600+ Questionable Ingredients In Your "Healthy" Packaged Products? Is Beef Tallow Actually Safe (Surprising Answer!) & How To Save Money On Good Groceries, With Thrive Market's Nick Green.

My name is Ben Greenfield, and on this episode of the Boundless Life Podcast, the FDA— there are ingredients that the FDA hasn't re-reviewed or hasn't reviewed at all in decades. This is the food dye issue, right, where you've got Red 3, Yellow 5, Blue 1, all of these food dyes. Many of them are actually byproducts of petroleum, which is pretty crazy when you start to think about it. They're linked to behavioral issues and like cognitive developmental issues in kids, like hyperactivity, ADHD, etc. Red 3 has specifically been linked to thyroid dysfunction and thyroid cancer in rats since like the 1980s. These are ingredients that have been banned in Europe for a very long time. Interestingly, actually, red 3 was banned from cosmetics, so like it can't be in lipstick, and yet it's still allowed in food.

Welcome to The Boundless Life with me, your host, Ben Greenfield. I'm a personal trainer, exercise physiologist, and nutritionist, and I'm passionate about helping you discover unparalleled levels of health, fitness, longevity, and beyond. Ben Greenfield: Nick Green, the co-founder and CEO of one of the coolest places to shop for groceries online, Thrive Market. How you doing, dude?

Doing very well. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, yeah. I think a lot of people are aware of ordering healthy food online or just food online in general, but I don't think I've ever actually done a podcast about thrive. However, I know that you have a pretty deep body of knowledge that goes beyond that including things like the USDA food standards and maybe a lot of things that are going on right now while we're recording this. I think yesterday it was the banning of food dyes. I'll be very curious to hear your thoughts on that. But, how do you describe what you do to people? If I'm sitting next to you on an airplane or we have a really long elevator ride from 0 to the 30th floor?

Yeah, well, I haven't done the elevator pitch in a long time, but basically, you know, for us it starts with just a really big mission, which is we think healthy, natural, organic, sustainable products should be accessible, affordable, available to anyone. So that's, that's what we get up to do every day. It's why we started the company. And really, like, at a, at a super high level, Thrive Market is aiming to be the platform that makes healthy living accessible to anyone.

So, did you grow up with hippie parents eating granola and sawdust or what got you interested in this?

No, it's interesting. My co-founder did. So, my co-founder Gunnar grew up on a communal farm in Ojai, California.

Yeah. That doesn't surprise me, by the way. I think I met him at a yoga retreat or something like that.

Exactly. If you know Gunnar, it won't surprise you. And, he basically grew up, they were doing wholesale buying organic food back in the '70s and '80s for the farm. Also growing a lot of their own food. And this is in Ojai, California, where, you know, there was this like huge organic movement that, you know, had been going at that point already for, for a couple decades. I had kind of a very different experience growing up, different in the same. So the different part was I was in Minneapolis or outside Minneapolis, Minnesota. So like think middle class Midwest in the '90s, you know, processed food, fast food, uh, you know, sugared cereal, all that stuff was like the norm. But I had a mom who was very determined to chart a different path. Oh, really? Yeah. So we were like the weird house on the block that had, you know, no soda on the table. I mean, we didn't even have soda in the house, let alone on the table at dinner time. Uh, you know, she— we weren't allowed to have sugared cereal, so it was like Cheerios was the, was the fanciest thing that we could have for breakfast. And for her, it went back to actually her family had a lot of obesity, type 2 diabetes. Diabetes was the big thing, multiple siblings that had diabetes. Her mom had diabetes very early. And so, she was making these changes for herself back in the '90s and basically enforced it on the family in a way that we hated at the time but ultimately ended up being basically breaking a generational cycle.

You weren't the cool kids.

Oh, no. I mean, for a variety of reasons, we were not the cool kids, but that That certainly was one of them. And the crazy thing was I just got to see firsthand what it did on the positive, but I also saw how hard it was for her to do it. It's like we didn't have a Whole Foods down the street. If we had, we wouldn't have been able to afford the price premiums. And so she was doing it on a budget. She was doing it without a lot of access. And then she was also doing it at a time where no internet, no health and wellness influencers. She was researching at the library.

No food babe cookbooks.

No, no, no, no, no. But like, it's pretty incredible. Like, again, she was very ahead of her time, but, you know, managed to get the basics right. And honestly, I think, you know, my personal philosophy on nutrition still is an 80/20, and she really, she really did it. And so the genesis of Thrive was I had started a company in college, sold that, and moved out to L.A. for the earnout that the acquiring company was based here. And, you know, basically was kind of blown away getting to SoCal. This is in 2013, 2014. And it's like, wow, there's like this health and wellness world. And I went deep into it having, you know, remember, like, had that experience growing up from my mom. It was like, you know, this is a movement now. Like, there's like millions of people that want this. And, you know, it's like my mom was no longer the weird person. Like, this is the norm now here. And yet the thing that blew my mind and the opportunity and the problem we're trying to solve with Thrive is that Despite that movement, it's still really hard to get healthy, right? And the stats are kind of, kind of mind-blowing. Like half of people don't live within driving distance of a health food store. The price premium on organic is still ridiculous in most cases.

Yeah, you got, you got the $36 jars of coconut yogurt at Erewhon.

Totally.

Yeah.

And it's like if you're, you know, if you're affluent in a place like LA or New York or San Francisco, fine, it's easy. But if you're anywhere else in the country, or frankly, even if you're in LA, New York, or San Francisco and you're not, you know, making enough money to spend, spend at Erewhon or go to Whole Foods, it's really challenging. And then I think the one thing that's different and kind of interesting in like an opposite way is like when my mom was doing it, the issue was like not enough information. Now you've almost got this like information overload where people are like hearing all the influencers online saying opposite things. Up is down, left is right, like protein's good, protein's bad, fat's good, fat's bad. And, you can literally find an argument for anything. And, I think for a lot of people, the question of just where to start, what's right for me, what the heck do I do, it's kind of a lot of people are just paralyzed.

