Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2722: Fish Oil: Scam or Super Supplement? w/ Angelo Keely

Episode Date: November 6, 2025

 Kion Angelo Keely His main role with Kion. (2:01) How often do people cut corners? (4:05) The two paths with supplement companies —and why Kion chose the boring route. (9:10) Beating everyone with quality and education. (11:40) His greatest blind spot. (13:23) Essential amino acids vs. Whey protein powder for overcoming anabolic aging. (16:30) What makes one Omega-3 better than another? (24:10) The scientific breakdown of Omega-3s and why they are important to add to your diet. (26:08) How inflammation works, and how Omega-3s help the body heal faster. (29:44) Eating fish vs. taking a supplement, and what is the proper dose? (37:05) How to know if you have rancid fish oil. (39:12) Where they source their fish. (43:13) Busting the argument of the Omega-3 and 6s balance. (44:05) The two supplements that have a profound impact on longevity. (48:53) The hidden benefits of creatine. (49:41) The risks in the creatine space. (53:23) Leading from the front. (58:04) Methylation issues and creatine. (59:41) The Zion formula. (1:01:19) The BEST tasting coffee. (1:03:40) Top sellers. (1:10:00) Related Links/Products Mentioned Get 20% off Kion at getkion.com/mindpump Visit Pre-Alcohol by ZBiotics for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! ** Promo code MINDPUMP25 for 15% off first-time purchasers on either one-time purchases, (3, 6, 12-packs) or subscriptions (6, 12-pack) ** November Black Friday Deals (Nov. 1-15th): Sitewide 60% off. That includes every single MAPS program, bundle, MOD and guide. Enter the raffle now to win HUGE prizes: Bundles give you 10 entries, MAPS program gives you 3 entries, MODs or guides give you 1 entry. For programs go HERE. Enter the code BLACKFRIDAY at checkout.  Mind Pump Store Use protein powder? New report reveals that some have high levels of lead Mind Pump # 2432: The Truth About Essential Amino Acids with Angelo Keely Stimulation of muscle protein synthesis with low-dose amino acid composition in older individuals Omega-3's could protect women against Alzheimer's New research reveals how creatine supports a sleep-deprived brain Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources Featured Guest/People Mentioned Angelo Keely (@angelokeely) Instagram Website https://www.angelokeely.com/ Kion (@kion) Instagram Dr. William Seeds (@williamseedsmd) Instagram Featured Guest/People Mentioned Angelo Keely (@angelokeely) Instagram Website Kion (@kion) Instagram Dr. William Seeds (@williamseedsmd) Instagram  

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind Pump, Mind Pump with your hosts. Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness health and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. Today's episode, we talk about fish oil. Did you know fish oil has, well, I'm sure you know it has incredible health benefits, but it also helps a muscle building.

In some studies show Fat Loss, we have Angelo Keeley on the podcast. He's the founder of Keon supplements. He talked about fish oil and other supplements. This guy knows his stuff. So we learned a few things. We hope you enjoy this episode. By the way, if you want to get 20% off any of their products, including their fish oil, go to get keon.com.

That's G-E-T-K-I-O-N.com forward slash mind pump. Now, this episode is brought to you by Z-Biotics. This is a pre-alcohol drink. It's a genetically modified probiotic that breaks down the negative. buy products of alcohol consumption. This is unique. There's nothing like it. Try it out.

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Every workout program bundle. Every guide. Everything is 60% off right now. And by the way, every purchase enters you into a contest, two people are going to get a week vacation on us at the Mind Pump Park City House, plus $1,000 towards their travel. 15 people are going to get some personal training from our trainers and coaches. Go check it out, get the 60% off.

Go to Maps Fitness Products.com. Use the code Black Friday for the discount and the entries for the contest. All right, real quick, if you love us like we love you, why not show it by rocking one of our shirts, hats, mugs, or training gear over at Mind Pumpstore.com. I'm talking right now, hit pause, head on over to Mind Pump Store. at com. That's it. Enjoy the rest of the show. Angela, welcome back to the show, man. Sal, thanks for having me. Thanks, Adam. Thanks, Joe. Real quick, just that people know who you are, what you do. Who are you? What do you do? What do you do? I'm the co-founder and CEO of a company

called Keon, it's a supplement company. And I guess what makes that different or special? I mean, well, what do you do for them? What's your main role for Keon? My main role for Keon is, is really to lead the company. Okay. And so I'd say leading the company is everything from working with scientists to figure out, like, really, what are the best products to make and why, to leading marketing and sales to figure out, you know, how are we going to communicate to people, why they should buy a product, to actually working with, you know, the manufacturing team to make everything.

You know, since you went that way and we were talking kind of business off air, it just makes me curious, you know, as a founder, as this kind of CEO leader of it, like, what do you not do? What is the thing that you're like, I keep my hands out of that? that and like completely delegate that because either one, I suck at it or I hate it. Like, what's that thing for your business? That's a really good question. What I would say is there as the business, well, from the very beginning, but to now as well, things get more and more complex. And there's very, very technical roles throughout the business. So that could be everything from, I mean, obviously, like the actual accounting. It's very technical accounting to, I would say

to some of the quality dimensions of the business, like actually setting up the very unique specs and then reviewing all those specs for every single lot. Explain that. What do you mean? So, like, if you're going to manufacture a supplement, you want to have very, very specific specifications in terms of exactly what the raw ingredients are going to be, what testing they have to hit before you're even going to include them in a formula, and then you have to test them every single time they go in, and you have to test after a product's made.

So there's a lot of complex chemistry. and that's actually applied to ensuring that the products you're making are exactly what you think you're making and that they don't have any type of adulterance or other issues in them. How often do people cut that corner right there? Pretty, pretty often. It's pretty worried. It's pretty worrisome, honestly, in the supplement space. Are you kidding me all the time?

It was a consumer report that just came out another one on protein powders. They came out that showed like high amounts of lead in the majority of the protein powder. Yeah, but how much of that is like, cutting corners and then just, and negligence or just, man, there's just certain things are just so hard to get out.

Like, is that pure, like when you hear something like that, does your brain go pure negligence or they really just don't give a shit? Or, man, sometimes it's really tough to make something perfect or appear. Like, what goes through your head when you hear something like that?

That's a good question because I think it's complex and there's a lot of different reasons why it might happen. So one thing that does happen is that some raw ingredients can have adulteration issues. were literally like honestly lots of botanicals. So kind of getting away from the protein, we'd come back to it. But anything that's like an herb, there's, there's really high risk of it being mixed with

other types of substances and however it's been picked, process, et cetera, gets a lot of chemicals and other weird gross stuff in it. That said, anything that grows out of the ground has a high chance of having a lot of heavy metals in it, especially if you concentrate it. And so that is typically why when you look at protein, powder is anything that's like a plant-based protein powder. The bigger ones are the worst. They're the worst. They're going to have a ton of lead in it. Why are you going to have a ton of lead? Well, because you took all these peas or hemp, etc. And then you processed it and extracted it down to this very

small concentrated amount. Well, with that came all the heavy metals that were part of the original plant when it was growing in the ground. From the soil, right? From the soil, yeah. So it's much less likely that you're going to have lots of heavy metals in, honestly, like, a weight protein or beef protein. Because there's simply less of it present in general in that protein source. The other part of it, too, is there's a few steps to go from raw ingredient, you know, getting the ingredient to the place that produces it, to the company that buys it and then bottles it or whatever. Ultimately, the person that's responsible, everybody's responsible,

but at the end of the day, when you're selling a product, when Keon sells a supplement, what you guys do, because I know this about you guys, is you check, double check, triple check, because you're putting your label on it. And that's a big deal, and that's expensive. I think a lot of supplement companies don't want to pay the money for that. It's very expensive. Right.

So there's one thing, like, you know, if you're working with manufacturing and you want to get something tested, lots of companies say they just, they test the wrong ingredient maybe once. Right. Or once a year. Same thing. Once you actually get the finished product made, they maybe want to save money by not getting everything tested every time. You want to test something sometimes. Or like, well, that's never really been an issue before. so we're not going to test for that.

