Why Dave Asprey Changed His Mind About Juicing – Junaid Kalmadi of Farmers Juice : 802

Bulletproof Radio. A state of high performance.

You're listening to Bulletproof Radio with Dave Asprey. Today we're going to talk about juice. And if you've listened to my stuff, you read my stuff for a while, you know that I was a raw vegan for quite a while. I have an $800 juicing machine that has a lot of dust on it. And I found out, of course, juicing fruit, it's just basically a sugar bomb. And I spent a lot of time and a lot of money juicing green vegetables and realized I was oftentimes juicing the wrong ones, spending a lot of time. But I've been looking at juice, and just like with any macronutrient, is protein good or bad for you? I don't know. Some proteins are bad for you. Milk protein isolate is probably not very good for you. Uh, but a different protein might be good for you. So it's not about what a thing is. It's what are the components of it. So I've been revisiting juice and looking at keto juice and juice and blood sugar. And it turns out there are ways that you can get substantial amounts of vegetable phytonutrients in with juices. But it takes detailed work on it. And I've got a guy for you. We're going to talk about this. Um, he is the former CEO and founder of Brain fm, which makes cognitive enhancing sound files for millions of people. And he actually moved on and started a company called Farmer's Juice, which has tied together regenerative agriculture, which is very near and dear to me. I live on an organic permaculture farm. I am building soil. So this is cool. Supporting small farmers, which is something that I'm really into. We're going to get to talk about that. And we're going to talk about composing a juice that doesn't create a blood sugar spike, but gives you phytonutrients with some hard data to pack it up. So you guys will be blown away by this, I think. And with no further ado, let's welcome Junaid Kalmati to the show. Junaid, welcome.

Thanks, Dave. It's great to be here.

All right. You went from being a brain hacker. You know, Brain FM has done really, really well. And suddenly saying, I want to start a juice company when it feels like jumbo juice has already sort of come and gone, you know, why would you even think about doing a juice company after a brain hacking company?

That's a great question. So I'm 30 years old today. And if I rewind the clock back to when I was in college, you know, I was raised by a really thoughtful, loving Indian mom that gave me some of the best nutrition based on her love and her, our grandmother's cooking. And when I came to college, I started getting the standard American diet and I started to get dietary stress and I got into getting depressed and really anxious and my GPA went down and I was.

Hold on, as an Indian family, your GPA can't go down? What would your mom say?

My mom gives me unconditional love. So that was the one exception I have. That's hilarious. And I was sitting there in senior year and you know, I went to like 50 plus job interviews, constant non stop no's because my GPA was not too hot. And I was sitting there, I was like, you know what? If no one is going to hire me, it looks like I have to hire myself.

Wait a minute, hold on. You're 30 and people actually looked at your GPA?

No. When I was in college.

No, but I'm saying when you got your first job, just like five, six years ago, whatever it was, people cared about your gpa.

Yes. You in my school, you wouldn't get an interview if you didn't pass a certain threshold.

All right, let me just be really chivalrous. I do not know the GPAs of any employee I have ever hired in all of my companies because it doesn't matter. Just to be really clear. So I'm sorry that you were run through that stupid bureaucratic thing. Anyway, keep going. I'm surprised. I thought it got better.

No, no, right now it is getting better. Especially if you work at an entrepreneurial company. I like to put a like bulletproof. So out of, sort of. They say like necessity is the mother of invention. So out of necessity I had to start my first company and you know, fast forward through the sort of self doubt journeys and going through the entrepreneurial journeys about. In 2017 I came to a point where I had, you know, outward material security and outward sort of success and entrepreneurial success. But my inner life, you know, speaking truthfully, was bankruptcy. I had a low sense of psychological well being. I still sort of suffered from the depression and the anxiety that I picked up in college from the dietary stress. So I took sort of six months off as this radical experiment and I just wanted to focus on what it took to be a healthy, happy human. And during that time I actually came into your work and I got on the bulletproof diet, I got into fasting, I lost £25. And I started meditating every day. And, and one of the introductions that I made was cold pressed juicing. I would go to this high end cold pressed juice bar and I would spend, you know, 10 to $15 per juice and I would custom make my own cold pressed juices. And I was pretty desperate at the time just to feel better. And I was paying $30 a day just on these juices. And I had it every day for four months. And I noticed my depression, my anxiety, my mental health, my emotional health, my vitality, my daily energies began to go from very little to very high. And it was almost like going from black and white to living color. And it always kind of stuck with me, that chapter in life where, you know, I went from pain to actually healing. And that was kind of the seed when I was looking to start my next company. How do I actually combine the sort of best farming practices that are actually, you know, been going on for thousands of years with ancestral farming practices around the world, create the highest quality cold pressed juice, make it ketogenic, make it roughly half the cost of a juice shop. And hence the idea of farmersjuice.com was born.