Yeah. And, you also don't see a lot of flexibility in the influencer scene because it's hard to turn your back on an argument that you've made in the past when your paycheck depends on you being right.

This is a whole rabbit hole we can go into and it's like the polarization of all dialogue in this country, whether it's political, ideological, economic, and health. It's not conducive to truth.

Ben Greenfield: I joke sometimes from stage that if you want to make a lot of money in the nutrition industry, one of the ways to do it is to write a book and create a villain in the book that is going to kill everybody. And then, if you're really smart towards the latter pages of the book, you design or talk about a supplement that you you've created to nuke the villain and champion that as the one perfect diet for all of humankind. It's a great business model, but it creates a lot of confusion when there's like 12 books on the market each with a different villain.

Yeah. So, silver bullets abound. Exactly. Yeah. So, Thrive, we approach our business as let's break down each of the barriers to healthy living. So, the first one we break down is geography. So we ship anywhere in the lower 48. And, you know, the, the assortment is highly, highly curated. So it's all 100% non-GMO on the food side, 600+ banned ingredients across all categories, like even more curated than you find at Whole Foods. Like we carry across the same number of categories in non-perishable, an order of magnitude fewer SKUs. So the idea is like outsource your trust to us, make it simple, know that everything clears this high bar. And then because we have a smaller assortment, we can actually do a lot of work to tag all the products so people can find the right products for them. And like, you may not know what keto is, but you're— if you're interested in that diet, click a filter, it all filters down. If you got a kid with a nut allergy, a spouse that's lactose intolerant, click, click, click, it all filters. And so there we break down this barrier of just like intimidation. Where do I start? How do I read the labels? On Thrive, you don't have to. Um, and then a big part of it is also on price. So we operate on a membership model. Think like Costco for healthy food, $60 a year. Every paid membership sponsors one for a low-income family. And then that membership helps us to offer the products at below retail prices. So our, like, theoretical goal, which we don't always achieve, but we sure get pretty close, is let's get the natural, organic, better-for-you product at or below a conventional equivalent.

Yeah, I think I've described it in the past like Costco met Whole Foods and had a baby. Really help, really help you. Seed oil for your baby. So how about AI? Has that changed anything for you in terms of like allowing people to auto-populate their carts in a different way or change the filtration mechanisms or anything like that?

Yes. So, you know, one of the advantages of being online is that we have a lot of data, right? So like when you go into the grocery store, the only data your grocery store has is like what's on the receipt. And like you may come back, they don't even know that you're the one that, you know, they're not tracking longitudinally what you purchased. And so we can track that data to drive personalization for people over time. And we've done that for years. So just running big machine learning algorithms to create recommendations of what to buy when based on not only what you've done, but also like aggregating the data across others like you. Just like to think giant correlation models, you can really give people— and you know, this isn't just us, right? Amazon does an incredible job of this too, where those product recommendation engines get really good. The difference for us is we're purpose-built for healthy living, so everything is focused around these like health dynamics. We also have an onboarding experience where people voluntarily share like, this is what I'm trying to achieve, these are the values I care about, these are the dietary restrictions I have. And then they actually shop using those filters. So we get all of this metadata category, metadata across the entire assortment and across purchase behavior. What's been really interesting in the last 18 to 24 months, which is the time to AI, is we've gone one step further in helping members build the cart basically for them. So it used to be when you came on Thrive, you would take an onboarding quiz, and you would get popped into, we called it my aisle. So, I was like, the way I described it is like, imagine a magical store experience where instead of having to walk down every aisle and find the stuff that's relevant for you, it's all in one place.

I could just walk in and have the Ben Greenfield aisle, which would be avocado, dark chocolate, sardine, blueberry. Literally, my team, my EA team when I travel, they have the list that they're supposed to order that is at my hotel room above the mini fridge when I get there.

That's it. Yeah. So that was the, that was like the circa 2020 or 2022 version. The, the flip more recently is we're creating like the Ben Greenfield cart, right? And so like when you come on Thrive Market, you give us the same data, but now that like machine learning algorithm is powerful enough that we can recommend products that are like so close to what you actually want to buy. In fact, they 50% of the time approximately, they are what you want to buy. And we'll just build the cart for you. So you end up then like the average cart on Thrive first order is like 15 items. If you're building that from scratch, it takes a lot of time. You're going to forget things like, etc., etc. Now we're seeing about half of the items people will end up actually checking out with are items that the AI will load into the cart. So it's still early days and honestly there's so much headroom still, I think, to achieve more here. But like the direction that it's going is You know, you're in a unique position to have EAs that help you to do that when you travel. We want to bring this to like anybody, right?

People don't have to have some team doing it for them, but I'd still do a once-over to make sure it didn't do some like, you know, substitute cashews for macadamia nuts or smoked oysters for sardines.

Like, right. So this is like really critical. And part of like our promise to our members is making sure they're still in control. So I think there's so many, there's so many e-commerce services and like everyone's had this experience where it's like, you know, you get like force fed into a subscription. All of a sudden you've got like a pile of these products that you didn't remember you'd subscribed to and they like show up and stuff. With Thrive, we really focus on the member having final control. So like we think about that cart build is not set it and forget it. It's like, that's an intelligent default. You then edit it. And then, you know, a lot of our members actually do go into auto ship. But, over 90% of those orders are edited before they go out. So again, to your point, it's like your AI assistant loads the card, helps you get started, but then you do that last 20% to make sure it's what you want when you want it.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah. What about when it comes to AI? And, I have no clue if you even thought about this, but it's something I think would be cool if you could ever roll this out. Somebody's gotten genetic tests, blood panels, maybe they have their Apple Health data or something like that. In theory, get to a point where people are able to upload their labs and have something like foods chosen based on their genetic profile or companies like Biome have the list of foods that are supposed to be good for your gut and the foods that are bad for your gut? Do you think you'd ever get to a point like that or are there kind of legalities around that that would restrict you from doing that?