Because every time you do it, it's hundreds of dollars. If not, I mean, I look at me, because I approve still every single invoice, I mean, thousands and tens and tens of thousands of dollars just in quality testing. So yeah, it's an easy thing to do to simply be like, ah, it's not really an issue. And boom, you know, you just added hundreds of thousands of dollars to your bottom line. And is that like on a spectrum too, meaning that like you could say that I get it third party tested and get the stamp of approval or the label or the thing. But then all I need to do in order to say that is once a year or once a batch get checked.

And then there's other people that might go, I'm testing every batch, every step of the way multiple times. Like is it on a spectrum like that? It is on a spectrum like that. Like you could say third party tested. So like not just what the manufacturer tested for, but I go out and I send it out and get my own testing done for it. But I only do that once a year. And then I could tell you I do third party testing versus no, I actually do consistent third party testing to always validate from a source that's, you know, a source that's. totally unattached from making this product to verify if it really does hit spec and it really

doesn't have any type of these other issues contaminants in it. And so when, since you are doing it at that level, how often do you catch something that could have easily by if you would have just done the once a year type testing? Like, is it often that you have to send back a batch or you go like, oh, that's not going to pass? Like, is it rare? As you develop in the business. So I'd say for us, we've been around now. We're just talking about over eight years. And you, are buying more and more raw ingredients and you're manufacturing more and more and you get known to be like the neurotic sticklers that constantly cause problems and that reject product, it happens less. Because when you have partners that have to basically accept a return that's worth 100,000 or

hundreds of thousands of dollars, they don't. Everyone makes sure that they do their job. Yeah, because I think that's on the contract. Yeah. And again, that's another thing too where it's like, even on that contract side, like the attention to detail, another thing I don't. do. Like, I don't write our contracts, but I make sure we hire the best attorneys that we have a director of finance and admin that critiques what the attorneys say. And then I critique it. And the director of ops critiques it. My responsibility more than anything is to hire really good people, create really good systems, keep everyone connected and integrated to where we can deliver. There seems to be two paths. One of them being more popular with supplement companies where,

and I'll explain the two paths. One path is you go with the boring, try it and true. data backed. Like there's lots of data on these things. They actually work and we're going to test everything, you know, 100 times. And then there's this other side which is like, we're going to go exotic and weird and not test anything and create big margins. And that's how we're going to try and make our money. And if we stick around for three years, it's okay.

Why did you guys choose to go to the boring hard route? I think it really just comes down to like what your style and life is and what your character is. I believe that the good things in my life have come. from dedication. Like, even things where I had like a lot of talent and skill to start with and I was pretty good at it. If I didn't like practice that thing every day, I didn't really get any better from it.

And so I think the same thing for me is true in business that like I want to be part of something where I put the time and the energy in every day and it consistently gets better. I don't want to just be part of this kind of like momentary hype in my life. Like I want to be part. I want to feel like I'm building. I want to feel like I'm getting healthier. like I'm building more wealth for my family, like I'm making meaningful things in the world.

And so I think like that second version that you gave the picture of, I mean, I think that there's, you basically got to either misrepresent things so much in the short term to where you just can make enough cash and you just extract all the money out of the business or you have to even, I'd say, hype up the idea to venture capital people

or to investors or someone else. I've got this really cool cutting edge thing. That's the thing. This X thing with the new. breakthrough science. It has like one paper, you know, but it doesn't matter as long as I can hustle that, sell it, that venture capital group into giving me money, then suddenly got cash for to do it. And then all together, we're all going to just hustle the next, you know, private equity group. And so you just, you know, you play that game. And it's like, man, I just, I don't even, I just,

I don't think I even understand. I don't even get it. Like, that sounds so stressful and not, like, meaningful to me versus like there is real signs behind real products that actually work. And if you just make that product, make it as best as you can possibly make it, like truthfully communicate to people about what it will do. Don't mislead them. Like just tell them really what it is. If it really is a really good thing and you can actually explain how it works, they're probably going to want to buy it. And then like that's like a meaningful real living in life. That's not like a hustle game. Yeah. Well, you just said something that you've lost over, but I think I want to focus on that because there's actually a big, in my opinion, a

bigger opportunity in what you guys are doing because the public, I think informing the public is important around this, but the public may look at, let's say, an omega-3 supplement from CVS or from Walmart, and then they'll look at omega-3 product from Keon. And without education, at the supplement industry and how things can, like, one thing can say omega-3, the other things say it Omega 3, but there's a big difference. Without the education, it's like they're comparing the same iPhone in two different stores. So the cheaper one is the one that I'm going to get. So the opportunity for someone like you, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm assuming you looked at this and said, there's a huge opportunity here. Well, we could focus on the products that have the data, but we can

beat everybody with quality. We can beat everybody with education so that when they get what works, they're getting the stuff that actually works. They're not just getting what it says on a bottle that let's say Walmart is selling. Would you say that's correct? I think you've got it. The only thing, only maybe slight correction to make is, I don't know that I was that savvy, that I was like, here's the really smart opportunity.

It was more like, wow, these products are really good. These are awesome. Let's make them really well and turn that into a business. And then I think in the process then realize, okay, the challenge and the opportunity is to really educate people because people don't know and they don't get it. They're going to see, just a perfect example.

Kian Omega-3, CVS Omega-Omega-3, this one's much cheaper. Why, like, why would I do that? And so that is, that's the opportunity and the challenge. And I didn't see it that clearly, but that is what has emerged from, I think, more just a general passion to want to make legitimate products and help people. What would you say was your greatest blind spot then since you weren't this savant when you started and had this, like, the whole vision?

I imagine that you kind of ran at it. And then as you began building, what would you say was your first big blind spot that you had like an aha moment or realized like, oh, shit, this is. going to be a little harder than I thought or I didn't know I should have been doing these things. Like, do you remember what the first one was? I think it actually is right at the heart of what we're talking about. And that is the amount of brands, particularly like, so we're pretty direct to consumer focus. We sell through our website. We sell through Amazon. And again, that's largely been because if you do it that way, you can make a way higher quality supplement and be able to still make it relatively

affordable because there's less people involved in all the margins. Because it costs a lot of money, just do these quality testing, but to get like the quality of the wrong ingredients, manufacturing, hire really good people, pay them a good wage. Sure. Like, just cost more money. So, um, I think what I didn't realize was the amount, how all the, how all the, how so many other brands in this space were going to, making such disingenuous claims. And maybe even claims that are very similar to a claim that I want to make about the product.

Like I want to say, um, essential amino acids, right? If they're leucine-en-riched, can stimulate protein synthesis up to six times as much or increase, you know, the EAA plasma level, six times more than weigh protein gram for gram in a group of women in their 60s if it's leasing-en-riched.

Now, I just said, like, so much, right? But all that nuance is actually important. Essential amino acids are not six times as impactful for a way for a 20-year-old. That is like, it's just completely false, not true. There are brands out there that will say that, though. So I'm...

They can attach it to that exact story. They'll just say, they'll just misrepresent it, right? So I'm in a space where I want to be out there and I want to have integrity and I want to communicate nuance and I want to make sure that we're actually saying what the product really does, but you've got someone else taking a piece of what a study is and then

manipulating it and saying it in a different way. So it's like, how do you... I don't want to get in the boat, though, like where I'm going to go out and be dishonest. or manipulate the story. Like, I still want to have that integrity and actually say the nuance, right? Yeah.

And I think that I just didn't realize, like, how much is that? Yeah. It's like, it's really, like, it's not, um, how to win in that game when you're not willing to, like, play by some of the rules that you don't think are, I think breaking the rules, honestly. Well, it's also hard because you're in, especially today,

you're so limited with the time that you have to explain that. Even you're just saying that right now, like, I'm super interested. I'm like, okay. Actually, why don't you explain that a little bit to everybody so they understand why would it be for a 60-year-old woman six times more impactful than a 20-year-old? Like, that makes me go right away. Oh, tell me more. But, you know, in Instagram, you got about eight seconds to deliver that message. And it's not happening.

They're going to hear the six times more impactful. And that's quicker, easier to get you. That's why he does long-form podcasts. This is how you can explain it. But let's talk about that. I'm actually really curious to explain why that would be more six times more impactful for a six-year-old woman and not so for a 20-year-old. year old young man. Yeah.

