want to buy. [00:49:25] Speaker A: Very true. Very true. You can't build a sustainable business that's also profitable. [00:49:30] Speaker B: False. We're doing it. [00:49:33] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Yep. I always. I love that question because there's actually people, I think that this is a limiting belief. People think that, like, oh, you can't, you know, build a sustainable business. And have it be a wild success. But anyway, I digress. [00:49:45] Speaker B: Oh, and just so you know, like we even went to the level of like the production facility co packing we're doing in San Diego. Full solar operation, net net zero production. So like we took sustainability that seriously. [00:49:58] Speaker A: Seriously. [00:49:59] Speaker B: And it's a healthy business for healthy people. [00:50:02] Speaker A: Amazing, amazing, amazing. Consumers prioritize taste over sustainability. [00:50:07] Speaker B: 100% true. And this is something that can be overcome because they do not have to be mutually exclusive. So you can have taste and quality and it can still be good for the planet. And I don't know why there's a perception that like, you know, health food tastes bad. Well, there's a whole trend, you know, against that now and you have to go to the right sections of the grocery store and honestly tell audience who's probably listening knows this, try it out. Don't make an assumption that it's not going to taste good because it's healthy. [00:50:44] Speaker A: Yeah, I would say bad food tastes bad. Like there's unhealthy things that taste bad too. So I don't think that the two things go if it's bad, it's just bad. Period. Let me ask you this next one. Convenience and clean eating cannot coexist. [00:51:01] Speaker B: That's false too. So this would be an example of a single serve stick pack. You're setting me up with these questions. This is as convenient as it gets. Tear the top and you just stick it literally in and you mix it up with a spoon or shake it even. So I love that. And the convenience of things that are bought in bulk for me instead of having to run back and forth to the, to the grocery store is great. So like Goya, like the black beans in a can, like there's, there's things you can mix in and the, the, the refrigeration life of like hummus and stuff. Like there's, there's, there's plenty of things that can be fast and convenient also be, be easy and good for you. [00:51:46] Speaker A: How about the wellness industry is more performative than practical. [00:51:50] Speaker B: I think that's false now versus a decade ago. I think we're now performing and focused on the performance for the practical. So wellness industry more performative than practical? No, the reason I said it's false is it's, it is pretty practical. I'm giving the industry the advantage by saying it's practical. The performance in the beginning was to just try and get the electric car out without the practicality of price. It's become more practical. [00:52:25] Speaker A: Right, right. Amazing. People overestimate how sustainable their habits are. [00:52:32] Speaker B: Hundred percent true. We talked about those plastic bottles they think they're recycling. They bought a case of 30 at the Walmart or the Costco for whatever, four or five dollars, and then now they think by recycling the plastic that they're being sustainable. Yeah, it's terrible. So bad. And the idea of packaging, when we buy this stuff from Amazon, we feel better because it might say, like, you know, recycled cardboard or something in the box. Imagine I have three of them sitting over here, like, just got some new stuff, like for. I think it was some sports stuff. It's like a tennis racket. Like something to adjust the strings. A box is in a box and the box in the box is in plastic. Right. So and. But it says it might be recyclable or recycled, and we recycle it. But the act of that thing moving. Right. And all the packaging is terrible. So we have to be sensitive that the little things we're doing don't really add up. [00:53:28] Speaker A: Right, right, right. So true. Affordable wellness is an oxymoron. [00:53:33] Speaker B: False. You just have to look harder for affordable wellness. It is there. It is not a disconnect. It just takes time to find it. There are options. Why we push to get the price so affordable for the kale. [00:53:47] Speaker A: Love it. And this last one, daily greens, can help with sleep. [00:53:51] Speaker B: Oh, super true. Food in general, including greens, are tied to wellness. And with wellness, I wear the. This is the whoop, the sleep monitor. You know, when some of the professional athletes where I'm like, what's the downside? It tells you all kinds of cool stuff. The reality is, if you are more fit through food, you eat and exercise, you will sleep better, period. End stop. Now, you can have nuances of that if you're stressed. Right. You have to have the mental health and think about that creek. Get through the rocks, go through, you know, like, just let it flow. But there are some tricks, by the way, if you. There's a military trick. I'll share with your audience. If you clench your fists and your forearms and then release, and you kind of go down your body, including your