There's not legalities as long as people are voluntarily sharing the information. And right now, our members already share a lot of information about themselves. That, of course, is something that we keep completely anonymized. So, there's no— like, people will share, here's the diet I'm on, here are my health goals, here's what's going on in my family. That's something that it only informs the model from an anonymized standpoint, but it is really powerful already. The way it functions today is it's like self-reported. And then it's self-selected. So, someone knows that they have high LDL cholesterol or they have high ApoB or some other risk factors for heart disease, they can choose. We literally have a heart-healthy filter that— and there's debate obviously on what is heart-healthy, but if you want to be on a low saturated fat diet, here's items that could be good for you.

Ben Greenfield: Right. Depends whether you ask the American Heart Association or someone who might not be in the pockets of, I don't know, the grain or the oil industry.

It starts to get really complicated because the, the link between biomarkers and nutrition, or rather nutrition to biomarkers, uh, you know, these are debated issues, but in theory, absolutely. And I think one of the things that's super exciting, you know, like I was an early investor in Function Health, like there are now more and more platforms going direct to consumer where people are tracking their biomarkers and they're already in their own lives seeing how their, you know, health habits, whether it's nutrition or exercise or sleep, affect them. So I think more than likely we already have members that are basically buying in that way. And absolutely, over time, you know, we can use AI to basically turbocharge that.

Yeah, this came up when I was interviewing Brandon Dawson from 10X. He was describing to me how they were trying to create like a QR code that you could scan when you get to the grocery store and the QR code is linked to your genetic and blood data and then it would kind of auto-populate your cart based on that. I don't know how far into that process they are, but I thought, gosh, that would be just so cool to be able to have something customized based on your biomarkers or your genetics.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah, I think it's really exciting and I think it will happen for sure. When you mentioned that, it made me think about one feature we've got on our app is It's a scan, a barcode scanner where you can literally take, like scan any item, you know, if you're at the grocery store and either find out if we carry it at a better price at Thrive, which we often do, or if it's an unhealthy item, find a healthier, better for you alternative. So, and then like you think about putting on top of that and like you can then help people build a cart with that as like the seed for it. So there's There's so much that's going to happen over the next few years. And, as everyone knows, the space is moving super, super fast.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah. Playing devil's advocate, another thing I'll sometimes say when I'm talking to people about nutrition or giving a talk is you shouldn't be relying on these scanning food apps too much because if you're scanning everything that you are eating, by the nature of that, you're eating out of packages. So, I tell people, and this is an old adage, this isn't my idea, but shop around the perimeter of the grocery store where you're going to find the meat and the veg and the produce and the eggs and the dairy, et cetera. How do you tackle that with Thrive where people probably perceive that it's just a lot of stuff in boxes and bags? And, don't get me wrong, dark chocolate-covered sea salt almonds are incredible, but you also have to tackle this idea of eating as close to the earth as possible.

So, how do you think about that? Totally. I mean, first, whether something is perishable or non-perishable, that's just does it go in a refrigerator or freezer or not? And there are— you can have ultra-processed foods in both of those categories, and you can have whole foods in both of those categories. Now, often the packaging is part of the processing that, you know, so there is a tendency, and it's not a bad heuristic to say middle of the grocery store is going to be more likely to be unhealthy stuff. But, you know, we actually see that as then more value that we can add because that's the place that people normally make the most mistakes, right? Where they're usually like, if you go around the perimeter, for the most part, most things are not going to be horrible for your health. You go in the center, it's almost like flipped. Like most, most products in a typical grocery store now are ultra-processed. And so, you know, we're basically taking that part, which is more than 50% of what people buy at the grocery store. And saying, all right, here's better for your alternatives. Here's a price that's better for you. Here's a convenience model that's better for you. Oh, and by the way, if you can save money on that half of your grocery basket, now you can spend a little more to, you know, get organic or get cleaner products as you go around the perimeter. We also have started to get to the perimeter. So like frozen, for example, today is our fastest growing category. So we were doing that with a, like a third-party logistics provider before because we didn't have the frozen capability in our fulfillment centers. But last year we actually in-house that because we were seeing such strong demand. And now, like, you know, many of the things that people could buy fresh, like meat and seafood for example, or veg, we sell frozen. And there's an argument that I, I find pretty compelling that the nutritional quality on those products is actually better. Like, if you think from a supply chain standpoint, you flash freeze at the point of pick. Yeah, like, for, like, if you look at the decay curve on nutrient Oh, so they're literally kind of like I do.

It's one company I work with, Seatopia. I get flash-frozen fish and it seems like it doesn't change the texture of the fish much. It's something about that flash-freezing process, but walk me through how you guys are tackling the frozen piece.

Yeah. So, with meat and seafood, there's really no difference in nutrient quality. As most people know, you can leave it in the freezer for a long time. With— where it's really impactful in a positive way is flash freezing at the point of pick for any fruit or veg, particularly like leafy greens, which have like a precipitous decay curve over a matter of weeks, like to the point that when you're buying, you know, lettuce, broccoli, etc. at the grocery store, they may have lost anywhere from 40 to 80 or 90% of its nutrient value, micronutrient value by the time you are consuming it. And so the argument is, and I think the evidence shows, that properly frozen veg and fruit— and, you know, look, there's, there's veg and fruit that you're not going to freeze, so it doesn't apply to every, every subcategory— but in the ones you do, it's actually got better nutrient density. And then I think for the, for the meat and seafood side, the advantage is being able to source, uh, you know, from supply chains that, you know, you might not be able to do fresh. So, and like hopefully in the future you're going to have more domestic produced meat and seafood that is also high quality. But like, for example, in the US today, beef, even grass-fed beef, and this is, I think a lot of your listeners probably know this, but even grass-fed beef is often grain finished. And so if you look at the, the like fat profile, for example, of those animals, they're not that different than a grain-fed animal.

