Is Juicing Healthy, The World's First Keto-Friendly Juice, Everything You Need To Know About Cold Pressed Juices, Juice Fasts & More With Farmers Juice Founder Junaid Kalmadi.

On this episode of the Ben Greenfield.

Fitness Podcast, the key aspect to kind of understand what soil is, its power. I began to notice within the first drink I would have this rush of vitality and energy. My body felt like it was giving like a big hallelujah. Like a yes, like it felt amazing. So instead of understanding and honoring the natural processes, you can just throw these chemicals on them. The viciousness in terms of the cycle is that the more you sort of pour these fertilizers and pesticides, the more and more you become dependent help, performance.

Nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield.

Welcome to the show. Well, howdy, howdy how everybody? As you listen to today's episode, do not fear. I have not become a vegan, but I have gotten a little bit more into juice. As a matter of fact, after recording the episode that you are about to hear, I decided to embark upon a five day juice fast, which I'll be doing shortly. You can follow me on Instagram to see how that goes. Both my wife and I are doing a juice and charcoal fast. You'll learn more about why when you listen to today's episode. All the show notes are@BenGreenfieldFitness.com juice and this is actually a really interesting episode. Got me excited about juicing. Well, I think I've probably said this before on other podcasts and in articles that I've never really been a fan of the whole juicing and the cold pressed juice trend for a lot of reasons. Like, you know, most of the juices out there are just full of oodles of sugar that basically mainline fructose into your bloodstream with very little of the actual fiber or the water that you'd find in whole fruit. A lot of them are really, really overpriced compared to what you can make at home. Anybody who's walked out of a juicery with a $17 bottle of celery knows what I'm talking about. But then if you try to do the same thing at home, you get this huge mess, you get this huge cleanup situation. And I do not like to clean my juicer daily or deal with all the pulp and the waste that gets left over all over the kitchen counter. And then if you actually look at a lot of the produce that's used in these juices, it's like subpar fruit and vegetables. It's grow degraded, mineral depleted soil, it's got GMO ingredients or pesticides or herbicides in it. And if it doesn't, a lot of Times just a ton of preservatives, so it doesn't go bad super quick in your refrigerator, destroying all your hard earned overpriced juice. And so in the past, you know, and I've talked about this before on the show before, I've used some of these powders, you know, some of the. Some of like the greens powders out there that I could just make my own juice with by putting that into a Nalgene bottle and shaking it up. But it still doesn't really seem to mimic the flavor of a true juice that you'd buy from a cold pressed juicery or something like that. And so recently I actually started drinking actual liquid juices again, and my wife and my kids have started to do the same. And we're talking about some really kind of interesting ingredients like performance greens and athletic GRE and beet juice and turmeric and carrot digest. I've been doing like these cocktails at night and I literally. My wife just walked out of the house and she's been taking these juices with her when she's driving around town running errands. And, you know, my kind of change in perspective on juicing and me actually being willing to have a refrigerator full of juice occurred after I had a phone call with my friend Junaid, and he recently sent me some of his juices to try. So he's an entrepreneur. I've known him from way back in the day, but recently he founded this company called Farmer's Juice. Farmer's Juice. And what they do is they deliver to your house these organic cold pressed juices. And then the little shots, like the, the tiny wellness shots like turmeric and ginger and stuff like that. And each of the juices has about one and a half pounds of produce in it, like cucumber and ginger and turmeric. And each of these juices has like one and a half pounds of produce in it, like ginger and celery and turmeric and mint and a bunch of different fresh herbs. But then adaptogens, antioxidants and mushrooms and even like keto friendly forms of juices. And so Junaid developed this company and also created this really cool technique called high pressure processing that preserves the juice using cold pressure instead of heat. So the juices keep their nutrient value for like a month in your fridge, but don't have a bunch of preservatives or other junk in them. And so we're gonna talk about this a little bit on today's show. We're gonna take a deep dive into all things juicing. But basically, Junaid is the man when it comes to us being able to learn a lot more about juicing. What's good, what's bad, what you need to worry about, what you need to look for. And I was really happy to have connected with him on this a couple of months ago. So, Junaid, welcome to the show, man.

Thanks so much for having me, Ben. Stoked to be here.

And you know what? I should check, because I know you and I have hung out a few times, and it's possible that I've just been butchering it forever, but. Do you actually pronounce your name Junaid?

Yes, it's Junaid or Junaid. Both work. I also go by J, but it's.

Spelled J U, N A I, D. Correct. How come you didn't call your company Junad Juice?

Humility. Focus on the farmers and the actual product.

You're not a narcissistic entrepreneur.

I've been humbled through the years, and it's an important value.

Yeah, I actually want to talk about the farmers here in a little bit, but I think just at the risk of sounding kind of stupid, because I actually don't know myself, what exactly is the definition of a cold pressed juice? What's that even mean?

That's a great question. You know, cold pressed juicing is a simple yet powerful idea. So for any vegetable, there are two fundamental building blocks. There's the liquid, and then 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, the pulp being.

Like all the messy stuff that winds up on your counter when you're making your juice from, like a home juicer.

Exactly. And each vegetable. So say, for example, celery, cucumber, or carrot, in particular, those three vegetables they have 70 to 95% is just liquid and juice. So the liquid portion or the juice component of a vegetable, it has a plethora of micronutrients, enzymes, minerals, antioxidants, essential phytonutrients. So cold pressed juicing does the concept what it is. It takes roughly a pound to 1.5 pounds of produce. Organic produce could be organic or non organic. We use organic. So it could be dandelion greens, dino kale, celery, cucumber, ginger, turmeric, lemon, mint, basil, much more. And you take this 1.5 pounds of produce and you squeeze it. So you separate the liquid from the solid, and you do this in a cold environment, and you cold is important so the nutrients don't degrade. It actually preserves the nutrient integrity.

