Realfoodology - Are We Sensitive to Gluten, Or Just What Has Been Done To It? | Jon Olinto

Episode Date: January 16, 2024

EP. 179: Have you ever bitten into a slice of bread and thought about the journey from wheat field to your plate? I had the pleasure of sitting down with Jon Olinto, co-founder of One Mighty Mill, as we explore the truth behind today's bread! We slice through modern wheat's potential gluten link, uncover the beauty of ancient stone milling, and challenge the food system's "fresh" facade. From sourcing integrity to the profound impact of dietary choices, join us as we bake a healthier future, slice by slice, with small businesses like One Mighty Mill. Topics Discussed: 01:08 The Mystery of Gluten Intolerance 08:56 Challenges in Rebuilding the Food System  13:36 Creating Transparency in the Food System 21:19 Michael Pollan's Influence on Protest Philosophy 22:18 Stone Mills, Real Flour, and Our Diet 25:39 Gluten's Connection to Our Food 34:45 Shelf Life's Impact on Food  39:16 Daily Discoveries in Gluten Sensitivities 42:12 Rebuilding the Food System With Wheat 45:52 Sustainable and Local Supply Chain 48:10 Challenges in Changing Consumer Attitudes 55:51 Driving Change in the Food System Check Out Jon Olinto & One Mighty Mill: Instagram Online Sponsored By: Natural Cycles for 15% off go to naturalcycles.com with code REALFOODOLOGY Needed Go to thisisneeded.com and use code REALFOODOLOGY for 20% off your first month LMNT Get 8 FREE packs with any order at drinkLMNT.com/realfoodology BiOptimizers MagBreakthrough Get 10% off at bioptimizers.com/realfoodology with a code REALFOODOLOGY PALEOVALLEY for 15% off go to https://paleovalley.com/promos/realfoodology Check Out Courtney: Check Out My new FREE Grocery Guide! @realfoodology www.realfoodology.com My Immune Supplement by 2x4 Air Dr Air Purifier AquaTru Water Filter EWG Tap Water Database Produced By: Drake Peterson Edited & Mixed By: Mike Frey

On today's episode of The Real Foodology Podcast. We don't have a stone mill in our... We don't have a mill that we go to. We don't think about flour as a real food. Our real flour is perishable. It's closer to a head of lettuce than it is to a bag of Pringles. But for our generation or whatever, for the last 100 years, that's completely foreign. Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of The Real Foodology Podcast. I'm your host, Courtney Swan, and today I'm sitting down with John Olinto, the co-founder of One Mighty Mill. If you follow me on Instagram, you may remember that I recently went to a Costco and One Mighty Mill was actually doing a, what do you call it? They had a table there where they were doing

samplings. And I was so excited because I had had a couple people DM me telling me about this brand, telling me that I really needed to talk about them on my Instagram, look into them because of what they were doing with their food practices. So we asked him if we could put a mic on him and have him talk a little bit about what One Mighty Mill is doing differently in the food space compared to all the other bread companies. And I'm so happy that I got to sit down with John today. We talk about what sets their bread apart from other breads that sit on the store shelves. We talk about what we've done to our wheat, like what we've done to our food. This is such an interesting conversation because, you know, everyone has been complaining in a mainstream lens about gluten for the last,

I would say like 15 years or so. I would say maybe more like the last 10 years. And we're having a conversation in this episode about why we think that is. Is it actually the wheat? Like are people all of a sudden actually gluten intolerant, a food that as a species we have been eating probably most likely since the Stone Age? What happened? Did our genes just suddenly change in the last 50 years where we could not digest this anymore? Or did we do something to the wheat? So we talk about that. We talk about how one Mighty Mill uses a stone mill, which is a very traditional way of making bread. I also asked him what the hurdles are that a company like his have to go through because when they started this company,

they couldn't even find anyone. They actually had to create their own stone mill. They could not find any companies that were providing stone milled wheat, stone milled flours in order to use and bake in their bread. So they actually had to start from square one and create this themselves. So I really just wanted you as the listener to hear what it's like coming from a food company that's actually doing it the right way. They're not doing it from a profit lens. They're doing it from a, how can we do the best by the consumer and create the most nutritious and delicious tasting food. And it from a how can we do the best by the consumer and create the most nutritious and delicious tasting food. And it's a lot harder than you guys would think. So definitely go to