I know. Those bastards, they can get away with it though. People like grass-fed. I think more and more people are becoming aware of this, but yeah, grass-fed isn't grass-fed.

Totally. It's like if grass-fed, if it tastes like grain-fed, it's because it probably has a nutrient profile that's more like grain-fed.

Yeah. And, I won't lie, I do like— if I go to a steakhouse and I'm getting a full-on fed-from-birth oodles metric crap tons of grain cow, it tastes better. But, But, the problem is I know enough about what that does to the body to where I don't even enjoy the experience as much just because I know. It's kind of like once you know how bad a Big Mac is for you, it no longer melts in your mouth with luscious goodness. It's more like, "Ah, crap. Let's just do it to my heart now." Yeah, ignorance is bliss, right?

But yeah. So, meat and seafood is one of our fastest-growing categories. Frozen, we think, is a huge opportunity for innovation. And yeah, over time, Today, we're still largely non-perishable food, but we've got so much opportunity to keep growing across some of these perishable categories and then also getting in outside of food.

Yeah. With the packaging, obviously microplastics is a big issue now and you still see a lot of healthy foods that are shipped in plastic. Are you guys starting to think about that or have you thought about that?

Thinking about a lot. I mean, it's the like when you start testing product and seeing the presence of microplastics and PFAS, it's like you just can't get away from it. And I know people are now some more proactive folks, myself included, are doing like microplastic— do microplastic testing on as a, as an individual to see the level exposure and like nobody's escaping that. Yeah.

And by the way, more prevalent than a lot of— like yesterday I was researching toasters. They actually line the toasters, you know, the little cage where the toaster, the bread slips out more easily. That's lined with essentially metals and PFAS that can leach into your toast. So, you start to look into this, you're like, "Crap, it's all over." Yeah.

Well, you have a paper cup and it has a plastic liner. You have a can, an aluminum can, and that has potentially a plastic liner as well.

Plastic versus silicone spatula. It's solvable, fortunately. There are companies like— one that comes to mind is From Our Place. They're starting to do really good cookware, air fryers, saucers, etc. But yeah, with food, what do you do as far as the packaging?

So I mean, we've reduced like plastic packaging is something we've been at war with since the very beginning of the business. And, you know, unfortunately in some categories there just aren't great alternatives. But like we, we reduced about 98% of plastic packaging in our orders. So like we're not wrapping and putting additional plastic on, on things. On the private label side, so like the Thrive Market brand, it's only 10% of our assortment, but it's like 25% of our sales. So a lot of our like most innovative products are actually things that we're developing ourselves, working with co-packers. And there we have a lot more control over the packaging. Indirectly, like we have with our just standards and admission onto the platform with brands, we also push them to move away from plastic packaging. Obvious, like BPA-free is a non-negotiable. But now the microplastics issue is becoming one that we're focusing in on. And one of the cool things actually as a, as a, as a retailer is we can do like we work with a lot of innovative brands that are still young and they're not necessarily at big scale. And so they like things that could be really expensive for them. If we come together and as a platform, you know, open source kind of what we're doing, Like we did this, for example, with plastic, with plastic neutral credits. We actually worked with an organization, opened it up to, to the brands, and then they work on plastic reduction, but then also had better costing on the plastic, the plastic offsets. So there's— I mean, it is not a problem that's solved.

So, so there's like, like the equivalent of carbon offset for plastics.

There's the equivalent of carbon. I mean, the challenge with that is it's mostly focused on the environmental issue of like plastic waste disposal. I think the part that just being perfectly candid, you know, we haven't solved and no one has solved is presence of plastic packaging, you know, as a substrate on food. And I think we've done better than anyone else. Like if you just look at the percentage of products that are out of plastic packaging, everything BPA-free, etc. We're very good, but like the truth, it's like relatively good, but nobody's good. And that I think that will change over the next 5 to 10 years. And like one of the things that we've seen is as these like issues come into the zeitgeist, you know, regulators are always very slow to react, but consumers are not. And so, you know, a platform like ours where consumers are savvy, like we can start like actually leaning out into new innovation, get credit for it. And it's like a good business decision. But it also is creating scale in these supply chains for better products or better packaging.

Ben Greenfield: When it comes to USDA food standards, because I think a little while ago you mentioned 600 different things that you guys kind of banned from being allowed in the products that you would sell at Thrive Market. I don't think I've ever really talked on the podcast before about how those standards got or are developed in terms of actual USDA food standards and how that's created such a pervasive issue in our grocery shopping environment. Do you know much about the USDA food standard system and how that's set up?

I know too much, too much for my own satisfaction.

Perfect person then. Fill us in.

Yeah. And just as backstory, our entry to engaging with the USDA was petitioning the USDA back in 2015 to start accepting food stamps online. Like, we just thought it was crazy that you could go to the corner store and buy soda with, with food stamps, but you couldn't buy healthy food online. And that was a 10-year process.

I was going to say 10 years. That was, that must have been pretty recent. People can use SNAP at Thrive?

You can use SNAP at Thrive. You can use SNAP at Thrive. We were the first pure-play e-commerce retailer to be accepted. Um, about 3 or 4 years ago, they started to finally bring brick-and-mortar in that had an online presence. You could use your food stamps on like Walmart.com or something like that. But we were the first pure-play e-commerce retailer. And yeah, so we like saw firsthand how hard it was to get things done with the USDA. And yeah, it's not nothing against the USDA per se, but just these agencies are big. The USDA has been around since like literally 1862. Like it was started under Lincoln. So they have like, they are huge. They have a lot of different kind of convoluted bureaucratic layers. There's a lot of parts of it that, that may be kind of vestigial from prior eras.