So without us like, because we, last time I was on the show, we had a deep dive into protein amino acids. So I won't like rehash everything. But I think the quick summary of how essential amino acids work in protein and in supplements is the more concentrated amount of essential amino acids that you get into your blood at once directly corresponds to how much of a spike of muscle protein synthesis occurs. And so. a concentrated protein powder, like a way protein, because it's more easily digested than, say,

like, a piece of steak. And because there is, so there's some uniqueness, too, to actually the composition of the essential amino acids in it, too. It stimulates more muscle protein synthesis gram for gram than the steak. And then the simplest way of thinking about it is, like, it's just more bioavailable. That protein powder can be digested and get into your blood more quickly and thus create this spike. So for the same reason, essential amino acids in a free-form supplement are more potent than like a way protein powder.

And the reason for that is because those essential amino acids in a supplement don't have any of the non-essential amino acids, which in this general conversation are inactive. They don't actually stimulate. The non-essential amino acids don't stimulate any more muscle protein synthesis. The essential amino acids stimulate all of it. I'm saying from a purely like nutritive standpoint. If you go out and you do resistance training, that obviously is going to stimulate, right? But just from the food that you eat,

it's the essential amino acids. So way protein is about 45% essential amino acids. A free form essential amino acid supplement is 100%. So it's only the stimulatory thing. So studies in young adults show that it's two to three times as stimulatory as weight protein. Still more. Still more.

But more because for all, obvious reasons. Like one is it's twice the amount of the essential amino acids gram for gram. And then the further point is it is more bioavailable. It requires even less digestion. It gets in the blood even more quickly. Right. So the other thing too is that there's a theory around this, which you have essential amino acids meaning you need to consume them. The body seems to have developed. This seems to be a signal to the body that we're getting the ones that we need so we can really stimulate protein synthesis. In other words, it measures the essential more than it does the non-essentials for muscle protein synthesis.

It's like just signal. It's like Lucene in particular. Yeah, but it's explained to me why that's different for the 60-year-old woman, though. So now here's now we get to the 60-year-old woman. So as we age, as you guys are familiar with, I'm sure coaching so many people, there's a thing called anabolic resistance that develops. And anabolic resistance actually occurs in different contexts. It's typically any type of stress physiology.

So that can be also during caloric restriction. That's why it's harder to put on muscle sometimes during clerk restriction without specific training intervention and protein and essential amino acids. Insulin resistance can do this and hormones. Et cetera. So aging is a stress physiology. As we get older, our body's ability to digest protein slightly decreases. It's actually not as significant as some people say. But what does happen is our sensitivity to the essential amino acids in protein reduces.

The basic idea is that like when we eat protein, our body doesn't read those essential amino acids in the way. that Sal was just saying to the same degree and say, like, oh, yeah, like, this is great. Now we can, we can break down some of the old proteins and rebuild new ones. And it makes sense generally, right? As you're getting older, the prioritization of your body is not to, like, remain jacked. Let's focus on eyesight here. You know, you get it. So, yeah.

So what's been studied, though, over the last 20 years is, well, what if you add lucine to a protein, right? And so this is part of why, if you add even just lusine, Lucine to a way protein powder. You take it, it's about 25% typically is like the amount of loosening that makes up the essential amino acid profile in WAY. If you jack that up to 40%, it's significantly more stimulatory of MPS. And this is true for older adults. So in a very similar way, if you take an essential amino acid supplement and you ensure that it's got 40%, so not just like a 25%, which there are lots of good,

essential amino acid supplements out there that are more targeted to like young athletes, et cetera, you know, endurance athletes, people who want to get, you know, a, quote, protein source in right before they train, that are not this 40%. But if you're really trying to target helping someone overcome anabolic resistance from aging, you have to have 40% in the essential amino acid supplement. And when you do that, it has been shown to be way more potent than just like a regular protein powder that does not have that enhanced amount of leucine. So in these studies, there's one really famous one, but there's a few that are kind of, you know, in line of each other that show, but there's one really famous one where they gave these women in their 60s three grams of essential amino acids, 40% of which was leucine.

And it stimulated as much muscle protein synthesis as 20 grams of way. So that is the study that shows this over six times. Yeah. And there is a lot of other good data from many other studies and mechanistic studies that shows. show that it makes sense. If you give an older adult this leucine-en-en-riched essential amino acid supplement, it's going to overcome anabolic resistance way more than like a way protein well. To put it differently, it's more costly for a 60-year-old to build muscle than it is for a 20-year-old. Sure. So the body is less likely to be like, let's pack on a bunch of muscle. And when the,

when the body looks at protein, it measures leucine, branch amino acids and the essentials as how much muscle are we going to grow right now. And it just measures those because those tell it a lot in nature. In nature, when you eat a protein that's high and loosing, you're looking at a very good quality protein typically. So that's probably what's happening. By the way, the way I've used your essential amino acids,

and I know I want to talk to you about the omega-3s. I want to circle back to that. Because you're getting old? No, is I've used it in combination with food to spike the essential amino acid content of what I'm consuming. to increase the concentration of essential amino acids. And I've seen some good results from doing that. That's a very savvy use case for it.

Yeah. So I eat a high protein diet anyway. I mean 200 and 220 grams anyway. And so what I'll do is with my meal, I'll add a scoop of your essential amino acids to my water, drink that with my meal. And I've just increased the loosing content and the essential amino acid content of what I'm consuming.

And I've seen a difference. Now, previously we believe that to be negligible, right? previously we believe that if you hit your, you know, upper limits of protein, throwing that on top of it would be worthless, but you're saying it's not. No, and I don't think it's not. I think the more you strength training, the more, the more muscle mass you have, the more you're trying to push it, I think it makes a difference. Bodyblowers have noticed for a long time where they push protein intake to well

beyond the one gram per pound of body weight and they notice different. So I've definitely noticed from adding them to my meals. And I've been doing that ever since, ever since we had you on the show, in fact. Better recovery, better, it looks like I'm building more muscle, which at this point is, you know, I can tell because it's been doing this for so long. So it's definitely made a difference. Yeah. Let's talk about the omega-3s. Let's go back to that.

What makes yours better? What's the difference? I see one bottle here, one bottle there. They both say omega-3s. What makes one good? What makes one not so good? So I'll give, I mean, I guess just like the really quick summary to that, although I think on some level people need to, it'd be helpful if people even just understood what omega-3s are. But the simplest answer is purity and concentration and the format.

So when you actually buy a high quality omega-3 supplement, which Kian is, it's of the highest quality you can get, the actual proportion of the total amount of the omega-3s that you're getting in it are a much greater proportion of the total oil you're getting, whereas like a cheap CV. So, for example, if you were to add up the EPA and DHA, which is the actual. active omega-3s in Keone Omega and divide that by the total amount of fat in it and the total amount of the omega-3s that are available, it's going to be 80%. And honestly, our C-F-A's will show higher. They'll show like 83, 84. But we say slightly lower on the label to make sure we always hit that claim. But a cheap brand will be 30 to 60%. So you'd have to take twice as much to get the

same thing. You have to get twice as much. So you think you're getting this capsule, right, that's like, oh, I'm taking my omegas. But if you actually look at the amount of the active ingredient, it's very low in terms of the total oil. And what else is all that other oil? What else is in here? Yeah. And so they're selling you a bunch of other junk oil. Wow. And now they're not required to list how much EPA DHA is in there, correct? They do. They will. They list. Yeah. If you look at any something bottle, you'll actually see. And you can do the math yourself. So you can, you can add the EPA and the DHA milligrams divided by the total amount of the fish oil that's in it. And you can very quickly see. What about on average 30?

That's a huge difference. Oh, yeah. What about, and I can tell a difference. Fish oil for me, omega-3, I have lowered inflammation. I just do. Let's talk about that for a second, how they affect inflammation. Why do people notice, why do I notice when I take a high-quality omega-3 fatty acid, I'm just less stiff, just overall?