their Instagram, go to their website, check them out and go and find out where you can get some of the bread yourself. Oh, also, if you can't find them in retail, you can also buy the bread online. Let's get into the episode. As always, if you are loving this podcast, if you could take a moment to rate and review it, it's really helpful for the show. So thanks a lot, guys. Appreciate you and I appreciate your support. Oh, and share it on Instagram if you feel so inclined. I see all your tags and it really means a lot to me and I try my best to personally thank each and every one of you guys when I see them. So again, thanks so much. Appreciate you guys. 2024 is the year of fertility for me. I'm just naming that right now. While I am not actively trying to get pregnant, this is not an announcement for that. I do know that it can take

a couple of years to get your body ready and fertile for pregnancy. And I do know that I very much desire to have kids. And I also know that I very much desire to have kids. And I also know that pregnancy and postpartum are some of the most nutritionally demanding times in a woman's life. And a mom and her baby's health now and for years to come is influenced by her nutrient status. Also a woman's fertility is also influenced by her nutrient status. So I am really taking this year to focus on all the things that I can do in order to set up my fertility for hopefully the best outcome that I can have. Most prenatal vitamins include bare minimum nutrition based on outdated guidance and stale research. And we deserve to thrive, not just survive. This is why I really love this company Needed. They offer radically better

nutrition products, education and advocacy rooted in clinical research and practitioner validation. I know that there's so many women's health and prenatal supplements out there and it can be really hard to know what's truly the best option. And I get asked often what prenatal I recommend. I really like the brand Needed. It's recommended and used by more than 4,000 women's health experts from nutritionists to midwives, functional medicine doctors, and OBGYNs. I even have girlfriends in my own life that have used it pre and during pregnancy as well. And this is because Needed offers products that are formulated by experts in women's health and are backed by clinical insights from their collective of over 4,000 practitioners. Their products offer the forms

of nutrients your body can actually use, dosed at optimal versus bare minimum levels. They also go above and beyond with third-party tests, testing every batch to ensure the safest product. Needed offers radically better nutrition for women from conception to pregnancy to new motherhood and beyond. If you would like to try any of their products today, head over to thisisneeded.com and use code realfoodology for 20% off your first month of needed products. Again, that is thisisneeded.com and use code realfoodology for 20% off. Did you know that women can only get pregnant around a six-day window? I grew up thinking that women could get pregnant any day of the month. And I know so many women that got on the pill because they thought that they could get pregnant any day of the month. And I know so many women that got on the pill because they thought that they could get pregnant any day of the month.

This is simply not true. And I personally didn't want to put synthetic hormones in my body, which is why I use something called Natural Cycles. It is the world's first FDA cleared birth control app. The app's algorithm uses hormone driven changes in body temperature to let users know when they're fertile or not fertile. And it's 93% effective with typical use and 98% effective with perfect use. Perfect use means abstaining from unprotected sex on red days. To put this into perspective, it's more effective than condoms alone and about the same effectiveness as the birth control pill. It's also important to note that no form of birth control is 100% effective. So how does it work?

It was developed by scientists and is supported by clinical evidence, and it's based on hormone driven changes and body temperature. The algorithm lets you know whether you're fertile or not fertile each day. A green day means you're not fertile and you're good to go. A red day means you're fertile and you need to use another form of protection or abstain. So all you have to do is first thing in the morning, take your temperature either with a thermometer or if you have a wearable like an Oura Ring or an Apple Watch, it automatically connects to your app, but you do not need a wearable. You simply just need a thermometer and to take your temperature first thing in the morning. If you would like to try Natural Cycles, go to naturalcycles.com, use code realfoodology and you're going to get 15% off an annual subscription

plus a free thermometer. Again, that's naturalcycles.com, code realfoodology. This is an ad and Natural Cycles is for 18 plus and does not protect against STIs. John, I'm so excited to have you on. It feels kind of serendipitous. So we were talking before we started recording about how you and I initially got connected and it was so cool. And hopefully my listeners listening saw the video that I posted on my Instagram. And it's so funny because I got a little bit of a pushback from some people saying, oh my God, this is an ad. You're not disclosing this is an ad. And I was just laughing about it because I was like, well, I can't like share anything now without people just thinking like everything's an ad. And that was so organic. I was so happy because I was walking through Costco with my producer who helps me film everything. And I came across a stand where you guys were selling one Mighty Mill, your bread in Costco.

