Navigating Food Challenges with Daily Harvest's CEO

You're listening to good inside with Dr. Becky. I'm so excited to introduce you to Rachel Drury, mom of two and CEO of Daily Harvest, right after a word from our sponsor. Hi, I'm Dr. Becky, and this is Good Inside. I'm a clinical psychologist and mom of three on a mission to rethink the way we raise our children. I love translating deep thoughts about parenting into practical, actionable strategies that you can use in your home right away. One of my core beliefs is that we are all doing the best we can with the resources we have available to us in that moment. So even as we struggle and even.

As we are having a hard time.

On the outside, we remain Good inside. I have Rachel Drury on the pod today, and I am really excited about sharing this conversation. Rachel Drury is the founder and CEO of Daily Harvest, the company on a mission to improve human and planetary health by making it easy to eat more, more real, unrefined foods and vegetables every day. Rachel is also a friend, and so.

Having her on the pod to talk.

About food and allergies and parenting is really such a treat. Here's the thing about this episode. Rachel and I talk about her journey with her son's extreme food allergies. But this episode is relevant for all parents, as we all have had or will have to cope with things that don't go the way we expected. So as you listen, please do think about the things your child struggles with or the surprising bumps you've had along your parenthood road. I know that the themes that come up and the coping skills we discuss will be generalizable to a wide range of issues. With all that in mind, let's jump in. Hi, Rachel. I am so excited to be talking to you today.

Welcome to the pod.

Thanks so much. It's so good to see you.

You too. So why don't we begin? Tell everyone listening a little bit about.

Who you are and the kind of.

Things that excite you or that are on your mind.

So my name is Rachel Drory, and I'm the founder of David Daily Harvest, which, if you're not familiar with it, is a company dedicated to basically removing the friction between the intent of eating healthy or eating more fruits and vegetables and the action of actually doing it and integrating them into your life. Sounds simple. It's not. I think we all can look at our own lives and say, like, oh, okay, I could have eaten more fruits and vegetables today. So that's really our mission. And we do it in a way that makes sure that those fruits and vegetables Add to human and planetary health. What's on my mind? That's such a loaded question, Becky. There's so much on my mind.

Well, take a moment. And as you're thinking about that, it's interesting how you said removing that friction between intent and kind of behavior. I've never thought about good inside in exactly that language. But we talk a lot about how powerful parents know the kind of parents they want to be, and it's the how that can get in their way. How do I get back to that path? And in that way, our missions are so similar in giving people the how to kind of execute these intentions that they have.

I love that. I mean, you have to break it down into things that feel achievable, which is so much. You know, what listening to you on Instagram and through your, you know, various channels and helps do that makes total sense. I love that.

So one of the things I know about you, as you're thinking about the things in your mind, is that you're also a mom of two.

Oh, yeah, I forgot about that.

And, yeah, that's really important. There's so many parts of you, I didn't give you the chance to identify all of them. So I know there's a multiplicity beyond the single label. Don't worry. But about that, I feel like you're becoming a mom. You're starting Daily Harvest. Your passion for the way food impacts our body, like, that's not actually all unrelated, right?

No, it's not at all. And when I started Daily Harvest, it was because of a personal health journey that I had been on where I was working really hard, burning the candle at both ends, as we often do, and I was prioritizing everything over myself, and I started breaking out in these crazy hives, and I couldn't figure out why. And it, you know, it found. I found out that a lot of it had to do with what I was eating. And it was so crazy because I knew so much about health and wellness and nutrition. I was an athlete growing up. I was actually a rower, a lightweight rower, and I'm not naturally lightweight anything. So, like, really having to understand how nutrition fuels one's body. And I also studied the politics of food in college, so I had just so much information about this. But even though I had that information putting it into action and, you know, to what we were just talking about, it's actually removing that friction and putting it into action, that was. That was so hard. And, you know, that was kind of part one of the journey that led to Daily Harvest. But you know what you were just alluding to where, you know, then I had kids. And that added so many more variables to my day to day equation. But the food journey itself. I was pregnant with my oldest child when I started the business, having these crazy hives, which in and of itself was pretty scary. And it turned out that he also had terrible food allergies, which I found out through an anaphylaxis episode when he was nine months old. So, you know, it really all has come full circle.

