Weekend Special Update: "How To Grow a Healthy Baby"

Hey, podcast listeners, this is Ben Greenfield, and I am here with a special guest for a special Weekend Update podcast. And this is just going to be a brief podcast for those of you who are interested in babies, baby food, growing, healthy babies, as well as green, organic investment opportunities. So the person that I have sitting with me right now just so happens to be my wife, Jessa. How's it going, Jessa?

Hi, there. Good.

We're sitting here because Jessa and her business partner Marta have been working diligently for nearly a year now on a special project that I wanted to let you guys know about. And this project has been going on essentially almost since the birth of our twin boys, river and Taryn, and came to fruition during the raising of those children and more specifically, the feeding of those children. So, Jessa, how did you come about to be involved in this project that you're involved in right now? And tell me a little bit more about it and what's driving you, what's motivating you, and why the audience should be interested in in this project and also what it's called.

Well, that's a big question.

Sorry.

How started is obviously, I have twin boys, and I was lucky enough to be able to cook and make all their food for them instead of having to buy packaged food like Gerbers or any kind of other organic canned baby food.

Well, I'm going to stop you right there, Jessa, because why didn't you buy the canned stuff or the stuff at the grocery store?

The main reason is there's a lot of problems with the method of canning. Canning, for one. It requires a heat seal to kill, basically, bacteria that could possibly kill you or your baby. And so they have to do this heat seal, which ends up killing a lot of the nutrients that's in the food. Another reason is a lot of.

So the vegetables and the fruits are heated to really high temperatures, basically. Okay.

And the second reason would be, I would say most of the baby foods out there are not organic, for one, which means they're sprayed heavily with pesticides.

And herbicides, which we've talked about on this show before.

And one of the scary things about that is there's multiple neurotoxins, carcinogens, pesticides that disrupt normal function of hormone systems. And many of them are category one.

Which means what?

Basically, that means it's the highest designation of oral toxicity, and that's going into your baby's food. And one of the reasons it's such a big problem is in the first two years of your baby's life. Their digestive systems, they aren't fully developed. They absorb a lot more of their food than we do as adults. And in that they're absorbing all those toxins with them. And it can cause add a lot.

Of neural, like neural development problems is, from what I've heard, like brain development problems. Now obviously, you know, I guess, you know, if I were, if I were listening to this, I would think, well, why not just go out and buy like the organic Gerber? And the reason for that would be because you still get the heat seal on it. So you still get a lot of.

Nutrients destroyed as well. A lot of them. If it just says organic on it, it does not mean it's 100% organic. They can put in 40% non organic foods into that. And a lot of that actually is fillers. Gerber is one of the worst that I know of with fillers. For example, their stage one, which is early baby food they call them, they do them in stages. Their stage one baby food, the banana specifically, has more nutrients in their stage one than their stage two bananas. Because your stage two bananas are so chock full of fillers, which fillers are generally soy, corn flour, empty calories that you could be filling your baby with something that's a lot better than that. They put in a lot of fillers. The food that generally goes into the making of baby food is, you know, grown across the world. You know, we don't have bananas here in the United States. They pick them when they're green. I mean, this produce is so green they can throw, they just throw them, I mean, throw them into bins and they don't get bruised. That's how young they are. So you're not getting the full nutrients that that fruit could possibly be getting. And that's true of all of the produce that goes into their food.

So. Well, yeah, it makes sense. Basically what you're saying is that in order to supply your baby with the nutrients that it needs from fresh food, you would have to get food that hadn't been canned, filled with preservatives and fillers, picked, whether organically or non organically months earlier and set on the shelf.

And because when you pick produce, that's the moment it starts, starts to lose nutrients. So if you pick an apple three months before, you actually plan on selling it in the supermarket and then getting to your table and consuming it, it is so nutrient deplete by that point that there's nothing there.

Now the other thing that I've heard you talking about, because obviously I watched you kind of putting these baby products together for the past year is the idea behind GMOs. And I want you to explain on this podcast what that is and how that works with baby food.