back and your butt and your legs, and you release as you go. While you're lying in bed. [00:54:46] Speaker A: While you're lying in bed. [00:54:47] Speaker B: Okay, you do that and then you do the box breathing four times. And the box breathing is the. In for four seconds, hold for four, exhale for four, hold for four. You do that four times. But you feel like whether you go from your toes and you're flexing, your brain has to focus so hard on, like rhythmically, like moving and then releasing the muscles, then the breathing that it lets go of some of the things that were preventing you from sleeping. Not unlike the old trick of like, you know, counting sheep, jumping over. But this is proven. The SEAL teams, before they go knock out some terrorists in some gunfight, if they need to do some power napping, use that technique, I didn't invent it. [00:55:35] Speaker A: Incredible. Incredible. Didn't know that. That's fascinating. [00:55:38] Speaker B: All right, everyone. Now the act of flexing and release. Flexing. It's sending a neuro signal to your brain to like fricking cal calm down. Right? And so, and then the breathing. So you're on this, like, work to release path. Try it out. [00:55:53] Speaker A: All right, done. We're challenge accepted. Challenge accepted. Now we're going to transition to our rapid fire section. We've got a bunch of questions that we're going to rapidly fire at you, and a lot of them are actually about you. The first one I want to ask you is, what is one daily wellness habit that you. [00:56:09] Speaker B: You keep 6 ounces of water when I wake up, before you do anything. [00:56:12] Speaker A: Okay. [00:56:12] Speaker B: I'm not, I don't know if you can tell from my level of enthusiasm, but I don't drink any coffee. People are joking. They're like, charlie, you're good, right? I'm like, yeah, I'm good without the coffee. I have a natural, natural energizer. But the six hours of water, no one drinks enough water during the day because we think we do, but it's hard to overdo it. I mean, you just pee more. But like, the reality is waking up with water is a pretty good start for me. [00:56:42] Speaker A: Love it. What's the go to sustainable swap in your home? [00:56:47] Speaker B: I brought a prop. I got some of these questions in advance, so I brought a co op. A prop. [00:56:52] Speaker A: I love it. I love it. [00:56:56] Speaker B: Bye. Bye. Paper towels, microfiber, washcloths, done. You rinse them out, even sometimes you throw them in with the laundry. The point is, we got seduced with, again, recycled paper for the paper towels. That's not solving the problem. [00:57:12] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:57:13] Speaker B: Imagine the truck that has to pick up the recycling. The reason it's reduce, reuse, recycle, and recycle is last of the big three R's is the truck's got to pick it up, that uses fuel. It's got to take it to a plant. It's got to turn that old paper, mush it up, heat it, dilute it, put it into grain form, whatever they do, granular form. And then form it at another factory into something else. Put plastic around it, put it in a cardboard box, get it to the grocery store. It's crazy not buying paper towels. This is good for thousands of washes and hundreds of things. I buy them but they're like 10 bucks. You buy a friggin stack of 10 of them. Whatever. [00:57:49] Speaker A: Right, right, right. [00:57:51] Speaker B: Point is that is a habit changing thing that is in line with sustainable living. [00:57:56] Speaker A: Love it, love it, love it, love it. How about a superfood that everyone underestimates? Kale. Dun dun. [00:58:06] Speaker B: It's overrated. I'm like no, no. Here are the big ones. Eyes, skin, hair, benefits, heart, bones, detox, the immune system, energy and recovery. Imagine the immune system like the benefits of these, these superfoods God created, whatever your religion, Mother Earth, this unbelievable thing, right? Kale. And we should just eat more of it. [00:58:34] Speaker A: Love it. One food trend that you wish would die. [00:58:40] Speaker B: Okay. The greenwashing of like all the, all the talk with like how it's sustainable. When you read on the packaging something that's like good for the, good for the planet. Like it's interesting that the, that the food trends towards like where and how it's sustainably grown like this. Sustainably grown. I'll give you an example. Farm raised salmon. Oh, don't get me started. Like they selling it as a sustainable solution. Like oh, you're not killing the wild salmon. The waste product from those farm salmon which are in big net pension and the impact on the ecosystem of these fjords in like Norway, wherever they're there. That's a lot of them are Norway. So be sensitive. The trend that I hate is that everyone jumps on the greenwashing like to try and sell products not just the food to make it green. [00:59:35] Speaker A: Yeah. Oh, marketers that they'll do it. I'm curious, what's the worst food that you've ever tried in the name of hell? [00:59:45] Speaker B: I hate. And I'm not going to pick on the yogurt company that begins with a Y, but the flavored yogurts that come in these tiny little plastic containers and they end up having low fat on