So.

Wow.

I mean, so just a little bit of a summary for everyone listening. Yeah. So you were pregnant when you started Daily Harvest.

Yes, very.

You are also going through some health concerns yourself. Your body was not kind of feeling the way you might want it to, or at least was giving you signs that something isn't quite adding up. Right. And then your first, your first son, nine months. Nine months old, has a full anaphylaxis reaction. Can you tell me, I don't know, it's like a little more about that. Like, where were you? How did that happen?

Yeah, so we had started food when he was about five months old. And we had started, you know, at the time, I think the research has changed since seven years ago or six years ago, whatever it was. But at the time it was, you know, it was start food at six months, or at least what I had been told was start food at six months and don't introduce any allergens until later on. Like, you know, if there's a, if there's an episode, you don't want that to happen until your child is like nine months, a year, whatever it was. When Elon was born, he had severe eczema, and something in my gut just told me that he had food allergies. I listened to that instinct and I'm very glad that I did. So when it came to food, I was like, you know, I had my volume turned all the way up and I was just very attuned to what, what could be happening in his body because it was clear he had inflammatory challenges. I was regulating what I was eating when I was nursing, trying to figure out what it could be. We went to a ton of dermatologists trying to figure out what was causing the eczema. But ultimately I had an inkling and I was doing a lot of my own research, trying to understand, well, if he has these leading indicators for food allergies, how can I treat things differently? So we started feeding him a little bit early. And when I had finally figured out that I Shouldn't withhold these allergens, that I should actually proactively introduce them to my child. He was about nine months, so it was part of that exercise where I knew I was already like a little bit later than the science was evolving towards guiding, but I was there, so what was I going to do? And it was cashew. I will never forget this moment, ever. I gave him one little tiny baby spoonful. He had a huge smile on his face. And that smile turned very quickly into his eyes rolling back in his head, head to toe, hives, projectile vomiting, you know, challenged breathing, which was terrifying, as you can imagine. And, you know, we live about a block from urgent care and another block in the other direction from hospital. And I didn't think, I just picked him up and ran with him under my arm like a football. He was nine months and he was kind of like a chunky nine months. Ran with him out the door to urgent care. They said, we can't help you. And they said, run to the emergency room. And because I walked in and I didn't go through an ambulance, which I didn't know was a thing, they wouldn't let us in. And I. I started banging on the window until a doctor came to see what the problem was. And I explained it to him. I showed them my son and they let me in.

Wow.

Terrifying.

I have like, chills my whole body. So you were in your apartment when this happened?

Yep.

And I, I was. I. I don't even know my question. It was going to be some version of like, what was going on for you. I don't even. You're in survival, like, threat mode. So I'm guessing your body's just like going through the motions.

Yeah, I like to say I was in fight and flight. I don't know if that's possible, but I went into problem solving mode and it was at the same time completely terrifying. But, you know, we got a doctor and they gave him some epinephrine and, you know, that was a very traumatizing moment, but one that brought us on a very long journey. And I think we're in an okay place today. So.

So what, like, what kinds of things even happen next for you as a mom? For you now you're already kind of, what was it, a year into this business. Also, that's all about kind of clean eating, right? You're well versed in food. You have this nine month old who, honestly, I need a little bit more education in this. So if you have a cashew allergy, do you automatically know that there's other allergies or like how what kind of happened next, we didn't know.

So it kind of began this journey of discovery. And there wasn't a lot of straight line guidance on like, here's what you do next. So, you know, I crowdsourced some moms who had been through similar situations. Everybody was so welcoming and open and open with making introductions to other folks who had been through similar experiences. And that's where I started. So we joined a. I think at the time it was like a Facebook group on allergies in Manhattan. We were like, we have no idea what to do. And we got directed towards a series of doctors. We ended up at Sinai talking to the doctors there and trying to understand what the steps we needed to take to make sure that he was safe were going to be. And as a nine month old, he was pretty unaware, which was helpful. He didn't fear food or anything like that, which I don't know some of the outcomes that can happen with a kid that's older. But that wasn't the issue. It was more like us really trying to figure out how to navigate it. So we went up to Sinai and they did a ton of allergy testing. Dairy, wheat, egg, milk, tree nuts, sesame. And finding all of these. Finding out that he was allergic to so many things. I kind of linked it back to when I was nursing and he had just so much reflux and I was trying to figure it out and it all made sense. Cause I had to still eat and I couldn't have known to eliminate all of those things. So, you know, we at the time, the science said that it was just avoidance of all of those substances. So I changed my diet, which felt pretty impossible given that he was allergic to so many things. And we changed his diet and we just focused on fruits and vegetables.