What's happening? So a lot's going on. So maybe like just a quick breakdown, so everyone kind of even understands what the omega-3 is. So omega-3 is one type of fatty acid. Fatty acids are all the low. little different types of like, we'll just call them like micro fats. They're, they truly are defined as fatty acids that go into making oils or fats. So when you have butter or lard or olive oil or any of these types of things, those are made up of fatty acids. And there's a few

different types of these. There are saturated fats, which people are, I'm sure you've heard these terms, saturated fats, monosaturated fats, polyunsaturated fats. And I promise it's going to be worth going down this. A slight little science lesson for everyone. So like a saturated fat literally, without going too down the science realm, like it only has these single carbon bonds. And so they actually stack really well and they get really tight together. And so that's why saturated fat congeals at room temperature. So that's why like butter, lard is like solid, right? A mono-unsaturated fat has at least one of these double carbon bonds.

And that's what you'll find in like olive oil. Olive oil is made up of oleic acid primarily. And then there's this other thing called polyunsaturated fats where there's more than one double carbon bond. And so that would be things like omega-6s. So that's like, that's typically, actually it goes more into you get from like seed oils, but from omega-3s, all these different types of oils. And in all of these, a key difference you can see and understand is at which point it becomes solid. So saturated fats, solid at room temperature. You know, something like an olive oil, you have to get a little bit cooler.

You go all the way down to something like an omega-3, which is a specific type of this polyunsaturated fat. You have to go like negative 50 degrees to get it to go solid. And that's because of literally its chemical structure. It's got all these more bonds in it. And it becomes more kinked and flexible. And what happens is when we eat fats, we don't just use them for energy. They actually go into making up our cell walls. So the simplest way of thinking about it is your red blood,

blood cells literally are made up of the fats that you eat. So if you eat, you know, a lot of saturated fats, if you eat a lot of omega-6 fats, if you eat a lot more omega-3 fats, whatever those proportions are, those are going to go into making up your red blood cell barriers, the walls of them. And when you have more of these very flexible types of fats, the omega-3s that go, that you consume and they actually go into making your red blood cells, your red blood cells, your red blood cells literally are. more flexible. And so someone who does not consume very much omega-3s in their diet is going to have in the very low single digits, one, two, three, maybe four percent of their red blood cell is actually made up of this omega-3 fatty acid. If you consume more and more, you get up into the 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 range, then there are these amazing health outcomes that emerge. Things like 15% reduction in all-cause mortality, 15% reduction in cardiovascular risk. in cancer risk and dementia and all of these things. And so part of it comes from this kind of key aspect of literally your blood cells,

all the cells in your body are made up of this fat that's more flexible. But another big component of it is that these omega-3s basically are precursors for not just anti-inflammatory agents, but actually these things called pro-resolving mediators. and these pro-resolving mediators, a way of thinking about inflammation. Sorry, I've been talking for a long time. Just keep going. No, no, go ahead.

Okay, yeah. So, just to kind of like break down what, you know, how inflammation works. Inflammation is not a, it's not a bad thing. Like, if, you guys have been athletes, right? I mean, it's like you twist your ankle and it gets swollen. Like, that inflammation response is actually your body trying to heal. It's sending a bunch of attention there,

and unique molecules are being generated to try to heal that spot. And that's a good thing. thing actually. You want that to happen. The issue with inflammation in our current world is that our diets have moved from, you know, as much of a whole food diet to something with a lot more processed foods in it. So you overconsume these calories. You eat tons of processed sugars, processed fats, et cetera. And all of those basically injure and stimulate the body in a way where you get this kind of low grade chronic inflammation, which personally I used to think was BS. I was like, ah, chronic low-grade inflammation, this must be, you know, it's like, just like woo-woo or

something, it's not. It's like a very real thing that we've been able to measure through, you can do blood tests on it, you'd like see reactive protein and our lukin-6. Like, you can actually measure the amount of inflammation, low-grade that's occurring in someone's body. And so similar to, you know, like if you get injured on your ankle, you could choose to take an ibuprofen. Right. And if you wanted to, what the ibuprofen would do is it would actually just like stop the process. It wouldn't heal the process, it would stop the process. The way that Omega-3's work is that they're the precursors of these things called pro-resolving mediators, and they don't just stop the process. They actually enhance and speed up the process. So they help the body to literally heal faster.

So they have this very unique relationship with inflammation that's totally different than maybe what our typical experience of dealing with inflammation is. Almost like an adaptogen. Well, it modulates the process. in this episode. In this episode is Angelo Keeley, the founder of Kian. If you want to go check out their supplements, which you should, they're some of the best in the world. Get yourself 20% off.

Go to getkion.com. That's G-E-T-K-I-O-N. dot com forward slash mind pump. Back to the show. Just to back you up, data on very powerful anti-inflammatory injections, like corticosteroids would say, show increased rate of joint destruction.

Athletes that consistently use nsads have higher rates of injury, lower rates of muscle building and adaptation, because it doesn't modulate the process, it stops the process. And you need that process, not just for healing from an injury, but also from adapting to any stress, including exercise.

Omega-3s modulate the process. And I'd love to point to some studies that seem to suggest that athletes who use a lot of exercise, omega-3s actually adapt better to exercise too. They have better performance outcomes and build more muscle. Can you speak to that a little bit? Because I think that fascinating. That is true as well. I would just highlight the studies that show that athletes adapt better to omega-3 intake. It is pretty high doses. Yes. So I would just name like, you know, like typical dose for someone to be like a gram a day. That's like kind of the standard dose I'd recommend someone takes. If you are an athlete who's wanting to get

better performance from it, or you're an older adult because the same thing is actually true. The thing we were talking about earlier with essential amino acids and anabolic resistance, omega-3s can also help overcome some of this anabolic resistance. And so basically what happens is, as the omega-3s make up more and more of the cells in your muscle, they assist the process of stimulating mTOR. And we don't understand exactly why it happens, but the outcomes are very clear. where literally you get like, you know, you give these athletes, this is young as well as older adults. It's been shown to be true in both.

That you give them these higher doses, 3.5 to 4 grams a day. Which is not that much. It's not that much. I'm not saying that's like a crazy amount. I just want to highlight again. I'm taking as high as 6 and 8 grams myself. Of course you. Yeah.

So you do that for 12 weeks and you increase your one rep maximum over the placebo by like 10 to 15%. Wow. build more muscle. You build more muscle. So it's legit. Like it really, you really do build more muscle. I want to go back to something you said earlier because I want to hear what the,

where the tipping point is. You mentioned that like if you're taking these omega three or typically a person is there makes up like three, four, five percent of the red blood sales, the lining or whatever that. And then once we get to a certain point, a certain percentage, nine, ten, what whatever is, you sort of see these incredible outcomes and health benefits. Where is the tipping point?

And where do you, so I'm assuming based on what you said, the average person who doesn't take these or just kind of, is in like low single digits, two, three percent of the wall, cell wall is made up of this. And then people that take it are probably north of eight, nine, ten. Where is the tipping point of where all these great benefits come from? So it's actually progressive. There's not like one set tipping points. So any amount more is better. That said, what the studies have really shown. So what I would say to, too, is omega's going back to like, you know, supplements that have been

studied a lot. Omega three has been studied. Omega three's. creatine, essential amino acids, weigh protein. These are the most studied supplements. The majority of studies that are double-blind, placebo-controlled on supplements are done on that.

80% of probably all studies are done on the ones you just mentioned. Yes. And you have an immense amount of epidemiological, long-term observational studies, meaning looking at people over 15 years

and measuring what their omega-3 index was, how much omega is in their blood. Omega-3s are in their blood, but also what they're eating behaviors are, et cetera. Like, I mean, a lot of studies. So it's not only these random control trials. It's also looking at groups of people over a long time. So there's a lot of data.

And so basically that's where these, what we're talking about right now is coming more from those observational. Got it, got it. Studies because you have to measure people's blood over a long term and then see what happens to that. Got it, got it. And so basically is the people that went from 4% to 7%. That's where they do the cut off in the studies.