So you're notyou're not introducing heat. What about oxygen? Cause oxygen is another thing that I know can cause oxidation. Like that's. I had a podcast a long time ago where I talked about, you know, how when I put, I make a smoothie, I make it with ice, but then I'll add a lot of vitamin C, you know, like the squeeze of a lemon to keep some of the oxidation at bay when I make it. And so when you're using like these big hydraulic presses for cold pressed juice, you're not producing heat, but then they're also somehow kept clean of oxygen.

Exactly, exactly. It's so cold when you enter the facility, you actually have to wear this like winter cold jacket as if it's like the coldest winter in Boston. So that's the kind of setup that we have. When you separate the liquid from the solid, what you end up, the end result is a highly, highly concentrated, potent beverage of dino kale, celery, ginger, all the goodies, including some of the functional ingredients that you referred to. And because of this high potency in terms of the plant based nutrition that you're putting into your body, you get this jolt of essential nutrients, micronutrients, vitamins, minerals. And we also use a few different functional ingredients like lion's mane matcha, apple cider vinegar. It's kind of a hack in terms of your nutritional edge to get your daily recommended optimal nutrients from vegetables in 30 seconds a day by just drinking a juice. And to really put into context 1 to 1.5 pounds of produce, if you were to sit down and actually eat it, it would be five large plates of vegetables of salad.

Yeah, that's true. Sorry to interrupt, but I mean, a lot of people would say, well, that's how you keep yourself from overeating. That's how you keep yourself from attacking the gut with way too much fiber. That's how you would keep, for example, your blood sugar from becoming dysregulated. And I think to a certain extent that's true. Like, like, you know, anybody knows, if you drink your food, you tend not to get full quite as quickly. Yet at the same time, like I've been tracking using my cgm because I just, I test everything with these juices, in particular these farmer's juices that you're making. And you know, I, I think, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, I think the main differentiating characteristic and the reason I'm not seeing the blood sugar spike or like the, you know, the post juice appetite spike that I seem to get with a lot of these juices is it's not like 8 pounds of apple and 2 pounds of pear and a bunch of fructose that you're mainlining into your bloodstream. They have like, I don't know, what's the average on like 80, 100 calories, something like that. Like it's mostly vegetables.

Exactly. You kind of hit it on the mark. We've sort of spent quite a considerable amount of time to actually develop the world's first line of ketogenic cold pressed juices and wellness shots. And each Juice has roughly 9 to 11 carb, 9 to 11 grams of carbs that come. But we don't use any fruit. And instead of sweetening it, typically, you know, the easy way to do it is just like put tons of apple juice or pineapple juice. What we do is we use a creative mix of basil, mint, lemon, ginger, turmeric that actually creates this wholesome, nourishing lift to your taste buds. And there are a lot of sort of keto products. I've been keto for a few years. I cycle in and out as needed. And my personal priority when creating this ketogenic line of green juices was we want to make sure that we serve people who are getting into ketosis, so the sort of pre ketosis phase. And while you're in ketosis, we want to make sure that you don't kick you out and over kind of ruin all the hard work that you put in over the many months. So I'm so happy to hear that you've been tracking through a CGM and it's actually not spiking you close. That's, that's amazing news.

Not at all. Actually. I'm even using it so for a long time and I still do this sometimes I'll use kefir or bone broth as the base for my morning smoothie. And a lot of times I've just been dumping a bottle of this in as, as my base just for a little added nutrient density and same thing, zero spike in blood sugar, which I've never seen before from, from juices. And I mean, you know, and when you first sent me a bunch to try, I actually, when I was looking at them at first I thought they did have fruit in them because I'd see like apple. And then I wrote it was apple cider vinegar. Right. For example, that's one that you have in there. But I mean like you Know the performance greens, it's lion's mane, cucumber, celery, lemon, ginger, turmeric, basil, mint, with like a little extra turmeric in it. And then you've got some that are a little bit more, I guess you, you would consider them to be kind of something that could be more fruit forward or sweeter. And, and these are ones that my, my kids really like. Like the, is it the carrot one? Carrot digest, carrot, jicama, lemon, ginger and turmeric, I think. And then the earthy one's really good too. I think the earthy one's the only one that actually has fruit in it. Right? The, the carrot, orange, apple, pineapple, beet one.

Correct? Correct, yes.

And that one, I'll be, I'll be honest with you, that's the one. I don't drink too much of it unless it's like pre workout or post workout, just for thethe blood flow effect, just cause it does have a little bit of the extra sugar in it. Uhm, but yeah, so you've got thisthis really cool lineup, which I was excited about when we talked, but then you also told me about something I wasn't familiar with. I think you called it hpp, which is kinda like a second part of the cold processing. What's the HPP part of this?

Yeah, that's a great question. So you know, if you sort of take the step back in terms of what's the process, it all starts from the farm. And when we get the highest quality produce by working with a community of farmers, we kind of juice it in this peak nutrient density zone, which we can unpack in a little bit. And then after you've juiced it, as soon as you juice it, the nutrients will begin to degrade, even at home. So for example, the juice that you have, if you juice at home in the morning is going to actually taste different. You'll notice the difference. And the next day, or even the same day, later in the evening, if you juice it in the morning, there's this breakthrough innovative technology called hbp, which introduces cold water and high pressure. And it's this machine that's as big as the size of a yellow school bus. So if you were to visualize a yellow school bus, you put a juice bottle in there and then you can juice.