Now you think that the juice helped to probably re recreate your gut microbiome. We know that most of the plant polyphenols are really food for specific kinds of bacteria. Do you think that's what lifted the depression or was it losing the £20 or £25?

It was likely a mix of the different influences of, you know, fasting and just cutting out anything that is bad, number one. So at the time I was not eating well. I was just eating, you know, at restaurants, random restaurants. So just getting my diet right. In terms of having more higher fat foods, like having eggs, having grass fed meat, having just, you know, really high quality smoothies and juices, that was the key thing. In terms of the physical effect, I didn't do any kind of hard testing. What I did test was in terms of my daily effect. Like every day I would sort of do a little journal entry in terms of how I felt, just to make sure I was keeping track of my healing and recovery process. My assumption is it did sort of just heal some of the dietary stress that was occurring. But I don't have a clear idea into what was going on.

How did you know what to put in the custom juices? I mean, I've been to those juice bars. I'm guessing it was the Erawan.

It was in Austin. It was actually, I forget the exact.

Name, but okay, it was A place in Austin. So Erewhon is, is like the highest end organic grocer in la. And they were the first place to ever carry bulletproof. And they have an amazing juice bar where you say, I want some of that, I want some of that, I want some of that. But you're right, having someone make juice for you, I mean, they have to have a ton of vegetables do it. They have this whole really professional operation with like professional herbologists and stuff. But you could buy a nice beer for the cost of a juice like that. And it does get to be financially prohibitive for a lot of people. So you were not, you didn't have to worry about that because you already were a successful entrepreneur. You were just fat and tired. So you spent the money and you said, all right, I can solve this problem. What is the problem though with just, you know, going out and getting a normal, a normal juice the way most companies are making them?

Yes, that's a good question. You know, if you take, take a step back, you know, some people may know what cold press juicing is, but many people may not understand what it is. And you know, culprit, juicing is a simple yet powerful idea. So if you take any vegetable or herb, there's two fundamental building blocks. There's the liquid and then there's, and there's the solid. So in other words, there's the juice, which is the liquid, and there's the pulp, which is the solid. So say for example, celery or cucumber, 70 to 95% of that vegetable is just pure liquidity. That liquid is, has a plethora of vitamins, enzymes, minerals, phytonutrients. So what cold pressed juicing does, it takes 1 to 1.5 pounds of produce and it separates the liquid from the solid, so it separates the juice from the pulp and it creates this really concentrated and potent beverage that has all of the sort of nutrients of, you know, roughly three to five pounds of salad in terms of, sorry, three to five plates of salad you can have in one drink. So that's what cold pressed juicing is in terms of, you know, it's not a pretty picture in terms of most juices out there because as you may know, they're just, many of them are sort of sugar bombs. And most juices, you know, can contain, even if it's a green juice, 40 to 60 grams of sugar in each bottle. And the vast sort of majority of juice companies, even though they're well intentioned, you know, they use sugar based ingredients like apple or pineapple, just because it sells more and it tastes sweeter and it's more appetizing, quote, unquote.

They're using a lot of kale, too, which tastes crappy. So then you have to have sugar to make it palatable. Right?

You're right. Kale. Kale does taste crappy, especially when it's in a concentrated juice form. And, you know, as you've talked about in the show, kale has high, high amounts of oxalic acid, and it can shred your gut and it can hurt your kidneys. And the thallium level is pretty high. It's not as well talked about as it should, but we have sort of the first ketogenic line of green juices. We only use in one juice, a little bit of dinokale. And we're actually phasing that out based on your guidance. And thank you, actually, for co developing these green juices with us.

Oh, you're welcome. I guess I should have said that at the beginning. I've been working with you. We first met at the bulletproof coffee shop in Santa Monica several years ago. And you're like, I'm thinking about doing this green thing. I'm like, can you do them that are keto, that don't raise blood sugar? And you came back and you said, I think I've done this. So I don't know why I didn't say that in the intro, but, yeah, I am working with you on it.