There's so many more things I want to know and we'll get to so many more things. I'm curious if you remember what was the hardest part of it like for you as like a new mom, Right. Like new parents, you're tasked with keeping your kid alive, right? Then so many other things that usually we focus on. I want them to crawl, I want them to, you know, I don't know, learn how to manage frustration one day. You know, I want them to learn math, right. But like at the very basic level, which maybe a lot of parents don't even have to confront that consciously, it's like, okay, first keep them alive, keep them safe, right? That's our number one job. I always say to keep our kids safe. And that was kind of thrown in your face. Right. And just what. Yeah, what, what was that like for you as a new parent? And what, what do you remember are kind of the hardest parts of that?

Yeah. I went immediately into blaming myself for it. When I was pregnant, I had an incredibly clean diet. I had read all this research about. I mean, there's a reason why everything is toxic and everything is to blame for allergies and different things that we're seeing in this generation of children. And a lot of it is contradictory. And I don't think that there's any true science pointing at one or two things. But I went right into self blame mode and I started reflecting on my diet when I was pregnant. I was reflecting on what I used, what I didn't use. You know, did I eat too many nuts? Did I not eat enough nuts? I looked back into, you know, what I was eating when I was nursing. I thought about like his environment and I just, I felt like I had failed because I didn't protect my child.

And so like I did this to him or I could have not done this to him, or both.

Both at the same time. You know, we have no family history of food allergies, so I was just incredibly perplexed.

Yeah. And just for everybody listening here, I'm sure there's people listening where they're fully identifying in this kind of scary food journey or allergies, eczema, inflammation. And then there's probably other people who are thinking, my kids don't have that. But like they've had something. Right. And I have like a very minor version that first comes to mind the other, bigger versions too. But when I had my first, who's older, right. Than Elon, I remember his neck like he had this like torticollis. Right. Or that was a word. When you have a baby, that word is like heard often. Once you don't have a baby, like don't access that word ever again. Right. Until this moment. So everyone else, you're welcome for bringing that back to the front of your brain. And I remember also just being like, oh, I always change him in one direction and I should have realized that I had to switch. And he is always gazing at me like whatever it is. And it's this narrative of something in the world didn't go as expected and is kind of messy. And still this thing we do as adults that we started doing when we were kids to gain control of our environment, which is as long as it's Me, as long as it's my fault I have some semblance of groundedness and control. Right. But. But having said that, it also leaves us with a ton of like awful distress and, you know, guilt. But I am sure everyone listening here can identify my kid had torticollis. My kid has allergies. My kid was a late talker. My kid, you know, struggles in whatever way. And I think it's just really powerful to pause and see that struggle in front of you, then almost just like count the seconds until self blame as a reason comes up. Because we probably can't fully get rid of that. And actually, I would say actually we don't need to fully get rid of it. But just being aware of how quickly that kicks in gives us a little dissonance and kind of a little space to question it. Because I know for me in the early days of parenthood also when things didn't go great, it was just how true the self blame felt. It wasn't even the self blame voice. It just felt like the truth that could spiral me. And I'm sure, like, I can't even imagine how that spiraled you after this hospital moment.

Absolutely. You know, and it's interesting that you say that with my younger child, you know, he had torticollis also and he has, I think, flat feet. I don't know, he's in orthotics now. And I think from the experience with my older, I had a very different perspective where, you know, the conversation that I often have with my older kid who still to this day has to navigate birthday parties, has to navigate snack at school, where he has to have a different snack than everyone else. You know, he has to be pulled out of school to, to go to allergy appointments. We often talk about how everybody has something.