the branding and they're jacked with the sugars and the sugar and like sugar is the new tobacco. Trust me again, your audience knows this. So like it's not just the plastic and they're tiny and then there's aluminum foil. You peel off and eat the thing. For me it's like four spoons because I eat four or five meals a day for training. Like the, it's like, not enough food, and it's stupid expensive. And they're single serve, and then there's waste for the plastic, and there's actually a bunch of sugar in them. I'm like, please. And it's all says low fat. Like, it's marketed with the green leaves and, like, looks all right. Super. That's one. I don't. I have more. But you. [01:00:33] Speaker A: I'm curious. [01:00:34] Speaker B: What. [01:00:34] Speaker A: What's your second one? I'm just curious. Inquiring minds. [01:00:37] Speaker B: All of the. The. The water products that, like, are sort of. That they have a little bit of the flavor, and they're so. They're. They're bubbly waters. And my daughter loves these things in the cans, and they're like. I'm like, Like, I think this is as expensive as beer. [01:00:56] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, it is. [01:00:58] Speaker B: I'm, like, doing the math on, like, these eight packs, I was like, what is. This is water. [01:01:03] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:01:04] Speaker B: Right. [01:01:04] Speaker A: So, like, wild. [01:01:05] Speaker B: But they're sold as, like, you know, again, eco friendly and, like, good for you. And, like, there's one called. I think it's not the smart waters. There's like, core or something. I'm like, this bottle of water is, like, $4. I'm like, how it's water. And being the guy that talked about 10 minutes ago, filtering water, like, how good could it be? [01:01:22] Speaker A: Right? [01:01:22] Speaker B: You know what I'm saying? Compared to, like, I'll buy the electrolytes and the liquid IVs and those things, or put the kale stick in the water. You know what I'm saying? Or even squeeze. I'll buy whole lemons or lemon juice. Just have flavor. [01:01:34] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:01:35] Speaker B: So I don't like. I don't like the yogurt, and I don't like the bottled water. [01:01:37] Speaker A: Good to know. Interesting. I won't buy that for you as a gift, ever. What's one health myth that frustrates you? [01:01:46] Speaker B: Okay, this is the magic sauce, the snake oil of, like, the pills. And just like, the whole. The myth that, like, you will get better, thinner, stronger, leaner by taking any shortcut. [01:02:01] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:02:02] Speaker B: So the reality is the marketing. If you looked on the YouTubes and the Amazons and the ads and the tick tocks, you're like, you would think that for, like, a little sort of like, electric belt that jiggles your tummy, you're gonna get these apex. I'm like, just guessing that's not gonna happen. [01:02:18] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, not so much. [01:02:19] Speaker B: That will do all kinds of stuff. And, like, it's like, basically a classic American phenomenon, which is we want it, like, right now we want to pay in, like, three easy payments of 1995. [01:02:31] Speaker A: Yep. [01:02:32] Speaker B: So, like, the. That frustrates me. So the myth is that it will happen quickly. Guess what? Move your ass outside. Hiking, biking. We went rock climbing with my girlfriend. Like on the. On the indoor climb wall. Great. Like, real exercise. Shocking amount of exercise to, like, test muscles that you haven't used in a while. [01:02:52] Speaker A: Yeah, I used to be a rock climber. I used to teach rock climbing wall. [01:02:54] Speaker B: How about this? No pain, no gain. [01:02:57] Speaker A: Yeah. I love it. Words of wisdom from Charlie. Let me ask you this one. What is one word that describes the future of food? [01:03:04] Speaker B: Freeze dried. [01:03:05] Speaker A: Yeah, I knew it. [01:03:09] Speaker B: This. Let's freeze dry it. And by the way, they come in boxes of 15, if anyone wants to know. Like, the way these. You know, we're not just selling individuals. I love that when it's freeze dried, it's easy and fast. [01:03:21] Speaker A: Easy to pour. Yeah, absolutely. What's a favorite? You know, someone maybe call it weird wellness ritual that you keep. [01:03:29] Speaker B: So I put. I put the kale powder in the tequila club soda with two limes. [01:03:35] Speaker A: No way. [01:03:35] Speaker B: It's insane. [01:03:37] Speaker A: Like, at parties, how do people do. Other people come up to you and want to taste it. They're like, what is that green? [01:03:43] Speaker B: I'm like, give it a shot. Now, the nice thing is you don't have to buy the Casamigos expensive tequila because the kale flavor. As long as I get the 100% agave real tequila. [01:03:55] Speaker A: Okay. [01:03:55] Speaker B: Lowest carbs. And this is, by the way, I'll have one or two cocktails over the weekend. I'm not, like, drinking tequila all day. [01:04:01] Speaker A: Right, right, right, right. [01:04:02] Speaker B: I haven't. It's. It's 115 on the east Coast. I have not had any tequila today. Very excited. [01:04:10] Speaker A: No one will