Protecting Your Family from Chronic Health Triggers, Hidden Ingredients, and a Medical System Built to Keep You in the Dark | Melissa Crispell

Transparency to me is a passion and it's a mission. So I am more than excited to be sharing our guest for today, Melissa Crispell. She and her partner have done deep dives into the supplement industry, into the practices, into the ingredient sourcing. And so this episode is really all about The Dirty Secrets of the Supplement Industry. Please enjoy Melissa Crispell. I don't want to pull any punches on this. Let's go where we need to go, where we want to go. But you were saying—

I've been in this industry for over 20 years. I have a degree in nutrition and health sciences. I learned supplements. You're seeing everybody on the news these days and they're addressing Congress or the Senate or whatever. And they're saying, you know, can you believe that I never took a single nutrition class in medical school? Yes, I can believe that. You were taught to do a little with a lot of things. There are people that were taught this part. So we're in our lane over here. We know this part. You guys know lots of things over there. Let's do this together. Because it wasn't until I was forced to have to make these supplements myself, to find a co-manufacturer, to find a facility, It wasn't until that moment that I knew how deep this issue really was. You can look at a label and you can go, oh, magnesium stearate. I don't want that in my body. Or, oh, silicon dioxide. I know what that is. Maybe people don't know what that is. So let's, you know, we can start there with what are these fillers? Okay.

So let's start there. So how is the person purchasing supposed to know, like, where do they start? We always talk about, oh, we'll just read the label. But as you just mentioned, most of the things on the label in the supplement industry, no one knows what the heck they are.

So that's what Pure Essentials is doing. We're trying to become the home, the resource center. I just created 7 different PDFs of top fillers to avoid, 11 hidden ingredients in your supplements. You can backtest all of this stuff. I don't like people to Google doctor themselves, but You can Google a definition. It's okay. Look the definition up and you can see I'm telling you the truth. This is exactly what citric acid is. People think, oh, citric acid, it's squeezed lime juice, squeezed orange juice, squeezed lemon juice. Could that be? Sure. Those things are citrus, but that's not necessarily the source of citric acid.

What is the source of citric acid normally?

It is usually a fermentation blend. And it can involve lots of mold, Aspergillus niger specifically. And I worked as a consultant for a food and chemical sensitivity test. Lots and lots of people came up reactive to Aspergillus niger and not like immediate allergy. Like I put this in my mouth and my tongue swells or worse. This is long-term, long chronic inflammation that finally pops and they get a diagnosis of MS or anything. You can fill in the blank. It gets worse.

Because that's the reality, right? Is most people are not thinking and/or talking about the accumulation of all these ingredients and we're getting them from so many products. I mean, citric acid alone is honestly, I haven't seen a product recently that doesn't have it in it. Now citric acid is used as a preservative. Is that correct?

Correct. It can also be used, you know, for, you know, making something tart, making, you know, that sour flavor, all the kids that love those Sour Patch Kids and all of that kind of stuff. And it's starting there. Parents are looking for what's the alternative. Okay. We know we don't want to give the kid mold, nothing against Sour Patch Kids, you know, whatever. I don't care what the brand of the candy is. We know we don't want to do this. We see the sugar. We, we know what the FD&C colors are. You know, we don't want to give the kid this, so let's look for an alternative. Well, we start looking for things that look natural and that's when we need to look even deeper and go, okay, it could be natural, but how natural is it? Do we really want that?

Yeah. Oh my gosh. Okay. So we have to cover all these topics because this is all too important. But before we go even deeper, let's just share a bit about your background, why this matters to you, how you got to this point. Where you are now deep diving into the, really the dirty secrets of the supplement industry?

Well, it was an evolution, an evolution of 25 years. This was not my original career field. I had no understanding of natural supplements, natural health as a difference to how to treat people. I grew up as an army brat. A lot of time I was in Europe. The apothecary down the street where we lived, you know, chamomile tea, those kinds of things. Those were normal for me. That was, that's what you did. You didn't feel well, you drink more water, you have some tea, you know, you look at those kinds of things. So fortunately my parents, they wanted to make a difference in nutrition for their kids, my sister and I, because of the way that they ate. They're World War II vet kids. They ate differently. than what they had the ability to provide for us. And my parents cooked. They weren't, you know, the, I mean, sure, we had a microwave dinner or whatever. I think we were probably the first kids on the block to have a microwave. That's how old I am. Yeah.

I remember when they came out too. So, I mean, neither of us grew up with them and that's that, you know, I think that's an important, important distinction.

You know, life goes on. I learned food and growing food and, you know, every base my dad lived on, we lived on. My dad had his own garden. You know, it just, That was important in our house was real food and learning to cook. I can remember watching PBS with Justin Smith, and I'll tell you what I'm going to did with my dad. And he would write those recipes down and go to the kitchen. I grew up with real food. So when my sister, who's up there over my shoulder, she was in the Army, she was in finance, she was stationed in Bosnia. So she was there during the war in the mid-'90s. Within a year, I guess, I don't remember the exact timeline, but within a year of returning to her base in Germany, She was sick over and over and over, and they just kept giving her more and more antibiotics. And you have pneumonia and you have this and you have that. And I think it went on for about 8 to 10 weeks. And then she gets this diagnosis of leukemia. They medevac her. It's this big, huge thing. Medevac her from one place in Germany to another, grab her keys, grab this, grab that, call her parents. It's this whirlwind of everything. She gets sent here to America. She was— put at Andrews. I meet my parents there. We go to Walter Reed. It was this whole thing. Like, she had never been sick. This kid didn't drink. She didn't smoke. She was active duty military. She was running however much they had her running every day. She had a strong foundation. She had the same foundation I did. We also grew up on military bases, toxic chemical loads, you know, those kinds of things. Sadly, 2 and a half years later, she lost that battle with leukemia. She's buried at Arlington Cemetery. And at one of the points that I was spending the night with her at Walter Reed, I had conversation with one of her oncologists and he was talking to me about epigenetics, talking to me about what we do or don't do can influence this blueprint that we have. I had never heard such a thing. That sounded like Star Wars stuff to me in 1997.