But what I would say is there was benefit at 6%. There was benefit at 5%. But when you, when you went from like 4% to 7% that is where on on average people added five years to their life and there was a 15% reduction in all cause mortality wow talk about the reduction in cancer risk alone yeah i mean it's similar it's like it's like a 15% reduction i would say any of these diseases that uh just to highlight though this is not like uh you start taking it once you get cancer this is like these are um nutrition choices that also i would just

name too. You could do this entirely through eating fish. You'd be eating a lot of servings of fish, which we can get into, but through eating fish or through taking some type of omega-3 supplementation, over the long term, you end up getting these results where it's like a 15% reduction in. Basically, any disease that seems to be related to inflammation, which is also dementia, I mean, it's like, it's so broad, it's unbelievable. Here's what's cool. Here's what's interesting about this. Usually, when we're talking about supplements, I would say, say whole food sources are better. Just go with whole food. If you can't do that, use a supplement.

Here's where I've heard the argument, and I think I agree with it, that supplementing with omega-3s is probably the better option, and it has to do with how difficult it is to get fish that isn't contaminated or farmed or unless you're eating sardines, which I talk about all the time. And a lot of people, I don't want to eat sardines because it doesn't seem to have a lot of heavy metals. It's like, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, actually probably better just to supplement with the omega-3s for just because of those in the context of finding the right fish, getting it clean, it's not farmed, it's wild and all that stuff. Yeah, I think if you want to get in these higher levels of EPA and DHA, which are the

two main omega-3s that are really the important ones, you need to be eating a lot of sardines. Right. If you want to be avoiding heavy metals. That's right. Because just to clarify, too, this is not coming from all fish. This is from fatty fish. You need the fat and fish. You're not A can of tuna is not going to give it to. Yeah. Yeah. We're talking like salmon, mackerel or anchovies or, yeah. So it's like, it's got to eat a lot of fatty fish.

So I would say if you ate tons of canned sardines, like that is kind of an option. But we're talking a lot of a lot of sardines. You know, I think on this level of like, if you want to get the equivalent of like a gram a day of EPA and DHA, you'd basically want to eat four. servings of those sardines per week. Per week. Oh, per week. I think you say per day. Not per day.

But I would say even four servings of sardines per week. That's probably more than what you do. Nobody does that. That's a lot. And you eat more sardines than anybody. I go through bouts of doing it because I'll get sick of them myself. And I would just say that's for the gram. If you want to get to, if you want to do the three grams a day, and I personally choose,

I'm not saying everyone else should do this, but I personally choose to take three grams per day. I mean, that would be three times that amount. There'd be like 12 servings of sardines of sardines every. And that's not. It's not happening. It's not happening for me. Something else that was revealing to me a while ago. I learned this a long time ago. I worked with someone who was very, she was just ahead of the curve when it came to stuff like this. And I was taking, you know, omega-3s. And she said, hey, Sal, open that capsule and smell it. And she goes, it's rancid. These are food. It's food. It goes bad. And so a lot of these companies are selling you bad, rancid, fish oil, which isn't doing what you think it's doing. How do you ensure it's like? How do you ensure it's that? not going bad. Like, what is that? Yeah. What's just like poking a hole in each one and finding out for yourself? Well, something that I do do, and I take this as my personal responsibility is every single day when I take my

omega-3s, I chew one. Oh, you do? I literally do it every single day. And it's just like a habit that I built like a long time ago. But not saying that that's our full complete quality testing. I think what you do is, I mean, freeze them. Is that? No, no, no. We're talking about bad. We're talking about a You do not need to freeze them. But if you buy them and you freeze them right away, I would just say like, so a quality of,

if you choose one of the highest quality brands, Keon Omega, it has no significant level of oxidation after two years of manufacture. And you do not have to, and I'm saying this is stored in your house. No, I'm talking about supplement companies that sell you a bad already.

No, I get it, but I also, I mean, it could also go back. that, right? So I thought they have a long shelf life if they're produced properly. If they're produced well. And so it really comes down. So freezing them was a waste of time. I was freezing them. I was freezing them. That's why I had you freeze them. Yeah, but even that, you don't get fish burps with a really high quality fish oil. So I mean, look, I chew the capsule. It doesn't taste like fish. It's not that fishy. No. No. But really what it comes down to is a few things. I mean, the fish burp thing is going to come down to that kind of concentration and purity issue we talked about earlier. If 70% of the thing you're eating is like junk fish oil, it's not even like they're really. concentrate EPA and DHA. Yeah, it's going to smell like nasty. But also there's, there's a question around, this is another thing where people like to cut costs is the preservatives that you use. So for example, we choose to use organic rosemary extract and astazanthan. And asazanthan is actually something that comes with fish itself. It's what keeps salmon fresher longer and gives it that pink color. It's also good for you. It's also very good for you. Your preservatives are

good for you. Yeah, our preservatives are actually good for you. But we put enough in to where they simply, there's like no risk of the oxidation anytime within the expiration window, but even beyond that. So really the issue is like getting it a really high concentration, very good purity from the very beginning, not buying junk oil to begin with, and then using really high quality preservatives. And if you do that, you will not have rancid fish oil. Like, I mean, I look at the test all the time. There's, there's not oxidation.

Yeah, no. And it's crazy because I would, I'll say this in the supplement industry, this, Supplements that have the most data where people are the most aware. Like if you say omega three, but today, right? Maybe not 15 years ago, but today if I say, hey, omega three, people say, oh, yeah, that's a good supplement to take. Everybody's nose that they see the data. Doctors recommend it. When you have that much awareness and that big, a large of a competitive market, the odds that you're going to get a product that is not great is higher because you have so many companies now trying to compete.

And what they're trying to compete is over is cash, is money. So when they do consumer reports on testing, and they test 15 omega-3s, what you'll find is 13 are going to have problems. And two, maybe, if you're lucky. I've seen consumer reports where none come back. That's a really good point. And I think a helpful way to have people understand where and why and how the risk develops. Because just that you're saying, like everyone's saying it's good, but no one really knows exactly why it's good.

So then there's lots of, you know, business people out there. They may not have the best interests at heart. They're just taking advantage of the marketing hype versus actually trying to make something great. Totally. What do you source yours? Is it sardines? Crile? It's coming from anchovies off the coast of Peru.

Oh, wow. Yeah. And the reason for that is there's a few things. One is the smaller fish have a much lower risk of any type of heavy metals. But also there's certain regions of the world that have the way that ocean currents work, etc. There's a lot lower risk of pollution reaching them. And then on top of that, in this region, there's better opportunities to do more sustainable fishing. So, for example, there are certain certifications that you can get to ensure that you're not doing really terrible, like, exploitive fishing practices.

And it's more available from this region. So we're able to get the highest quality fish that doesn't have a bunch of contaminants in it. And that on top of that as well is, like, not going to create longer term ecological. problems for us. I have a question to ask about sixes and nines. Yeah. And I'm terrible. I'm not like sour. I can remember the exact study and draw back to it. So I'm going to do my best. But I remember reading that if you were eating like in a calorie surplus in a high saturated fat diet, so a lot of nines, right, and sixes, that the sixes and nines out compete the three. So even if I were to take a fish oil that the cell wouldn't get it and that would out compete it. Is that true?

Yes, this is a good question. So just to clarify, too, so saturated fats are separate from these omega-9s and these omega-6s. Okay. So saturated fats are their own thing. Omega-9s and omega-6s are types of these poly-unsaturated fats. Got it. Yeah. So there used to be this idea that you wanted to have a good ratio of omega-6 to omega-3. Yes. Right. And that is a mechanistic understanding. And what I mean by mechanistic is there's all different types of stuff. Like we were saying earlier, you could observe populations over a long time and see what they eat and see what happens to them. Right. Or you could do a RCT double-blind placebo study and like give these two different groups, you know, different things and see what happens. Or you can do in vitro where you see what happens in a cell. Or there's these kind of mechanistic studies explanations where you're just trying to understand what's going on. That's more related to this kind of cell type study. Okay.

And so what we know is there's actually two essential fatty acids. and they're not the ones we've been talking about. One is this linoleic acid, and it's an omega-6, and then there's another omega-3 that's the alpha-lineleneic acid, ALA, that's an omega-3. So there's an omega-6 and omega-3. And it is true that those two essential fatty acids compete in the same enzymatic process.

