A Simple But Profound Solution to Food Waste with Kavita Shukla

Coming up on this week's episode of the Doctor's Pharmacy.

It's undeniable that reducing food waste is better for us and it's better for our planet and it's something that everyone can do.

Welcome to the Doctor's Pharmacy. I'm Dr. Mark Hyman and that's Pharmacy with an F, F-A-R-M-A-C-Y, a place for conversations that matter. And today's conversation really matters to all of us because it really is going to determine our future as a species and our future on this planet. And it is about food waste. And our guest today is an extraordinary young woman, Kavita Shukla, who's a founder of a company called Fresh GLOW and invented something called Fresh Paper, which is a crazy invention that was inspired by her grandmother to protect our food from going bad using Indian spices, which are top secret. It's like Coca-Cola's secret formula. And she has been recognized as one of the biggest innovators in the food space. She's taking on this global challenge of food waste. fast, which we're going to get into today. She's finding Avenues for her products in places she never imagined around the world. She started off in the farmers market and then went to Whole Foods and now is in 35 countries working across the food chain. She's partnered with some of the largest retailers in the world, including Walmart and Whole Foods. She's been featured on fast company as one of the seven entrepreneurs changing the world. She's been named by Forbes as one of the 30 under 30 that's really doing cool stuff in the world. Time Magazine's five most innovative women in food. She has four patents, the first one she got when she was 17, which is pretty amazing. And the first woman, sorry, the youngest woman ever to receive the Index Design to Improve Life Award, which is the world's largest design prize presented by the Crown Princess of Denmark. Kavita holds a bachelor's in arts from Harvard University. Her parents probably were very freaked out when she started hanging out a farmer's market, but here she is now leading the world in understanding the problem of food waste and how to solve it. So welcome.

Thank you. I'm so excited to be here.

Well, let's just sort of start from the top. Food waste is a big problem. Yeah, we based on estimates, anywhere from a third to half of our food is wasted. In other words, you grow food, we put food in supermarkets, we try to distribute food, and half of it ends up in landfills or worse. We actually weighs six billion pounds of food at the farm because food is not perfect. Six billion pounds are thrown away every year in America at the grocery store. And it's because they're ugly, ugly food. It's a misshapen apple or a funny looking watermelon or something just doesn't get into the shelves. And we also know that our food waste problem isn't just bad because we have enough food to feed the world, but we're not getting it to them. And there's 800 million people that go to bed hungry. But it's also because food waste, it turns out, is one of the biggest causes of climate change. And it's also the third number, number three solution for fixing climate change.

Yeah.

So let's get into your story because I just want to set the context for food waste. Because what you invented was a solution to this big problem. Now, I want you to tell the story. When you were 12, you went to visit your grandma and she gave you this drink because you drank a cup of water that was unfiltered and you were terrified because your mother said you were going to get violently ill if you actually drank it. And somehow this magic concoction, I don't know how it tasted, but it looked pretty bad in the pictures I saw. It became the inspiration for what you have been doing with your life. So tell us about that story, what happened and how you got inspired. Sure.

Yeah, so you know, when I was 12 years old, I went to visit my grandmother in India and I immigrated to the United States with my family when I was a little girl. And you know, it was a very challenging time for us. I did not really get to go and see my grandmother, who I had been very close to. So, I remember I was so excited. And my mom was really worried that, you know, I had been living in the United States now. She was worried about how I would handle things. And her biggest concern was that I might drink the tap water. -Dr. -Belly belly. -Dr. -Yeah. So, she said, you know, just remember, please do not drink any tap water. So, you know, of course, on my first day there, I was a middle schooler. I was brushing my teeth and I drank like an entire cup. And I started to panic. I was convinced I was going to get really sick. And I remember I was like freaking out. My grandmother, she just went in her kitchen. which was this little room with a stone floor with different jars. And she came back with this murky, almost muddy brown mixture that she had made using different spices. And, you know, I was 12, so I was pretty skeptical, but I drank the mixture and I ended up not getting sick. You know, to this day, I don't know what happened, but that...

I mean, you don't think you would.

Have gotten sick or not, but at least raise the question in your mind. Exactly. It just kind of inspired me. I still remember for me as a little girl, that was almost like a magical moment because I couldn't believe that my grandmother with these very simple resources, but her very limited could have created something that I thought was like incredibly magical. And so I remember I pestered her the rest of the time I was with her to tell me more about botanicals and spices. And she always had a home remedy for everything that was based in spices that she had learned about from her grandmother. So it was really a fascinating experience for me. And I think when I came back home to Maryland where I grew up, I had this idea to do a middle school science project where I wanted to see if the spices could clean dirty water. So, you know, I was a kid, so it was very basic, but I started adding spices to jars of dirty pond water. And then one day I forgot about it. My mom asked me to go clean my garage and I was like, oh.

Okay, I'll do it.

All those disgusting jars in the garage. And it had been a couple weeks and then I noticed that there was something going on with some of the jars. There seemed to be like something going on where there wasn't as much growth stuff. I think it's like how I described it. And so I noticed that perhaps they were stopping mold growth, but I was a kid and I didn't really know how to apply that. And then a little bit of time passed and I went to the grocery store with my mom and she asked me to buy strawberries and I noticed that all of the boxes of berries seemed to have like fuzz growing on them. Yeah, what is that? Yeah, and so that was the first time I'd like seen mold as a kid. And I thought, okay, well maybe I can dip strawberries in my mixture. So I went home and I started dipping strawberries and some other fruits and veggies in this like mixture I'd been creating. And I went back in the garage a couple days later and I was just astounded. They stayed fresh for, you know, several days. And I remember I was- and you had a control group of strawberries? Yeah, so I had strawberries that I had left like in one corner of the garage. And then in the other corner I had dipped a whole bunch of strawberries and like some apples. and pears. And I still remember, I just couldn't believe it. I was so excited. And I went out and I got many different fruits and vegetables, and I kept doing it. And then to make like a long story short, I spent most of high school as this like weird girl rotting.

Fruits and vegetables in my garage.

So you basically started your business in your garage. It's like Apple, right? Yeah, kind of. But much more simple, very low tech. And then that eventually led me to this idea of creating a packaging that could be put in any container that was infused with these organic spices that.

Are naturally antifungal and antiviral. How did you figure that out because, you know, to get from the spices in the jar with the strawberry to infused paper with protective properties against spoilage, how did you get that idea?

Yeah, so I feel really fortunate that I was just a kid, I think, when I was working on this because I had very limited resources and I was thinking about it in a very simplistic way, which now I think is what is Fresh Paper's greatest advantage, is that it's Such a simple, low-tech way to keep your food fresh for longer. And so I remember when I was creating this mixture with the spices, I realized that it was messy. I think my mom would complain that I was always making a mess. And so I thought, well, no one can use that. And I was really thinking about my grandmother. I was thinking about people who lived in places like India without access to refrigeration. And so I wanted to figure out a way to make this a way for them to keep their food fresh. And then, you know, I went to the craft store and like the only materials I could access as a kid were like paper or paper-based products. So I started with paper and it was really effective. And then I realized that, well, you know, paper is something that is quite easy to source. It's pretty low cost and it's something that could be used by anyone in any part of the world without any fancy infrastructure.