Right. Stuff, stuff that possibly even Elon Musk might not be able to make a dent in.

I think it's going to be really tough. We'll see. It's going to be really tough. And again, it's not like the USDA ultimately, like it took 10 years, but they did make this change. So if change is possible, there's good people working in these agencies. They are aware of some of, or many of the problems. And I think reform is possible. It's just really hard. And if you look at the USDA, the structural challenge that they have is that they, their original mandate was not around food standards or food safety. It was around the promotion of the agriculture industry. So it is literally like for supporting farmers.. And so it was only later that it evolved to encompass food safety, dietary guidelines, food labeling, which is— food labeling is interesting because that's like there's overlap with the FDA there. So you've got this like there's an issue with agencies that are siloed and then there's also an issue with agencies kind of stepping on each other's, stepping on each other's toes. But the, the fundamental challenge that the USDA has is the inherent conflict of interest between being an agency that is there to promote commodity crops like corn, soy, and wheat on behalf of farmers and then setting safety standards and nutritional guidelines.

Ben Greenfield: You mean that there could be financial interest in, say, taking some kind of a byproduct of corn growth and, I don't know, elephant in the room, high fructose corn syrup, and having incentives to put that into the food supply.

Yeah. And I think this is like beyond debate at this point, right? When you look at the number of things that have to take your example of high fructose corn syrup or just corn byproducts in general, it's like just sort of ludicrous. And that is because of, you know, like the USDA is there to serve, among other like agricultural subindustries, corn. And then you have the direct incentives that come from lobbying right, where the other huge industry lobbies that have— that are well-funded and they carry a lot of sway that are like for— have been for decades and actually more than a century influencing agencies like the USDA. So it's not quite the inmates running the asylum, but it is way too close for comfort. And I would say if you look at the kind of twin mandate of the USDA around food standard— or sorry, food safety and food nutritional guidelines or food standards, they've done pretty well on food safety. If you look at the US compared to any other country, pathogen reduction, safe handling procedures, cooking temperatures, testing out, this stuff is actually very good in the US and we should be very grateful for that.

Ben Greenfield: Right. And then, to clarify, you're not talking about the ingredients that are actually allowed in food, you're talking more more about the contaminants that are not allowed.

Yeah, so like, like the, the— and this is again where you get to understand the difference between the USDA and the FDA. So the FDA actually does a lot, a lot, is a lot broader in terms of categories. Like USDA is really focused on meat, poultry, certain egg products, um, and then nutritional guidelines. But like its food safety mandate is quite narrow, uh, but it's like, you know, eggs and poultry, meat are like places where there can be real food safety issues and We shouldn't take that for granted that like that the USDA has done a terrific job and that you can eat raw eggs in the US. You should like, not everyone does this, but like you can and like you're not going to get sick. For the most part, we have very, very like good clean supply chains that are well regulated and well controlled from the safety standpoint. Where we've had, I think, a total failure is on the nutritional standards and guidelines. And so, yeah, this is like now I think wide out in the open, but the food pyramid that, you know, you and I grew up on in like the 1990s with refined carbohydrates as the base, with this idea that like the, you know, the cause of heart disease was fats where, you know, different types of fats weren't distinguished between at all, or sort of carbohydrates were universally good, where they, you know, The idea of glycemic load just wasn't even in the picture.

Yeah, which unlike you, by the way, that's what I was raised— like, I was raised on really not even the food pyramid. It was more like take-and-bake pizzas, 29-cent hamburger, 39-cent cheeseburger day, gallons and gallons of fat-free milk. Even we had a lot of milk powder.

I mean, some of what you're saying there was very compatible with the food pyramid, right?

Like low-fat milk, for example, Yeah, yeah, it's kind of, kind of like my parents like accidentally followed the food pyramid because we were just buying what was cheap and what could feed me and my 4 siblings, you know.

And like the problem with the food pyramid was both what it said but then also what it didn't say. So like I think probably the biggest failure of the, of the overarching paradigm was like the absolute lack of attention to food quality and food processing. Like at the end of the day, at least my perspective is like you can have a diet that has very different macros and still be healthy.

Ben Greenfield: Oh, yeah, absolutely. You could technically, yeah, you're right, you could hit rewind, you could follow the food pyramid and if your dairy is maybe some really good fermented yogurt and kefir and your grains are good whole grains without synthetic folic acid additives and your meat is from good, you could technically follow something close to the food pyramid. And this is based on a— what's the actual biochemical law? I'm blanking on it right now, but it's an equation that dictates that if you're consuming a higher percentage of carbohydrates, your body becomes efficient at glucose oxidation, same for fat with fat oxidation, and that the human body is pretty plastic, not microplastic, but yeah. Has a great deal of plasticity in terms of what we can actually metabolize. So, you see many populations thriving on a high-fat, low-carb diet, others on a high-carb, low-fat diet.

Yeah, this is the Weston Price insight, right?

It's like— Yeah, exactly. It's the quality that trumps everything.

That's exactly right. So, yeah, I do think that they're like the pyramid itself has problems, but the biggest thing is that not identifying processing and particularly ultra-processed foods as the problem, as the culprit, was a major miss. And that is not a coincidence, right? Like, the reason for the push towards ultra-processing is it benefits businesses and suppliers and manufacturers and the agriculture industry because it's cheap.

It's cheap and you sell more of it because it's highly palatable and addictive.

It's— yeah, it's exactly— it's cheap, it's appealing, it's a better economic model in the short term, but it's got all of these externalities that are being produced in terms of health and downstream consequences that, that just weren't taken into account. So what I will say is there's, you know, there has been progress. So if you look at like the 2020 through 2025 nutritional standards and guidelines, like there's more of an emphasis on whole grains, like distinguishing between ultra processed and refined grains versus whole grains. But like they still don't distinguish between different fat types. It's still completely focused on macros versus quality. And I think another thing which may just be the nature of the beast, but it assumes one size fits all. And the reality is depending on one's own, and this goes back to your point around shopping by biomarkers, but different people respond to different things, different macronutrients differently.