Oh no, man, I was homeschooled. You'll have to use a different analogy for me.

So as big as your backyard garden.

Okay, perfect.

It's pretty sizable. And you introduce cold water and enough pressure that the juice Bottle can go to the bottom of the ocean. So it's that much pressure. So with the physics and the chemistry of introducing cold water in a high pressured, controlled setup, it neutralizes all the negative sort of bacteria and pathogens that would sort of degrade a juice if you were to juice at home or even in a juice. And it makes the nutritional integrity and the freshness stay fully intact for up to 30 days. So that is kind of the revolutionary breakthrough that we kind of combine not only the highest quality ingredients through working with farmers, juice it in a nutrient dense peak zone, but we HPP it the same day. There's no sort of trucking to another, different facility in another city. We have to, we're very, very sensitive in terms of the process to make sure there's minimal nutrient degradation.

Okay, got it. So how do you actually know when it's at, like peak nutrient density to be able to bottle at that point.

At any juice company starting out, you have to be mindful in terms of the sourcing where you source from. Typically speaking, non organic, why it's so popular and why it's everywhere. It's because it's 30% cheaper, roughly 30% cheaper, depending on which state you are in terms of the cost. What we decided to do, what I personally decided to do, a big motivation and why we called it Farmer's Juice is I've spent the last couple driving around California and meeting different farms and farmers and kind of getting to know intimately, you know, what is their sourcing, what is their certifications. So what we do is we've created this network, this community of an alliance of different family farms. And some of these family farms are completely sort of independent. So they've been stewards of their land for over 100 years. And the quality of water that they give to the soil is the same quality water that they give to their own children. So with this sort of high quality of soil, particularly, what we do is we make sure that from the very get go, every single vegetable and fruit passes a sort of USDA organic bar, which means that there's no pesticides, there's no organic fertilizers, and we actually make sure that all of the produce, all the farming practices enhance soil fertility, they protect wildlife, they actually promote biodiversity. And in this sort of like vetting process, what we've had to do is make sure that there's no sort of cutting the corners. And we actually, through a sort of like selection process, most produce, you know, when it ends up in the grocery store, it has been in A truck for two to three weeks. So the peak nutrient density zone sort of is right when it's like getting shipped up from the farm. So what we do is, you know, we've set up our facility very, very close to the farmers. So it's actually in the middle of California in sort of like a random piece of land. And we kind of work with the knowledge, the ancestral knowledge of each farmer because each farmer is knowledgeable based on, you know, hundreds of harvests over 50 to 100 years. So what we kind of work with is the life cycle of each plant. So when there's the seed and all the way to the degradation and you're kind of familiar, as soon as you get a kale, for example, from the grocery store, you have about three or four days, roughly speaking, before it degrades. So the life cycle of a plant, there's these peak zones. We kind of just work with farmers and trust their experience and ancestral knowledge to juice it right then and there. And we have an advantage because a lot of the non aesthetic produce that would not sell in a sort of Whole Foods or a Target because it just doesn't look good, we use a lot of those to reduce the cost of a juice.

The ugly stuff, which, which it's kind of weird because arguably the ugly stuff is, it's. I've talked about this before on other shows and there's a really good book about this by, I think it's Joe Robinson called Eating on the Wild side. The ugly misshapen produce that's not big and fluffy and full of sugar tends to be actually higher in antioxidants and natural, some of like the natural plant defense mechanisms that allow you to get a little bit more of this hormetic effect and a little bit more of an antioxidant intake. So it is kind of interesting that you're using some of the uglier stuff.

Eating on the Wild side. I'm going to check that out.

Yeah, it's a good one.

I've been reading for me. Thank you. It's a great sort of advantage as an entrepreneur from an economic perspective because we want to a support the farmers. That's number one. Because providing sustainable purchasing for them helps them to make more long term decisions and not cut corners in terms of their harvest by introducing pesticides or going from organic back to non organic. That's one of the key things. The other key thing is all this non aesthetic produce goes waste. It doesn't get used or it goes into compost, which is a low value Use of such high quality produce. A big reason how we can reduce the cost of a high quality organic juice that you would get at a very high end juice bar, which would cost $12. Our price is $5.99 per organic cold pressed juice. So that's one of the sort of key economic advantages that actually just happens when you begin to get to know the farmers, get to know the land. It was kind of this unexpected, surprising, positive discovery.

Now with the soil degradation, do you guys do any soil analysis or do you already know from the way the farmer is operating that the soil hasn't been degraded over time? Or can you comment on just what you know regarding, you know, kind of dirt versus soil?

You know, to step back, most folks may think of soil just as dirt. And the key question is like, why do I even, why should I even care about thinking about soil? And you know, you can think of soil as the living skin of the earth. It gives plants the nutrients it needs to grow. And you know, Michael Pollan said, you're not what you eat, you're what your plants eat. So your plants eat the microorganisms in the soil. And that same principle is kind of applied. You know, most people are very familiar at this point with grass fed meat. So, for example, you're not just what you eat in terms of the direct relationship with the cow that you eat, you're what the cow eats its environment. So there's a relationship. If you have a burger from a factory farm versus, you know, a Belcampo burger, you're going to feel very differently. So our soils, it's very much alive. And in every handful of soil, there's more organisms that have lived in the history of the entire planet earth in just one handful of healthy soil. And our soil sort of is the backbone of our food production. 95% of all food production by the year 2060 will be coming from soil. So taking care of the microbes in the soil is critical not only for soil health, but for human health. The key aspect to kind of understand with soil is its power to fight climate change. So healthy soil absorbs carbon, and unhealthy soil actually releases carbon. And when carbon gets in the atmosphere, it not only causes climate disruption, but it just causes massive economic failures in terms of inefficiencies in the agricultural system. That makes these farmers more reliant on pesticides and fertilizers to cut the corners and make short term decisions, spring the soil with toxic chemicals. In other words, non organic produce kills the very microbes that we need to give us health and pull carbon from the atmosphere and win this battle for humanity. And you know what Mark Harman said? It was, I love this quote. He said the depletion of our soils causes our vegetables to have up to 50% less minerals and nutrients.