Yeah, it's been an honor. And they taste great, too. That's one of the key things in terms of why most juices have sugar is, you know, if you don't, it tastes like grass. It tastes really bitter, like. Like most kale juices, or more sort of any other green juice. What we ended up doing is we perfected this combination. Instead of using the typical ingredients like apple or pineapple to just sweeten it up, we use an alternative of a mint, basil, lime, lemon, turmeric, ginger. And the combination of this was. Tweaked it. We tweaked it up to a point. So it gives the juice this wholesome, uplifting taste to your taste buds every single time you have it.

My kids drink it on purpose. They actually like it. It's hard for me to get in Canada. Like, we have to arrange special shipping, so I don't drink it all the time, although I would if I could. But every sample batch, everyone we've had, I give it to the kids as my test. And they're always like, daddy, I like that. And Then they finish the bottle. And so that would not be true of a typical green kale garbage smoothie, unless it was full of sugar, in which case they still probably wouldn't like it.

Yep, totally. I'm, I'm glad you, I'm so happy that your kids love it. You know, in general, you know, after Santa Claus, the most recognized figure. There was a survey done. 96% of kids recognize Ronald McDonald. And we need to change, you know, the default of sugary drinks across the country in terms of schools. And I think if we create a really healthy alternative, starting at the home and have better habits, you know, when kids are younger, it's a duty of care that you can give to your family, for sure.

One of the other concerns that I've had with juices, if they're not carefully composed, right, you get a blood sugar spike, even if it isn't particularly full of sugar or even fruit juice. And one of the things that really made me say, all right, let's actually talk about this on the show was people have heard me talk about levels all the time. I'm wearing my Levels continuous glucose monitor right now. And so I track my blood sugar and tell me what happened when you talked to the head of partnership at Levels with the juice, because I've actually seen the data, but share the story.

So Levels is a CGM company. It's a continuous glucose monitor. And basically I was so impressed by the tech and the promise of actually tracking in real time without it being this heavy duty device that you put on. And, you know, it can give you the data right on your phone and give you immediate feedback if you have, you know, a sugary green juice or if you have a low glycemic green juice, you know, you can see the spike if it's happening or not. So you can actually, in real time, almost get, you know, better food choices. So I reached out to the, the CEO and he connected me to the head of partnerships and, you know, the levels, their team, it's, you know, Stanford surgeons, SpaceX people. So they immediately, they were super skeptical. They were like, okay, they were like, let's do a test between Naked's Green Juice, which is a really popular company that has, you know, sells millions of juices in the usa. And they said, let's do a test again against the Naked Juice with Farmer's Juice. So they took a subject within their team and they found within 24 hours that the, the test subject had no glucose. Almost no glucose spike with Farmer's Juice. But the Naked Green Juice saw a very, very significant glucose spike. And this is a green juice. This is supposed to be like making you healthy. And most juice companies, you know, they promise health. And I want to really preface this because they have good intentions, at least I choose to believe they have good intentions. But with the high sugar content, it creates a harmful daily biological cost and even illness if they're pre diabetic or obese. And you know, during COVID a compromised diet with high sugar intake makes one pre inflammatory and risks their body's immune system. And I think juice companies, you know, selling sugary drinks, even though they have good intentions, you know, contribute to the health care burden of 240 million Americans being overweight or obese and nearly 125 million Americans that are diabetic or pre diabetic. And juice does not need to be.

Part of the problem.

It can be part of the solution. So I'm stoked that you know, you said yes, join to do a create these cold pressed juices with us that are ketogenic as well as join our advisory board in helping spreading juice as a solution, not as a problem.

Well, I actually looked at this stuff because I'm also on Level's advisory board. I'm an investor in both your company and their company. And when I looked at the spike, it looks like his blood sugar went up about 74 points to about 174. I'm looking at here with an off the shelf green healthy drink. And with yours it went up 10 points from 90 to about a hundred and then was level. And that's the difference between, you know, saying carbs are good or carbs are bad. Well, what did this actual combination of carbs do? What did this combination of protein do? It's all about the composition of it. And you did put a lot of times, I think I probably tested six boxes of the juice as you were dialing it in. And I want to know how did you get it so that it wasn't spiking blood sugar? Like what was the trick?

The trick was replacing apple pineapple with a potent combination of basil, mint, lemon, lime, ginger, turmeric. That was it. And if you do that and you have to really get the exact proportion of ounces right, it's not a simple task. So we've at this point made, I don't know, like almost 500 juices and done testing with maybe 50 to 100 people to get this formulation right.