So, there's any preservatives or anything?

Yeah. So that was kind of how it all got started. But I'm so grateful that I was.

Able to find this.

And it's this little thing here. It's just like a little piece of paper. It's a tiny little sheet that's infused with it. And it smells so good. Yeah.

So that's from the active Spices that I didn't even know existed.

It's like, yeah, it smells like maple syrup. A lot of people say it's like maple syrup. It's like fenugreek, right? And then in about a month that.

Scent fades and then you just compost your recycling. So it's active for a month and then it's something that you just compost. Yeah, so it's fascinating because you take this paper and you just stick it with the food in the fridge in.

A container and a bag and a box and it doesn't even have to be touching all of them.

Exactly.

So how does that work? Yeah, well, you know, spices are aromatics. and I think people are always- so.

The aroma goes in the air.

Exactly. It's off-gassing basically. Yeah, and so if you think about it, spices have been used for a very long time to keep food fresh, especially in climates like in India. That's where my grandmother learned about all these properties of spices. So the innovation with fresh paper is infusing these spices that have antifungal properties into a method where it can actually be used from farm to fork. So you're right, in your home, you would just put a sheet in your refrigerator drawer and your fruit bowl, and one little sheet is actually enough for about a one-foot radius. So one sheet's enough for an entire fruit bowl or an entire fridge drawer and it'll keep all your produce fresh. You can swap it out. But what I love is people will cut them down sometimes into like a fourth of a sheet and put it into a berry container. Yeah. Because it's made only with edible ingredients, you can feel comfortable having it in your foods. You can put it in a lettuce container.

You can put it in like a huge salad. It's closed within the packaging. In other words, does it have to.

Have a cover on the strawberries or can just be open in the fridge?

Airflow is great. So you actually always want airflow when you're storing your vegetables.

So you can stick it in your vegetable drawer. Exactly. Without having everything Exactly.

Because you know, all those nasty rotten vegetables.

It's discouraging. And as you were saying, it's horrible for the environment. I think, you know, cutting down on food waste is one of the most impactful things we can do for our planet.

Yeah, it's huge. We're going to get into the food waste a little bit more, but I want to talk a little more about this story because you basically came up with this idea. You went to a farmer's market and you thought like no one would really come. And the first few times nobody really showed up. And then there were like lines around the block. and you didn't know what was going on. And then you got this random call from Whole Foods. And it was you and your partner, your co-founder, and an intern, and you decided all go together to Whole Foods.

So you could seem like a big company.

Exactly.

But you had no back end. No, that was the whole company. That was everything on the line.

And what happened at that meeting? Yeah.

So I remember, you know, Kevin was this like urban gardening college student that we had met at a farmer's market. And when I was at the farmer's market, I had gotten to that point after almost 10 years of not being able to get my idea off the ground. So I was pretty- so you patented when you were 17.

Yeah. And then nobody wanted to hear anything about it.

Yeah, well, you know, I was, I'm an immigrant. And, you know, when I was 17, I was so excited. I was still a young girl with this sense that I had created something that maybe could have an impact on something as massive as, you know, global food waste. And so when I went to college, I couldn't wait to get the idea out into the world. I wanted to build a non-profit. But as I started to talk to a lot of experts and people in the food industry and even some of my professors, what I kept hearing was that, you know, really, really hard to do anything in the food industry. And you would have to raise millions and millions of dollars. You'd need a lot more experienced people on your team. And I found it really discouraging. Eventually, you know, after many years, it really got to me. I started to doubt my idea. I doubted myself. And I only went to the farmers market almost kind of like as this last act of just giving myself one last chance. So I had gotten to that point. I was already quite discouraged. And I thought, well, I've spent almost my entire life working on this idea that's not going to go anywhere. So maybe I can have some of the farmers in Cambridge use the product, and then at the end of the day, they can donate the produce that's left over to a food bank. And I thought, well, at least, you know, I'll get to see it being used. And so that's how I was thinking. I wasn't even thinking about having people purchase it. So, you know, when I first got that call from Whole Foods, I had to think quickly about, like, bagging it up into lunch bags and sticking a label on it, because it never occurred to me that people would actually buy.

The product and need to use it in their homes.

But, you know, I've since learned that food spoilage is this massive challenge. Yeah, but, Kelly- you- really didn't even know the scope of the problem. Not, not at all. You know, I was thinking about people like my grandmother and you over over a billion people lived without access to refrigeration. And I was really thinking of, you know, villages in India and Africa, places where we didn't have anything. I thought in the US we have so much technology. It didn't occur to me that, you know, the supply chain is still so inefficient. But Kevin was this urban gardening college student who had really been interested in the food supply chain. And he came up to us at the farmer's market and he was like, you know, I think this can change everything. I want to help out. I want to be an intern for your company. And I said, well, you know, it's just me and my co-founder. We work out of my studio. So I was like, you know, thank you so much for your encouragement, but that's not really- We have a borrowed Toyota Corolla, right?

Yeah.

And then Kevin was like, no, I want to come. So he actually just started showing up at my apartment every week to help out, and we'd make paper together and we'd cut it. And so, you know, this moment with Whole Foods was something that he had been talking about. He was like, oh, we gotta get into Whole Foods. And I was like, you know, Kevin, if we can convince them that we're a real business, that we can start in one store, that would be huge. So let's just try to be cool and just say that we want to start in our local store in Cambridge. So I remember we were driving over and I didn't have a car. We took Kevin's car, which didn't have AC. And if you spent time in Boston, you know how hot it is in July. Yeah, yeah. So we're delirious and sweaty, and we just walked into that meeting and Kevin was like, no, we're going to do this. And I'll never forget when we sat down with the buyers, I showed them the product. And then within a couple of minutes, they said, well, this is great. This is what we think we really need to help make fresh food more accessible. so we'd love to launch this in the entire North Atlantic. And I remember all of us just nodded and said, oh yeah, absolutely. Sure. We had no idea how to make it. So we went back in the elevator.

And we were just like, and you were literally at this point still making.

Stuff in your kitchen, right? Oh yeah, we were, it was just the three of us making it by hand. So I still don't know how we did it, but we somehow came together. We made the entire first order for Whole Foods by hand. We packaged it by hand. And then we drove it early in the morning to their distribution center in this borrowed Toyota Corolla. And that moment where we rolled up in our little car into this like sea of 18 wheelers in the Whole Foods Distribution Center. That was the moment that I thought, okay, we could actually do this.

This is real. Now you actually need 18 wheelers to over your million sheets a month that you sell.

Yeah, which is still, I know, it's hard for me to believe. I still have to pinch myself. But it really started at that farmer's market with those people that believed in this.

Sometimes it's better to be innocent and not know what you don't know.

So you don't think it's not possible, right? Absolutely.