Yeah, it's pretty nuts. It's, I think one of the reasons that magnesium, for example, is probably magnesium and potassium are the two biggest deficiencies that I see in people's minerals. And I did a big podcast on mineral analysis with Barton Scott. I'll link to it in the show notes. By the way, the show notes for everything you guys are hearing, you just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com juice that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com Juice I'm assuming you all know how to spell juice. And I'll put a link to that podcast with Barton Scott where we talk about minerals. But I think a huge part of it, we touched on that in that show, is due to mineral depletion of the soil, thus us consuming produce that's mineral depleted. And another really good book about this, I don't know if you've read this book, Junaid, by Gabe Brown called Dirt to Soil. Have you seen that one?

No, I have not.

Okay. Fantastic book. It's, it's one of the better treatises of, of kind of the big issue with the way that we farm in the US in terms of herbicides, insecticide, synthetic fertilizers, etc. And it's a story of this farmer who switched to no till planting and then he started planting like diverse cover crop mixes and changes grazing practices to more of like the rotational grazing. And the guy that wrote the book, he has like a 5,000 acre ranch where he's doing, you know, pastured laying hens and broilers and pastured park and grass fed and grass finished beef and lamb. But a big part of it is he literally just like over the process of 20 years, completely reinvented the topsoil of his entire farm to be like this living biologically rich microbrich soil. And you know, anyone who has like a backyard garden who is really, you know, like our family has. Yes. I may not know how big a school bus is, but I can tell you we've got like our, our eight raised garden beds that we do a ton of composting, a ton of soil turnover, a ton of like small crop rotation in and that like that soil is just, it's rich, it's diverse, it's, it's moist, it's like this, this living compound, it's, it's crazy.

Compared to dirt, it's crazy. You know, there's an example, there was a study done that it takes eight oranges from today, eight full oranges, to match the vitamin a quality of one orange from our grandparents generation.

Geez, it's nuts. It's nuts. Now a big part of this too. And you know, I don't know how much it is the mineral repletion or the nutrient repletion or what it has to do with this, but I know that you actually yourself had some depression issues and you'd been filling me in on this and you actually were finding some links between some of these nutrient mineral deficiencies and mental health and wound up actually using juice as a way, not sound gimmicky, but as one way of healing yourself from depression. Can you get into that story?

Yes, yes. It's a personal story to wind back. I'm 30 years old today and around 10 years ago I was in college and I was raised by an Indian mother that gave me the most amazing meals and put her love and her energy into each meal. But by the time I came to college, I started getting on the standard American diet. I started developing anxiety and depression. I just thought this was part of growing up. It's part of being an adult. I didn't make the link and the connection between my mental health and my diet going out of whack. And I was kind of sitting in my senior year when all my friends had job offers and creating wonderful plans for their life. And I had, and I went to 50 job interviews nonstop no's. And it was because my cognitive performance was down and my GPA was not too, not too hot. I was kind of sitting there, I was like, you know, if no one's gonna hire me, it looks like I have to hire myself. So that was the kind of aha moment. You know they say necessity is the mother of invention. So that was for me out of necessity. I had to become an entrepreneur. It wasn't a choice. I had to do it to move forward. So I started my first company when I was 20. And then fast forward seven years through blood, sweat and tears and a lot of the self doubt journeys kind of going through the entrepreneurial journey. I came to a point in roughly 2016, 2017, where I had this sort of outer material security and riches. But to speak truthfully, my inner life was bankrupt. I had a low sense of psychological well being. My inner peace was missing. I still suffered from the anxiety and the depression Except I had this nonstop demands from work and I was burnt out. And I was like, I thought I had the dream. I had the American dream. I was like, I became an independent entrepreneur, like, where's my well being? So I kind of did this radical experiment and I took six months off. And I had the privilege to do that at the time. And I just focused on what does it take to become a healthy human and just focus on the fundamental habits and the building blocks. So I started meditating every day. I started being very mindful. That's when I started getting into ketosis. I lost 20 pounds. I began fasting. I began to just, you know, nurture every single life department with love, began to focus on my social relationships and in this journey came across cold pressed juicing. I was in Austin living at the time, and I came across this juice shop and I was like, oh my gosh, this guy had, you know, the dreads and he knew the farms that he worked that he sourced from. And I custom made ketogenic cold pressed juices every day. And it's embarrassing. I used to pay like 10, I was 10 to $14 per juice. And, you know, I began to kind of notice within the first drink, I just would have this rush of vitality and energy, cognitive clarity. Like my body felt like it was giving like a big hallelujah. Like a yes. Like, it felt amazing. And I began to drink two a day. And a lot of the sort of anxiety and the depressive symptoms, it was very sensitive. I was monitoring everything and it began to go away. So three or four months in, I began to feel amazing. And it always stuck with me, that four month chapter where I juiced every day and just continued juicing. But that radical transformation, I was like, it was because of juicing. I knew it worked. I know there's a lot of crappy juices out there, but fast forward, when I was looking to start my next company, I was like, juicing is amazing. However, I don't want to spend $4,000, $5,000 on just juice. I want to make this affordable. Can we actually work with the farmers? Can we actually get the cost down? Can we deliver this nationwide? And can we begin to actually champion the next generation of agriculture with regenerative agriculture, which is beyond organic, that can sequester carbon? And that was the kind of original inspiration and vision of taking kind of pain to purpose?