And one of the guys was speaking to people as they were walking by. And it really, I heard him say something. And then I remembered, I've actually had a couple of people DM me about your brand too. And I was like, oh, that's the brand that people have been writing me about. And so I started picking up on the things he was saying and talking about just speaking my language. It was like, are we actually allergic to wheat or is it what's been done to wheat? So anyways, this is a long-winded way of telling the listeners a little bit about our backstory and just how excited I am to have you on today because I really want to dive into what we've done to wheat, what you guys are doing differently. And also I want people to understand

too from a consumer standpoint, how hard it is for these companies that are trying to go up against the food industry and do clean real food in the right way, how hard it is for these companies that are trying to go up against the food industry and do clean real food in the right way, how hard it is for you guys. So anyways, thank you so much for coming on, John. Yeah, thanks for being here and thank you for supporting us at Costco. I really think that we've been around for five years and there are these certain moments

where you work so hard and you put yourself in these spots and you're just waiting and hoping that there'll be that kind of, you'll, you'll find that person that believes and has a, and has a larger audience to share it with. And, and so what you did for us was, was massive. Um, for us, our biggest challenge is not just rebuilding the food system that we use, um, and that we need, but, uh, but it's education. And so people don't think about flour. They don't think about wheat. They read headlines and they're looking for easy solutions.

And what we've taken on is not easy, right? To fix wheat and flour, you have to start over and you have to go back in time and um, in Rebid local food systems. And, and we cannot do that if we don't have a larger platform to tell our story. And so, you know, you, you stumbling upon us was,

was such, was so great for us in a lot of ways, not just because you help us educate your audience, but also, you know, you helped us with Costco, um, by, by, by giving us an endorsement and giving us something to share with them to say, hey, people are paying attention to this. And so

your members or your Costco members, they need this. And this doesn't exist in your warehouses now. So just great timing and really grateful and grateful to be here and let's get into it. Yeah, I'm so excited. So I actually listened to you on another podcast and you were talking about how hard it is for if a company does actually want to create like a healthier for you product, like crackers or bread or something with a better source of flour, there's not even really anything that exists for them to source from. So let's talk about how you guys got started and how you said you basically, you had to rebuild it yourself. This didn't exist, so you had to start from square one.

Yeah, I mean, for sure. So the way that One Mighty Meal started is my best friend and I, we started a fast food chain 20 years ago. And that chain was the mission of that restaurant. That first one we built in Boston was to make fast food what we called real. And we didn't know what really that meant other than we were going to grind our own beef. We were going to cut our own potatoes and everything we did in the restaurant was going to be from scratch. The co-founder and chef of that concept is the co-founder and the culinary and the head miller and all things food related to One Mighty Mill. But we embarked on this 20 years ago, and what that definition of real evolved to for us was

it wasn't just about what happened in our restaurant. It pushed into our supply chain. And so as we became a much better restaurant concept, it was transparency to the source and to the supply chain. And the further we pushed, the better we got. We believe the more loyal our customers were. We thought our food tasted better. And we actually believe that our employees cared more. And so we built these restaurant business to like 70 restaurants.