be judging, though. But, you know, but I can tell. [01:04:13] Speaker B: You it's funny to twist things in terms of perception where, like, they're thinking, is that some weird, like, specialty drink? I'm like, no. And then I whip out the stick pack. But we had a friend, it was for a group of 70 of her girlfriends, did a fundraiser down in Washington, D.C. and I sent down all the stick packs in the kale, and she made up the. The kale daiquiris. Kale lime daiquiris, blender, the whole thing. And they loved them, sold, quote, sold them out, meaning she only made, like whatever, 140 of them. And then for fashion week in New York City, one of the designers had. There was a big opening with a cocktail party. And they served. We had sent 200 kale sticks up for the kale cocktail party. So they made the kale drinks and super bowl parties. So to me it was like a fun, weird. Yeah, it's not a health drink. Right. It's alcohol, which is terrible for you. [01:05:09] Speaker A: Right? [01:05:09] Speaker B: We all know the downsides of alcohol, like alcohol and sugar are not good, but you get to at least have some fun. And it's a way to tell someone that you're doing something new in your life that involves something that's freeze dried and it's just an excuse for me, obviously. [01:05:26] Speaker A: I love that you're on it. [01:05:28] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [01:05:31] Speaker A: So good. So, so good. Now I want to transition to our next section. Our team scours the Internet, TikTok, the Instagram, all those things to find some wild trends and we want to ask you what you think about them. So we found a trend of these vitamin infused vape pens. What do you think about this? Is this actually practical or just practically a bunch of bs? [01:05:58] Speaker B: Okay, so I'm shaking my head because I haven't seen them or really heard of them much. But like I can tell you the optics are so 100% terrible because vaping is so bad on so many levels that I say forget it. That sounds like it just a terrible idea because there are so many other great ways to get vitamins. I will have with Omega 3 Gummies, a multivitamin because the kale gets you part of the way with lots of great vitamins, but not the whole way in any given day. So if there weren't pills that are pennies, you know what I'm saying? Like literally you can buy at the big box stores, like whole multivitamin adult whatever age women, because they're so affordable at 400 in the, in the tub, you know what I'm saying? Like, seems like a waste of effort. I think it's a novelty from what you just said. So no thank you. [01:06:51] Speaker A: Okay. Okay. Okay. How about AI Optimized Solar Farm? Is this a solid idea or a little sketchy? [01:06:57] Speaker B: Okay. The earliest solar I did was fixed, meaning you mount them on the roof. And then we started moving towards ones that would track the sun. So when the sun rises in the morning, it's lower on the horizon. Teju. Right. So as it's coming up and then it moves across the sky. So imagine there's a pole and the panel is tracking during the day you get an incremental 10 to 20% lift depending on where you are in the country because you're, you're capturing even potentially more than the 20% of the the sun. [01:07:29] Speaker A: Right, Right. [01:07:29] Speaker B: During the course of the day, AI could even optimize that further. And there's some ways with the panels themselves. The photovoltaic is the technical term for how you're turning photons. Which is totally magic. Right. Like pretty impressive. 90 million miles away, there's a hydrogen, hydrogen explosion called the sun sending photons to us at 640 million miles an hour. It takes seven minutes. [01:07:55] Speaker A: Mind blowing. Yeah. [01:07:56] Speaker B: Going that fast. That's insane. Right? To get to us. [01:07:59] Speaker A: It's really. [01:08:00] Speaker B: If the AI can figure out how to maybe like use each photon to make a little more electricity, that's great. The pause on this button though is we don't need more power. We need to be more efficient with the power we have. One example of this is in, in the Gambia. Power Up Gambia had funded solar panels for two hospitals in the Gambia to help pay to keep their lights on. Because they didn't have enough electricity for all the hospital rooms. So they had whatever, 40 rooms. 20 of them were powered with the solar. They come back for a fundraiser. I'm there and it dawns on me. They're using the fluorescent tubes and I can cut the energy consumption by 90%. I created the first light project and started sending to Africa LED lights so that they could use the power they had. [01:08:56] Speaker A: Right. [01:08:56] Speaker B: To illuminate all the rooms in the hospital. [01:08:58] Speaker A: Incredible. [01:08:59] Speaker B: Start a whole trend of donations. So this was a philanthropy personally that I was, I was impressed with their challenge, having done some solar. But the default was we need more solar panels. Which is why with the AI maybe the AI can make the solar smarter. We use 25% of the world's energy in this beautiful United States of ours, this great continent, great people with 4 1/2% of the population. So we are obese. Giant 4.5x times