The other problem I have with juicing, actually there's a couple of them. One of them is it seems like it creates a lot of food waste. And the other one is that it's, it's kind of bourgeois bougie, you could say, like, oh yeah, I'm going to drink, you know, my $15 green drink. But part of the thing that we talked about when we first met and you talked about this new idea for a business you had was what were you going to do about both food waste and what you're going to do about making it affordable? And what's the current price point? I know you keep driving it down.

It's $5.99 for an organic cold pressed juice.

Got it. So it's way cheaper. And in terms of food safety and all, you're using a cool new tech I'm familiar with because of all the work I've done at Bulletproof hpp. Talk about that a little bit.

Yeah. So, you know, good juice, if you really want to get an amazing organic old produce juice, it costs anywhere between 10 to $15. And you're right, juicing unfortunately is a luxury and it really shouldn't be. And part of our mission is can we@farmers juice.com make an alliance with family farms to actually drive the cost down? And what we do is we use a lot of the sort of quote unquote ugly produce, the non esthetic produce that doesn't reach the grocery stores because it's not non esthetic and it doesn't sell as well. So a lot of this sort of ugly produce, which actually there's some preliminary data showing that it may have higher quantities of antioxidants, they actually get sort of wasted and there's a low economic value for that. So they just use it as compost or, you know, they just throw it in the trash. So what we do is by partnering with an alliance of family farms, we get the cost down and, and we juice it sort of at the peak nutrient density zones for each, for each produce. And with food waste, I'm so happy that you brought it up because the annual food waste statistics are pretty alarming. In the United States, you know, food waste is estimated, you know, at between 30 to 40% of the entire food supply. So 30 to 40, 30 to 40% of the entire. And this is, you know, the official US government data, according to the USDS Economic Research, like 31% of food loss occurs at retail and even consumer levels at homes. So that is related to sort of juicing at home. A lot of the pulp that gets used, a lot of the pulp that gets accumulated after a Home juicing session at home, it just goes into the trash. Or if you have a garden like yourself, Dave, you can use it in the back. But many people may not have a garden. So food waste in particular is a solution that we want to take on pretty affirmatively. So what we do is as soon as the juice is made, it's probably got a few hours before the nutrient degradation begins to occur. So immediately we introduce this technology called hpp and it's called high pressure processing. And it's to kind of explain it. If you visualize a yellow school bus and you think of a juice bottle entering into that school bus, there is cold water and high pressure and enough cold water so the juice bottle can go to the bottom of the ocean. So with the physics of the chemistry of this process with hpp, it neutralizes all the negative bacteria and it makes the juice Last fresh for 30 days versus if you were to go to a high end juice bar or juice at home, it would sort of degrade within the same day or the next day. So that's sort of the technique that we use with hbp. In addition, after the juice is made, you know, there's a lot of the pulp. What do you do with the pulp that would go wasted at a juice shop or a grocery store or even at home?

You.

What we do is we work with our alliance of farms and we donate a vast majority of the pulp as cattle feed. So there's a lot of cows in California, they get super happy almost every week and they get this, and they almost at this point instinctively know that this like pulp is coming. And it's really, you know, dense, rich, quality food. So we really focus on sort of the circle of life with every juice.

If I could get all of your fruit, all of your pulp from that, I would use it on my farm. My, my pigs would be more than happy to do it. We're probably going to get a couple small cows too. But it's amazing what happens when you feed vegetables to animals and you feed plants to animals instead of feeding grains and soy and corn. So you're, you're basically doing what farmers always did, which was the stuff you don't eat goes back in. So we don't have food waste in my house because either the pigs, the chickens, or the sheep will eat it, and if not, the worms will eat it. So we have the circle of life intact here. But how many people can do that? It's completely unusual. And in fact it's, it's highly unusual. So what you're doing though is you're saying by returning the pulp back to the farms, the cows eat it, the cows use it to make good bacteria and soil nutrients and then you're building soil. So that's a lot better than juicing at home, unless you're composting at home. And even then it's probably better because you fed a cow before it hit the soil. So like you've got the closed loop system for not creating food waste. You're not using preservatives. And these are all things that we talked about when we talked about forming the company because you know, these matter. And then you have the composition of it so it doesn't have sugar in it. And there's also the composition of vegetables. And tell me about why did you go with dandelion Greens versus kale, which everyone else is using?