Yeah, everybody has something. Everybody does have something. And you know, I think if they don't now, like, they will. And that's not a negative prediction on anyone's life. But nobody goes throughout life without struggling and feeling a little different and wishing something else were true.

Yeah, absolutely.

About their, their world and yeah. That I feel like this is like a two things are true, like to your son, like everybody has something and it stinks that this is your thing.

Right, Absolutely.

So you're going through this, you're going through some self blame, what helped or like, what types of things. Because I'm sure there wasn't a day that you're like, I have it all figured out. Awesome. I'm never gonna worry that day hasn't happened. So what was part of your process, almost separate from figuring out the things you figured out for him, what was helpful for you as a parent during that time?

Yeah, I mean, I'm the type of person, I joke around. I call it beast mode, where I just go into extreme problem solving. And where I went with it was I wasn't truly satisfied with what I'd learned from the allergists, where, you know, the answer was avoidance. That, to me, did not feel like I could. I could send my son to school and, you know, I could send him to birthday parties. I could send him to camp in the future and feel like he was safe. So I went on my own journey to try to figure out what other information there was out there, what other options there were out there. And, you know, my husband is also very much cut from the same cloth. So we went into beast mode together, which was very helpful. And we kind of divided and conquered. Research books, medical journals. We read science journals. We have no business reading science journals. We spoke to everybody who was willing to get on a call. We read books. We just searched everywhere we could find. And where we landed was we really believed that systemic inflammation, based on what we had learned, was the root cause of his allergies. And everybody's different, for sure, but for us, when we had gotten deep enough to understand that that could be the cause for allergens, that's where I felt like we started taking back that control. And that feeling of, like, you know, while we can't control the fact that he has allergies, it felt like even though it was going to be a really long path, that there was a path to at least have him feel safe. And for us to be able to tell him that he is, he would be safe in these situations, you know, thinking three, four years ahead. So what we ended up doing is we ended up going to so many different kinds of practitioners, Some traditional, some completely untraditional. Some of the things that we did. Oh, my goodness, like, I don't even know if you would be my friend anymore if I told you. Like, these stinky foot things that we would, like, put on him that made him smell like fish. Like, I can't even tell you. But, you know, through trial and error and a lot of sweat, we were able to get to a place where, you know, he can eat out at restaurants, which was such a goal for us. And, you know, his eczema is still terrible, but it at least is contained under his shirt, so he's not self conscious about it. And you know, there's a lot of goalposts that we have been able to hit that, you know, I. I think if we didn't follow our instincts, we probably would not be where we are.

A part of what you said that I want to kind of draw out a little bit because it's like pinging in my brain over and over is really doing a deep dive and learning and learning a lot, not just taking one source and learning from so many different sources and so many different perspectives about this struggle your child's having. And again, food allergies, you know, something around, you know, motor development, speech, anything, right? We do get control when we blame ourselves, right? We at least kind of tell ourselves, okay, I'm a bad parent, and if I could be a better parent, this won't happen again, or this can change, right? I mean, it does a number on us, but it does give us a sense of control. A different way to get control is learning a lot, is becoming like a mini expert in this topic. And I'm visualizing right now Elon's food allergies, right? And if everyone right now takes a struggle that their kid has and almost just visualizes it even as like a circle in front of them, blaming yourself really is kind of an act of shutting out this issue. You kind of gaze in and you're like, I'm a horrible person, right? I did this to my child. I could have done this or this. It would have ended up differently. Versus getting control through learning is really like approaching the thing itself, right? Kind of. What you said, it didn't make sense.

To you to just like, avoid the allergy.

You're like, I just can't buy into avoidance, avoidance, avoidance. So I'm gonna start my approach strategy by just learning from a million different people and a million different sources. And it's so empowering to get control through learning through saying, yes. So many people know a lot of things, and there's a lot of probably contradictory information out there, but maybe I can trust myself to consume it. And in the process of doing that, like, see where I land, right? And it sounds like that balance of kind of, okay, pausing the self blame for a second or at least giving it a backseat and learning and then combining that learning with your and your partner's kind of, like you said, intuition or, you know, kind of ability to put various things together that really changed, like, the path of how things went with him.