GMOs are genetically modified organisms. Basically, what is happening in the US Right now is there's a handful of crops that are gmo. Basically what they do is they shoot genes that are foreign from the plant that aren't. Don't even. That are not even related to the plant. They basically take a gun and shoot them into these seeds, and then they. And then they basically. What the. Basically what it does is it gives it qualities. Like some of them have, like, a natural herbicide to them, and some of the them have like a grow bigger and taller or something. You know, that sort of thing, or can withstand weather conditions and that sort of thing. But the problem with this is there's been no studies on. In the US no studies in the US on how this affects human consumption. You know what it does, right?

It's like the unknown territory.

Yes.

Okay. But there's. There's anecdotal evidence, right?

Yes. Well, in Europe, they've done lots of testing on GMOs, and they're actually banned in Europe completely. You will not find a GMO product anywhere over there because not just baby.

Food, just like, anywhere nothing.

People won't even buy it because basically they're finding that it causes learning disabilities, stomach ulcers, infertility, low birth weight, and all. All kinds of scary things that, you know, this is going into your baby's mouth, and you don't, you know, you don't want your kid to have, you know, a learning disability or, you know, it even goes even further than that. When your mother is carrying the baby in the womb, you know, she could. The baby's gonna have a low birth weight, potentially. She could mislead.

I mean, if the mom is eating GMOs.

Yes, exactly. So this. This goes all. I mean, basically, you should be worried about what your baby's eating before it's even conceived.

Right?

So anyways, GMO crops are corn, cotton, sugar beets, and soy are the main ones, and they're actually looking into doing it with wheat as well. And those are a lot of the fillers that go into baby food. So if you're buying commercial baby food, I guarantee your baby is getting a gmo.

So commercial. We're just talking about any of the kind of popular brands you'd find on the shelf, like Gerber. You know, it's actually the only one that I know of. What are the others?

There's Beach Nut and, you know, some of these like Albertsons and Safeway brands, they have those now, but Gerber's the biggest one.

So I've seen you and Marta, your partner, doing countless hours of research and hours spent in the kitchen and talking to farmers spread out across, you know, this area around Spokane. What is it that you guys have been working on for babies? I mean, for the people that are hearing about the, you know, the GMOs, about the pesticides and the herbicides, about the heat seal and the heat disruption of the nutrients, what is the, what's the solution that you guys are working on?

Well, basically our solution, what we plan on doing is we plan on getting our produce locally within, you know, about 100 to 200 miles from Spokane, Washington.

And that's. And you actually have a contract with these farmers already to be supplying you with local, fresh, is organic, okay?

Organic produce. So what we, and we have gone to all of these farms to see them for ourselves, you know, to see the practices and their methods because, you know, that's a big part too is organic farming is a sustainable. It's good for the earth, it's good for the future of your children. That's another reason we chose organic. Then secondly, we decided to freeze our baby food instead of can baby food because the freezing method does not lose any nutrients.

So you're literally making it. And then right after it's made, it's still in the blended baby food format. And you guys, from what I understand, you have all these recipes.

Yes.

How many recipes?

There's nine products right now.

Okay. And so you make the recipe, it's organic, you're getting it from the local farmers, and then you freeze it. And then what? It just goes straight out to the grocery store?

This year we will not be selling in the grocery store. We'll be doing. We'll be selling it ourselves, retail. Hopefully in the next year or two, we'll be going into a couple of grocery stores. We have some people who are already interested just for growing purposes. We decided to stay, keep it simple this year.

Right. So. But you're basically trying to sustain the local economy at the same time, provide baby food. For what kind of geographical region are we talking about in terms of the scope of the baby food that's going to be available?

Well, this year it's going to be Spokane, Coeur d', Alene, all the way down to Moscow, Idaho, potentially the Tri Cities is what we're looking at this year and then eventually we would like to expand to the western side of Washington, you know, the Seattle area. And you know, Oregon is a great place.