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Yeah, with the vegetables, you know, specifically the lineup that we use is cucumber, basil, mint, ginger, lemon, turmeric. We use lime. We use a little bit of dino kale in one of the juices which we're actually phasing out in April. And we also use dandelion greens. We're constantly sort of testing a functional juice line. So for example, we have a Focus Greens juice that has matcha in it along with all the vegetables, herbs. And we also have Green Athlete that has maca. So it's supposed to be an amazing sort of pre workout drink or even a post workout drink for recovery. We also have one called Performance Greens that has lion's mane and all of this is organic. And we actually work with our sourcing and we, you know, get the certifications in terms of the USDA organic certifications. And we're very thorough with every step of the way. We introduced also this new juice that's coming out in February called Peaceful Greens. I don't think you've had this yet.

Yeah, I've had Peaceful Greens. Oh, you've had.

Okay, you were in the test run, right?

Yeah.

You got the early stuff. And Peaceful Greens has ashwagandha, which is an ayurvedic root that's been used for thousands of years to support your adrenal system and reduce any sort of symptoms of anxiety. And the digestive greens is another juice that is one of my favorites. It has apple cider vinegar, cucumber, lemon, turmeric, basil, mint, and extra ginger in there. And you really feel it when you drink it.

That one's extra keto anyway, because apple cider vinegar is pro ketogenic, so you can drink that. You're not getting meaningful amounts of protein if more than a gram or two. And there are some carbs in it, but not very many. Do you measure the actual carbs?

Yes. So each green juice roughly has 9 to 11 in total carbs. And in terms of net carbs, you know, there's probably one gram of fiber in there. And so it's, you know, 9 to 11 minus 1. And then there's roughly 4 grams, only 4 to 5 grams of sugar per juice. And it's all coming from, you know, ginger or turmeric or lemon or basil or mint. It's not coming from any fruit. We don't use any fruit in our green juices.

So then on a normal ketogenic diet, you can easily have one of these, and you're getting way more vegetables than you could have otherwise had, and you're unlikely to have any problems. And you can also add MCT oil if you're really worried about it.

Yep. Yeah, we're actually thinking of experimenting with an MCT oil based green juice.

Oh, never even thought of that. I was just thinking, I was thinking I just pour some in there. But the, the idea here, though, is that many people on keto are vegetable deficient. And you actually, and I've tried this, you can't really eat enough vegetables if you want to do that. And it can also be rough on the gut. You know, if you're eating 12 servings of vegetables a day, a lot of people can't do that. So there's, there's Debate. I'm generally, I'll be really blunt. I'm generally anti juicing because people do it wrong almost all the time. It's full of sugar and they juice, spinach and chard and kale, none of which you're using, except for the dino kale, which is the lowest oxalic acid kale. I've talked about that on the Joe Rogan show. And even that one you're phasing out. So I'm like, oh, you didn't do the bad greens. You've measured the effect on blood sugar. And for people who are die hard keto bros say I can only have 15 grams of carbs a day. That's actually not true. You actually have to look at what the carbs do to your blood sugar. You can have 100 grams of carbs a day. If it's prebiotic fiber, which is a carb, it doesn't do anything. In fact, it might even lower your blood sugar. So when you look at what this does to your blood sugar, I think the data from levels speaks for itself. There's a non, meaning an inconsequential rise in blood sugar. But if you drink a normal green juice, it's like drinking a Coke. And so solving that combination of how do you make it taste good, how do you make it cheap, how do you make it convenient, how do you make it environmentally sustainable? And all of the things. I think you actually did all of those things, which is why I wanted to. Wanted to back you. Although we talked before, I backed you, and then you did it and I backed you, and then here you are and you can send these things out for six bucks. Tell me about shipping and all that kind of stuff. How does that work? Because I live over the border, so I have to do special arrangements. So how does it, how does it come. Do you charge for shipping? What's the whole deal?

Yeah, so we ship nationwide in the United States to all the 48 states. And we're working on expanding to Canada next year. After Covid gets a little bit more in control, it'll just be easier for us. And we charge a very minimal cost of I think anywhere between 5 to 750 for shipping. And it comes with these refrigerated, reusable gel packs to make sure that it's completely cold. And all of the materials that we use within the packaging is completely recycle friendly and used with recycled materials. And, and this is kind of an important point because most use companies, or even companies in general use single use plastic. And the Landfills build up. What we do is we go out of our way to source from recycled plastic sources. So pretty much, you know, how the loop works is if you buy a plastic bottle and then you consume whatever it is, a juice or food product, and then if you recycle it, and if it's going to a recycled plant, you know, they reuse that plastic and then we go and purchase it. So as long as you sort of recycle it, and we encourage all of our customers to do it, and we're working on sort of an incentive program to release later this year so we can actually have sort of the smaller cities in America that may not have a really, you know, well built infrastructure in their city for recycling that we can, you know, have them ship it to us and we can recycle it for them. So we're very sort of hypersensitive in terms of doing what's best for the planet.