How old are you at this point?

I wasn't quite 30. I was 30 when she passed away. So she passes away, life changes, all the things. And doors just started opening. I had someone who came, I was breeding labs and someone came to our house for a lab and said, you know, you'd be great at this. And, you know, I was kind of dipping my toes into personal training and I coached my kids' soccer, basketball, and lacrosse. You know, I was, I was in that athletic type world. So I go and get a personal trainer certification. I get a job in a chiropractor's office. I start learning more about nutrition. I go and get a degree in nutrition and health sciences because this, this lights me up now. It's like, wait a minute, this food that we're eating has the potential to hurt us. People don't think about that. Let food be thy medicine. Yeah, sure. But what about the foods that are hurting us? And let's look at those labels. I have a really good friend. Her name is Mira Desi. She wrote the book, The Pantry Principle. That became a staple for every client of mine that purchased a full 12-week Whydah Wellness program. You have to have this book, use this as, you know, anybody else out there, go grab it. I don't get paid for it. It's free info. Go get that book. It is a coaching manual of how to change your pantry. So that's how I came here was the inspiration of my sister's, one of her oncologists was how do we, how do we affect this with food?

What a gift your sister gave you. It's regrettable That she had to leave, but what a gift you've done and how you are now amplifying what she gave you, the inspiration she gave you. So from nutrition now to focusing on supplements, how did that leap happen?

So in nutrition care, we know what's happening in our country with food. We know that Pesticides have been allowed. There are pesticides that are being found in our food that have been banned for 50 years. Does that mean that farmer's still using that pesticide? It probably doesn't. I don't know. It could in some cases, but it does mean that the soil holds onto it for that long.

And the body too, right? Yeah.

Yeah. If the dirt holds it, we hold it. There's just not a high enough level of these vitamins, minerals, phytos, all the things that we need from the food. And it creates this gap. Where do we go? How do we fill this gap? We go to nutritional supplements. They work together, not a replacement. You know, it's not like there's some magic pill you can take and everything's gonna go away. But if you look at the body through a functional lens, look at the blood. Don't take zinc if you don't know what your zinc level is. Don't take vitamin D if you don't know what your vitamin D level is. So look at your blood objectively. What are functional reference ranges? Not just the reference ranges put out there by the labs that are designed to not let you die, but let's look at them a little bit differently because we want to thrive. We don't want to just get by and survive. So let's look at those differently. And then let's add those supplements to help fill in the gap and get us to where we want to be beyond the food.

Yeah. And what you're really talking about too, because you mentioned it earlier, is not self-diagnosing. Getting that support, you know, getting real testing from a qualified practitioner who is looking at it with the lens that is going to most support you holistically. And then you now have some information. You have some information about what your body might be depleted in and what it might need. But we're here to talk about the dirty secrets of the supplement industry, which you are very qualified to talk about because you have deep dived into this industry. Because you now run a supplement industry because you saw an industry that you didn't like and you saw a huge hole that needed to be filled with integrity, with transparency. So can you talk about what you created?

So Pure Essentials originally was created by Dr. Richard Ash, a medical doctor, Fifth Avenue overlooking Central Park, brilliant clinic. He was years, light years ahead of his colleagues. He was using magnesium and CoQ10 before statins. He had a segment on Peter Jennings, World News Tonight, and showed how arteries were opening without any statins. Like you can do this naturally. And so he was light years ahead. Unfortunately, he passed away 9 years ago. Christmas Day was 9 years ago. In that timeframe, I stayed friends with his wife the whole time. And Pure Essentials went and it came back. And at the time that Rachel was ready to, you know, really be with Pure Essentials, she came to me and said, I need your help. I can't imagine doing this with anyone else. Let's, let's do this together. And I said, all right, let's do this together. So we started evaluating, okay, what do we have in front of us and where do we want to go ultimately? What do we want to put out into the world? And we agreed our mission is to reclaim health for humanity. We want children to not suffer. Like, how many kids are obese right now? If you're obese now at 10, what's life going to look like at 35?

Totally.

Do you even make it to 55? I don't know. We have to start there. We have to educate parents. Parents are not doing this on purpose. Parents are not trying to hurt their kids. Parents are doing the best they can with the budgets that they have and the information they have. So we have to elevate that information. Pure Essentials wants to be that home, that resource center, that trusted place where you can get some peace of mind. We've already done all of this work for you and we'll show you what we've done. We're not going to keep it a secret. We're not gatekeeping anything. So when we're looking at the supplements, do these supplements match what we say we want to put out into the world? Well, then we start looking at what the FDA requirements are. There is, I don't know if it's an actual booklet, mine's digital, but it's 21 CFR. It's the code of formulating these supplements. There, there are rules, believe it or not. Everyone says supplements are the wild, wild west. In a way they are, because I think that co-manufacturers, the people that own these facilities that make it, allow just anybody to walk up. If your checkbook is big enough, you can make whatever you want and put it out there. These companies, these fly-by-night e-commerce companies just pop up. so quickly, you know, the FDA just can't keep up with that stuff. There aren't, there aren't enough human beings. So I have to, you know, cut them a little bit of slack here. There is a rule book and we're on our honor to follow that rule book. Rachel and I start going through this and we go to those manufacturers that were supplying the Pure Essentials supplements at the time and said, hey, we're going to need batch records. We're going to need, you know, COA is what it's called, certificate of analysis. We're going to need these things. We need to see the lab testing to make sure that what's in here is really on there because even though you're making it, the FDA says whatever we cause to be in commerce, we are ultimately responsible for. So we have to have the backup paperwork to prove it is what it is.