I'm really glad I didn't know what I was getting into. I think there was a quote by, I think Bernard Shaw says, you know, I exactly forget, but it's something like, you know, those who say it's impossible to do something should get out of the way of the people who are doing actually doing it.

Yeah. I think there's nothing like just going out there, taking one small step forward and just trying to keep going. That's, that's certainly what kept us afloat in those early days.

So now this product, fresh paper, is available in all Whole Foods. It's in other retail outlets, Walmart.

Yeah, we're in Kroger and Safeway. Kroger, Safeway, and stores like anthropology, which I find really interesting because it shows you how people are really starting to think.

Yeah, from Walmart to anthropology. That's quite a spread.

It's not just for the elite, it's for everybody. Exactly. And that was always the goal, was.

To make it something that was accessible.

And you're in 35 countries? Yeah, so now we shipped over 100 countries.

100 countries.

Okay, I can't keep up to date. Yeah, and it's really all been through word of mouth. It's people that have shared this, that got behind this idea that the sense that fresh, healthy food should be accessible and affordable, not something that is a luxury and.

Yeah. And it's a problem because, you know, we don't eat enough fruits and vegetables in this country. I think, you know, we know clearly from the research that fruits and vegetables are the key to health and longevity. There's no doubt or argument about that from any camp of nutritional, you know, fanaticism. Everybody agrees with that.

Yeah.

And, and yet we don't really produce enough for, for everybody in America and globally, I think. or maybe a little bit better, but mostly we eat processed food. Mostly we don't eat fruits and vegetables. And this is a way for people to actually consume more. And tell us more about what you discovered because fresh paper keeps food fresher two to four times longer than it would normally last. And how has that impacted the ability for people to afford and consume more fresh fruits and vegetables?

Yeah, you know, when I was at the farmer's market, I was so surprised that everyone would come up to us and say, oh, I really have been looking for something to help me eat my CSA share or for something to help me eat more fruits and veggies.

That's a community-supported agriculture. You get a big box once a.

Week and if you don't eat it, then it goes bad, right? Yeah, exactly. And I remember just thinking, well, this is fascinating that in a place like the United States, people are struggling with being able to afford eating fresh, healthy food because I was really thinking of people like my grandmother in India. And then the more I spent time with these people at the farmers market with our earliest supporters, I realized that there really has been this very encouraging trend. And you've been one of the leaders of this movement, but towards adopting more plant-based diet. and you're right, I would meet people who were going keto or doing vegan or trying to do paleo and trying to be gluten free, but at the core of all of these wellness trends, I call them, was this idea that you need to consume more fruits and vegetables. And you're right, the studies show that that is really one of the most effective interventions you can make for your health. And so what I was really surprised to learn is what was holding people back was that they felt that they just could not do it because it was too expensive and it was too difficult. you know, I think our lifestyle today has just reached a point where we can't cook at home every day. It feels like an enormous challenge to think about preparing, purchasing, and planning a meal and then doing that every single day is a huge burden. And I think even trying to cook a few meals a day at home, I know you've talked about this, can make a huge difference. But the key to being able to do that is to be able to keep fruits and vegetables in your home, have them stay fresh for at least long enough that you can consume them. So that's where fresh paper, I think, really came in as this wellness tool. And it took off because people were struggling to fresh and they would add in the fresh paper, they would be able to purchase food at the farmer's market or if they were going to like a Costco, they could purchase enough produce and then be able to eat it all. And I think it was like a cycle where they felt encouraged because they weren't wasting all this money and they weren't wasting all this time and then they would be able to do it again and again. And then as you know, once you're able to start making small changes in.

Your diet, it's really exciting. You can really start to feel a difference very quickly.

It's huge.

Yeah. You know, and you just, I just think back on on my fridge and over the years how much stuff I've had to throw out. And you multiply that times hundreds of millions of people and it's a problem. And I try to be good about it, but when that broccoli just starts to go nasty and those asparagus get mushy, it's like you have to throw them out. Now I think composting is one of the things that can actually be a part of the solution.

Absolutely.

And I've been composting since 1979.

Oh, that's amazing.

I'm that old. No, that's great. And I feel a little bit better about myself, but still, it's a shame because I waste a lot of good fruits and vegetables. And you multiply that times all the people in America. It's just an astounding amount of food that gets thrown out. There's six billion pounds of food that gets thrown out in people's kitchens, and it mostly goes in the landfill. So talk about why food waste is such a problem. who cares? It goes in a landfill, it goes back to nature, why is it an issue? Yeah, well one of the things that.

I was surprised to hear is that the average American family actually loses over $1,500 worth of food that's just wasted. So when you first think about just the fact that people are saying it's difficult for them to be able to afford a fresh healthy diet, food waste is one of the key pillars of that. Because if you can reduce waste, you're suddenly able to stretch your dollars and if you're living paycheck to paycheck, you may feel like it's a good economic decision to buy something in a box or to go buy fast food just for calories per dollar. But if you think about being able to extend the shelf life of fresh produce, it suddenly becomes more affordable. But then when you think about the planet, when you think about the amount of land, water, energy, and labor that goes into creating a single apple and bringing that to your grocery store, so it's not just harvesting that apple, but then putting it on a truck, putting it through cold chain storage system, and.

Then getting it to your grocery store.

The amount of energy we use too, like, It's incredible. And, you know, they say that food waste is one of the biggest sources of carbon emissions. But what I have found really exciting and encouraging when you look at this discouraging problem is that even really simple and small interventions, like cutting your own personal food waste, just like we started to do recycling and composting, can have a big impact just because there are so many inputs into creating produce that eventually is just thrown away to the landfill. Because, you know, I was shocked to learn that we actually grow enough food to feed every single person on the planet. But over 800 million people go hungry every single day. And we lose in some parts of the world over 50, 60% of our world's food simply because of inefficiencies in how we're storing it, producing it, and getting it from farm to fork. So even though it can be really discouraging, I remember when I first learned the magnitude of the problem, I thought, oh, that's really depressing. I mean, how can somebody like me, how can a team like ours even think about addressing this challenge? But what I found really inspiring was that this is one of the those global challenges that every single person can actually do something about. And even doing something simple has a big impact. Because you do have to think about all the land, water, energy, and human labor that went into every single fresh food item in your fridge. And when you start to think about it that way, I think it's inspiring to see that people make small changes in their behavior. And research has even shown that just being aware of food waste. That's why advocacy is such a big part of our work. Just being aware of the fact that food waste is a challenge can make people start to their own food waste in their homes. So that's encouraging.

Yeah, that's great. And so the product in a way is both a solution and an inspiration to talk about the issue that no one's talking about. Yeah, that's what it's turned into.

And that was because of this grassroots movement that really started at that farmer's market. And that's what keeps us going every day, is seeing how people are being inspired and then they're writing to us and telling us how it's working.

And it was fascinating to me as you didn't start out saying, I'm going to solve the problem of food waste. like, I'm going to take my grandmother's recipe and see if I can help a few people. And you really didn't even understand the context of what you were doing at the time. And now it's like, oh wow, I created a solution for a problem that I really know existed in a scale that it exists. And now you actually are inspiring people to think about food waste in a different way.