the energy everyone else uses in the world. So making more power to me is like making more of those single use plastic water bottles. Not the solution. We should get the canisters to reuse. We should find a way to be more efficient with the energy in the, in the buildings, the natural ventilations, natural systems. There's, there's ways to do it. It just takes a little more time and you have to focus on. I'll give you 10 second advantage or example. A deciduous tree on the south side of a house which the Amish people and farmers planted forever loses its leaves in the winter when you want the free heat from the sun shades your house in the summer. When you don't want that extra heat like the developers clear the land and then build a bunch of cookie cutter matching size houses as opposed to counting where the trees are and designing houses to go behind the biggest trees. [01:10:26] Speaker A: Fascinating. I never thought about that. [01:10:27] Speaker B: Tiny little things like that. It's time. If you're smarter with time, you don't have to use technology. And that's part of that Learn from Looking book, which is how you can use low tech solutions to solve modern problems. [01:10:39] Speaker A: Right, right, right. Love it, love it, love it. How about carbon footprint food scores? Is this something that you love or leave? [01:10:48] Speaker B: I love this because miles per gallon show up on your sticker when you buy a car. That's a scorecard. [01:10:56] Speaker A: Right. [01:10:57] Speaker B: If I'm buying two products and one might cost 10 cents more or a dollar more depending on what it is, and I can see that it has traveled less distance and its footprint is less, I may be inclined to buy that. Just like if I see a logo for recycled paper right on the copy paper ream and spend a few extra dollars, I'm good for it. So knowing it doesn't hurt anything. And it may encourage other companies to see trends where more people are making those purchases. And then guess what, with volume, that price can come back down. So it's normalized to the competition of non sustainable products, right? [01:11:43] Speaker A: Absolutely. By the way, I want to, before we jump into the Reddit rabbit hole, I want to ask you a quick question. You mentioned the Learn from Looking book and we forgot to talk about that, that you illustrated. Tell our audience about that because it's super cool and the story and how you did that is actually incredible. [01:11:56] Speaker B: So the illustrations were the start. It's 60,000 words of my notes from traveling in Asia, Eastern Europe, all over the world, including islands from the Virgin Gorda, you know, islands in the Caribbean, over to Hawaii. And looking for how people, including the reference I made to the Amish, have lived without high tech solutions and did drawing travel drawings throughout the journey. And then I realized with the kids I had a fire safe with thousands of feet of just drawings that folded out, took all my notes and, and put it in the Learn from Looking book, which is basically a message to pause, look at the things that are around you. Enjoy the time like with your friends and your, your loved ones to eat right. Enjoy the flavors of things, taste new things and look at things in a way that's like a critical thinking approach. A little bit of a pause, soak it in. It's not about drawing, it's about Me sharing what I learned on these pretty exceptional journeys. [01:13:02] Speaker A: Yeah, people have to check it. It's really beautiful. So, so cool. Let's transition. Let's jump down the Reddit rabbit hole. So we've scoured Reddit for some questions that we want to ask you in different subreddits. So I want to read the first one. This is found in the sustainability subreddit. So the person says, how can I live a more ethical and sustainable, sustainable life? I'm 90% vegan. I recycle, but I would like to be more aware and helpful for people and the planet. Any tips, even the smallest ones, to improve and be better in my life ecologically and socially? [01:13:34] Speaker B: Okay, great. I love what you're doing. Or this 90% vegan person. That's great. Grow some food. We talked a little bit. In the underserved community, the richest people and sometimes the poorest people end up doing the same things in a way because the middle gets pulled, stretched with lots of other distractions. Growing food feels so good because whether it's the microgreens that I would bring to the table, serve with kids, family, or clip things and take them as a gift with a bottle of wine to a friend's party for dinner. [01:14:07] Speaker A: Love that. [01:14:07] Speaker B: Pretty cool. So the idea of growing and sharing. Oh, we've got some cucumbers that they grew in their backyard. Terrific. With the kids growing up when they were probably around 12 to 8. Eight, yeah. I think my oldest was 12 and then 8. The first stand was not a lemonade stand. It was a produce stand on our street. 