And they said no. Well, you did— oh, they said no.

They said no. We're not going to give this to you. It's proprietary information.

And I said, well—

Right.

The proprietary information. This is one of the biggest dilemmas of communication within the industry, right, is they are not transparent to the person that came to them. So the manufacturer is not transparent to the business who they're creating the product for. And yet there's an illusion of transparency so that— and I'm thinking of a few businesses I know even that are putting out product that they're under the impression that it's incredibly clean. And I'm like, there's no way it's completely clean because, for example, natural flavors have carriers and most companies are not revealing what those are.

But most likely corn maltodextrin.

It's so interesting because like Element Tea was, was just highlighted about how they had a very high amount of maltodextrin from their flavorings and everyone's freaking out. See, for me, I just thought it was interesting because it's like, oh, well, they probably didn't know is my guess. Maybe they did. I don't know. I'm just giving them the benefit of the doubt that they didn't know and they're working on trying to fix it. But everyone that's making a comment is like, oh, well, that amount of maltodextrin is not going to throw off your blood sugar. It's like, I'm not concerned about my blood sugar with it. I'm concerned about transparency and the fact that I'm getting corn. When I didn't ask for corn, nor was it ever revealed to me that there was corn. And I'm personally sensitive to corn.

In all fairness, corn maltodextrin, for all the negative things that it is, it's from corn. Corn is highly GMO'd. It's highly exposed to pesticides. You know, is someone reactive to the corn? Are they reactive to the pesticides? Are they reactive to something in the processing? Who knows, right? We can test. to see if there's corn antigen in there. So it is possible to use corn malto and test for the corn antigen. Those things are so highly processed, there may be zero corn left in it. I didn't test this product. I didn't look at their COA, so I don't know that for a fact, but there is the possibility to test for the corn presence.

Are you guys testing for everything? Because that's the other issue is a lot of people don't realize that It's not like the manufacturer is paying for that. It's the company that's paying. And those testing fees just get higher and higher and higher. And suddenly everyone's like, well, why is LMNT or why is this product so expensive?

It's like, well, because we had to pay for so many fricking testing fees. I have a co-formulator. She is a licensed naturopathic physician out in Oregon. She and I decide what formula we're going for. We just I'll share this one with you because I'm so proud of our Ultra Vitamin D3. We got our USDA organic seal on it. We use organic reindeer moss, so that's lichen-based. It's vegan. It is not from sheep grease, which is what lanolin is. And most D3s are from lanolin. We also use organic MCT oil from coconut. So those are the only 2 ingredients in there. But each of those ingredients were tested on their own. And each of them have their own organic certifications on their own before we put them together. But we do that for every single solitary ingredient that we choose. Everything gets tested singularly to know what's in it. Because if we just test the finished product, well, now I didn't, I don't, I don't know which one that came from. And if you have something like this, my new Menopause Symptom Relief Formula, it has 4 different ingredients in it. And one of them is trademarked and it has 3 herbs in it. So if I wait and test this at the very end, I don't know what's what. So each and every ingredient gets tested before we move forward, before any prototypes or bench tests or any of that kind of activity happens. And then we test the finished product that we are sent. Each of us are sent a case of product to observe it. We observe everything from the label. We use biostones, so it's rock, not not paper on our, on our label, but we inspect everything, every single pill. How does it smell? How does it look? How does it taste? Is this exactly what the prototype looked like? And then we send that out to a third party to verify that what we said is in the bottle is actually in the bottle before we accept the shipment from, you know, the producer of it.

So every lot that you produce, they're doing that?

Yeah.

You must have to be on top of your inventory incredibly, because that probably slows down the process, right, of you getting the actual product Well, we're really new.

We're young. We're 28 months into this. Fortunately, we're going about this, this way from the very beginning. This is, this is the ethos of our company. And we're making those decisions upfront, what we're going to test, how often we're going to test, what labs we're going to trust. We've found that there are labs that'll say, what's the original C of A? What's your label claim? What do you want it?

They're, they're basically adjusting things to be what you need it to be so you can sell it to the public. Yeah. The illusion. Yeah. The illusion continues. What's your primary focus when you're testing? So for example, like more and more we're hearing about microplastics. Are you testing for microplastics? Are you testing for glyphosate? You know, like what are your main focuses when you are testing? You, you mentioned, of course, you're testing the ingredient just to make sure the ingredient's pure.

Yeah.

But what about all those other things?

So it depends on what the ingredient is, but we're testing for carriers. We want to know if we say no carriers at all. For instance, our bromelain that's coming out in our new quercetin product is just straight bromelain. We had to test it to make sure there's no carrier, no corn malto in there, or worse. Were those pineapples? Were those trees, plants, everything? Was something sprayed? Residual solvents. How did you extract it? What was the method? Was it hot water, cold water, ethanol? You know, alcohol can be an extractor too. Or did you use something like hexane? In our search for a vegan D3, we found a company that uses pine. And sustainability and love for our planet is a big deal for Jen and I, for Pure Essentials. We don't want to raid any one particular place and cause an issue or cause harm to the earth or the farmers or the community. We wanna make sure that what we're doing is sustainable long-term. So we thought pine, our country's never gonna run outta pine trees. This is gonna be brilliant. Let's use pine. They use hexane to extract the D3 from the pine. Okay, let's test that. Yes, there was hexane in the final goods. So there are companies that are using that raw vendor, which is—

Hexane is a petroleum, right?

Yeah. It's not a good—

you don't want it.

I don't know that there is a good toxin, but there are things that our body can, you know, it just takes what it leaves and, you know, needs and leaves the rest. But this one that's in one of the classes to absolutely avoid.