Yeah, that farmer's market changed my life. And I tell all entrepreneurs and inventors now that the simple act of putting your idea into the hands of somebody who could benefit from from it can change everything. And so it was that early feedback that made me realize, okay, maybe I'm not thinking big enough. Maybe this could go beyond just my little idea for a farmer's market to something that could affect the food system. So that was certainly very interesting.

And your story is important because it inspires people to think what they can do. Because it feels very disempowering when you think of these big global problems like climate change, food waste, hunger, obesity, agricultural problems. and here you are just one person having this global impact in over 100 countries just from an idea that you had that you didn't know couldn't be done.

-Yeah. And it was inspiring for me too. There were so many moments though where I was ready to give up. I mean, there were so many moments where I just felt like there's no way that I could take another step forward. But there were always people that stepped up. There was the first person who ever took a chance on me. His name was Tony Russo. Russo. And he's the head of Russo's, which is a third generation family farm stand in Watertown, Massachusetts. So he was one of my first retail customers. And he taught me how to build a business from the ground up. He had this experience before Whole Foods. Yeah. So right before Whole Foods, that was the first, like, retailer. And they were like a firm stand. So it felt comfortable to me.

Right.

I would go stand in Russo's every weekend and tell people about the product. And Tony would just Mentor us. So it was people like that. You know, my high school science teacher was probably the first person who told me, you should think about taking this a little bit further.

Were you living on rice and beans and ramen? And how did you get- yeah, well.

That'S one of the funny things is that when I did eventually realize this was going to go somewhere and I left my job and I was working out of my studio apartment, I was one living a very unhealthy lifestyle and eating tons of processed food. So it even took me a while. It was quite a journey for me to understand what these people who were coming and telling me about how this product was changing their lives. They educated me on the power of a plant-based diet. They taught me about how they were transforming their lives with this simple tool. and how it was enabling them to eat more fruits and veggies. And then I started to learn more about it. And you got healthier in the process. Yeah, and it made me much healthier. But I think it gave me a real appreciation for what individuals can do when we come together and just, you know, believe in the sense that the food system can be different. Yeah. You know, I get so discouraged sometimes. We were talking about this earlier when I look at what's happening in the food system. But then you see these innovators, you see these people who are supporting the innovators, and you see that, okay, the tide is turning. You're one of those people.

You know, we can start to make a change as long as we can communicate with them.

And it can be simple ideas, you.

Know, a friend of mine of mine started a company called Watermelon Water.

I love that. Yeah.

Jody. Jody had 800 million pounds of watermelon that was ugly and misshapen or bleached by the sun and was white. So they didn't wasn't a perfect watermelon. And then they turned those 800 million pounds of watermelon into a product called Watermelon Water, which is like an electrolyte replacement drink. It's way better than Gatorade, right?

Yeah. And it's helping people consume fresh fruits and veggies without even realizing it.

So I think that's fantastic. And so those kinds of things are really inspiring and people can solve these problems and they can make choices in their daily life that make a difference. I think that's the thing that people don't connect with is they see the problem, it's overwhelming, they feel disempowered, they give up and your story, what you created both as an entrepreneur and the product you created, give people a way to actually change what they're doing in their life. And it's super exciting.

Thank you. I just taught me that you just have to take one small step or whatever you're trying to do. It's just that one step. The other part of your product is.

So fascinating to me is that, you know, we think of these high tech solutions, you know, we need digital solutions, we need AI, we need all this stuff to solve our world's problems. And you're basically doing with a piece of paper and a bunch of grandma's spices, you know? And what's fascinating is that nature is often smarter than we are.

Absolutely.

And most of our drugs come and are inspired by herbs with various pathways that have effects. And one of the foundational principles that I work from in functional medicine is that food is medicine. And so essentially you've created a pharmacologic paper, pharmacologic with an F, right? And it is more effective than anything anybody's come up with to reduce spoilage, and rotting in food. And one of the fundamental principles I teach is that you should only eat food that rots, right?

That's a really good point, actually, yeah.

But you don't want it to rot too fast.

Exactly, yeah.

So this is a great way to figure that out. So as someone with this crazy idea, what were the biggest challenges that you faced other than what you sort of shared already about everybody telling you it can't be done? You know, what were those things that were those moments where you're like, this isn't gonna work, but what happened to help you get through that? Yeah, well, you know, I think I.

Initially even dismissed FreshPaper after I started to get some feedback because it's so simple. It is just this tiny little sheet. And I think when people look at it, you know, they're used to thinking about reducing food waste and reducing food spoilage as something with a very sophisticated, like, cold chain infrastructure solution. And I was thinking about a technology that could be used in the developing world. And so one thing that I've since learned is that, you know, fresh paper is powerful because it is so simple and it can be used by anyone in any part of the world. So the very reason that I felt I was sort of underestimated, even I started to think, well, no one will ever take this seriously because it's this little sheet of paper. Who's going to want to put it into their strawberry container? Or how will I convince a retailer to put it on their shelves or convince a farmer to put into their packaging? Like it's so different. from what they're used to and what they were used to were these big, like if you're looking at maybe a clamshell of strawberries, it was these like plastic containers that have been molded in a certain way and then there's chemicals applied at every step of the process. And I think I thought, well, this solution is just plants. It's so different. And now I realize that really is what changed everything is that it is something that can be implemented at every step in the food supply chain from farm to fork. It can easily be used by consumers and the very same technology that you in your home, in your fruit bowl or in your fridge drawer is used by a farmer in India or by a food bank that's working in a disaster relief area. So I think the biggest lesson for me in all of this was understanding the power of simplicity. And that, you know, simplicity is really the simple ideas are the ones that have the power to change things because they can be spread quickly and they can be adapted by people from all different backgrounds. So I've come a long way too in my understanding. that, you know, I think what helped me through that was going to the farmer's market and talking to people that were using it. Yeah.

And see, and seeing the stories. So, so tell us across the food chain. I mean, we understand that we can take this and put in our fridge and put in our strawberries. And that's easy concept to understand. But, you know, when you're talking about farmers and you're talking about the food processors and the Distributors and the retailers, you It's harder for me to understand how this gets inserted in that supply chain because all those steps are opportunities for food waste, right?

Exactly.

And not just in your fridge or the consumer, but all those steps. The farmers and producers, the processors, the retailers, it's a huge problem. So how does this get inserted in that in a way that actually is meaningful? Because in this little piece of paper, you can put in a truck with 4,000 pounds of tomatoes.