The omega-6, the linoleic acid, wants to make, for it to be able to make arachidonic acid, which is actually more common in meats and things like that, and it's good for you, it does things. It's gotten a bad rap. It's not all bad. Actually, it can do some good things. And ALA, for it to convert into EPA and DHA,

what this whole conversation about omega-3s has really been about, they compete and they, for the same enzymatic process. So if you have a bunch more omega-6 than in this linoleic acid, then the ALA can't do its thing to convert into EPA and D. DHA. Right. But here's the deal. ALA only converts at like 2 to 4% to EPA and DHA.

And that's why EPA and DHA is fundamentally a conditionally essential amino acid. So it's not truly essential. Like your body, essential just means your body cannot make it. That's right. It doesn't mean that it's what's most important for your body. It doesn't mean like a bunch of other things. But like as we've been talking about, if you actually consume these way higher amounts of EPA and DHA, you get this incredible.

set of benefits. There is no way that you're going to consume enough ALA to convert it into that EPA and DHA. And it doesn't matter with the enzymatic process anyway because you're taking it already as EPA DHA. Well, and so that's the point. I think what the point is like you're not going and I think this is an advocate for people saying, you don't need to eat fish or get them from marine sources. Like just eat chia or or flaxseed oil like which are high in this AL. But here's the deal. It's not going to convert into the EPA and DHA. So the. The. The big thing is, if you want to have these more flexible red blood cells, if you want to have way more of these pro resolving mediators that are going to resolve all this inflammation in your

body, if you want to have these benefits from strength gains, and if you're older, hypertrophy as well from omega intake, you have to take DHA and EPA directly. It is not going to come from ALA. So this whole argument of the omega-6 omega-3 balance, it really, it's like an old-school way of trying to think and understand, think about and understand what's going on and what we need. That's really not relevant. I'm so glad you cleared that up because I know I've seen people use that, that study or that and as a way to shit on omega's as if you eat this much saturated fat in your diet anyways,

and most Americans eat this much, you're basically flushing your omegas down the toilet. No, you mean omega-9 and 6. But to put it plainly, it doesn't matter that the enzymatic process isn't going to happen because it's coming pure already as the DHA and... Bottom light, you need to take in the EPA and DHA regardless. Right. You either need to eat fatty fish multiple times a week or you need to take a daily EPA and DHA supplement

if you want to have more of your red blood cells be made of this thing and avoid these diseases. Like that's... I'll say this, Angela, and I'd love your opinion on this, but just my strong opinion based on the data and there's a lot of data to support this. There are two supplements that I think most people should take. And I say most because there's always, you know, variances out there.

And, you know, I can't speak for everybody. But most people, from a longevity perspective, and I mean not just longevity, but health span, because longevity is how long you stay alive, but I mean how long you stay healthy. There's really two supplements that have a profound impact. Omega-3s, high-quality ones, and creatine. Those two seem to show benefits across the board from the brain to the organs to performance to pretty much everything.

Would you say they're at the top of my list? Okay. Definitely. Okay. Let's talk about creatine for a second. Because I love talking about crate team. Years ago when we started the podcast, I talked about how it would be the future longevity supplement. At that time, you know, this was 10, over 10 years ago, it was just muscle building.

And I was like, uh-uh, this is a lung. And now we're seeing, like, this is a major longevity. Oh, these brain benefits now. Let's talk about some of the benefits of creatine outside of you build more muscle and strength. So what I would say is, and this is one why I want to be nuanced because I think it could end up being even broader than what we're about to talk about. But at this point, what the studies show is that it's really good again for stress physiology. Meaning if you're really sleep deprived. Yes.

if you're older senior citizen and you're suffering from certain types of mental impairments, not things like dementia, but like focus, working memory, etc. Although some studies show for dementia and Alzheimer's, it seems to be a benefit, but that's a little more speculative at this point. I think that's more speculative at this point. Sure, sure. So you got good integrity. Yeah, so I'm just trying to be like, you know, real about, yeah.

So what I would say is similar to the mechanism in the way that it works in muscle. Basically, the way that creatine works is you take creatine consistently, on a daily basis, it saturates in your muscle cells. And then when you go to exercise, you have this super quick form of energy that allows you to exercise better and stronger and get more reps in, and thus you get stronger and you develop more lean muscle and more strength. So what happens is if you take a lot more creatine, so I'm going to give the example, it's probably more relative for us and our age group and anyone younger. And actually, I would just say everyone. If you take 15 grams of creatine on a day when you are sleep deprived,

it has been shown to improve focus and working memory. Right. And so why is that? How is that working? What's going on? Well, what we think is that initially the muscle wants a lot of the initial creatine. It's trying to absorb it and get it. But what's left over, if you give this surplus, goes into the brain because the brain is the other primary place where creatine gets stored. And we don't understand the exact mechanisms of action, but what it seems like is in a similar way to the muscle where it kind of gives this quick burst of energy, or this conversion into ATP, it's doing something similar in the brain that's allowing you to basically overcome this kind of stress physiology, where typically it'd be like, it makes sense, right? It's like hard to remember or I can't

really stay focused. It gives you this more accessible energy. So that's, I mean, that's, that's, that's kind of the core of what the studies have shown for people our age. When you look at older adults, it's higher doses, it's like 25 grams. So 25 grams is five, I mean, I take typically five grams a day. So it'd be like five scoops. At 25 grams a day, they have seen consistent improvements in working memory and focus, et cetera. But it's definitely a lot more. And so I just say that because I know, you know, someone who sells a creatine, like, I don't want someone to get hyped up on this, tell their mom to start taking it. They're only telling their mom to take five grams a day. And they're expecting her brain's going to work totally differently. It's like, that's not

what it's shown yet. That said, typically in the way that supplement science works is you start with really high doses because you want to show that it's going to work. So it could end up being that over time we find, you know what, 20 grams was enough. Actually, 15 grams was enough for my 70-year-old mom or grandma. So we may find that lower doses are sufficient. Yeah, and it's very safe. It's been tested a million times for maybe not a million, but lots and lots of times for safety. but it helps body produce more ATP. What cells don't run on ATP? Do you know of any?

I think they all use ATP, you know, to an extent. So do you see in the supplement industry issues with quality with creatine? Yeah, that's actually a pretty significant issue. Especially now with the gummies. Oh, yeah. All the gummies that are coming. I see a lot of tests coming out on the gummies that are just mostly. There was a huge study.

It was like 90% of it didn't even have any creatine thing. You've just eating candy. Yeah, I mean, it's crazy. And I actually have, I have done it before. It's hard to tell with the creatine because it doesn't taste like anything, which is also a weird reason to make a gummy. Like the gummy thing is seemed weird to me just because it's not a difficult thing to take down. But like,

other supplements that have strong. We're children and we eat. It's the only way I take my vitamins, bro. Okay, don't judge. Other supplements that have stronger taste, you know, like aminos. I've tried like gummies and this doesn't taste like amino. And you get it tested, there's nothing. Yeah.

Like buying supplements off Amazon or of some brand you don't know. It's like you literally could be buying nothing. And it is more, going back to this question earlier, about like doing all of the testing, you know, suddenly creatine is this very hot topic and everyone's interested in it. Well, I promise you there's a bunch of up and coming entrepreneurs and online marketers that want to get into that business and they want to do it. And they don't know how to, they don't know anything about creatine, right? So they're just going to try to go to some manufacturer, they're going to make some product. And they don't even know if what that manufacturer is giving them is legit. Yeah.

So, I mean, that's, I think that's the risk. in the space. But even more broadly, like, the actual process by which you make creatine is, you know, it's a, it's a complex chemical process. And in it, if you don't pay very close attention and be very committed to quality, you can have trace amounts of some of the inputs that you don't want, ultimately. And so it's, that's another issue that comes up in like cheaper versions of creatine. So yeah, I think there's both a risk of, you know, contamination with things you don't wanted it all the way to like it's not it's not 100% creatine you're getting 70% of what the label actually says is on it yeah and either one of those is you know just not worth it especially with

the supplement that's like you know you look at a brand like keon and you're like oh it seems more expensive than what I can get from bulk supplements you know it's like it's not you're going to be taking it every like as you're saying sal too this is the type of supplement to take every single day for the rest of your life yeah it's like buy the one that is you know all to say five bucks Yeah. Come on. Don't say. Come on. Come on.