So in many ways you're testing to make sure the manufacturer is on the up and up, really.

So there are a few different levels. So a company like us who does not own our own manufacturing facility. We don't own our own machines. We contract what's called a co-manufacturer. So this is a company, and I'll tell you who we use. We use, one of the companies we use is Gemini Pharmaceuticals. Let me tell you what, you talk about a buttoned-up organization. That sales rep a year and a half ago looked at me and said, Melissa, you're going to be spoiled by Gemini. And I thought, hmm, I've heard that one before. I had already been through 3 co-manufacturers and I can, I can share some of the debacle with you with those guys. And so my rep says, you're going to get spoiled with us. And I said, sure, I'll give you a chance to try. He wasn't wrong. Everything that we do with them, every raw ingredient, they test it exactly the way we want it tested. They provide us with every bit of paperwork from the original vendor, the raw ingredients. So they're the ones who we tell them what we want. They go out to whatever country we say, and we try to avoid certain countries. Unless there's just something that doesn't grow anywhere else. So we do source globally, but we do pay attention to what countries those come from. Anyway, Gemini then goes and gets the bromelain from where we want it, the exact company we want it from, because Jen or myself has— mostly Jen— has already had a conversation with that company and we've decided what we want because we've already gotten COAs from that company. But then Gemini will turn around and give us the COAs for that particular batch. They don't hide the company name on it. They don't redact any information. They don't blur anything. They give it to us exactly the way that it is. And this is the big thing that I hope that the other companies, supplement companies, food companies, I don't, it doesn't matter. Your product can be reverse engineered just by the ingredient label. So stop hiding it.

Can you explain that further?

So many of these companies, particularly the supplement companies, that's what I have the experience with. They don't want to give you the COA, the certificate of analysis, because it breaks down exactly exactly what's in that product. If this is a magnesium product, it'll say magnesium by ascorbate, and this is the amount that they found. This is the reference range. Magnesium glycinate by blah, blah, blah. And so it has exactly what the form is, exactly what the amount is, exactly what our label claim is, exactly what the reference range is. And these companies don't want to share that because they think that, you know, they're letting out the ancient secrets. Well, anybody can pick up this label of Pure Essentials product and go take it to a co-manufacturer. They have R&D teams, they have chemists, they have scientists, they can reverse engineer it just from that.

In a sense, you're saying, well, anyone can do it, but that's, that's not our mission. So we're not going to be in fear of someone doing that because our mission is the transparency and planetary human, you know, people, planet, Profit, obviously the 3 Ps, right? So let's dig into the ingredients, not of your product necessarily, but of what you learned through this journey of diving into the supplement industry. You mentioned ascorbic acid already. What would you say are another 4? So we can give people 5 of the kind of main ingredients that we see in Supplements that most people don't realize are coming from a certain source that they may be getting something that they didn't know that might have a carrier that they didn't know.

So there's citric acid. We know about that. GMOs.

Oh, I said ascorbic acid, didn't I? So citric acid. Sorry.

Yeah. Well, you know what? Let's go back to ascorbic acid. People think ascorbic acid is also citrus.

That's true. Yeah, you're right.

It's not, it's fermented corn. And acetone. Every vitamin C on the planet, every ascorbic acid, unless you make it differently, is likely from corn or beet. Now there are, you will see, someone's going to say, no, mine's not from that because mine says this. If you have something that's from say acerola cherry, it is the acerola cherry, 1,700,000 pounds of it smushed down. And you have whatever vitamin C that equals. But if it says ascorbic acid on it, it is fermented corn. Ours is from cassava. So ours is different. There's cornstarch. Cornstarch can be in supplements. They use that as a filler. Carrageenan. People think, oh, seaweed, natural. It's okay. No, it's not. No, it's not. Not at all. Not only has it been shown And look at the NIH, look at PubMed, go look at some real studies, not the Google Health study and your Gemini and your AI and all that kind of stuff now, because I have noticed that even ChatGPT puts absolutely false citations in articles. You have to fact-check everything these days. It looks really real, but it's not scientific at all. So go to the scientific sources, go look at those. Carrageenan has been shown to be a cancer-causing agent.

Why though? Even as a chef, I was always, it's like, it's a seaweed. So what are they doing to it to do that? It has to be how they're processing it, right?

It's quite possibly how it's being processed. I do know that, and I learned this recently, my son was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma and he's the Marine. So all of these military people in my family.

I'm sorry.

Thank you. He's, he's good. He's good. It's gone. He had a whole year of treatment and we combined Both sides, allopathic and naturopathic medicine. He took his dietary supplements. His oncologist was great with it. We all worked together. It was very good. And he's great. He was co-diagnosed though. This is what kind of made it initially in the beginning, really, really wonky. He was diagnosed with alpha-gal syndrome.

So the beef, so sensitive to beef, right?

Sensitive to all mammal protein. Carrageenan mimicked that. In the alpha-gal community, we learned that carrageenan mimics that same reaction in the body. And that's really when we started digging in even closer to these supplements. Like, what is really in here that someone could have a reaction to and they have no clue? They're going through their food log. They're running down their diet. Look at this. Look at this. Nothing was different. Nothing changed. But wait a minute, maybe something did change. Here's another shocker. The co-manufacturer can change an ingredient on you if it is as close as possible. If I'm manufacturing clay and I'm using this particular type of clay, that— it's called a co-manufacturer because they're the people that own the building. They're the ones that are actually putting the powder in the capsules and putting them together. If they run out of X clay, but they have Y clay, it's really, really close to X clay. They can put white clay in there and they don't have to tell me.

What is the definition of close though? Is it a certain percentage? Is it within 10%, 5%? Do you know the details around that?

That's a great question. And I have yet to discover that answer.