Right, exactly. If you're Sub-Saharan African or Southeast Asian genetics, you're going to metabolize carbs, high amounts of fructose, etc., more efficiently than a Northern European.

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And so like when you look at the district, back to how the standards are set, like the USDA reviews them in theory every 5 years, you've got— so that's probably not enough frequency given how fast like knowledge is changing. You've got heavily, heavily, heavy influence from these industry groups and lobbies. And not surprised. And then you have years and years or decades and decades, a century plus of accumulated kind of morass in the, in this, in the standards and the agency. And not surprisingly, it's pretty, you know, pretty tough to get, get things to the right place.

Yeah. Yeah. People say it's different in Europe. I mean, I travel to Europe, I look at labels, there's still a lot of crap. And, you know, it seems like dyes and preservatives, et cetera, in Europe. But is that true? Is it a myth? What's the whole USA versus Europe thing?

Yeah. I mean, it's funny because anecdotally, you'll hear people be like, "I went to Europe and I ate pasta all day and I felt great." And you wonder, well, is that what you were eating? Was it that you were active all day because you were walking around?

By the way, I will throw this in that I would say that the lower amounts of herbicides used on wheat crops in a country like Italy could, in my opinion, potentially cause someone to have less digestive distress when consuming a bowl of pasta in Italy versus America. But, I think there's considerations that go beyond just herbicides, right?

Yeah. No. So, to be clear, there absolutely are differences. So, this is FDA and USDA stuff, but the FDA is responsible for the banning of ingredients. If you look at the European standard, they basically take a— they use like what's called the precautionary principle where it is an ingredient has to be proven safe before it is allowed to be added to the food supply. So it's like a guilty until proven innocent.

And what would— what would safe be considered?

So it means there have to actually be studies that show over time no deleterious consequences to health, no toxicity. And, if there are studies that show the opposite, it's not going in.

Yeah. But, how's that any different than grass in the USA, generally recognized as safe?

Grass is literally the opposite, right? Generally recognized as safe is a loophole that allows companies to put what they want in until it is shown definitively to be unsafe. So, the burden is actually on consumer groups or on the FDA itself to prove that an ingredient shouldn't be there. So, those two approaches like opt-in, opt-out kind of thing are just radically different in what the effect is over time.

So, if I understand properly, what you're saying is safe in Europe means that there's been robust human research demonstrating whether or not something has adverse effects on the human body. Generally recognized as safe in the U.S. means there's really not any or not much research that's been done on this but proceed at your own risk. It appears to be okay.

Yeah, generally recognized as safe is proceed at your own risk because we don't know. And if we don't know, then the ingredient is allowed to be in the food supply. So, just to be really clear there too, the FDA, there are ingredients that the FDA hasn't re-reviewed or hasn't reviewed at all in decades. So, this is the food dye issue where you've got red 3, yellow 5, blue 1. There's All of these food dyes, many of them are actually byproducts of petroleum, which is pretty crazy when you start to think about it. But like those three, the three I just named, for example, are, you know, they're linked to behavioral issues and like cognitive developmental issues in kids, like hyperactivity, ADHD, etc. Red 3 has specifically been linked to thyroid dysfunction and thyroid cancer in rats since like the 1980s. These are ingredients that have been banned in Europe for a very long time. And interestingly, actually, Red 3 was banned from cosmetics, so it can't be in lipstick in the early 1990s, I think in 1990, and yet it's still allowed in food.

Can't smear it on your lips, but you could eat it.

But you can ingest it. And so, the really bad thing there is kids aren't putting lipstick on, but they are eating Froot Loops and, and Skittles. And like the, the, these dyes are most common in items that are being consumed by children, in part because children like bright colors and in part because they are used basically to mask the unhealthiness of ultra-processed foods. So like one of the effects of ultra-processed food, they like, they make it taste really good. But it ends up looking really bad. There's no natural coloring that's going to be left in that thing. So, you just put a bunch of artificial coloring in which costs cents per ton.

I heard that a lot of stuff like these cereals due to the ultra-processing would be gray.

Exactly. Yeah, of course. It's like any industrial byproduct, right?

Who's going to eat gray Cheerios?

No, the kids want color. But it's almost like this, not to get conspiracy theory, but it's like it's like a sleight of hand, right? It's like a magician doing a trick on our children where it's like we're going to take something that if you looked at that would not be at all appealing because there is no nutrient value, right? Like color is a pro— in nature, color is a proxy for health.

It's the equivalent of beer goggles for kids.

Yeah, it's like now we're going to get— take this like industrial byproduct, we're going to put color in it so it triggers the, you know, kind of pleasure sensors of children. And then, we're also going to put a bunch of sugar in it or high fructose corn syrup. So, the taste and the look signals to us health when in fact it's anything but. Right.

And back to the beer goggles analogy, wake up 40 years later with diabetes and roll over and ask, "Gosh, what the hell did I just sleep with?" What happened?

Yeah. So, I mean, it's pretty crazy. The food diet issue is obviously now coming to the fore. And in the case of RED3, California banned it in 2023, finally. So like you had this like state patchwork thing that's happening where some states are being more proactive. And then the FDA actually 2 months ago in February did come out and say we are banning it. But then this is like, it's just nuts. They gave, they gave manufacturers 2 years to come into compliance. So like they've acknowledged that this is a toxin, it shouldn't be in the food supply. I think implicitly have acknowledged that they're decades late in making this happen, but then they said we're going to give manufacturers another 2 years to actually do it.