Absolutely, absolutely. And, you know, ultimately going to different doctors, going to different practitioners, it's helpful, but they're Only seeing him for 10 minutes, 20 minutes at any given time. So being that I am the one that's, that's with him most frequently, seeing all, how all of the pieces come together, I felt like having the information gave me the confidence to trust those instincts.

Yeah. And now let's bridge from all of this to you are building Daily Harvest, a company focused all around food. You were immersed in all things food. How did that inform what came next? Or your passion or your drive or your mission?

Yeah. So when it comes to things like inflammation, when it comes to pollution, when it comes to pesticides, when it comes to all of the things that kind of ladder up to a lot of the chronic health issues that we're seeing pop up in future generation. I guess they're current, but younger generations. So much of it comes back to food. And Hippocrates said, let food be thy medicine. Somehow along the way, we started letting medicine be thy medicine. But medicine, if you start with food, becomes less important. And I'm not saying that this is, you know, universal, but generally, if we eat a lot of fruits and vegetables, if we eat balance, if we are consuming the vitamins that the Earth has to give us without consuming pesticides and some of the things that are unnatural or unfortunate outcome from the way that our food system has evolved, that we can all live happier, healthier lives. There's also the planetary component. Thinking about the environmental components, it's very complex and there's a lot to tease out. But my goal was always, how do I simplify this? How do I make it as easy as possible? At the beginning, I talked about removing the friction between intent and action. There's so much, so much friction into biodiversity. If you translate that into something I'm sure you've seen on Instagram, which is eat the rainbow. It's super important because every color of fruits and vegetables is giving you a different vitamin and a different component that your body needs to thrive. So biodiversity is one of our tenants because of that very reason. How do we make it easy not to just eat more spinach every day, but to eat the variety that's going to create this concept of, like, balance over time. And, you know, we are 95% organic, which is incredibly important to me. But what's more important is the 5% not organic, because organic is expensive. And the reason it is expensive is because only 1% of US farmland is, is used to farm food that we actually eat, and only 1% of that 1% is organic.

Wow.

That's why it's expensive. So that 5%, often people will say, well, you're not certified organic. And I get really excited to have the opportunity to tell them why, because we invest that 5%. We partner with farms to transition them from conventional to organic and we're talking about actually increasing that and how we might make a bigger impact. But partnering with farms to transition their land from conventional to organic. Organic is a three year process and farmers lose their shirt during this period. So making sure that we're investing in the system and eventually bringing down those organic prices is our goal.

And I, I feel like one of the, you know, points of friction between intent and kind of action around eating the way we'd want to eat is like ease and, and price point. Right. That yes, price of organic food is higher, but also just the price of like cooking yourself a meal. Right. Maybe even on one person or. Right. It's, it's higher, it's just not feasible.

So it's, there's also like opportunity costs. Right. You're spending that time cooking a dinner that is, is, you know, unprocessed, unrefined, made with nourishing food. That's time that you could be spending doing 50 other things.

Yeah. Like watching a show on Netflix for me. Totally. Or responding to emails or working or working out or reading a book or sitting and just giving myself permission to accomplish nothing. Right, all of those things. Absolutely. So like, how is that important in like what Daily Harvest puts out there? And then how does Daily Harvest kind of accomplish this for people?

Yeah, so we have this whole attitude and it's not something that we, we use externally very often, but internally we call it shamelessly not cooking. And it really is, you know, giving yourself that permission to not cook and know that you're not compromising on feeding yourself. You've got to put on your own oxygen mask first. Right. Like if you are not fed, it's hard for you to show up as your best self every day. How to not worry about feeding your family, how to make sure, sure that all of that friction, right. That opportunity cost is just out of the way, out of the equation when it comes to nourishing your body with a multitude and diversity of nature's bounty. Which sounds so cheesy as I'm like listening to myself, but it's important, but it's true.