How do you like- yeah, that's a good question. How does that work? so that was something I had to think about, too. You know, once I started to hear from Growers and retailers, I had to think bigger. And the reason the sheets are the size most people don't know this is I was cutting them by hand with a paper cutter from Staples. And so I was cutting down, like, a little eight and a half by 11. That was the standard size. And then people would say, oh, this is the perfect size for my fruit bowl, or this is the perfect size to cut down and put into, like, a berry container, because they'll cut a fourth of a sheet. But then when I would hear from Growers that were thinking about or like you said, a container full of lettuce, we had to rethink the process. And honestly, going from making sheets by hand to making millions and millions of sheets was almost an entire reinvention. I had to almost recreate the product from scratch. It was very challenging. And I wanted to use organic ingredients. I wanted to do it in the United States for quality. And so it was really difficult. But what we figured out was that we could create it in large rolls and then customize it for the different solutions. So we create basically a custom solution for a strawberry grower that might be different from what we would create for like a mango producer or a lettuce producer. So it's been really interesting. I've learned a lot about the agricultural system, which has been both scary and sometimes encouraging. And I think, you know, I've also seen how many points there are for disruption and how much we can actually do to make it more efficient. Because I think a lot of things have been done the same way for a long time.

So let's say Walmart, for example. They're, I don't think people realize this, but I think they're the biggest grocery store chain in the world.

They're America's grocer. More people get their groceries at Walmart than anywhere else.

And they have a lot of organic food and across their supply chain, they've been able to implement policies that have changed the marketplace. Like they said, we don't want trans fats or we don't want more packaging than this amount and you have to redo your packaging or you can't sell at Walmart. So they can influence from the farmers to the fork, what happens? Have they actually taken this idea and inserted across their supply chain?

Yes, I've gone to Ben & Jerry's a few times and it's been fascinating. Those early conversations with them totally changed how I was thinking about the American food system because I learned a lot of what you were just saying. And so we're working with them to figure out solutions that can be implemented by their growers. Obviously, that supply chain project is a much longer path. So it's already in retail stores and, you know, people can purchase it at Walmart and use it in their homes. But the goal, obviously, is to insert the product from the moment food is harvested until it shows up on your plate. So you can actually have a much longer extension in shelf life and a greater reduction in food waste at every single Step.

So have you been able to actually implement that?

Yeah. So we work with a number of growers and retailers. We actually make shelf liners for retailers, but with the large, large scale growers, we're just starting to implement the product now because that's such a systemic change. So we've, you know, we have self funded from the very beginning. So we like to start small, scale up, make sure that we understand the ideal solution. And then we were starting to implement on a large scale. Yeah.

Because, you know, all along along that chain, there's ways for disrupting it.

Yeah, it's very exciting actually to see now.

So maybe you need like a billion sheets a month.

Yeah, that's, I think one day, you.

Know, that may be exactly where we're headed. Well, there's seven billion people and everybody.

Eats three times a day. Yeah, I mean, the numbers, when I went to the growers that work with Walmart and growers that work with some of the other retailers that supply American stores, it was mind-blowing. I mean, I had never seen that much produce. It's crazy to understand the the size of the challenge. But I also said, you know, there's ways that very simple interventions can have massive impact.

I know a farmer's open to it.

So that was interesting. You know, I think what I've been encouraged by is they're all struggling with food waste and food spoilage. And the interesting thing is reducing food waste is really good for their bottom line. It's good for retailers, it's good for farmers. Everybody is incentivized to actually reduce waste. I think there's a lot of concern that implementing technologies that are expensive or that require them to retool how they've been things is not worth it. And so I think that's where Fresh Paper has been really successful because they don't have to build a new factory or change how they already are packaging their fruit. It's something that's been inserted into the system. And that wasn't something I realized when I was 12. But today I'm like, oh, because it's a little sheet, it can actually be customized for anyone. And I think that's why it's taken off is it's not requiring them to.

Change how they've been doing things. Now, there's another maybe unintended consequence of what you're doing. Maybe you thought of it, but when we harvest food in California and we ship it to Minnesota or South Carolina, it loses its nutritional value along that distribution chain from when it's picked to when it's shipped to when it's on the retail shelf to when you cook it. And I wonder, maybe there's data on this, not, but it seems to me that if you're preserving the food with spices, actually protecting the nutritional density and the nutrient content of the food? Is that something you thought about?

Yeah, so we've just started to study that because that's a great question and people have asked us that. And we have seen in our early work that it does appear that the food is more, I think because you're keeping it preserved essentially how I describe it to people, is in the state that you first inserted the sheet. So that's why we want to get it in at the farm. But you are able to preserve the nutritional kind of makeup of the product. And I think What is most important to remember is it just tastes better. And, you know, if we know that fruit tastes better, it's encouraging to keep eating it. And so I think the nutritional profile, we're still researching that. But the key is that when fresh food actually tastes like it's supposed to taste, it's much easier to keep consuming it. And that will certainly change how you consume food.

It's true. And taste and nutritional density are actually actually parallel.

Exactly.

So if you eat a wild strawberry, you know, it's about the size of a, like, peanut, but it tastes unbelievable compared to a regular strawberry because it's so nutrient dense. But the flavor comes from all the phytochemicals and all the special molecules that get dissipated through the food chain distribution channels. Exactly.

And that's where we first realized that is everyone would say, oh, well, I feel like my food Tastes fresher, tastes different. And I think when you look at food sometimes the reason it's hard to keep encouraging people to eat fresh fruits and veggies is often some of these fruits and veggies are tasteless. And so that's why I think the taste part of it shouldn't be dismissed. It's actually really critical to changing your diet is to have fresh food that actually tastes incredible because that's what encourages you to reach for those strawberries when.

You might want to make a different choice that isn't as healthy. It's true. And I bet it also affects the stability of organisms. organic food because most food that's grown in industrial ways stays fresher longer, has less nutrients, and may look better but doesn't taste better and isn't better for you.

Exactly.

But organic food tends to waste faster because it's not preserved and you end up with more spoilage. And so I imagine this is a way for us to actually encourage different agricultural practices by growing food in a sustainable way. I think it's a way for us to actually get more nutrient-dense food in ways that we weren't able to before. So there's probably all these unintended consequences that you couldn't have foreseen when you.

Were 12 years old. -That's been the most inspiring part. And I'm hearing that from other people, which I think is really what encourages me to keep going. Because, you know, as we were saying, it hasn't been easy and it can be very challenging at points. But it's just realizing that, you know, it is a connected system. system. And when we can make a positive change, whether it's in our own lives or in the food system in one small way, it actually does trickle down to every other aspect. And I think that's what keeps me going about the food system too, is it does seem daunting to try to change the course that we're on right now. But, you know, there's so much that we can actually do to start to improve the quality of the food that we consume. Right.

So have you had any experience with resistance from different groups? For example, it's cool in farmers markets, it's cool in Whole Foods, but But hitting the Walmart demographic is a very different demographic. Have they been as open to using it and interested in it? Yeah, that's a really good question.