Hmm, That's a really cool story. And I think that a big part of it probably does have to do with nutrient repletion. I mean, obviously we know there's a link between depression and also everything from inflammation, you know, high intake of vegetable oils, omega 3 fatty acid deficits, probably a lot of the other stuff that occurred when you switched out your diet. But that's super interesting that juicing wound up being a part of this. And so you, how long has it been since you actually formed the company?

It's been around two years. Around two years, Got it.

So you've got these organic farmers, you got your cold pressed juice, you have your HPP processing so you don't have to add a bunch of preservatives and then the actual flavors of these juices. Who's kind of like coming up with the flavors because you guys have all these different boxes with varieties of, I mean a whole bunch of, of different flavors. I mean I named off a few of them, but folks can go to the website. I'll link to it in the show notes@bengreenfulfitness.com juice. But is it just you as a one man show running this or do you have a flavor team or how exactly is that running?

Yeah, it's with close guidance with a couple sort of nutritionists that are really into juicing that I've been doing this for 20 years and my own sort of self experimentation with making a variety, hundreds of juices. And what we do is we keep it fresh. So we try to introduce new recipes every couple months and constantly tweaking it. So if you have any feedback, if you're listening, if you email founderthefarmersjuice.com, i read every single email. If you have any notes of improvement. Our job is here to serve you. So that's a big part of the magic formula is we just listen to everybody's flavor profiles. The first so the five seconds when somebody has a juice, they have these raw reactions like, oh my gosh, this tastes amazing. And if it's not so good, they'll be like, actually there's a little too much apple cider vinegar. Let's dial it down because I like apple cider, but it's too much. Let's kind of balance out the flavor. So it's a combination, to answer your question of the nutritionists who are juicers myself and just constant listening to our customers.

Well, I've got a little bit of feedback for you. First of all, you got to have one that's got a little bit of a cucumber vodka in it because like I mentioned, I've actually been making cocktails with your juices. Like, like I'LL take, for example, one's called the. I think it's called Focus Fuel. I believe is what's in the Focus Fuel. I forget. I think it has lion's mane in there.

The Focus Greens is the one that you're referring to. It has matcha and it has cucumber and it has basil, mint, ginger, lemon, extra mint and lime.

Okay, got it. Yeah, no, it's not that one. It's a little shot. Because you guys do like the tinier shots, I think.

Oh, yes, yes. The tiny shot that has fennel, lemon, lemongrass, jalapeno, matcha and a tiny bit of apple. Very tiny bit.

Yeah. That one I've been pouring over ice and putting a shot of cucumber vodka in at night as a cocktail. And it's amazing. So I don't know if you knew this, but you could get into the cocktail business too. They actually, they work really well as mixers, which is amazing, these little shots. I've also found that with the shots, because there's just so much in there, you got to give them a really, really good shake. Because I like to get all the goodness out of there. But typically I'll shake it up really well, pour it into a glass because I like to drink out a glass rather than the bottle. And then I will at that point have cleared out a little bit. I'll put some water in there and drink a little bit of the extra goodness out of the bottom of the shot just because I don't want to waste any of it. But. But those little shots are pretty amazing. Just as like cocktail mixers or even if you don't want to drink a full bottle of juice. Now that leads me to something else I wanted to ask you about. Do you pay attention to packaging at all? I mean, a lot of people are going to ask. Well, I only drink out of glass. I'm concerned about BPA or phytoestrogens or things you might find in the plastic. What are you actually using for your materials for bottling?

So there's an option to use single use plastic, which what most companies use. And it's. It could be BPA, it could be not. We use only 100% recycled materials in terms of our plastic. And the key thing here is if you recycle after you've had a juice or if you reuse it for, you know, you're not military smoothies. But if you choose to recycle, it actually goes back into the system and then we go collect it from, you know, we purchase it from one of these large recycling plants. So the kind of, the best solution is to kind of make sure that as a company, we, A, use recycled materials, but B, encourage our customers to recycle. And we're also looking into actually a recycling program to introduce later this year where we can actually have sort of a package to pick up all the recycled bottles. And in case you live in an area where, you know, I don't know if my city has the infrastructure to actually recycle these bottles. So we're very, very sort of hypersensitive in terms of doing the highest good for the planet.

Okay, got it. So when I. When I get these juices, because I've got a couple boxes of them now sent to my house, they. They arrive. They're in kind of like this. This cooler with the recyclable packaging material, and then I transfer them directly into the fridge. But I wanted to ask you, like. Like, they're good for about 30 days right in the fridge. Okay. So could I theoretically freeze them? Does. Does freezing influence at all, like, the nutrients? Would they stay good in the freezer? Would the bottles explode? Or. Like, is anybody freezing these things?

You can freeze them if you'd like. It's not necessary. However, if you do freeze them, you just have to give it enough time to thaw out in the fridge. Or if you leave it out of the fridge, it just, you know, if you leave it out and it gets warm, you just got to watch it in case it gets warm. So it's temperature sensitive. So generally speaking, keeping it cool, roughly around 41 degrees Fahrenheit is the ideal time to drink it.

Okay, got it, Got it. And then in terms of delivery, are you guys just in the usa, doing? Usa Canada, or where exactly are you delivering to?