10 cherry tomatoes for a dollar. We had grown so much food because we were composting and using the worms with the, like, banana peel on the waste and the eggshells. We had, like, super soil. It was like, it looked like Jurassic park cucumbers and, like, the craziest stuff you'd ever seen. So we had too much food, right? And I literally ran out of going and getting invited to parties to give food away. We sold it on the street. The kids were like, literally in their little. [01:14:53] Speaker A: So great. [01:14:55] Speaker B: So that is grow food locally. Windowsill farming. Buy a little LED lamp and, you know, grow some veggies, whatever you can do to supplement your sustainable lifestyle. I love that. [01:15:04] Speaker A: And, you know, it also creates a sense of community. One of my early memories must have been, like, 10, 2. Our neighbor had a little farm. We as well, had a little farm. And I just remember my dad and the neighbor, they would like, meet up and share. Like, okay, you grew the zucchinis I have the strawberries. And then they would just talk forever. You know, we would always have fresh produce. It was beautiful. It's such a great community experience. [01:15:26] Speaker B: The community word is so underrated, meaning those conversations that come, they're not a screenshot of someone showing a picture of the food that they're eating. But like the growing culture is, it's the coolest club ever because it's back to the root of all human existence, putting the fuel in our bodies. [01:15:48] Speaker A: Agree. Couldn't agree more. I'm going to jump down the Reddit rabbit hole and ask you another one. So this person says, superfoods, yay or nay? This was in the saturated fat subreddit. So this person says, which superfoods are full of pesticides, slash overall bad for you, even though they're commonly recommended. One of these is a scam for sure. One of these that is a scam for sure is spinach. I read somewhere that it lost about 20 times the nutrition content it had 70 years ago due to soil being sterile. In my opinion, it also tastes quite horrible. What about blueberries and broccoli? They say I was eating blueberries and really feel felt good afterwards. Out of all the vegetables, broccoli is the tastiest, the best for me. I'm wondering if it's my body craving something that's in it or if it's just a good overall vegetable to eat. Pickle would be the second best, taste wise. Any other superfoods you guys like to eat? [01:16:46] Speaker B: Okay, so I had referenced interestingly in our priority discussion, the problem with the soil is you can deplete the nutrients and that happens over time. So the biggest play here is, yes, on superfoods, but beware with the pesticides. So I'll address this thing just sort of in aggregate. The big superfoods are the sponges, the way we talked about it, for the pesticides. So the kale, the broccoli, and the spinach are more susceptible than others. And the blueberry, the strawberry, and the raspberry, vulnerable. So if you're gonna spend money on organic, those are the six places to spend it. And the way to think about it is if it's got a appeal like an orange or a banana, it's protecting itself and then in a way, protecting you. Not that you shouldn't buy organic, but at least there's a wrapper on it. Right? The blueberries, you can just imagine, are like an absolute sponge, right, for this stuff. Okay. I think the other nuance in this is with antioxidants. We talked about it. The ratio of the vitamins is you have to make a decision on cost, whether to get superfoods in your, in your body or whether to buy all the multivitamins and buy foods that might cost a little bit less. So the reality is you need the vitamins and how you get them can come from either the healthy food or the vitamins which are extracted from them. Right? I mean that's just, just the reality. So it's easy to say grass fed beef and you know, pasture raised, you know, whatever it happens to be the free range chicken and all the organics that gets crazy expensive, especially today in our, our economy. So the balance is supplements where you can find a way to have, I would say less volume of the food that you buy at a higher quality level and then the supplements can be the infill. That's a monetary balance that won't break the bank. [01:18:49] Speaker A: Right, right. Got it, got it, got it. Our last question from the Reddit rabbit hole. This is actually a business one. So this person says what things create a sustainable business? Is it having huge brand awareness, having products that gain prestige, building products that are special and unique, genuine brand, sense of community, aspirations or status, solid set of features, style in comparison to product. Are these things what gives a business enough edge to make a good amount or is it something else entirely like solid business plan or executing well as an entrepreneur? What do you think about this? [01:19:25] Speaker B: Okay, I have a huge tip for all business owners which they should like, which is a scorecard. We talked about the miles per gallon for a car, very clear number. You can compare it to other things we talked about with the food. Maybe it's distance traveled or the scorecard of sustainability. No one in this country does this. And I pitched this to the national association of Realtors as well as some other business chambers. Operating utility cost, meaning the energy you use per square foot of your building and per employee. It's so easy to calculate