So, you know, when I first started, I never thought it would be a consumer product. Then when I went into Whole Foods, I never thought that it would actually reach the people that I had hoped it would reach, which is the folks that were struggling to afford fresh, healthy food just because it was too expensive for them. And when it would go bad, they just couldn't keep consuming fresh food. And so, you know, when we first started to have the conversations with Walmart, I was really excited because my hope was that that would make it more affordable and more accessible. And that was really had been my dream for fresh paper all along. But I wasn't quite sure if it would resonate. And I think what was really surprising to me was that it resonated so significantly with mainstream audiences. And I think really that was because people have started to understand that they should be eating more fresh fruits and veggies. They are shifting towards more of a plant-based diet. But now they're kind of stuck at the point of, well, how do I do that? And, you know, and that's where I think what you do is so because once you've made that decision, that's just step one. And then you have to figure out how to actually do it on a consistent basis and how to implement it so that it becomes a lifestyle change, not just like a fad diet that you're doing for a couple of weeks. And that, I think, has been the most fulfilling part of all of this, is seeing fresh paper used in food banks. It's seeing it being used by people that otherwise had no option but to buy processed foods that would last forever because they could not afford fresh food. So that's been encouraging for me. And also, you know, it is a technology that makes the food system more sustainable. So it's really exciting when I see someone coming in and just buying the product because it saves them money. But I know that their actions are having a positive impact on the environment. And that's kind of like our personal mission is if we can get them to just come in because it helps them, we'll be able to start having an impact on the environment.

It's huge. I mean, you know, you really, with this product, have the capacity, it seems to have a big impact on the food waste problem. Not obviously solve all of it, But with a few others innovations like composting, I mean, in Europe, you can't throw garbage out. Like in some countries, like Switzerland, if you throw garbage out, you have to pay a lot of money to throw the garbage out.

We can't even imagine that.

They don't have the packaging we have. They don't have the composting laws. I mean, in San Francisco, they've now sort of mandated composting and you have to pay if you don't compost your food. In New York City, where I live, you know, there, it's frightening. I mean, you go on the street and it's garbage day. There's literally like mountains of giant garbage bags on the street. I'm thinking, wow. And this is multiplied by block after block after block. I think I heard some guy walked around all New York. It took him like 12 years. He walked, you know, it was like 9,000 miles or something to walk all the streets. But imagine how much garbage in just one city. And yet there are little pockets of hope. You know, there's the Union Square Farmers Market near where I live. And they have a- I love the Farmers Market. Composting. So bring your composting to the farmers market. If you live in an area where you're not in a little studio apartment, you can actually buy these composting bins or barrels and you actually use your food scraps in there to create compost. So if you live in the country, you can have a compost thing in your backyard and just throw the garbage in there and you get this amazing soil. You can create a garden. So it creates this cycle of awareness around what people are doing. So whether you use fresh paper or inspired people to think about the problem of food waste, right?

And awareness is everything with food waste. That's one of the keys.

So, you know, I was talking to the vice chairman of Pepsi, who's actually a very nice guy, and, you know, challenging him to address this idea of the scalability of fresh food, because most of what they provide is packaged, processed food that stays on the shelf for years. And he said, yeah, we're innovating. different packaging methods where we can have fresh food without preservatives in a way to distribute without refrigeration that is allowing people to eat more fresh food. So my question to you is in places like India and Africa, you're selling in a hundred countries now. How did this product sort of get in the marketplace? How do people start using it? And what have you found from the people who are doing it? Because it's not a bunch of farmers market, young professionals. it's like, you know, your grandmother. Yeah.

Well, what was amazing was that a lot of people have reached out to us from those markets. And I think that really does show you the power of the internet. You know, I think if I had even started the company 10 years earlier, we wouldn't have been able to have the reach that we did. But people would read about it, and they were, you know, sharing it through social media. They were sharing it through blog posts. And so I started hearing from people that were working in regions in, like, Malawi and India, where my grandmother was from very early. And the next challenge for me was figuring out how do I get it there? And so, you know, I think what's been encouraging to see is with the social enterprise and kind of with the model we've had, we've been able to scale the production so we can actually make the technology even more affordable and produce it at a scale where we can actually subsidize it for use by NGOs. So we work with a lot of NGOs that are working in those communities because there's an education piece, too. You know, you have to show the farmers how to use it. It is a very intuitive, sort of elegant design. cause it's something that people are used to is just slipping in a sheet underneath your packaging. Like in India, they already wrap produce in newspapers sometimes, so it's not that far off from what they're used to. But, you know, we've partnered with great organizations that are working in those communities. And in the United States, we actually work with food banks. And so it's been really interesting to see how they have struggled. You know, they often get produce at the end of its life cycle from grocery stores, and immediately they have to make decisions about where to send it. And a lot of it still doesn't make to the people that could benefit from it because it does go bad in transit. So that's been interesting to see. But I think the nature of the technology is such that if we can just figure out how to scale it up and get the production to a point where we can get it in the hands of those people that are working those communities, they're able to start implementing it in ways that I could have never even imagined. And that's wonderful to see.

And they don't even have refrigeration. A lot of these people.

No, over a billion people don't have access to electricity, which I think is easy to forget. I forget when we're in a place like this.

When everybody has a smartphone. They might not have electricity, but they do have a smartphone.

Yeah. All right.

I was in South Africa and I was with this Zulu medicine man in his hut and it was like, there's no electricity, no running water. And he was doing a reading for me with these bones. They throw these little, like, different bones and teeth and thing, and they read your fortune and your future. We're in the middle of this ritual spiritual session and all of a sudden his cell phone rings and he picks up the phone and we're in the middle of nowhere and I'm like, oh, that's incredible. Yeah, maybe he was asking the spirits for advice, I don't know. But it was great. And I think people do forget how much poverty there is, how much hunger there is, how much lack of access to food there is, how these issues around food waste and preservation are really a global problem. So for people who don't understand the food waste, I just want to sort of backtrack a little bit because you say it increases climate change. How does it do that?

Yeah, so when you think about how food is grown, especially when you think about industrialized agriculture, just think simply about how much water and energy has gone into just growing ahead of lettuce. And then you energy and not only.

The sun's energy, but fossil fuels. Exactly.

Because of industrial agriculture. Exactly. And then it gets washed. It goes through all this machinery. It's the entire time it's in a cold chain system. And then it gets put on a truck into a container, which is usually a refrigerated truck as well. And then sometimes it gets shipped from California all the way to Maryland. So you just think about, I always tell people, just think about like the journey that one piece of fruit or a vegetable might take from the farm to your home. And it's very easy to start to just think about at every step how much energy is being used. And then you have to think about the human labor. You know, this is something that is not mechanized. There aren't robots picking strawberries out of the field. You know, there are people going in there and they're having to clean everything. They're sorting it. And then we talk about the ugly food problem. So there's, there's an entire sorting system that's going on, and then it's getting washed. We use A lot of, unfortunately still a lot of chemicals and waxes and other processes to just keep the food shelf stable, really, till the point it gets to your grocery store. And then at that point, if you look at like a box of raspberries, if you even go to some grocery stores, they have signs that will say, you know, only keep in your refrigerator for two days. Think about what we've gone through to get those raspberries from California to Maryland. And then you maybe can use them.

In your home for two days.