Wow. Is it still around today? It is still around. It's taken kind of a turn, but it still does exist. But the reason why I wanted to start here is because we would build these local supply chains in every region. So we were in Toronto, we were in Boston, we were in New York, we were down in North Carolina, all the way down the East Coast. And every time we did, we would establish this local network. We could tell our customers and our team where our beef came from, where our potatoes were grown, where in as much as possible was from kind of the regional system. And the only place that there was a disconnect, even though I didn't see it at the time was we

were always proud of the local artisan bakery that we would work with. So in Boston, where I am now, the bakery we worked with was, was a third generation Italian bakery called Quinzani's. And we were proud that we sourced locally and that we had great whole wheat buns because it was our recipe. But never, ever considered that everything else on our menu was connected back to a farm. And so grew,

grew the restaurants, kept working with bakeries, kept thinking that our whole wheat buns were great. And then at the same time, watched as gluten intolerance rose, we saw more and more customers that needed us to prevent cross-contamination, have gluten-free buns, and just really deliver to their needs. And so towards the end, this is, I guess, six years ago, when I knew that it was time for me to do something else, I kept going back to this disconnect where I had been all over the country to farms. I thought so deeply about really creating transparency across the

entire menu for us. And that I had never once thought about wheat or flour. I'd never seen it grown. And truly, I didn't even know what it was. I don't think I'd ever touched wheat, never mind eating it in its whole form. And so that was kind of the starting point was thinking that if there's something in our food system that we or as somebody that had invested a ton of time trying to learn didn't know about, if there was a blind spot, then it clearly, there was some bad things happening there. But on the flip side, huge opportunity to make a change and hopefully make an important impact on people's health and build a company that stands for something awesome and makes a huge change. That's so cool. It's so cool. I love what you guys are doing and we're going to get more into that. I think what you said about when you were building that fast casual restaurant is so important. And I want to reiterate this a little bit for people to understand, because even though you guys were making things from scratch in-house, if you're not paying attention to the ingredients that you're using,

those potatoes could be sprayed with toxic fertilizers and pesticides. Same with your greens. And again, with the flour, like even if you're baking your bread in house, like I think about this all the time. I don't know if Subway still says this, cause I don't really pay attention to them anymore. But I remember like one of their things is like, we bake our bread fresh daily. And it's like, okay, but what are they putting in that bread? That's really important. And I think people get confused on that and they think, oh, they're baking it fresh or they're making it from scratch in-house. But it's like, okay, but

where are they getting all the ingredients that they are making these things from scratch from? And where are they getting this bread that they're baking? Maybe baking it in Subway, but like it also has yoga mat material in it. So yeah. So it was really important for people to hear that. So, okay. What have we done to our wheat? This is really important. And this is actually one of the things that I brought up in my video. And it's very near and dear to my heart personally, because I was actually diagnosed with a wheat allergy. Like I think it's been 13 years now. And I remember at the time, this was like, there was maybe two gluten-free products on the shelves. There was nothing. This was before gluten-free was really having its heyday. And so one, I was confused because I was like, okay, what is this? What is gluten that I need to be avoiding? Why am I allergic to wheat?

What's happening? And I know there's a lot of different theories about it. So I want to talk about what have we done to wheat as far as hybridizing, we're spraying it with stuff. Let's dive into all of that. Yeah. I mean, we have really screwed it up and we've been left, I think the simplest form, and I hate getting too scientific and technical because there's such a simple solution to all of this. But really what it comes down to is we took a, and I don't even like to use the word superfood, but we took a seed. So wheat is a grass. The seed of that grass is a wheat berry. It is completely nutrient dense. It has nourished civilization since, there's like theory that it nourished civilization since the Stone Age. So it is a complete real food. What we have done is we have built an entire industrial system to change what happens from the farm and at the mill to the actual output of flour,

and then to what it is transformed into, to what we consume, which is garbage bread or garbage processed foods. And so I so you know i think you can start at the farm we can go really deep but i think the the keys the key things are um that uh wheat is grown typically uh in conventional fields meaning so it's it's it's it's used with with toxic chemicals like glyphosate so you know like only two percent of all wheat in america is grown organic so you know if you think about it that way and you have to think beyond like the experiences that we might have when we go ourselves to a specific grocery store kind of like we were mentioning cornea's like