because you get an electric bill and you multiply that, you either annualize it or you just take your year end bill and you divide it by the size of your facility. Then you divide it by in a separate calculation number of employees and you will be shocked. So having a benchmark normalizes the data to compare it with other things because I've been in leed, I'm a LEED accredited professional leadership environmental, you know, design, energy, environmental design. Shocking number of high performance buildings that are LEED certified and they have their silver plaque or their gold are actually using more energy per square foot. Than the common neighbor property across the street. It's really interesting because they might have a recycled bamboo reception desk and they might have a green roof. Like we get again, a perception that we're doing the right thing for businesses and the greenwashing. And so this idea of a scorecard, very real operating cost of your utilities relative to the size you're building and the number of employees. [01:21:17] Speaker A: Do you think that's what helps make a successful? Like if someone, let's say, I'm just curious, if someone's starting a business, wanting to create a business like yours, what is it that makes them successful? What's made you successful? [01:21:30] Speaker B: So you have to have the grit, the G word. Got to grind it out. There's no, there's no short answer for this thing because I found that also inspiration comes from going to the weekend trips and speaking at conferences and having to bring kale and veggies. And I was like, screw it, I'm going to figure out how to make it. Powder went down the path of the dehydration and the freeze drying. So you can either do research to figure out your business idea or you can find something in your own life that you need. And then guess what, someone else may need it. It too. But none of this is easy. All the craziness of how you get approved through the Amazon portal and the, and the E Commerce and the USDA certified for organic like the dollars and the time, it's just thousands of the phone calls calling back with retailers that said they're going to carry and then they went to a conference. You're like, where's, where is Carol? What happened to her? [01:22:26] Speaker A: Where's Carol? Carol. I've had a Where's Carol? Multiple moments with my beauty line. [01:22:33] Speaker B: Right. So, but the point is grit, grit, grit. So it's the, it's the shortest word for tenacity, which is you come up with an idea and then you have to be agile to pivot in some form and not just dig your heels in. So that the secret to success is start with that grid. Like you've got to be ready to go for it. But then you also have to be at least sensitive enough to know if you haven't hit some benchmark. Maybe it's not you, maybe it's the market. You have to pivot in some way to evolve. [01:23:03] Speaker A: Yeah, agree. Couldn't agree more. I want to go to our last segment. It's been such a joy. The time is going by and I can't wait for this. Our last segment is called what's in your bag? So this is where you get to show us some of the things that you use for your daily wellness practice in your daily life. So, Charlie, what is in your bag today? [01:23:24] Speaker B: So I have a. This is. This is when I run and I just take this. This is my actual bag. [01:23:30] Speaker A: What a nice bag. [01:23:31] Speaker B: So this is good because I can run on the beach with it. I can take it. I don't have like a briefcase. [01:23:35] Speaker A: It's super functional. Yeah. [01:23:37] Speaker B: So my bag always includes the mix. I throw in the unsalted almonds and the macadamias. [01:23:44] Speaker A: Love those same. People make fun of me. They call me like the almond pusher because I'm obsessed with unsalted raw almonds. And I'm just handing them out to people. [01:23:52] Speaker B: Big challenges. You know, they use a lot of water. They're not great. They come from California. I don't love that. But you know what? I've done enough other good stuff. Right. I think I count this bag has been washed out. Meaning I reuse these bags. [01:24:07] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [01:24:09] Speaker B: Like this. There's some where like literally the paint's gone. You know, at some point you gotta throw them away. But at least I'm getting a dozen uses out of them. [01:24:16] Speaker A: Right, right. [01:24:17] Speaker B: And then. And then obviously keep the stick packs in there. Okay. The next thing in the bag that's absolutely mission critical, if anywhere is the sunglasses with the strap. [01:24:29] Speaker A: Yep. Those are stylish ones too. [01:24:31] Speaker B: Hat for me. [01:24:32] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:24:32] Speaker B: No surprise. I have more than one thing with the name on it. Then other thing I'm pulling out. Pulling out of the back here is the. This, no question. Right. Everyone's got one of these. The charger with the brick. [01:24:45] Speaker A: Like. Yeah. [01:24:47] Speaker B: Here's the bonus coming from Charlie. Stealth Angel. Solar powered backup. No legit charges. 