One of the things that I like about plant juice, even fruit juice, which I don't generally drink because of the sugar, is that the water is exclusion zone water. So when plants take water in, they convert it, much like humans do, from bulk water into something called exclusion zone water. And I funded some research at Dr. Gerald Pollock's lab at University of Washington a few years ago where he's written some books on this. He's spoken at the biohacking conference I put on. So in plants and animals, they take the water and they do something. And plants at the cell wall, in humans at the cell membrane, where they make, they change the viscosity of the water. That's one of the reasons fruit juice tastes so. Fruit juice or vegetable juice tastes so refreshing. It's because the water in there, it's different. And it's funny enough, it's also the reason why bulletproof coffee doesn't work unless you blend it. When you blend it, you make exclusions on water, but if you don't blend it, you don't get the change in the water that happens in the waters up against little bits of fat. And I, I have, I don't have any hard data that says that the HPP process of just adding, you know, hundreds of atmospheres of pressure in order to turn off all the bacteria and stuff like that. I don't know if that breaks exclusion exclusions on water. I don't think it does. Have you seen anything about that?

I have not. But we are going to be working with a nutritional lab to test every single one of our juices to get a detailed breakdown in terms of the nutritional content before HPP and after hbp. So we will be publishing that later this year.

And there's a dirty secret about most juices that you buy at the store that has to do with growing vegetables in China, freezing them and shipping them over. Tell me about that.

Yes. So most juices, sort of the bigger companies not naming names because when you get to a certain volume and size and you want to keep the cost down, a the two things that big companies do is that they use non organic produce because it's 30 to 40% cheaper, depending on where you live. And non organic produce is incredibly damaging, can be incredibly damaging to the soil, can contain pesticides like glyphosate, and there's no way to sort of know to an unassuming customer or individual walking down the street to say, hey, here's the difference between an organic kale and a non organic kale. Sometimes they may just look totally identical and it may even taste identical. But there's really subtle forms of pesticides in there that if you drink on a daily basis or you consume on a daily basis, you. It can be really damaging to your, to your health. In terms of, you know, soil, I'm really, I'm so happy that you brought up soil as a topic in general. You've been talking about it on the show. You know, just to take a step back, you know, most folks think of soil just as dirt. And what we kind of want to encourage people is like to reimagine soil as the living skin of the earth. It gives the plants the nutrients it needs to grow. Plants are the food and the fuel for animals, but also for the soil. And whatever the soil gets, it gives to the plants. And those plants give it to your body. And soil in general, it is going to be supporting by 2016, 95% of all of our food production on the planet. And by 2060, our soils will be asked to give us more food, as much as we have consumed in the past 500 years, all put together. And you know, the Rodale Institute, they're one of the pioneers of organic or agricultural research. They do amazing work. They're a nonprofit, I believe. And what one of their head scientists, you know, put it so, so poetically, is that in every handful of healthy soil, there's more living organisms that have lived in the history of planet Earth in every single handful of healthy soil. So, you know, the key principle that Dr. Mark Hyman brings up, that Michael Pollan brings up, is that you're not what you Eat alone. You're what your food eats. So if, and if you think about it, we really have that connection dialed in at least with sort of the bulletproof community that when you have sort of a factory farm burger, you know you're going to feel like crap almost immediately because it's being treated like crap. And, and it has low quality food, it has emotional stress, mental stress, the animals do. And that if you have a grassroots co op burger, it's going to taste, or a butcher box burger, it's going to taste way different because they actually are thoughtful in terms of the nutrition and the environment of the plant. That same exact principle, that paradigm that people are familiar with cows and chickens applies to the soil, applies to the plants, but it doesn't get as much as attention as it needs to, which is why we are from each box we donate a portion of our profits to a nonprofit called Kiss the ground that Dr. Mark Hyman is an advisor to as well. And he actually inspired me first to that, even brought in awareness of that, of the nonprofit. And they champion, you know, going beyond organic, so with the regenerative agriculture to give not only education to these farms, but also financial support. And there's an amazing documentary on Netflix, totally recommend to add it to your list. It's just called Kiss the Ground. It will blow you away and it will make you sort of reimagine your role in every single purchase and kind of make you feel empowered about climate change versus just feeling like this, like this hopeless duck where this thing is coming with every single purchase that you make. It's almost like a civic and a political action you can take to enrich the soil, to enrich your own health and enrich the health of the planet.