you know you have to forget like what you go and curate at a grocery store is different than what you consume over the course of your life because you're, you're eating at all these different places. And so when you think that only 2%, you probably think like I only order organic wheat when I eat wheat, but no, you don't. Cause you eat pizza, you eat pasta, you're dining out. It's flour is inour is in so many of the foods we eat. And so number one, it starts with toxic chemicals used on the farm. And also, you know, soil that has no nutrients because it's grown in monocultures, meaning single rotations year after year, depleting soil health, sucking out nitrogen, and then using chemical fertilizers at the soil level. From there, you're taking conventional wheat that is sprayed with toxins, and you are running it through an industrial mill, which is specifically designed to take the good things out of the

wheat berry. So you're already talking about a compromised wheat berry that's soaked in stuff, right? And then you're pushing it through a system that only wants the empty starch. And they want the empty starch because it's cheap, it lives forever, and it can be pushed into, it's super durable. So it can be pushed into basically any type of activity at the bakery level. And so that doesn't look anything like the wheat or the flour that our ancestors consumed, like our great grandparents. And it doesn't taste anything like it. Because I think, as you know, there's one thing to make something that's really nutritious, but to have a mass impact like we want to, it has to taste better. So the taste has to win before the health delivers on kind of the nutrient benefit. And so that's the modern way of growing wheat and then making

flour. I think the other piece I left off of the flour piece is that it was interesting in the 1940s, after the industrial revolution, when we made this modern system, people started getting sick. And so the FDA mandated that we had to enrich flour. So we had to then, all the nutrients we took out of this dead, empty starch, it was mandated that food manufacturers or millers had to add back mostly B vitamins and folic acid. Synthetic, by the way, which are not as bioavailable in the body. Yeah. I actually read about this. Sorry to cut you off.

I want you to keep going. But I read about this in one of my favorite books of all time is this book called In the Defense of Food by Michael Pollan. And he was really one of the people that paved the way for me and he writes about this where there was a time when it was a sign of your class in society of what kind of bread you could have and people so it was the rich that would have the white bread and then the poor were actually getting like the full wheat with all of the vitamins and everything the nutrients in it and the rich were getting really sick and it's because they took all the nutrients out of it. Yeah. It's crazy. Now it's the opposite, right? Like now, if you have no money, you get sick or

everybody gets sick, but you get sicker quicker. But you get sicker quicker. The system is designed to feed you the worst stuff. Yeah. That's cool. It's cool. You referenced Michael Pollan. So Michael Pollan in his book, Cooked, he's inspirational, I think, for anybody that listens to this. Anybody that listens to you or follows you obviously isn't fired by them. He had a line in Cooked that said, milling your own... And we read this before we started, as we were getting ready. So it was super motivational. But he said, milling your own

flour is a sign of protest against the homogenization and industrialization of what we eat. And I swear, that was like a rally cry for us. It was so much a rally cry that we actually took it and put it on our original packaging. We had this kind of message about, we called it Get Up, Stand Up. But then it came with that Michael Pollan kind of sentiment about resisting kind of the status quo. I love that. You're my people. We're of the same mind. Michael Pollan, like I said, was really one of the people that really got me into all this. So that's so cool. That's modern. I can take you through kind of the way it was and the way we do it.

Yes. Yeah. So that's how wheat and flour is made and processed now or grown and processed now. The way it was is since really the beginning, flour was produced by crushing the seed whole. And so the wheat seed or the wheat berry, your body can't really digest it. You could chew it, but way, obviously, more applicable and easier to digest if you crush it. And so using two stones, you keep all of the whole wheat berry intact. So you get all of the nutrient benefit from the germ, which is the living embryo. You get the starch, which is the endosperm, but then you also get the bran, which is the outer

shell, which is the fiber. And so internally at our team, we talk about an egg. It's like a good comparison to a wheatberry. So you have the shell, which is fiber. You have the egg white, which is starch. And then the embryo, which is the yolk, is going to have most of the nutrients. And's crushing it whole is the way that you can preserve all the integrity of that seed. And so granite stone mills or stone mills in general, whether they were granite or not, are the old school way of producing flour. And that is the way our great grandparents produced it. That's the way our ancestors made it. There's some crazy statistics that we learned that really kind of pushed us forward as we were getting, as we were on the path to building One Mighty Mill. And it was that in the year 1900,