3. Three full phones. Slow the roll. I don't. I'm not. I'm not a rep. I just love. [01:25:03] Speaker A: I can't even. That is. That one gets one of these. Yes. [01:25:06] Speaker B: This is. This is probably. This is like pro. [01:25:09] Speaker A: Like top, top, top. Yeah. [01:25:14] Speaker B: Kids are calling. You're like, oh, my God, I can't. You know. Okay, so next one is the. Is the. Let me pull this out. The fun stuff. So, like, I will have the suspense. [01:25:26] Speaker A: I'm like, Dun, dun. [01:25:29] Speaker B: 50 SPF lip balm. Goes also in this other bag. [01:25:34] Speaker A: Yep, yep. [01:25:35] Speaker B: This is a mic for the phone. Because I have the. The Google phone with a great camera. And if I ever see anything I like for the. For the videos, the YouTube, I'll just clip it and Shoot it, you know, on demand. I have like a little rolling studio for the learning the channel. And then. This is funny. I always carry super glue because something. [01:25:56] Speaker A: No way. [01:25:57] Speaker B: Because something. Not I. Not my stuff. The kids break something. I'm like. I mean, like, if they tear their clothes, I'm like, dude, I will superglue clothes. And then I. This is the dad carryover. I always put her a little band aid in there in case the kids bangs because they're obviously old enough now. Fifteen. [01:26:17] Speaker A: Yeah. But it's so sweet that you. [01:26:20] Speaker B: When I would see something, because if I'm shopping and I need something. This is the measuring tape that was my mom's, so I just happen to have this little guy. No, it's so small. Right. So this all goes in like, they don't go anywhere without this stuff. [01:26:33] Speaker A: Incredible. [01:26:34] Speaker B: The bay. The big containers are. This will typically have like the water. This might have the protein powder. So the Accelera Fitness was the. Was the sort of the launch for only kale. And I made the AF on there because that was just kind of cool. [01:26:50] Speaker A: I love that. Yeah, that's a good. That's a good one. [01:26:52] Speaker B: Yeah. Something else to other people. [01:26:54] Speaker A: Yes. [01:26:56] Speaker B: But the idea is one will have typically the. The mix like the whey protein or the creatine and something. [01:27:03] Speaker A: Is there a whey protein you like? I'm actually curious. I'm curious, like, what is there one that you prefer? [01:27:09] Speaker B: So I signed up for one of those GNC like membership bundles. And it's not honestly the greatest if people really don't want the whey and they like just the veggie, but they do that. I wait for those deals where it's like you're buying a, you know, a tub of these things. It looks like Arnold schwarzenegger from the 70s walking out of there, like. [01:27:30] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:27:33] Speaker B: And then one where it's like, buy one. The next one's like, you know, 50% off. So I just wait. And then it looks like a joke in the kitchen. Like, can you imagine? Like, our parents would never have any powders or pills. And this and this. Now we're between the smartphones and the powders and pills. It's a whole new game and AI. We never know what happens there. So that's it. That's what goes in the bag. [01:27:56] Speaker A: I love it. I love it. So many. The super glue got me. That is a good one. That's a first on the show. But smart. So smart. Very. You know, I'm had to do that. [01:28:04] Speaker B: It's tiny too. [01:28:05] Speaker A: All Those things fit, you know, so smart, so essential. I love it. I love it. Charlie, where can we find you online and what are you working on right now? [01:28:14] Speaker B: So only kale.com? pretty easy. I am working on what will be the strategic partnerships with outdoor living groups from here to California. There are unbelievable trail hike, bike, paddle board groups that get out there and organize and figuring out a way to introduce only Kale into their ecosystem, in effect, sponsoring, you know, various events and things, and then finding what will be strategic partners. Where if it's not an electrolyte mix, is it something like with a powder? Where instead of just selling the kale powder in isolation, it's teaming. And this goes back to the diversity conversation we had about finding complexity and not just simplicity, because it's a pretty simple product. It's just kale, 100% organic. So finding those strategic partners is a potential scale implicator for us that puts fuel into the fire to grow the brand. [01:29:16] Speaker A: Right. Incredible. Incredible. Awesome. Awesome. Yeah, good luck with that. And you know that just. That would be amazing with collagen, with, you know, I think even a protein all that could see and it's just easy to mix and go. Incredible. Awesome. Well, Charlie, it is just been such a joy. You are a riot. You have me cracking up. This has been so fun. Thank you. Thank you. And just hats off to you for all the success and building only Kale. I know how hard it is to build a CPG company, so just hats off to you. Thank you so, so much. It was just such a joy to have you on the show. [01:29:49] Speaker B: Teju, thank you again for hosting and keep up the great work with all your communications. [01:29:53] Speaker A: Thank you. Thank you so much. [01:29:54] Speaker B: Okay.