We deliver to all the 48 states in the U.S. but we don't deliver outside of the U.S. at the moment, we're looking into Canada probably later this year or early next year. And we don't serve Hawaii and Alaska at the moment, but that may change after Covid.

Got it. And you can do. You can do a subscription or just a single purchase of a box of the wellness shots or a box of the juices or a mix and match variety box or whatever you'd like. Right?

Correct. Correct.

Okay, got it. So I've got a few other questions for you. By the way, you almost derailed me when you brought up Bel Campo burgers, because, oh, my goodness, that's like, my treat when I go to la. I think it's Called their double fast burger. It's got like, like two grass fed grass finished beef patties and then they do like the onions and the ketchup and the mustard. But then I get those with the. I think it's the tallow fries. And if anybody is, is going through LA and you get a chance to stop by Bel Campo for a burger, probably go pretty well with a juice. I don't know. You're not, are you vegan, Junaid?

I'm not, no. I had Bel Campo last week. Gotcha. Yeah, fantastic.

It's kind of funny because if you literally go open my fridge right now, it's a bunch of of cooked up bone in pork loin chops from Bel Campo, some trout and some fish and then just like I think about 20 bottles of your juice and your wellness shots. So I'm vegan carnivore right now with the juices. Okay. So the other question that I had because my wife and I were talking about this last night and we're thinking about doing it, but I wanted to get your take on this and if you've had customers do it or if you've done it yourself, we were thinking about targeting a five day span sometime in February and doing an actual juice fast where all we drink are the farmer's juice juices. You know, for me, I'm a big old boy. I probably do like, I would guess I'd probably go through about six or seven juices a day, you know, just because again, they're not super calorically dense or fruit forward. But have you had any customers? Have you yourself experimented with juice fasting at all?

Yes. Juice fasting is not something that we sort of explicitly market or something that. But you could easily do that with any of our boxes. So we have had customers do like a one day cleanse, a three day cleanse or a five day cleanse. And depending on how keen you are in terms of the green juices, like that is the sort of default that you can use. So the greens only box has four to five of our most popular ketogenic options. So drinking six, seven a day is a great option. However, I personally really enjoy our orange immunity juice which has oranges from a fourth generation family farm in Santa Barbara, some of the most amazing oranges, and also Peruvian ginger. And that if you drink greens, greens, greens all day, it's nice to I think mix it up a little bit. So if you choose to kind of have an inclination towards outside of the greens juices, the mostly green spots is what I Would recommend for a cleanse.

Evan. The mostly green. It's called the mostly greens box, correct?

Yeah. And that has all of our green juices. Has the earthy roots, which is a beet focused one, Carrot digest, which is a carrot focused one, and the orange immunity, which ishas the orange immunity one. And then, you know, every three months or so, we're gonna start introducing new flavors. So when the summer comes around, California watermelons are on point, which is amazing for your hydration. So we're also gonna introduce that then.

My kids love watermelon juice. That's amazing for nitric oxide too. Like, it's. It's almost like Viagra in a bottle. I was giving the. My wife and I got Covid and I wanted to make sure that my kids. This happened like six days ago. We both tested positive for Covid. And so I, I put all the. What's it not? Not the ginger immunity. What's the other immunity one you were just talking about Orange.

We have orange immunity as a juice. Correct.

So orange immunity and then the ginger immunity, which is the ginger and the lemon. The turmeric. I think a little cayenne's in there too, and maybe some. Is there like a piperine or a black peppercorn for the turmeric absorption? Yeah. So I literally just like put a bunch of those in the corner of the fridge and told my kids, you know, drink at least one of the ginger immunity shots a day and one of the orange immunity shots a day just to get their whole foods vitamin C up. And they justthey punish the juices. I mean, kids absolutely love these things too, which is great because they're not spiking their blood sugar with juices, but they're getting a ton of these nutrients just mainlined in their bloodstream.

Yeah, that's such a good point. With kids, you know, I think it's a duty of care to your own body, you know, in the form of self care, but also in addition for your entire family. And I came across this sort of survey after Santa Claus. The most recognizable character among 96% of children was Ronald McDonald. And, you know, part of the kind of mission for us is to create this sort of healthy alternative. Two sugary drinks that are low carb. And even if it is sugar, it's low sugar. And it's coming just from Santa Barbara based oranges or beets from the central valley of California to have this. Kids in general are high energy and they crave. Not all. Some of them do crave sugar. If you do it in moderate doses. That's part of our mission too. So just create a healthy alternative for kids and it's totally safe to have even for kids as well as for pregnant women because all of our juices are hpped. But you know, for pregnant women, I do want to say consult your medical doctor and professional before making any decision because every sort of mother's journey is very unique.

Yeah, yeah. One thing that I actually wanted to do if I wind up doing this as a juice fast was to assess lipid peroxidation because you can get lipid peroxidation markers. Now there's one called malon dialdehyde or mda. And a lot of times they'll measure that, that to determine your toxin load. But I believe that one is urinary analysis in most cases that you can get. But the reason I'm interested in doing that is I looked up some studies on juice fasting and there's one really interesting one I'll link to in the show notes if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com juice but they actually did a urinary lipid peroxidation measurement of MDA during the course of a fast and found a massive, massive, massive drop in these lipid peroxidides, which, you know, and again, I don't necessarily think that a juice based diet is something you would do for life, but in terms of the drop in toxin load, particularly the lipid peroxidation toxin load, which is something that would be increased through vegetable oil consumption, even if you're doing like a lot of, you know, heavy meat cooking, grilling, barbecuing, etc. It literally just got cleaned out clean as a whistle with this consumption of juice. In this case it was a three day fast. And so they also suspect it might have been due to just the low fat content of a juice fast, meaning just less lipids to get oxidized or peroxidized in general. But you know, it's really compelling. And so what I want to do is actually measure toxin load before and after and actually see what happens to lipid peroxides in general. Just for me, eating almost like kind of a semi carnivore diet for the past several months, you know, not that a carnivore diet is going to be super high in these lipid peroxidides, but I'm just curious if I do a before and after, what actually happens as far as the effects of a juice fast from a toxin load standpoint?