Ben Greenfield: Wow. Okay. So, back to Thrive. Let's say me and my wife, Jessa, we come to you and we're like, "Hey, we want to get in the Thrive Market. We have these beautiful Ben and Jessa sweet potato popsicles that we've been making in our kitchen. We want to go big time. A company comes to you, what do you look at? What do you analyze to decide whether or not it's going to be allowed in Thrive Market?

Basically, what we're trying to do is pick up where the FDA has maybe dropped the ball and informed by higher standard areas like the EU. But actually going even further. So, we have 600+ banned ingredients, no artificial colors, no preservatives, no artificial sweeteners, no hydrogenated oils, no high fructose corn syrup. All of the obvious bad stuff is just off.

Ben Greenfield: But, there's some gray areas there. Sorry, I don't want to derail you, but artificial sweeteners, let's say erythritol, right, sugar alcohol, is that allowed? Is it artificial, natural? How do you approach stuff like that?

Yeah. And, the truth is we try to follow the evidence. So, we do have stevia as a common ingredient and a sugar alternative can sometimes be better than a sugar or arguably is better than a sugar.

Ben Greenfield: Like allulose, for example, it's actually good for glycemic variability and insulin sensitivity. It's technically different than sugar, kind of looks like a chemical on the label, but it's actually super healthy.

Yeah. So, we like allulose, monk fruit sweetener are on Thrive Market. So, the sweeteners question is a subtle one. One of the big things that we look to avoid is added sugar. And that again is not one that we can draw an absolutely hard line on because there are cases where the nature of the product, you'd basically have to eliminate a whole category if you're not going to have any added sugar. So we try— I mean, the balancing act that we have to play is meeting people where they are, like having the categories that people want, but also doing it in a way that, you know, like plants our flag on the things that matter. So like no high fructose corn syrup is just a commitment we've made because like if you want sweet, there's ways to sweeten it that don't have high fructose corn syrup. And it's also like a good proxy because if something has high fructose corn syrup, there's probably a lot of other bad stuff happening. We're entirely non-GMO on food. That's not because we're against genetic engineering, but because most of the genetic engineering in the US, in US agriculture, is to be pesticide and herbicide resistant. So, a supermajority of people test positive for glyphosate in their urine.

Ben Greenfield: To clarify, what you're saying is if you're buying a GMO product, it's likely that it has been sprayed with pesticide and herbicide.

That's right. That's right. Because the whole point of genetically modifying that commodity or that crop in the first place was to enable heavier spraying of pesticides. So, like, you know, we're non-GMO on the food side. I'd say 98% is certified organic. The 2% that's not certified organic is going to be organic in practice. You know, on the meat side, focusing on grass-fed, pasture-raised, looking at sustainability of harvesting practices. We also try to audit the sort of brand practices. So like the looking at the cleanness of their supply chain from an animal cruelty standpoint, from a, from a kind of ethical employee, employer standpoint. This stuff can be burdensome for some brands. So we're not like looking for like, you know, you got to collect a bazillion certifications. But, but, but being common sense on that stuff. And then to your point, your question earlier, like packaging is a big deal and that's one that we work— we try to work collaboratively with the brands because it's hard, but reducing plastic packaging and then focusing on compostable and recyclable materials where possible. But, but the biggest thing by far is just like starting from, all right, here's hundreds of ingredients that you're going to find all over the grocery store that are demonstrably bad for human health and just like take those out.

Now, the part about sustainability or animal welfare kind of makes me think about something I've been wondering about beef tallow because someone commented to me, this is a couple weeks ago, that, "Oh, there's tons of beef tallow to go around to replace seed oils. Look at all these huge cattle operations. They're basically not using their beef tallow. We can just use that to replace seed oils." At the back of my mind, I'm thinking, But isn't that kind of like indirectly keeping large-scale cattle operations that are doing a poor job with animal welfare or what they're feeding the cattle and the beef that gets produced from that kind of in business? Doesn't it create an altogether different problem?

Yeah. Not only that, but it also like the health profile of the fats.

Right, exactly. Yeah. Fats are where a lot of animals, pigs especially, but cows also concentrate a lot of the toxins. What are your thoughts on that?

Well, I'm glad you actually brought up seed oils because that's, you know, it's a hot button issue as well. And actually a very good example of the, you know, the failure of the food pyramid, I think, like, dropped ball on the part of the USDA where, like, seed oils, like, they just, like, completely missed the issue, right? And not only that, but actually perpetuated or instigated it by— because they were, you know, in bed with all these industry lobbyists and groups. So like soybean, canola, sunflower oil, like these have like risen up just insanely massively over the last several decades because it made sense from an agriculture lobby standpoint. And they didn't think anything about the health side. And like on the health side, it, it conformed to this narrative of like, you know, animal fats are bad. And that the seed oils would be better. The problem is seed oils are by definition ultra-processed foods, right? They're extracted using chemical solvents, things like hexane. They are rich in omega-6 fats. And, what we're now finding, which I'm sure many of your listeners know, is that they're one of the primary drivers of chronic inflammation, which is heart disease, autoimmune conditions, metabolic dysfunction, I mean, these are like really, really bad things. So I do think that moving away from seed oil towards, I mean, there are good oils like vegetable oils, like avocado oil or olive oil. I think for cooking, beef tallow can be great, but I agree with you that like taking factory farmed animals and using the like fat byproduct to create beef tallow that's going to have a high toxin load, it's going to be poor omega profiles.

Right. When I see companies like— what's the shake fast food chain they just switched? The Steak 'n Shake?

Yeah.

Yeah. I just wonder, I'm like, well, if they're getting all their beef tallow from CAFO food lots, we're just creating an altogether different set of problems.