It's one of the many reasons I say if it's not grass fed, don't eat it, because grass fed animals build soil and grain fed animals deplete soil. And it's just that straightforward. And then with what you're doing, I absolutely just love it that you're taking the waste and making into cattle feed, because that's how it has to be if we're going to be here for a long time. And the statistic you have about running out of topsoil in about 60 years, we're out. And that doesn't account for shrinkage of topsoil. Some new satellite imaging says we've lost 20 to 30% of our topsoil in the US over the last 30 years. And partly it's glyphosate, which destroys soil and it's really aggressive farming practices where they just keep plowing the soil before the soil has a chance to heal itself. And it's actually much more dire than we think it is. And the solution is more poop and putting stuff back in the soil whenever we can. Say, creating the closed loop system that you have there, I think it's, it's brilliant and it's, it's the way we've got to think about it from the future. So I really think kudos to you for thinking about all of the different steps that you could do to both make it affordable but also make it environmentally sustainable. There's, there's values that I have when I'm creating a food product or any product really. And you got them in the right order even. And what they are is this. I don't know if I ever shared this on the show, but first thing is, how do you feel after you use it or eat it or drink it? You should feel more energy. You should feel good. And that's what people value the most, is energy. Second thing is, how does it taste? Because if it tastes like kale, we won't do it for a long time. If it tastes bad, it won't. It doesn't matter. If it's good for you, we will stop doing it because we're human. Third one is, is it convenient? Because our time and our energy matters. Right. And then the fourth one is cost. Right. It has to be affordable. But people value those other things a lot. And the fifth one is environmental impact. And you do it in order. And if you can line all those things up, you end up with something that is long term sustainable because people will want to keep using it because it works for them, it's of high value to them. But it also doesn't pull things out of the soil and all. So I, I think you hit all of those in order, which is really cool. So I appreciate you being one of my portfolio companies and having worked on that stuff. And it does taste good, which ultimately, if it doesn't do that, people aren't going to do it. I get that 100%.

It's been a true joy to collaborate with you. You're a lot of fun to work with.

Oh, thanks, man.

One key aspect that really touched my heart and really opened my mind up is family farms. At least the ones that we partner with, you know, they care about the soil the same way that they care about their own children. So the quality of water that they use on the soil is the same quality of Water to the, that they give to their own children. And sort of the six principles of farming practices that we sort of abide to with every single corpress juice that we use and wellness shot is that there's absolutely no GMOs, there's no artificial colors or preservatives, there's no synthetic fertilizers, there's no toxic persistent pesticides. It should actually enhance soil fertility and protect wildlife and promote biodiversity. And we, you know, really leverage the knowledge of the farms in terms of their ancestral knowledge of understanding. When is the peak time to juice anything? Because if you think about, you know, if you sort of get like a celery or a cucumber from a grocery store on the first day, it tastes amazing, it's super fresh. But by day three, four, five, it begins to degrade. So there's this sort of life cycle and there's a peak nutrient density zone which actually occurs before it's trucks and trucks that get sent out from the farms to the urban cities. It occurs somewhere in between there. So we work with the farm, so we trust their industrial knowledge. And noticeably when you have any of our green juices or even any of our other juices that have, you know, oranges or beets in them, you will feel almost immediately this like rush of vitality and energy. Almost like kind of when you have like a grass bread burger, you get this food high. Like there's, there's like almost a juice high. Like you feel your body is like big hallelujah. It feels like, yes, I feel great. And you automatically sort of have this natural craving, you know, the next time you open your fridge and to have, you know, a fridge full of juices, I'm sure your kids can maybe appreciate this. It's like it's like Christmas every day. It's like, oh my gosh, it just makes it look amazing. Your fridge kind of it's like almost Christmas Christmas lights for your fridge. But it's a great drink to have right when you wake up or probably. I have it typically after my bulletproof coffee. I like to have it before my workout. I like to have it during my, my middle week, mid day break, during deep work. Instead of going for being tempted for any kind of food that is going to make me feel crap, I typically go for a really healthy green juice. That's sort of how I've begun to use it.

Well, a lot of listeners are entrepreneurs, but a lot more of them are not entrepreneurs. So I do want to pick your brain a little bit about being a second time successful entrepreneur. Really? Before you're 30. You just turned 30. So what was it like starting Brain Dot FM? Like, what did you learn as an entrepreneur that you're putting into farmer's juice? Like, give me some of the learnings. It's hard to do this when you're under 30.