You know, when I was creating Pluck, because it, it's the first time anyone had ever combined these ingredients in, in the way that we did. The USDA and FDA didn't know what to do with us. They kept lobbing us back and forth to one another. And I was like, I talked to a USDA overseer who basically like shared the details with us, but they, for months they were like, no, you take it. No, you take it. And at one point I got a call before I actually had an in-person meeting and they were like, hey, can you just put in 2% or less of organ meat? And I was like, wait, what? And they're like, well, because if you do that, then we don't care about you anymore. Like, you're good as long as it's 2% or less. And I was like, but that's pointless. Like, 2% organ meat in a seasoning that you're already only getting a little bit at a time. Like, that's snake oil. Why would I do that? That was one piece of story that I was like shocked about that they just, it's like, they don't understand the value of what we're trying to do, what our mission is, right? So they're not on board. They're more concerned about that percentage that we just identified, even when they can make changes, right? We'll skip ahead. Then I was actually looking for a co-manufacturer or co-packer, and I ended up talking to one of the chemists at one of them, and they were like, well, why are you using organ meat? And I was like, what? And he was like, well, cause I could put in a flavoring that gives you that meaty taste. Why do you need the organ meat? And I was like, oh my God, this is the industry. This is the issue.

We had a co-manufacturer who we were going through, we were reviewing the formula. We were reviewing documentation. We wanted to make sure that we had all the documentation for each one of these ingredients. This was a complicated herbal formula, which did not see the light of day, by the way. Back on the drawing board and we're going to look at it again later on this year. So this company was providing us the COAs. They weren't necessarily hiding anything, but they weren't just forthright with everything, if that makes sense. Like if I asked for it, they'd give it to me, but they weren't just coming up with it and saying, here, here's everything that you need. So Jen and I were sitting in a meeting with them and this one particular herb, they said they used the whole plant. And she says, but that's not what you do with that particular herb. You only use the berry. You use the stem and the leaf, you're going to give people diarrhea. Like we can't have that in our supplement. That's not what we're going for here. And they said, well, you know, this is what this raw vendor told us. This is what they said that they use. And she said, well, that's okay, but we're not going to use that. We want the berry. That's the part of the plant that we need. And he holds up a catalog that says the letters EZ Health on it. That's where he was ordering our herbs from. Like they had no reputation. They had no, it was like you go into, I don't know, Napa Auto Parts or something. You'd go and try and find what your filter is and it's a catalog and you do, do, do, do. It was like that.

Oh my gosh. So, so in many ways they don't even know. Their sourcing. Oh my gosh.

No, no, we were looking for cranberry and we did end up finding one. And we did put that in our product and that'll be out later this month. It ships, but we found a great source of cranberry in Oregon. Who knew Oregon had higher polyphenol activity in their cranberries? The anthocyanins in cranberry from Oregon is higher than from Massachusetts or Wisconsin, which are like known for their cranberry growing. So we go to Oregon for this cranberry and find out from the sales rep that the cranberries are frozen, shipped to China where they're dried, sprayed, pulverized, powderized, and then shipped to California to be sold in America. And they didn't have to tell anybody that.

What is the consumer to do? Like, just such a lack of transparency. You know, I haven't been in supplements for 20 years, but I've been in the health field for 20 years. And even I get paralyzed. I'm just like, oh my gosh, what? We're not supposed to eat vegetables now? Like, I don't, you know, like whatever the trend is, it's like, oh, I just can't, I can't keep up. Because in a sense, we're saying our food industry is not as nutritious as it was. And this is a fact. The government's been tracking it for decades. Basically every, every few years or every decade, they can show that it's You know, a tomato of today is not a tomato of 10 years ago. And it kind of goes for everything. So we know that less nutritious food equals nutritional deficiency. We look to supplements to supplement that nutritional deficiency, but most people are purchasing supplements based on price, which we know for a fact means that there's going to be fillers. There's going to be ingredients that are not what's on that label, not revealed. You're getting less of a dose or of an active ingredient in that supplement than you would if you were going to a practitioner quality supplement. So we know that, we know that there's ingredients that are in those products in all supplements that may not be listed. Can you actually talk about why those aren't listed? You mentioned earlier it was because, you know, there's proprietary, but there's other reasons as well, right?

Here's a fact. This isn't a what-if. We learned that mag glycinate is standardized to a certain percent. I'm going to say 15%. Don't quote me on that, but I think it was 15%. That's what it is. That's the potency of mag glycinate. It's standardized to that percent for a certain reason. So then you know how much you're going to put in and you're going to get more and more and more like that. If someone says that they have potency at 20% or 25%, what we learned from this one particular chemist Is they likely have bulked it up beyond the 15% with mag oxide. Well, mag oxide is not very absorbable. It's not super beneficial to the gut. And we don't want mag oxide at all in there, but it doesn't have to be reported on the back of the label because it wasn't intentionally added to the formula.

It was already, it's an ingredient.

It's part of the mag glycinate. So the mag glycinate is what's listed.

That is one of the loopholes, right? And I know that the flavor industry does that. Like, so when, when the manufacturers receive the natural flavor or the artificial flavor, they, in most cases, A, don't even know what ingredients are in those flavorings, cuz it's an industry that is not very transparent, but B, the natural flavor is the ingredient. So nothing else has to be listed. But yet we're learning more and more where, you know, through, through people like yourself, that there are nefarious ingredients within these ingredients.

And there doesn't have to be. That's the trick. I don't think supplement manufacturers are out there trying to hurt people. They're not trying to, it's not malicious in intent. I think things have just been done the same way for so long. It's not like any other industry. You know, if socks are made the same way with that crinkle seam thing across the toe until someone says, I don't like that seam. And I have to, I'm tired of turning my socks inside out every time I go run 10 miles. The sock industry doesn't change. Right. And have seamless now or tagless shirts or, you know, those kinds of things. So I think it's, it's our time to stand up and say, got it. You're not trying to hurt us on purpose. And you may not put value on this because corn is not listed as one of the major allergens. So when we say to a co-manufacturer, we don't want any major allergens, to Jen and I, corn is in that, is on that list, but it's not one of the government-recognized top ones. So we have to specifically say all of these things.