Just same type of model, local organic, because you guys here have an organic, certified commercial kitchen that you're producing this food in. So you would just have, again, a relationship with farmers in the Seattle area, in the Portland area, same thing.

Yeah, if we could do kind of little plants all over the place just because that way you can get the freshest produce and the freshest product. So, yes, you know, that's kind of what the model is looking like, is to have like these little mini baby food productions all over.

So what do you have in place right now in terms of the baby food business or. Well, we didn't even say the name of the business yet. What is the name of your business and what do you guys have in place right now? Kind of ready to roll.

Right now we are ready to pull the trigger. We have all of our marketing material done, we have all the recipes, we have our website ready to go. Basically everything's ready to go. We have contracts with farmers, we've got, you know, contracts with the kitchen, everything. So basically it's just finding funding.

So at this point, it's, it's. You need that initial investment in this idea. You need someone who's looking at investing in a green, sustainable project that's essentially, in my opinion, kind of designed for America's future, for the future of our children. And as far as what you guys are providing to someone who might be listening into this show who thinks, well, that sounds like a really good idea. I know somebody who would want to invest in that idea or, you know, I myself am interested in putting some money towards that idea. What are you guys looking at in terms of the funding that you would need and also the business plan that you would provide to someone who is interested in investing?

Well, we do have a full business plan already done up. We have our spreadsheets for costs, spending and how much money we're making in an Excel document ready to go to any potential investor.

And what kind of funding are you guys looking for in order to, as you say, pull the trigger and actually launch the only frozen organic baby food line that I know of anywhere, at least in the Northwest or the Pacific Northwest?

Well, we're looking for $25,000 is what the cost is going to get this up and going.

And you're looking at working out a return on investment plan with an investor for the 25,000?

Oh, yes, yeah.

Okay, well, that sounds like a good plan to me, and I guess that's why we're putting it out on the podcast. And I've seen their business plan, and it actually is very sound plan. And this product shows a lot of prompt, especially considering the growth of the organic industry. In the last three years, it's up 20%. Parents are becoming a lot more aware about some of the issues that Jessa was telling us about, about the GMOs, about the herbicides, the pesticides, the heat seals. And every parent, including us, we want what's best for the babies. And it's becoming more and more apparent right now that what's on the shelf is probably not the best and could actually be harming your baby, harming your baby's development, their potential, their growth. I've, with great joy, seen our kids be a lot healthier than a lot of the other kids that we see hanging around with. And this is. How many recipes do you guys have?

Nine.

Nine. Okay. So nine different recipes. And you have this set out in different stages of development according to what.

The needs of the baby are right now. A lot of our products we've designed so you can mix stuff with it, like if you want to add rice, or if you want to add quinoa, or if you want to add. Just add something to it to make it either go longer or have some. Or as your baby grows, you can adapt some of their food very easily to.

But when mom prepares the food, it's literally just out of the freezer onto the stove. Obviously, I would imagine not the microwave.

You probably would actually, I suggest is you would take it out the night, plan your meals out the night before, and just take them out of the freezer and just let them thaw in the fridge. It's less oxidization of the food, which.

Less heat damaging of the fruits and the vegetables.

Yes, exactly.

Okay. All right, well, if you're listening in, I'm going to put a link to the Bud Organics website in the show notes, as well as Jess contact information and some points that kind of go over some of the things that we talked about today. And if you or someone you know is interested in helping to grow this business and in investing in this business plan, not. Not donating to the business plan, this would be a return on your money investment. Then call Jesse using the number that will be provided in the show notes to this podcast or email, and we look forward to seeing if people out there are interested in this type of idea. And if you have your own comment about what you think about growing healthy babies and organic baby food and non organic baby food. Feel free to leave a comment in the show notes or you can email me ben greenfieldfitness.com and this is our special weekend update from BenGreenfieldFitness.com we will be coming to you with a full podcast in just a few days. So Jessa, thanks for coming on the show.

Thank you.

And this is Ben Greenfield and Jessa Greenfield signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.