I mean, and obviously so many people listening here are parents. And you know, as parents, like we, we are caregivers. Right. And I think a lot of us, it's not even until we have a kid that we Realize, wow, I need to be a caregiver of myself. I need to be a better caregiver to myself as a foundation. But we do want to take care of ourselves. It's just, it's time consuming and it's hard to do that. So I for one can say that I love everything you put out there into the world because it does give me a way, like you said, to take away the shame and to really allow me to say to myself, you know, like, oh, like I'm a good parent or I'm a good person who's making this decision. Right. And I feel good about food in my house, you know, and I also can give myself permission to then, like you said, use my time in other ways. Yeah.

You know, one of the reasons that we actually started with the smoothie, not a lot of people realize this, it's because I wanted something with my like 2 month old son. Right. That I could eat with one hand. And I thought a lot about that postpartum moment where your body is just depleting, depleted of so much because you've given so much to your child. You know, there's a lot of research on postpartum depletion and whether you believe in it or not, I knew that I was depleted. And there are so many cultures that really focus on that fourth trimester as a moment to truly nourish yourself and taking care of mom in those moments and not focusing so much on baby in those moments. And it's something that's just missing from American culture for the most part. So that was a lot of the insight and motivation for starting with the smoothie. And I was literally thinking about what can I eat that is a whole nutritious, going to give me the vitamins I need to nurse, to take care of my child, to work, to do all these things and show up in all these different places that I need to show up in a way that doesn't require, require me to, you know, put my child down, like take my hand off of my computer. And that was a lot of, of the origin story of daily harvest smoothies.

Well, I can, you know, kind of attest to that need that it is. So often it's apparent you're thinking like all the things I need to do there just aren't enough hours in the day or I don't have enough hands to do them. So the ability to take care of yourself and take care of a child, it's amazing that you and I are actually kind of, you know, in that same space trying to help parents do all those things. Do all those things at once. What I usually like to do as we end is to kind of give people a couple key takeaways and I would love to kind of co create that with you. So things that we actually said or extensions or something someone can think about or experiment with. So I'm gonna give you one in three, and I'll take number two. Okay. So are you ready?

I'm ready.

Drumroll. Okay, key takeaways for all of our listeners. Number one coming from Rachel herself.

Yeah, I would say taking the energy created from the shame spiral of, you know, things that in life that just happen with our kids that we can't control and putting it into education and kind of managing those feelings through that education and knowledge.

Love that. My number two takeaway here is to really start to notice and befriend that self blame voice. Right. That most of us have it, and most of us have it kick up when something feels really, really hard. And as much as we like to say, oh, I just wish that voice didn't come, and I wish this kind of compassionate voice came instead, we can really affect change by noticing that voice. Seriously saying hi to it high self blame voice and talking to it. Right. And that takes away a lot of its power and it will no longer feel as true because essentially you're making it a part of you instead of it feeling like all of you. All right, number three, bring us home at the end.

Oh, that's so much pressure. I would say trusting your instincts, even if it's your first child, you know your child best. You're capable of more than you think. You know more than you think. So your instincts are going to allow you to be the best advocate for yourself and for your child.

That is the ultimate takeaway. So amazing. Rachel, thank you for being here. Thank you for being so really so open about your journey and allowing us to like, kind of walk alongside you, especially those tough moments. So thank you and can't wait to connect again.

Thanks for listening to Good Inside. I love co creating episodes with you based on the real life tricky situations in your family. To share what's happening in your home, you can call 646-598-2543 or email a voice note to Good Inside podcast. There are so many more strategies and tips I want to share with you and so many Good Inside parents I.

Want you to meet.

I'm beyond excited that we now have a way to connect and learn together. Head to goodinside.com to learn more about Good Inside membership. I promise you it's totally game changing and follow me on Instagram and Facebook @Doctor Becky@good Inside for a daily dose of parenting and self care ideas. Good inside with Dr. Becky is produced by Beth Rowe and Marie Cecile Anderson and executive produced by Erica Belsky and me, Dr. Becky, if you enjoyed this episode, please take a moment to rate and review it or share this episode with a friend or family member as a way to start an important conversation. Let's end by placing our hands on our hearts and reminding ourselves. Even as I struggle and even as I have a hard time on the outside, I remain Good Inside.