And it's on your list mostly because it's, it's usually a GMO corn, right?

It's that. And there are people that are sensitive to it. A celiac should not have that. Is it a teeny tiny amount and will that hurt them? I don't know that, but I don't want that on my watch. So let's just not use it. Let's go tapioca. You know, there are rice solutions that use the rice hull. There is no rice antigen, but it takes time and it takes a lot of testing and it takes asking questions. We had a co-manufacturer down in Florida that was putting together We put the formula together and they were helping us, you know, backtest everything. Can this be in this size gusset bag? And is it going to taste good? We were trying to make a meal replacement that hasn't seen the light of day either. They're very complicated. Those are places where ingredients get hidden in those, those protein powders.

Share a little bit about that. Like, because of the filler?

Because of the filler, number one, when you're going with a plant-based protein, There's going to be heavy metals there. Stuff was grown in the ground. I think there's more education that needs to be done around Prop 65. It does not mean automatically cancer. Go pull the carrots or the beets from my backyard. Yeah.

They're going to be higher in lead.

Right. They're again, that corn malto is just so, just insidious. It's everywhere. Vitamin A, find a vitamin A that's not soaked in corn oil. Please find it and let me know. We haven't found it yet. 2 and a half years later, we have not found What we want. B vitamins. Some of these co-manufacturers have laughed at us when we say, this is the form we want. This is the form that helps the human body. And they say, but we can get this one for you cheaper. I'm the one who buys the organic stuff. I'm the one who buys the grass-fed, grass-finished beef. I'm not worried about that part because I'm making these supplements for these people, the people that put value on all of the ingredients and the ingredients of the ingredients.

What are the kind of top 3 nefarious ingredients that consumers should be looking for on labels that are probably indications of stay away from this product?

Mag stearate. Mag stearate's used as a flow agent. It keeps the powder from sticking to the machines. So if, if the powder, whatever that ingredient is, goes through too fast, it'll stick to the machine and burn and then it's ruined. So they use that kind of as The anti-sticky stuff, but it can cause neuromuscular issues in great quantities. It also, in a lot of cases, is made from pig. Someone with alpha-gal can't have magisterate.

But is that even gonna be listed on the label if they're using it on the machines?

Well, they use it in the powder because as it's going through the machine, it lubricates the machine.

Oh, okay. So it is an ingredient.

It is. I have seen companies starting to use palm oil and they're starting to like differentiate themselves in that way. And they say mag stearate from palm.

The palm oil must have a carrier, right? I mean, it's a, it's a liquid that they're then drying, right? Right.

They probably use alcohol in that case to help with that one.

But does it fully dry without a carrier? Because like, even I think coconut water, that usually has a carrier as well, doesn't it? When they dry it.

It depends on who's doing it. There are places that are doing it right, but they're so small and they're so expensive. They get overlooked. They're for the boutique brands. They're for the people who do put value on that. So the next one up I'm going to say is sodium benzoate. That can magnify hyperactivity and ADHD in kids.

And that's a preservative, right?

It is a preservative. It's a filler, a preservative. It can also increase or exacerbate asthma. In adults, it's usually combined with ascorbic acid. And when it does, it creates a carcinogen called benzene. When you mix them together.

I remember when I was a kid, there was this product called Koala. It was like an orange soda. It was such a fascinating thing. They pulled it off the shelves because they said it had high amounts of benzene. And I was like, wait, but isn't benzene in coffee as well?

I think in some, in Pure Essentials, it's not.

But back in the day, I think it was, I mean, I'm talking, this is in the '80s.

Yeah.

I'm pretty sure most of the coffee on the, on the shelves, 'cause there was no kind of artisanal coffee then, no awareness around Starbucks didn't exist. You know, they were in the tin cans that you had. Yeah. It was all the tin cans. And I, and I remember they pulled it off the shelves, but there was a point of like, well, they got pulled off 'cause they were a smaller company, but the bigger industry would never get pulled off the shelf for that. But it's in there.

Sodium benzoate's not just in food. Fun fact, I had done my food chemical sensitivity testing. Sodium benzoate came up in it and I thought, this is the weirdest thing. We only become reactive when we're talking about delayed reactions. We become reactive to the things that we're exposed to the most. If we haven't been exposed to it, we don't develop a sensitivity to it. Our body just doesn't randomly say, we're not gonna process broccoli today. It doesn't work that way. So I'm trying to figure out where sodium benzoate— I know where my supplements come from. I know where my food comes from. Where am I getting this stuff from? And I happened to be in Houston. I had these organic apricot, whatever face wipes, real quick nighttime routine kind of thing. I woke up the next day and my face was like red and swollen. Like someone had been slapping me all night long. And I'm like, oh my gosh, I have to give a presentation today. What is wrong with my face? I look at the back of it. Sure enough, sodium benzoate. I had been doing it to myself this whole time.

Yeah. I mean, of course we're talking about supplements, but the skincare industry is, you know, it's just as, or even more worse, you know? And then of course the cleaning products, I mean, those don't even, most of those don't even have ingredient labels, right? Like that industry is a mess in terms of transparency. Okay. Any other ingredient to highlight?

Another filler is titanium dioxide. So titanium dioxide makes white things whiter. It like amplifies the white color. It creates gut issues. It breaks down the intestinal lining. It can trigger IBS issues. So IBS itself is not its own diagnosis. It's a, you know, accumulation of all of these different symptoms. And here you have IBS. It can trigger symptoms, people that are already diagnosed with colitis and Crohn's, and it, you know, it can trigger a reaction. Titanium dioxide. Dunkin' Donuts, people can Google this. Dunkin' Donuts got in trouble for putting titanium dioxide in their powdered sugar because they wanted the powdered sugar To be even brighter white.