You know, it's like, and so for example, there's, there's one primary ingredient manufacturer of creatine called Creepure. So that's the one that Keon uses. It's the one that's made in Germany. And it's the one that has the best relationships with all the scientists doing like all the newest best studies. It's from micronized form. It's super clean.

So it's, you know, that's why. And again, it actually is interesting. It happened during COVID. During the COVID years, um, there was a real struggle to get this. ingredient crepeer. It was very hard to get. And I watched a lot of my peers and brands that I respected. And I thought, oh, man, they're like the legit supplement company switch to Chinese creatine. To switch to Chinese creatine and stop carrying creepure because they couldn't deal with the supply chain thing. And we literally just throttled sales. We had people on subscription. We couldn't really sell anymore.

And we just kept doing that because I didn't want to go and sell some crap product that I didn't want to take or I didn't want to give to my. teenage kids or my mom or dad. What an awful predicaments have to be in, you know? Well, there's nothing worse than taking a supplement every day to improve your health and to not realize that you're at, you're, there's some contaminant or some byproducts that you didn't realize was in there through the, you know, crappy process or heavy metal. And you have no idea that you're actually making your health worse because you've been taking something that's cheaper for 10 years, which our industry.

your industry, I should say. Our industry is terrible too, but the supplement industry is just, every time a consumer report comes out where they test supplements, I always make this face, like, okay, here we go. And I read it.

And it's never, nine out of ten of them came out great. It's always nine out of ten of them had some weird stuff or had nothing in it or we found all this other stuff. It's all, I think, in fact,

I would love for someone to show me a consumer report that shows different. It's almost always the majority are not good. So this is like a big deal. I'm proud to say that that we're batting 100 still with anybody we partner with. Yes.

You know? Yes. That's always something. I remember the first time that we first. That's a big deal for me. When we first started. Oh yeah. No.

That's like, and I think you have to do that. I think that when these reports come out and 50, 60, 80 percent of them are bad, it's like. Yeah. And people just to save three to five bucks. It's like, it's crazy to me what, what people will choose because of that. Well, the problem is, you look at a bottle that says omega three. You look at another bottle that says omega three.

you think you're comparing the same thing. That's the issue. It's hard to tell. I mean, I get it too. Like, it's not, it's not an obvious thing to just get, like, maybe after listening to an hour-long podcast, like, you understand this one specific thing about, but who has the time to do that or, you know. Yes.

Do you guys feel like, though, that's shifting and changing? I feel like the, I mean, we're at an interesting time now. I mean, look at where we're at where, you know, you actually as a founder now are like a, you're forward facing. Like just 20 years ago, no one knows who the founders of any companies really are, where now you kind of have to be out there. People expect that they want to hear from the guy who's behind this and I want to hear him talk about his thing where that wasn't a thing before. Yeah, well, talk about the, I guess, I mean, for lack of better term, the courage it takes to get on a long form, form of media like this and have three hosts ask you all these questions. I mean, seriously, most companies wouldn't do that.

Most CEOs wouldn't do that because it's scary. It couldn't. It wouldn't be able to answer questions like you answer right now. I mean, that's part of the thing that I think what landed you with the conversation the first time with us was, you know, first of all, you were, you wanted to counter a position that we've taken on. We feel pretty damn confident about all of our positions. And you articulate it so well. So I was like, okay, tell me more. I want to hear this.

And then you've been able to come on here and handle any question and handle it with integrity. I don't know too many founders that can do that with their supplement company. There's not a lot of them. You know, back to creatine. I remember having Dr. Seeds on. He's one of the lead doctors and researchers on peptide science. Brilliant man. And we talked about creatine as being beneficial for people with methylation issues.

So people who have the MTHFR gene have to, you know, make sure they take, you know, B vitamins that are methylated. He's like, oh, creatine, it allows more methyl donors to be available to these other enzymatic processes in the body. That's a big deal for health and longevity. There's a significant percentage of people that would benefit from that. And I'm one of those people. And, you know, praise God, I've been using protein since I was 16 years old. So it's been beneficial in that case. Are you familiar with any of that?

I'm not as familiar with that science to speak to it. It's really, really cool. That is cool. Yeah. How common is that, Sal and somebody? It's relatively common. Well, it's not super common, but it's a significant percentage of people, enough to where people have issues. Significant as in more than 10%?

Yes. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And these are issues, these are people who have issues with getting rid, you know, how does somebody test to find out they have?

You know, the problem is that people are, that people are afraid of revealing it because they may get docked with insurance and stuff like that. So some people, in fact, I won't say who it is. We had someone on the podcast, he's a health wellness guy. And he has the MTFHR gene variant. And he's like, don't say it. I don't want anybody to know from that very reason right there. Insurance policy stuff. Yeah, I just, I think afraid of the future insurance companies and, you know,

medical companies and stuff like that. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Yeah, pretty interesting. Yeah. So tell me about how you decide to carry a supplement at all. Like, what go through the process? If you're like, we're going to add this new product.

Is it just, you got to see lots of data? Yeah. I mean, to be totally honest, we haven't added a bunch of stuff. Yeah. we kind of started with core stuff and we've stuck with core stuff because it's, um, it works. So,

um, from the most fundamental level though, yeah, it's like, is this a product that is worth taking every day? And that is going to meaningfully create benefit in our health and in customer's health and that has really good data behind it. And it's,

it's, it's like that simple of a, of a formula. And it's, it's, it's, produced kind of like a weird thing, like coffee. We have a coffee. We have a coffee. We have a coffee. They're like, why do you have a coffee? Well, I believe actually in caffeine every day.

I like, I like, I like, I like cool data for it on. Yeah. I mean, honestly, like, and the antioxidants of coffee are legit. And it was one of those things where, again, it was hard to find a super good quality coffee that I wanted to consistently drink every single day. So there's a, there's I don't want to make it seem like too personal because it's not just like pure like what do I want to take every day. But there is a real thing behind like, hey, Omega 3s are legit. I really do want to take it every day. Other people should take them every day. My family should take them every day. Same thing with like a protein powder. Same thing with the creatine. And so that's kind of like the fundamental base. And then and then really like is there science behind it too though? Like is this something that we're going to be able to build a real business around? And and then after that it's like you just need to do it.

really well. You know, I admit, like there's other, you know, it's interesting when I was younger, I got these staff infections. And the only thing that got it to stop for me was this very unique garlic extract. And I'm still believing that garlic extract, man, and I still take that supplement. But like the data behind it, it's like no one's really invested enough into getting the studies done, et cetera. And it's like, if I was going to do, you know, some kind of cool breakthrough thing, it maybe would be that. But it's like, you know what? That's like, that's not what I'm up to on Keon. On Keon, it's like, what are the daily essentials that I'm going to put in my body every single day? I want my family put in their body every day and that I can be proud to stand behind and that our whole team can be proud to stand behind. Since you brought up the coffee, I want to give you your flowers because Keon coffee has been my favorite coffee for so many years. Justin loves coffee. I wish, and just so the audience knows, I will 100% it would be a sponsor of the show and I would sell the shit out of it if I could sell thousands of bags every time I talk about. The margins are so slim.

It's so hard for us to give you guys your return on your investment for a commercial, just straight up being honest with the audience. It's the coffee that these, absolutely. My whole family. I have my whole family on Keon coffee. It's just, it's amazing.

It's amazing coffee. But, uh, and I remember when we first wanted to do it. And we've coffee. We don't move enough. We just, we, we don't have that big of an audience where I can sell thousands of bags every time I

talk about it. Um, but I wish I could. because I would talk about it all time because I drink Keon coffee every single day. So got to give you your flowers for that. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it.

Wish I could. Why does it taste? Why does it taste? So it really does taste. It's the best tasting coffee I've ever had. These guys are religious about it. We go to Truckee. If Keon coffee's night there, they're pissed.