That'd be a great Experiment. If you do it, I'll follow you and I wanna see those results.

Yeah, yeah. The other one I wanna pay attention to is the microbial diversity because I found another study that looked into the actual microbiome and they found a big, big increase in Akkermansia and bifidobacteria. And I think that was like closer to a seven day juice diet. But Enterobacteria and Lactobacilli went down. And so basically what that means is that a lot of the markers, specifically the microbiome, the bacterial markers of metabolic syndrome were decreased while all the bacterial markers associated with more robust metabolic health from a microbiome standpoint, those all went up. And so it appears it's kind of shifting the microbiome as well when you do something like try something similar to a juice diet. Now, I don't know how fruit forward versus vegetable forward, this particular diet that they were using was, but I would imagine with a real vegetable forward protocol like this, particularly without a lot of the herbicides and pesticides, et cetera, there'd be a profound impact on the biome totally.

What's an interesting story in terms of pesticides and herbicides and non organic produce, it's very deceptive in the sense that it looks the exact same like an organic kale versus a non organic kale looks pretty similar. You have to actually look into a microscope to actually see that there's harmful chemicals in there. And industrial agriculture. Are you familiar with the German scientist Fritz Harbour and his story?

Yep, I haven't heard this story. I don't think I've heard this story, but go ahead and tell it.

So industrial agriculture actually has its roots in World War II. So there was a German scientist called Fritz Harper and he invented this process for making synthetic nitrogen fertilizer. And one of his other sort of scientific breakthroughs at the time was the creation of poisons known as pesticides to harbor. He used his pesticides as the first chemical weapon in history in the Holocaust. But after the war was over, you know, the US chemical companies, they bought sort of the pesticides back to America and they rebranded as pesticides on American farms. And farmers at the time could use sort of nitrogen fertilizer to spray it on the crops, even if they hadn't taken care of their crops. So it was a way to focus on the short term at the sacrifice of the long term. So it was kind of a hack. And there was also economic incentives at the time. So instead of understanding and honoring the natural processes that go into ancestral agricultural Practices, you can just throw these chemicals on them. And the viciousness in terms of the cycle is that the more and more you sort of pour these fertilizers and pesticides, the more and more you become dependent on them. So hence the big sort of chemical companies have really, really high market caps in terms of their billions of dollars of revenue. But you know, modern agriculture today is not designed for the betterment of soil. And to illustrate this in a very concrete way, the number one crop in America today is field corn. And it is entirely sprayed by glyphosate and Roundup. And every year for every American alive, three pounds of toxic chemicals are sprayed onto the food. There's over 200 peer reviewed studies on this that correlate that spraying of these chemicals like Roundup actually affects ADHD in children. And you know, there's a lot of sort of lawsuits now. And one of the more recent lawsuits is there was a jury that hit Monsanto with a $2 billion judgment for a cancer lawsuit to compensate for those people who are damaged who contracted cancer after having glyphosate based produce because it kills all the microbes in your body and your body can handle acute stress, but not chronic stresses. So I bring this all up in the context of prioritizing organic produce and if you can, supporting the family farms and going to the farmer's market and supporting them independent of farmer's juice. I just think it's kind of a civic and political action when you make this benign purchase or seemingly benign purchase at the grocery store.

Yeah, that's super good point. That story of Fritz Haber and the idea that a lot of pesticides and herbicides were originally almost like, you know, wartime chemicals, you know, biological weapons. It reminds me also of the same story with fluoride. Like a lot of people don't realize that, you know, pharmaceutical grade fluoride is used in toothpaste. And so you don't have to worry as much about that. But the fluoride and water, that's an untreated industrial waste product that contains pretty high amounts of arsenic and lead. And one reason for that is that the hydrogen fluoride and silicone tetrafluoride is the other one. Those are byproducts of fertilizer production. And a ton of this type of waste built up to the extent to where they had to figure out what to do with a lot of this fluoride and wound up actually starting to drip feed it into drinking water to quote, prevent dental decay, unquote, when in fact it Is not sound like a conspiracy theorist. One way to just get rid of the massive amounts of industrial fluoride waste that is a byproduct of a lot of our fertilizer production. So you know, when you're consuming fluoride from drinking water, it's even different than the fluoride they're adding to tooth cleaning products. And it's a. It's a really big issue. If you go look at the actual source of fluoride and I'll put a link in the show notes to some pretty good articles on fluoride's kind of transformation from industrial waste to almost like a public health product. But it's pretty shocking.