I'm thinking of the health industry. The way that it's set up is someone is sick. They have something going on. They go to their doctor, their doctor diagnoses it, whatever it is. And then they give them some sort of pharmaceutical or supplement sometimes. And they say, okay, go on your way. Just take this. And sometimes that this is forever. But no one's actually saying, well, let's look at what you're putting in your body. What's— look, let's look at what you're putting on your body and let's look at what you're spraying in your environment and let's see what's in those things. So how should the consumer be advocating for themselves? Like what we've talked about, clearly people should be reading labels. What are some other kind of like general tools people can be using to just kind of start to bring awareness into their homes, into their lifestyle and, you know, start practicing, you know, what you're about to share, what would be some good practices that people can start incorporating to just be more mindful of what's in the things that they're eating or using?

I would say the very, very first thing for people who are ready to make the change is forgive yourself for all of the things you didn't know, because I see people going, oh my gosh, I didn't even know that. Oh my gosh, I didn't know that was in You know what? You didn't know. Put it aside. Don't worry about what you didn't know. Now you do. Start from this point forward and make these changes one at a time. First thing, your drinking water. We cannot control where the air goes and the birds and the bees and all of those kinds of things when it comes to the food. Even things that are grown on a completely organic space, you can't control where that water flows. So do the best you can with what you have. First is your drinking water. Make sure that that is clean drinking water. I can tell you if people tested their water, they will find things in there that aren't supposed to be there.

More than just fluoride, clearly. Yeah.

We found amoxicillin.

Oh my gosh. Right.

I don't take that. I haven't taken that in, I don't know how many years. Can't even tell you how many years. You can find things in your water. COVID was found in the water treatment plants long before And I don't know if I'm even allowed to say COVID, but it was a thing and it did happen. It was found in water treatment plants and people can backtest that too. And it was found before they made a big giant deal and started putting protocols in place. It was found, it was here, it was done. And that's not conspiracy stuff. There are things in your water. Get a water filtration system. If what you can do in your house, in your budget right now is, you know, one of the on-the-counter ones, That has the expert filter. I don't even know what they're called at this point. And you see it has chemicals listed on it that it says it does this. Start there. Work your way up to a whole house filtration system because it's not just the water you drink. It's the water you bathe in. It's the water you brush your teeth in. It's all of it. Next up, look at the dirty dozen. If your budget, you know, is such that you're starting at this place and you're going to work, you know, good, better, best. Start here. Look at those foods, purchase those foods, and spend the extra on these that we know are really, really highly pesticide exposed.

And can you just share for anyone that doesn't know about the working group, like what the Dirty Dozen is?

Yeah, you can go to EWG and you can look and see what all of the chemical exposures are, what the toxicity of the thing is, all the way down to shampoo and body wash. You can go there. And get a rating for everything that you're doing.

Every year they're testing, right?

They're your buddy. They're your friends. They're the ones doing this work for you. So you don't have to. Another organization that you can look to is Made Safe. Made Safe is certifying products that are not exposed to and do not contain these 14,000, 15,000 toxins. So you can go to Made Safe as well. Look at the foods that have thin skins. You know, when you wash your fruit, I know people laugh at people like us and they go, well, you can't wash a pesticide off. You're right. You can't. We're washing dirt off. Got it. I don't want to clump of dirt or a snail or whatever on my, on my vegetables. So if we're using thin-skinned fruits and vegetables, those are the ones that are probably highly exposed to pesticides on the inside, on the flesh. So let's go to certified organic for those types of things.

You know, that's something I've always found interesting. And I love that you pointed out water first is that a lot of times when people are cleaning their food, you know, washing their food, you know, like my mom always loves to say, oh, wash that apple, wash that berry. And I'm like, well, but what are you washing it in? We have this idea that one thing is going to cancel out another, but a lot of times in more cases than not, that one thing we're using to attempt to cancel out the The other thing is also contributing to an issue.

Yeah. Well, if you have a water that's full of chemicals and toxins and, you know, whatever else can be in that water, you're not helping the strawberry.

Yeah. I always think about chicken, for example, right? Because they wash chicken and on the manufacturer level, they wash it, you know, usually with some kind of chlorine or something like that. And so the big thing is like, people are like, oh, should I wash my chicken when I get home? I'm like, yeah, but there's chlorine in your water. Like, Like, who cares? It's like, you're either been chicken chlorine washed one place or you can do it in your home, but it's still, unless your water has no chlorine, it's going to be washed in chlorine.

People just don't know these things. They don't know what the process is for the food, for those chickens. Where did they start? And what was their whole cycle to get to your table? People don't know that.

I really love exposing what's going on and helping people really think deeper about the ingredients and what's not on the label. And just, just be aware that there are things that you can, you can have the best intentions. You can have all the money in the world and be spending all this money, but you still may not know what you're eating or what's, what's in that product that you're using. So where my mind goes with that lack of control that we really That is truth. We don't have control over all these things. And you touched on that earlier, is then how much emphasis should we put on all this? Because sometimes when, what I'm seeing a lot, and I'm curious on your feedback on this, is that people are getting extremely anxious and extremely stressed out over these details that we're highlighting. I have to imagine that that stress is more an issue than potentially even the item. Now, that's not to say that someone who has a delicate immune system who's responding or reacting to these things, that person, yes, they should absolutely be looking at what they're eating. But someone who's not as sensitive to some of these things, or maybe has less symptoms showing up at this stage in their life, isn't the stress around this awareness going to potentially cause more harm than good? What are your thoughts around that kind of philosophy?