Totally. It's a different problem. You can argue whether it's better or worse than seed oils. Probably from a health standpoint, it's a little bit better, but, you know, not much. And from a, from an environmental standpoint and an animal welfare standpoint, for sure not better. So yeah, it's like it's tough, right? Like you, like when industry has put its thumb on the scale or governments put its thumb on the scale, you have, we have now like a seed oil, like industrial complex that is, you know, is massive. Like it's going to be very hard to unwind given the way those supply chains are built. You've got alternatives like tallow, which are still like in terms of an ethical supply chain there and a healthy supply chain. Like, you know, we work with White Oak Pastures that does regenerative.

Oh yeah, they're great.

They're amazing. But like there is only a handful of farms really doing that and like they just aren't at scale. So it's going to be years, if not decade plus, for those supply chains to grow. What gives me confidence that they will, that it will happen is the conversations are happening and consumers are smart. And I think the role that we see Thrive Market having is being that platform to expose the issues, reward the brands that are doing the right thing, and sort of allow our members, consumers, to vote with their dollars and kind of brands and platforms get credit for good work.

Yeah. Well, I don't want to end on the note of the depression of potential toxicity in beef tallow. So, fun question. You guys do have, back to my comment about the the dark chocolate-covered sea salt sprinkled almonds, certain food products that do kind of taste like crack. And again, I know you get this, Nick, and I don't want to diss Thrive Market, but a lot of your packaged foods are hyperpalatable and high in calories. And, I would caution people like just because it's healthy, you don't have to eat the whole bag. But, that all being said, are there any particular products, maybe 2 or 3 that are just flying off the shelves because they're like freaking crack there?

The point that you're bringing up is actually a really, it's a really important one, which is like healthier versus actually healthy. And as I said, part of the fine line we have to walk is like where are we going to plant our flag and really take a stand? And then where are we going to meet members where they are and offer them better alternatives? And so like, you know, subbing out high fructose corn syrup and getting in something like allulose, like that's a big win. Even if that product ends up being still processed. So, allulose-sweetened chocolate has been— yeah, it's awesome. It's really good.

Ben Greenfield: Does not give you bloat like that. What is it? I don't want to throw them under the bus, but I think Lily's. My wife and I used to mow through those. We're like, "Why do we have so much gas?" And we realized just a crap ton of sugar alcohols in it. So, I did not know you guys had allulose chocolate. But, okay, so that's a plus.

Chocolate's a little addictive, so is coffee. Our Chocolate Club covered espresso beans, just because you said the word crack, that's the first thing that comes to my mind. I mean, they are very, very good and pack a double punch and a very clean product.

I'm assuming mycotoxin mold-free bean, single estate farm, things like that.

Yeah. And so a big thing that we're doing now is more independent third-party testing ourselves, particularly on the own brand side for— we didn't even get into this, but heavy metals is one that's becoming a bigger thing and people are again testing themselves and finding high levels of heavy metals even if they're not consuming a lot of large fish. So yeah, we're all on that and we're actually stepping up all over it. I mean, for me personally, just looking at my kind of stuff, I eat a lot of just nuts and seeds. I'll put hemp seeds on everything, right? And it's just like, it's great texture, like pumpkin seeds. So, for me, I'm a skinny guy. I actually have trouble getting weight, keeping weight on, kind of maintaining muscle mass. So, I try to make sure I get enough calories. Walnuts. That's the go-to snack for me, just have a handful.

I'm big on the cacao nibs and the unsweetened coconut flakes are probably my two prime because that's the meat of everything I put on top of my smoothies is cacao nibs and coconut flakes. Just makes any smoothie incredible. So, I'll throw those two into the mix.

I'll put cacao nibs in a smoothie. So, I mean, this was my smoothie this morning and there's probably still cacao nibs at the bottom. I will also eat cacao nibs straight. I'll chew them as just kind of a— it's a little stimulating, it's a little caloric, it's a little bitter.

Ben Greenfield: You get your anandamide, you get your dopamine. Yeah, nature's feel-good drug. Well, Nick, I'm sure people's mouths are watering. We don't want to make anybody drive off the road or quit lifting weights at the gym so they can go hunt down some cacao nibs to munch on. So, probably going to bring this to a close, But, you guys, I'm not kidding, Thrive Market is actually just a fun website to shop on. They really have created an incredible user experience. And now, with this ability to auto-populate your cart and the filtration mechanisms way beyond what you're going to be able to filter for it, let's say shopping for foods on Amazon or something like that because they're looking at the health like keto, paleo, low-carb, et cetera. BenGreenfieldLife.com/NickGreen, N-I-C-K Green, is where you can access the shownotes. We got fat discount codes for Thrive Market. I'll put links to other podcasts I've done on things like the seed oil issue, food dye issue, et cetera. And Nick, it's a pleasure. This one's been a long time coming because as you know, I've been a customer. I even invested in you guys when early on close to when you launched. And, I've just been a fan for the longest time, so I'm glad we were able to finally have a chat.

I mean, super grateful for your support through the years and this was fun.

Alright, folks. Well, BenGreenfieldLife.com/NickGreene. Have fun grocery shopping. And, until next time, I'm Ben Greenfield signing out from BenGreenfieldLife.com. To discover even more tips, tricks, hacks, and content to become the most complete boundless version of you, visit BenGreenfieldLife.com.

In compliance with the FTC guidelines, please assume the following about links and posts on this site. Most of the links going to products are often affiliate links of which I receive a small commission from sales of certain items, but the price is the same for you, and sometimes I even get to share a unique and somewhat significant discount with you. In some cases, I might also be an investor in a company I mention. I'm the founder, for example, of Kion LLC, the makers of Kion-branded supplements and products, which I talk about quite a bit. Regardless of the relationship, if I post or talk about an affiliate link to a product, it is indeed something I personally use, support, and with with full authenticity and transparency recommend in good conscience. I personally vet each and every product that I talk about. My first priority is providing valuable information and resources to you that help you positively optimize your mind, body, and spirit. And I'll only ever link to products or resources, affiliate or otherwise, that fit within this purpose. So, there's your fancy legal disclaimer.