Yeah, no, I totally echo that. It's important as citizens just for the world to recognize how big industries, if they're motivated solely by economic incentives at the cost of our health, it just goes unnoticed. It's important to actually emphasize this and spread it, but also be calm and hopeful because there are real solutions and kind of go in that wind. There's another story back in the 1950s. It would be kind of surprising to hear this from a doctor, But Big tobacco, for example, would pay doctors and actors to say that cigarette smoking can actually help your cough, can actually clear up your coat of sinuses. And Philip Morris was one of the companies at the time. And it was not until 20 years of people just smoking non stop till the oncologists began to be questioning, okay, all these. And making the sort of clinical link between them. So I think it's important and I think some of the big fertilizer companies are going to be the equivalent of the big tobacco companies. When we look back 50 years from now, there's a lot of hope in terms of regenerative agriculture. Kiss the Ground is one of the organizations that we support. It's a nonprofit and it directly works with farmers around the country to provide them financial, educational and social resources. Because a lot of the problem is farmers. It's hard to be a farmer. It's so, so hard. You're playing with mother nature. You're playing with a lot of different variables. The economic stresses are real. So for them, it's a lot. They're kind of sometimes tunnel visioned in terms of doing what they need to do. But if you approach them with other farmers as representatives and kind of give them financial resources, you actually work with them, you actually support them, you can sort of seed the next movement and kind of replenish all the damage that's been done over the past 100 years. And, and if there's any message, it's important to always keep the hope alive. And I think regenerative agriculture, and that's why we donate from each sale to Kiss the Grant as a nonprofit.

Yeah, I like that. And again, when did you call me? A couple months ago. Tell me about the juice. I really was not that interested just because I really did think this was gonna be just like yet another fruit juice that gets shipped to your house. But seeing my kids and my wife and how much they actually love this stuff and are just, just sucking it down every single day, how good I feel when I'm drinking it, how much better an evening cocktail it makes, and then also, you know, even though I haven't done it yet, I'll report to my audience once I do it. This idea of me at some point in the next month doing about a five day juice fast, just using your juices, you know, I am, I'm a big fan. I don't, I really don't think a couple months ago if you'd asked me if I was going to do a podcast about juicing, that I would have. But, but I'm actually pretty excited to tell people about this because I, you know, again, keto friendly, super clean, you know, more vegetable forward than fruit forward. Like, it kind of ticks the box of everything I've been looking for in a juice. And I'm not just saying this to blow smoke or saying this to make this podcast sound like a commercial. Like, I actually really do like the juice. So I'm good conscious in good conscience and am recommending it to folks to try out. And so in terms of people just like signing up, getting a box, trying it out, ordering, etc. I know that, you know, we've got a special discount code. I think it's Ben. Is that correct? Okay, so that saves $5, I think, off of a box or off of an order. Okay, so you save five bucks. I think the juices, what do they come out to, to like drink a whole juice? Like five or six bucks, something like that.

5.99.

Okay. Yeah. So way less than what you get if you were buying this stuff from like the, you know, the natural foods grocery store, from the cold press juicery or something like that. But anyways, you just order a box, you get a variety pack or you get some of the wellness shots, whatever. I don't even know what I've been getting. I've just kind of been drinking what gets sent to my house. But it's amazing, all of it and yeah, you go to, you go to the Farmer's Juice website and you use code Ben or else just go to the. If you go to the show notes@bengreenfulfitness.com juice I'll just link to everything that we've been talking about as well like studies and books and Junaid's juicing website, et cetera. So anyways, Farmer's Juice is what it's called. Anything else you wanted to share with folks while I have you on the call? Junaid?

Yeah, I think one thing is the link is farmershuice.com or farmershoes.com Ben. Okay, got it. You can type in Ben in the discount code. I think 2020 has sort of been a character building year in many way. One of the ways in terms of putting yourself in the best position for 2021, speaking personally, is you got to show up in terms of self empowerment and being your own best friend and making sure all your different life departments are nourished. And nutrition is one of those key areas. And our kind of challenge is if you've had juices in the past or you're juicing at home and you've stopped juicing because it was such a pain. Experiment with the box, try it out and if you have any feedback, write to me@founderthefarmersjuice.com and our goal and aim is to not only hit the best juice that you've had at the juice shop at home, but kind of exceed that quality and they all taste sort of mouth wateringly delicious. That's one of the key questions that people ask like, does this taste good? Does this taste like grass? Does this taste like, you know, like mainlining apple juice? It actually tastes wholesome. That's the one word how I would capture it.

Okay, cool. I like that. I like that. And it does have, it does have an amazing flavor. Like it just tastes more alive which, which I really like. And, and I think a big part of that is the sourcing, the work with the farmers, the commitment to the packaging and, and the quality of the, of the final product itself. So you guys are up to some good things and, and I dig it. So again folks, I'll link to everything@bengreenfulfitness.com juice the discount code if you wind up on the Farmer's juice website@farmersjuice.com Ben is code Ben to save 5 bucks. Get yourself some shots, get yourself some juice. I know that you can get a subscription, but you can cancel anytime. Stay fresh for 30 days in your fridge. So give it a go and leave any of your comments or questions for Junaid or I@bengreenfulfitness.com juice and one of us can pop in and reply to any questions that you have. Let me know if you try. Like I'm going to try a five day juice fast. And I'll keep you guys posted on that one too. And Junaid, thanks for. Thanks for making juicing something I can actually do now, guilt free and for coming on the show to share this with us.

You're so, so welcome. I'm so grateful to be here. Thank you, Ben.

Awesome. All right, folks. Well, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Junaid Kamadi signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have an amazing week.

Well, thanks for listening to today's show. You can grab all the show notes, the resources, pretty much everything that I mentioned over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com along with plenty of other goodies from me, including the highly helpful Ben Recommends page, which is a list of pretty much everything that I've ever recommended for hormones, sleep digestion, fat loss, performance, and plenty more. Please also know that all the links, all the promo codes that I mentioned during this and every episode help to make this podcast happen and to generate income that enables me to keep bringing you this content every single week. So when you listen in, be sure to use the links in the show notes, use the promo codes that I generate because that helps helps to float this thing and keep it coming to you each and every week.