I love that you brought up someone whose body is less reactive or less sensitive, because honestly, our bodies have evolved over thousands and thousands and thousands of years. We're designed to survive. Our bodies can heal. Our bodies have this innate ability to detox. So stop drinking all your celery juice, juice cleanse detox stuff. That's what our kidneys do. That's what our liver does. How about we just don't put the things in there that clog up their process? Let's rely on our bodies to do what they're supposed to do by taking care of them. And we take care of them by drinking clean water. We take care of them by not putting excessive processed foods and alcohols and stuff. It doesn't mean you can't have a cupcake and a glass of wine for your birthday. Doesn't mean that at all. It just means you probably don't want the scratch your box open kind of thing on a daily basis. Doesn't mean that everybody has to become a chef either. It means you have to do the best you can with what you have. And there are so many other, you know, 3 or 4 more pillars. Are you sleeping every night? Are you getting 8 to 9 hours of sleep? These people that tell me, oh, I get 4 to 6 and I'm good. No, you're not. You might be good today, A couple years, you're not gonna be. And you probably aren't. You just haven't made all of the connections yet. So are you sleeping? Are you having fun? Do you laugh every day? Are you hanging out with the kids and blowing bubbles and chasing the ball? And you know, that's movement and exercise too. So what, you didn't have time to get to the gym? Go to the garage and do 25 jumping jacks and 25 pushups. If that's where you are in your day and in your routine and in your timeframe to work with, Do it because that's better than absolutely zero and plopping on the couch and watching TV for the next 3 hours until it is time to go to bed or until you fall asleep on the couch and wake up. So it's time to go to bed.

I think it's a really important message that we can, you know, we can focus on the dirty secrets of the supplement industry. We can reveal all these things to be aware of, but at the end of the day, there was this book that I once read. They called it your stairway case of needs. So these are your basic pillars, your basic steps. That we all need to be covered to be able to function, you know, in this world fully. That ultimately that's where you start. And that some of these granular details that we covered today are for people at very specific stages of either their health or their awareness where they're ready to be more aware of like, okay, I'm taking this, I'm using this in my house, I'm eating this. I want to know more details about like, how does meat that's 100% grass-fed affect my body? How does it feel in my body versus, you know, conventional meat that was grass-started, but then fed other things like, you know, GMO soy or corn or whatnot later on, you know? So I think what I hear you saying is we need to honor where we are in this stage of awareness. And let that dictate your next step. But I loved that you uncovered so many things in this conversation today that, I mean, I learned so much. Where can people get the supplements that you, you've very consciously created? And then where can they learn more about you?

So everyone can go to Pure pure-essentials.com. So P-U-R-E dash E-S-S-E-N-T-I-A-L-S. You can get all of the supplements there. You can learn about the supplements there. There are data sheets. If there's something that we talked about here that you don't see on the website, there's an email, clientservices@pure-essentials.com. Send an email. We're happy to answer your questions. I get on the phone with people, with customers. Why is this any different than the other one? I call them and I talk to them about it because I'm proud of what we've done. So they can do it at pure-essentials.com. You can go to the resource center at Pure Essentials on the website, and you can download hydration ideas, recipes for fruit drinks, infused waters. There's all kinds of healthy recipes on there. Cooking is my passion. So folks can go there. They can follow us on the socials, Shop Pure Essentials. We put information out about All of this, all of the time. They can follow us there. You can go anytime there. Take a look, take a look at the supplements. Take a look at the coffee. We have our own coffee now that's been mold tested, ochratoxin A tested, all of the fun things that's passed. So go take a look at everything. I'm excited for, for your group. And we did a code for you, PLUCK10. So anyone who goes can put PLUCK10 in the little code box at the cart and get a little bit of a reduced rate just for listening to our show.

Oh, thank you so much. I haven't actually tried your products, so I can't necessarily talk to them, but I, after having— well, you came vetted to me by someone I very much respect and care about and trust. But now after having talked with you for an hour, I absolutely feel your integrity. I cannot mirror back to you enough how you are taking the gift of your sister of what she gave you and you are passing it forward in such a beautiful way. And I hope, I hope you honor yourself for that because it's similar to what we said. We can only take the next step when we're ready. We can only, we only know what we know. Now, for me, looking back at your journey from what you shared and seeing how you're showing up in the world, I have to think that you, you took that gift and just created such bounty with it. So her life is just being so honored.

Thank you for recognizing that. And thank you for saying that.

Thank you. And please continue to fight for transparency. We need people and companies like you. I think it's the only way we are going to see change. And I love that you mentioned that, that even in an industry that's very antiquated, it's not that the industry is against human nature. We're not, no one is necessarily malicious. They just don't know better. They don't, they don't realize that some of these things are an issue. And the only way that we're going to do that is by businesses like you guys demanding that change.

And that's what we're doing. We're doing it for, for the people. If we want to, we want to raise the consciousness and we want to raise the awareness, you know, we have to do it from the foundational level, which is what we're putting in our mouth, what, what our body is becoming, because we are what we eat. And that includes dietary supplements too. So thank you for inviting me on, on your journey. And I'm glad to be on this mission with other like-minded people. So thank you very much.

Well, thank you all for either watching or listening. I'm your host, James Barry. This has been Everyday Ancestral, and I truly hope that you feel inspired and curious to learn more about what you're putting in your body or what you're spraying in your environment. But remember, most of all, just take it one day at a time. Be curious. Thank y'all. Thank you so much for joining me on Everyday Ancestral. If you enjoyed this episode, hit subscribe so you don't miss the next one. You can find the show notes, links, and resources mentioned at eatpluck.com. That's E-A-T-P-L-U-C-K.com. And hey, if you know someone who'd get something out of this, share it with them too. Stay curious, live well, and keep it ancestral.