It actually happened once. We're like, who did it bring? What is, is it the roasting or is it the beans? It's multiple steps. So like to make this kind of coffee, the first thing you start with is a really high quality raw ingredient as well. So basically,

basically it's all single origin, which is funny because we don't even advertise that, but that's like a whole coffee snob thing, right? So it's, they're single origin beans from Central America, but they're from very specific farms and co-ops where, uh, they're not only organic and they're not only specialty grade, but they are dried on machine dryers. Because in some of these cases, you can just dry the beans like on the actual like green bean sacks out in the fields. And in that process, that's where things like mold and other types of contaminants can get into the coffee bean. Whereas if you take the wet beans, you immediately take them and put them into these like machine dryers, then there's nothing, there's no other kind of like remnants

of junk and stuff that gets on it. And like some of that junk could be actually dangerous, you know, like mold. Other other things could just be like other, you know, dirt and other stuff that you know, brought in. I didn't want to say bird poop. I don't even know that. I don't even know that about it, but when I describe it to somebody, I say it's the purest, cleanest tasting coffee I've ever had. Smooth. That's right. It's the purest, cleanest tasting coffee I've ever had, and I absolutely love it. And that makes total sense why that is. You said something, I didn't know this about coffee. Single origin. So is that very common that you just gather beans from all over and throw it all in one batch? Cheaper coffee. Yeah, cheaper. You call it a, and you call it a whatever.

It's like, medley at that point. Yeah, I mean, the, the, um. And is that why Starbucks kind of, what they say, kind of burns it? So it makes it a, yeah. It makes it. It makes it. That's what I was going to say. So the easiest solution for making a coffee, and if you can imagine too, like in older times where like they're bringing coffee beans on ships for like months at a time. And they're probably getting pretty gross by the time they get there. You mix a lot of different beans and you dark roast burn them because it just makes it the easiest way

to consistently offer a coffee. Right. I can only imagine if you were constantly tasting your coffee and every cup tastes it a little different, you'd be like, I'm over this. I'm not. Yeah, so how do you make a really consistent coffee that is single origin? That is actually maybe the greatest challenge to the key on coffee. Because like a lot of like what they call third wave of coffee, these hipster coffee shops,

you'll notice they maybe have like a different new light roast thing every time. This one's from Ethiopia and this one's from Columbia or whatever. And it's like from a special farm or whatever. And sometimes they're like really bright tasting. Have you ever had that with like super acidic? It's because that's kind of like the hip thing in the coffee world is to, I can get this one really unique coffee. bean from this one place and get the really unique flavor profile out of it.

That like it won't taste like anything else. And so, um, whereas the opposite of that would be like Starbucks, you know, or traditional French roast, just like whatever coffee beans I can get and just burn them. Yeah. And if you burn them, no one can taste the difference of it.

Yeah. So the interesting challenge with like a key on coffee as well, even our dark roast is not that dark of a roast. We have a light roast, medium and dark. And really what it is is you get this really high quality coffee bean. Um, but it can't always come from. the same Honduran farm or Mexican farm.

Like sometimes you have to get it from a slightly different place, but they all need to have the same profile so that you are tasting the same awesome kion coffee that you have been drinking for however many years. So it's very difficult to source them to get the same kind of profiles, the same notes of chocolate and caramel, et cetera. And then it's really extensive testing, which again,

and it's crazy to say this because when we first got into it, I assume like coffee brokers had been through this. They didn't, were not, had not gone through it. We're like, we're testing all the green beans. And then we have these contracts where like, once you transport to the United States, it has to pass the test again. And if it doesn't pass that test, we'll reject it. Like, dude, we're not doing that.

And it's like, we just negotiated it over time. But we came up with things. This is an interesting thing I never would have imagined where we tested it in, in the other country, right? Yeah. And then it gets shipped to the U.S. and we roast it. And it pops for like pesticides. And we're like, how could have pesticides?

you can buy an organic coffee as a coffee producer, and then they will put it in one of those green sacks. That was a conventional sack that had been used prior for non-organic coffee beans. So it's getting covered in the pesticide remnants that were on the conventional coffee beans. Dude, how often does that probably happen to people that claim they have organic coffee?

And we were like, they had never heard of this. They'd never, like, we're the ones that uncovered this in 2020 or something. I'm like, I kind of blew my mind that no one had come across it before. How long did it take you to figure that out? Because I'm imagining you guys. Well, we had to just like stop that all that caught. You know, we had to stop that whole lot of coffee basically and move on to another one and figure out what was going on. Yeah, but how did you tie it back to the sacks?

I mean, because I imagine when that first pops, you're going like, how did this happen? And your first thing is someone sprayed it. You don't think a bag that it travels in is contaminating it. It was literally just like an audit of the full process to the point where then we got the green bags. And yeah, and our primary partner that helps manage the coffee side. was like, we just got to test the bag and test the bag and that's what popped. Wow. Yeah.

That's wild. That's wild. What's your top seller? Essential amino acids. Wow. Yeah. Consistently? Consistently.

And I would say that's though also, I mean, what I would say is we don't really advertise the coffee either. Because just to be real about it as a business, the margins. The margins are very, very small. So if you want to go out there and you want to advertise and tell the story of it and do ads on, you know, Facebook or something or Instagram. Like, you just can't, it can't pay for itself unless you have, and like, there's another part of our business is we've been bootstrapped from the beginning. We don't have some big financial bank or partner, you know, like we didn't who could burn a million for a couple years. Yeah, it's like, you know, like from the very

beginning, we had to like actually like make it make money, you know, it's like, I borrowed a lot of money personally to make the thing work early on. So it's like, you know, it wasn't, it wasn't a thing where we could just, you know, just try to get customers, but not make. make money from it. So yeah, it's just, it's tough on, on that side of things. And what I'd say, so then, like, naturally supplements have better margins than, than coffee does. But really early, early on, the essential amino acid started to take off as kind of like just the story of what they are and how they work. And with a little bit of an older audience. And, you know, we follow that intuition and we devoted more resources to marketing them. And you said earlier, Sal, you know, like,

omega-3s and creatine. And I know I haven't converted you yet on how important essential amino acids are. I think in that tier, I think they're in that tier, particularly as we age. I think if you talk to, you know, a 20-year-old, I'm not telling him you need to start taking essential amino acids. I would say, you know, you start taking omega-3s now. And over the long arc of your life, you raise these omega-3 levels in your blood, you have a much greater, you have much lower risk of these diseases.

and you want a little bit of, you know, you want a little bit of advantage in the gym, take the creatine. It's going to work. I would say the EAAs are also going to give an advantage. But as we get older, as you're 50 years old, the creatine is awesome.

The creatine is going to give you more energy when you're in the gym. Yep. But after 50 years old, particularly, any way in which I can stimulate a little bit more, like a little bit more enabalism. Like I can, actually build some muscle or stimulate the replacement of my old muscle and the proteins in

my body without even having go to the gym that has literally no side effects. Like there's no, there's, I mean, we're talking like hundreds of studies on essential amino acids. It's similar to creatine. There's no bad things that happen to anyone. Yet you get people putting on pounds of muscle without any additional resistance training. I mean, they had some kind of existing resistance training program, pounds of muscle within months. And over the course of decades, 10 pounds, 15 pounds of muscle. No muscle loss as they age. So it's like, I think the essential amino acids still are a sleeper.

It's like, it's kind of crazy to me that still has it. I don't disagree with you. I agree with you, especially as you get older. The game of fighting aging is complex, but I'd say you could, in a nutshell, it's to slow down or stop the catabolic effects that happen from aging. So anything you can do that prevents the. catabolic effects is going to improve your longevity in that case. And I think essential amino acids definitely do that for sure.

So I would agree with you 100%. Yeah. Love that. Good stuff. Angela, great. Thanks for coming back on. Thanks, guys. Thanks for having me on.

It's always fun. I appreciate the education. And I know our audience appreciates it. I think a lot of them take omega-3s. I know everybody takes creatine. We've been, you know, touting that since we started. So I love your integrity and honesty. It takes a lot to do a business that you're

doing. I know a lot, I have a lot of friends and know a lot of people that scale supplement companies. And the model is, once you build a foundation you have, is you do go chase every product just to build LTV on your people, which doesn't matter if it's that good or not. It's just like more stuff to sell your people regardless of how much of an impact it makes. And so just stick to your guns and do things that really move the needle and stay in that space. I know how difficult that is and I have a lot of respect for that. Yeah. Thanks, Adam. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump.

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