Yeah, that's a great question. I think the number one clarity for me is purpose. Like, do you have a purpose that will enrich the lives of people every day and that becomes motivation for you? It's like precious fuel because if you know that you're working with the fuel of love and service as your values, you've got to be pretty driven and motivated to, you know, get through the ups and downs and be pretty persistent in terms of success. And they'll just keep you on the right track. That's what I start with, anything. So as long as you know. And honestly, Dave, you've been pretty big inspiration for me by building bulletproof from 2014 to 2020. I mean, it's been a pretty astronomical growth and I kind of look up to you in terms of how you're incredibly thoughtful. You know, the collagen bars that have just come out are like incredible love.

Thanks.

I literally bought like four boxes and I have them a couple times a day. So a big part of what drives you too from our conversations is like making people healthy, actually, like trying to fix some of the structural problems that are in the food system. Like, you know, there's, there's two pandemics going on. One of them is obviously on the news all the time, but the other one that does not get discussed is the, you know, amount of diseased states based on poor health and lifestyle choices. So we've, you know, have a diseased population that's incredibly vulnerable and gotten, and gotten a pandemic and we need to make ourselves a healthy population regardless. Not to say that, you know, it's going to be a cure, but we're just going to be way more resilient as a population if we're not going to be pre inflammatory and kind of vulnerable. So to answer your question, for me it's a simple driver of just purpose, love, service, being useful.

I like that. When I looked at starting companies when I was in my early 20s, it was always, you know, I want to make money. Like chasing dollars is not a good way to start companies. In fact, it's a terrible way because then you're just kind of always, always hungry. And of course you have to, you have to make sure that the company is paying for itself along the way. But if you have a big mission, it's easy. And if you don't have a mission, it's really hard. And it took me a while to figure that one out, but I'm glad you got it early.

Absolutely. Yeah. I think the big, inspiring mission is amazing for every single stakeholder. So your employees, you're going to get some of the most amazing talent that will work for you a lot harder because they care about the mission, and that comes into the product. So the customers are happy. It really. If you just. If you start with a pure intention, back it up with hard work and you care genuinely to put purpose and doing higher good over profits. Yes. As an entrepreneur, as anyone, you have to make sure that people get paid and the books or everything is in line. But you can't make that the number one. It has to be driven by purpose, love, service, whatever kind of drives your pure inner fire.

Very, very well said, Junaid. Thank you for creating a company that's doing all the little hard, invisible stuff. Right. A lot of people just don't care enough to do that. And I vetted what you're doing extensively to the point that I can be a backer of the company. So I just appreciate the integrity that goes into that. And thanks for being on the show and guys listening. If you go to farmersjuice.com, use code Dave, I think it is. And you save five bucks on a box, because I always get you a deal whenever anyone's on the show. If I can work out something, I do, and here I had some leverage. So, Junaid, thanks for offering that to people, and just thanks for being who you are.

Thank you. Thank you for having me on the show. And I'm so stoked that you and your family are enjoying the juices.

You can count on it open in Canada so we can get more.

Oh, well, 20, 22. Here we go.

All right. If you like today's episode, you know what to do. Number one, look at your blood sugar when you drink a green juice. And then you can laugh at yourself and say, why am I doing this to myself? And the other thing you could do is say, maybe there's a better way, and maybe I could save some money. So if you're into juicing or you'd like to get more vegetables in less space, I think this is the right combination of cost and quality and efficacy and all the things that have to be dialed in there for it to be worth your time to even hear about it. So I hope you enjoy it.

A Human Upgrade Formerly Bulletproof Radio was created and is hosted by Dave Asprey. The information contained in this podcast is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended for the purposes of diagnosing, treating, curing, or preventing any disease. Before using any products referenced on the podcast, consult with your healthcare provider carefully read all labels and heed all directions and cautions that accompany the products. Information found or received through the podcast should not be used in place of a consultation or advice from a healthcare provider. If you suspect you have a medical problem or should you have any healthcare questions, please promptly call or see your healthcare provider. This podcast, including Dave Asprey and the producers, disclaim responsibility for any possible adverse effects from the use of information contained herein. Opinions of guests are their own and this podcast does not endorse or accept responsibility for statements made by guests. This podcast does not make any representations or warranties about guest qualifications or credibility. This podcast may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products or services. Individuals on this podcast may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to herein. This podcast is owned by Bulletproof Media.