And on the shelf at the grocery store. Then you get the fuzz. They're doing turn, yeah. They're, they're throwing out raspberries probably every a couple of hours to make sure that the display looks nice. So it's crazy. And I think it's something that even a kid can comprehend. I think if we can start to educate children about this, because they're actually very aware of what they can do to start to have an impact on the planet, but it's just something that doesn't occur to people. You just kind of think an apple.

Shows up ready to go. So you've got this huge energy input, which is one-fifth of our entire fossil fuel consumption. Think about it, is for this whole supply chain of growing transporting, refrigerating, right? But there's another problem with food waste. It also contributes was when we throw it out, it goes into the landfills. What happens then?

Yeah, so when food waste goes into the landfills, it's an enormous drain on all of our systems. It's, you know, I think probably one of the most significant things we can do, even if we do have to waste food, is as you were saying, to start to compost because it's an enormous drain on all of our resources. And then as At that point, the food waste in the landfill is contributing to what is already an overcrowded and very inefficient system. And you're taking essentially organic matter, which could biodegrade, which could be feeding worms or being used in another way to actually positively impact the planet and just putting it into- It also kind of.

Rots and that off-gases methane and other gases that are a huge contributor to climate change.

It's not something that people think about, but I feel like no food waste should ever be sent away. And the other thing it solves is.

His argument that big agriculture has, which is, well, yeah, there are problems with industrial agriculture. Yeah, we do use pesticides, we do use GMO, we do use forms of agriculture that deplete the soil and deplete our water supplies, but we have to do this because we have to feed the world. There's 800 million people hungry. They're not getting enough food. We have a growing population. there's 7 billion, we're going to 9 billion. We need big ag to solve this problem. And in a way, fixing the food waste will provide more than enough food for everybody on the planet. And we don't need industrial agriculture for that.

And it's a simple solution. It's something every single one of us can do at home. We can solve this challenge that I think is really built up as this monstrous challenge that only really large corporations can solve with very sophisticated and complicated technologies. Now, actually, just as you said, we could start to take that on by just reducing food waste in our own homes. That's it.

I think there's three cool solutions. One is fresh paper. And then if you don't know what to do with the food, you use the Google search and put in all the ingredients in your fridge. So you can put whatever vegetables or fruit you have in your fridge and whatever ingredients you have, and it comes up with recipes.

I love that.

So then you can use it. And then the third thing is whatever you don't end up using, you can compost. Exactly. And these are all solutions that individuals can make that have an impact globally that is far more powerful than they think. And I think it's the small acts that make a big difference. Yeah.

And all of us together can have an impact in the next decade, I think, to start to reduce food waste on a massive level.

That's huge. So there's this food waste bill that is this happened in France, where they basically prohibited all this food waste from going to landfills. And then the law forces the supermarkets to donate food that would go to waste. And there's so far from that in the United States. And I remember the story, my daughter and her friends, they don't have a lot of money, and they were going on this rafting trip to the Grand Canyon for a month. And, you know, when food in the grocery store says best buy or, you know, eat by or, you know, best, whatever, that, that doesn't mean it's out of date.

No.

That you couldn't eat it, but it gets thrown out.

Yeah. It's a.

And it goes into the dumpsters. But there are police guarding the dumpsters because these stores don't want people eating their garbage.

Really? Yeah.

So these sort of dumpster diving is another thing. Right. Yeah. And not just for most people for kids who're trying to figure it out. And, you know, there's a lot of good stuff that gets thrown out. And yet, in our country, we actually arrest people who try to steal our garbage. It's kind of crazy. And yet, in Europe, they're like, we're going to arrest you if you don't use the garbage or if you don't do something good.

So.

How do you see us handling that in America? I mean, are you optimistic about us figuring this out or getting to a solution where we can have these changes in policy or in the way we actually produce, distribute, sell, and consume food?

Yeah, I think working in so many different countries has been actually really inspiring for me because seeing that this is working, for example, in France shows us that it can be done. And I think we've seen things like recycling that maybe not that long ago seemed like something that very few people did become something that's normal now. You can't go anywhere without thinking about separating your trash into recycling and not, and hopefully soon composting.

Yeah, some of the new in Cleveland Clinic, what they have is they have a garbage can says landfill. Yeah.

Recycling. I like that. It makes sense.

It's a reminder.

Exactly. I'm gonna put this in landfill. Right, because you have to remember that's exactly where it's going. So I am optimistic. I think seeing that it can work in a country like France, seeing the model even in smaller communities, like, you know, we've been part of programs that have like in the Pacific Northwest, where the EPA has some programs that they're working on in trying to reduce food waste. They've done pilots. We've seen, you know, what Kroger, the supermarket system, is trying to do with their food zero waste, zero hunger campaign. So I think there are pockets of communities and even corporations and governments and people that you think might not care about these issues are seeing the interest and the demand from consumers. And so they're starting to address it. So I feel optimistic because I think the results of all of those campaigns have been pretty exciting to see. I think it's undeniable that reducing food waste is better for us and it's better for our planet. And it's something that everyone can do. We're not asking them to make a tremendous behavior change. It's just a matter of education and awareness. So I feel pretty optimistic whether we'll have policy that bans food waste and landfills. I don't know. But I believe that, you know, based on the response we've even seen to something as simple as fresh paper, that the consumers will start to come together and act in ways that will require retailers and growers and even governments to start to think differently about food waste.

Yeah, I mean, and it's important because people don't understand the ripple effect of this, right?

Exactly.

So not only are we saving our water, which is being depleted because we don't need as much to grow food, not only are we saving our soils that you're being depleted, and we're gonna run out of soil in 50 years, you know, because of the way we're growing food, not only is it gonna, you know, reduce the use of pesticides and fertilizers and industrial chemicals, and not only is it gonna help reverse climate change, It's going to make you healthier, it's going to make your families healthier, it's going to feed the hungry of the world. I mean, this is a big issue, right?

You can't overstate it.

It's true. And it's something that people aren't really talking about. I think, are you aware of any initiatives on a policy level around this on the government level, whether it's local, state, federal in the United States?

So we've been involved with this campaign that, you know, I think piloted initially in the Pacific Northwest and they're starting to roll it out across the country slowly, but it is happening where they're educating consumers about food waste and just how they can use recipes, tools like fresh paper and other methods like composting to actually just cut down on food waste in their homes. It's called Food Too Good to Waste. And it's been really exciting to see. We've heard from a lot of people that heard about fresh paper through that campaign that are now really excited about reducing food waste, not just in their homes, but now they want to take it to their children's schools or to their or to other community organizations that they're part of. So I think that's been encouraging. There's obviously a lot of discussion about whether there should be, you know, a food waste bill. There's, it's a very complicated issue because there are a lot of stakeholders. There's retailers and growers and everybody has sort of their own reasons for reducing waste or being resistant to it. But I think, you know, on the municipal level and city and county level, we're seeing a lot of different programs and we've been part of many of those. which is exciting. And I think one thing that people don't realize is that food banks actually do a lot of work in educating the communities that they serve. They're not just providing food, they're educating them on how to cook with fresh food. They're educating them on how to reduce waste in their homes so that they can save more of what they buy. And they have some very successful programs that are running and just teaching people how to better work with fresh food. And then when you're more mindful, you do end up either wasting less or looking for solutions to waste less. So I think that's encouraging.

That's great. In your journey in this space of food and food waste, have you come across other innovative solutions that inspire you?

Yeah, I think there's so many people that are working in this area and that's been really encouraging and inspiring for me. I love seeing all the work that's been done with the misfit produce and the imperfect produce. I think there's a number of juicing companies that have started. I love the idea of watermelon water. I think these are incredible resources that can be used to create really great tasting foods that are better for us that, you know, innovators are just starting to kind of scratch the surface of that.

And like the ugly food movement, right? Yeah, I mean, I, you know, I travel over the world. You go to these markets and, you know, you've got the lady with her little, you know, wooden cart filled with vegetables. And there's funny looking food there. They're not like perfectly shaped, but they're, they're just kind of ugly food, but it's delicious and it's safe to eat. and it's, you know, there's nothing wrong with it. It just isn't the perfect apple with no blemishes.

Yeah. And I love that because it's simple. I think, you know, the challenge is so complicated that the solutions that will really take off and be adopted across the globe are the ones that are simple that everyone can start to implement. And the ugly fruit is a great example of that. There was one, I think, video that went viral and people started to see it. Now we see innovators and entrepreneurs everywhere.

Yeah. They're starting to address that problem. So great. Yeah. This imperfect produce is a that basically came up with this idea of getting the ugly food from the farmers that they were going to throw out or till back into the soil and then distributing it to people who don't have it. And it's such a, it's just so important. So you work on a nonprofit things too. Can you tell us about that?

Yeah. So, you know, we have started to work with a lot of nonprofits now because that was always the goal was to put fresh paper in the hands of people that could benefit from it most. And those are people all over the globe that are struggling to have access to fresh healthy food. But for me personally, this journey has really taught me that, you know, when I first started, I didn't have anyone that I could look to that, that made me believe that I could do it. You know, I'd never seen a woman inventor or a CEO or an entrepreneur that looked like me.

Yeah, I saw that. I saw that you had one of the, one of the sites I saw, there was a Google CEO, and it.

Was all these white men showed up. It was, yeah, if you could get a CEO, it's crazy. And, you know, you Just see the images that are kind of projected in society of what careers are available for women. Because I had literally just never seen someone who was a CEO that looked like me. So I thought when I had this idea that I really believed in that my best hope was to find somebody else who might believe in it and would either build a company around it or would license it or would somehow get it to market.

Find a worthy white guy, but yeah.

I just never thought that it could be me. And a lot of the messages I got were, well, you need some 20 years of experience in the industry. Unfortunately, there aren't a lot of young women or women at all with that kind of experience, especially in an industry like the food industry. So that held me back for a long time. And I often talk, you know, to women now about this decade of doubt where I feel like I lost almost 10 years of this idea that I had believed in just because I doubted myself. And the messages that I heard kept me from believing that I could be the person to bring my own idea to the world. So now we're working on a campaign which we've been really excited to share. where we're just highlighting the inspiring stories of women entrepreneurs. I call it like the grip behind the glory because there are so many incredible women that have built organizations that are having an impact on the world. But we don't often know their stories. Like if I were to tell you, you know, about the guy who created a social network in his dorm room, you immediately know it's the founder of Facebook. Right. But if I were to tell you that, you know, America's richest self-made woman created a pizza shop, you wouldn't know that it's the founder of Little Caesars.

Oh, wow.

And so, you know, I think it's just that these stories are not out there. And so that's part of the idea for us is highlighting these stories. It's encouraging women also to share the challenges that they face because, you know, anybody who looks like they might be an overnight success is anything but. And my story has been full of so many ups and downs. And what kept me going was just inspiring stories, people that I could see that had done it before. So that's kind of my personal mission now in all of this.

So great. So if if you were in charge of the world for a day or a week, what would be the things that you would change policy-wise law-wise culturally? What would be the thing that would inspire you to actually do that would make a huge change in how we are around food or whatever?

I think policy-wise I would just require that no food can be sent to a so I think that is something that could have a tremendous impact on our global food system. And as you were saying, just having a policy like that would encourage people to be just significantly more mindful. So I think it would ripple far beyond just the fact that we wouldn't be sending food to landfills. I think people would be much more mindful about where their food actually comes from and why we need to treasure it and think about it as something that can really change our health and our lives and our planet in an everyday interaction.

And what's beautiful about this idea is it seems like it doesn't have any opponents, right? It's not like we're saying, Don't drink soda. You're saying, Don't throw out food. Everybody wins, right? Everybody wins if we figure out a solution to food waste. Exactly. Exactly. I mean, I don't know why people guard their garbage waste, the dumpsters that have food.

The food industry is weird like that.

It's very crazy. Don't take my garbage. So we're really at this inflection point where despite the overwhelming problem of the food system that's driving a food supply that's creating enormous amounts of burden on our society through chronic disease, the economic burden, climate change, and all these other issues, there are pockets of hope that are emerging. And there are many people innovating in the food system that's around the margins that's then coming to the center. And I think that you could have started in Cambridge in a little farmer's market and now be in 100 countries and Walmart and Whole Foods and having an impact globally and being recognized as one of the top leaders in innovation and food, it's just really an inspiring story. And I think I encourage everybody who's having doubt about solving this problem to think about what they can do because everybody can have an impact. And every day we vote with our forks, we vote with choices we make with our wallets at the supermarket, and that makes a difference.

Absolutely. I think, you know, just taking one small step and changing one little thing about how you consume your food and take care of it, it's gonna make all the difference.

So great. Now, for those listening and you're interested in fresh paper, there's a fantastic opportunity to try it. You get 30% off anybody who's listening, go to freshglow.com, and the code, the discount code, is FRESH4ALL, fresh for all, 30% off, freshglow.co.com, and you'll get the fresh paper. And it's pretty cool. It comes, looks like this. It's super simple. It's a brilliant idea. It's changing the world. Thank you for what you do, Kavita, and keep doing it. Thank you.

This was such a fun conversation. So inspiring.

So thank you for listening, everybody. This has been the Doctor's Pharmacy. if you've enjoyed this podcast, please share with your friends and family on social media. Leave a comment. We'd love to hear from you. And we'll see you next time on the doctor's Pharmacy. Hi, everyone. It's Dr. Mark Hyman. So, two quick things. Number one, thanks so much for listening to this week's podcast. It really means a lot to me. If you love the podcast, I'd really appreciate you sharing with your friends. family. Second, I want to tell you about a brand new newsletter I started called Mark's Picks. Every week, I'm going to send out a list of a few things that I've been using to take my own health to the next level. This could be books, podcasts, research that I found, supplement recommendations, recipes, or even gadgets. I use a few of those. And if you'd like to get access to this free weekly list, all you have to do is visit drhyman.com/picks that's drhyman.com/picks I'll only email you once a week I promise and I'll never send you anything else besides my own recommendations so just go to drhyman.com/picks that's P-I-C-K-S to sign up free today.

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