there were 25,000 stone mills in the United States. And by the year 2000, there were 201. Wow. That's crazy. Yeah. And so truly back 150 years ago, every community had a mill, a stone mill. And it wasn't just about the healthier food. It was a connection to a core part of our diet. And that's so removed now. And it takes me back to the way we started the conversation, which is like, it's hard to imagine that the food that Americans eat the most of is wheat and flour. It's not even close. And to think that nobody ever talks about it, nobody thinks about it, nobody has any relationship to it. But meanwhile, we go out to eat and we want to know, we look at the menu, we want to know that wherever the demands are that we want to understand locally where products are from. We go to a grocery store, we want transparency. In this one even, we don't challenge it. This industrial complex has been, has been taken, like it's been removed from our consciousness. So like, we don't, we don't, we don't, we don't have a stone mill in our community.

Like we don't, we don't have a, we don't have a mill that we go to. We don't, we don't think about flour as a, as a real food. We don't even think, you know, our real flour is perishable. It's, it's closer to a head of lettuce than it is to a bag of Pringles. But for our generation or whatever, for the last 100 years, that's completely foreign. Oh yeah. It's just been a bag that sits in someone's pantry for like three years. It's crazy. Yeah. So what I was going to say is I was going to argue that I do think that people are talking about it and they're paying

attention, but they don't even know it because it's happening under a different guise. Everyone is talking about gluten. In the last like 15 years, it has been all the headlines. Everyone's saying they're going gluten-free because it helps with their gut and it makes them feel better. Even people that are like not celiac. So I would argue this is a symptom of what is actually happening and what we have done to our wheat and what we've done to our food, but people don't have the wherewithal to fully connect it because you're right. So I would say yes and no, what you're saying is that we are talking about it, but in a way that like we don't actually understand what's really happening. Because I see all these headlines and there's been a lot of pushback from people in the last couple of years in the nutrition world where they're like, okay,

not everyone needs to avoid gluten. It's not that everyone's gluten-free. And then there's alternatively headlines being like, why is everyone gluten-free? What's happening? What happened to our genes? Nothing happened to our genes in the last 50 years. It's what we've done to our food. For sure. Yeah. Yeah. We've taken something that we eat a ton of or that we ate a ton of. If people have a sensitivity now that they ate, they spent 20 years of their life eating as a kid. Everything they ate had flour in it, but it was junk. Yeah. And so our bodies, at some point, your that does deliver real food. You can't do it without making your own flour because the industrial complex that's out there has removed all the things that you need to make real food. Snacks. Let's talk about snacks.

Everyone loves snacks. Let's talk about snacks. Everyone loves snacks. And I feel like it's hard to find a good snack that actually fills you up and that you really crave and like to eat. I am obsessed with the grass fed beef sticks from paleo Valley. If you guys follow me on Instagram, you probably saw recently that I went, I literally went to this show downtown and my girlfriends were making fun of me because when I met up with them, I literally had a paleo valley beef stick sticking out of my pocket. My friend goes, are you packing meat in there? I was, I always have a paleo valley stick with me either in my purse or I always shove a bunch of them in my car and just leave them in there for emergencies, for snack emergencies. I'm always bringing them places on hikes, you name it.

I always have them on me because they're such a great snack. It's a great source of protein. They taste really good. They come from 100% grass-fed beef and they're really high quality. It's only organic spices in there. You're not going to find any other fillers. And you know what I love so much? Their beef comes from 100% grass-fed cows raised entirely on natural grass pastures by family farmers right here in the US. And they also are committed to supporting regenerative farms, which is really important. If you guys are not into beef, if beef is not really your thing, they also have pasture raised turkey sticks and they also have pasture raised

pork sticks. So they have a variety of different flavors and all different kinds of meats to serve your meat desires. And if you guys go to paleovalley.com slash realfoodology, you're going to save 20%. Make sure you go to paleovalley.com slash realfoodology. You're going to save some money. Also check out everything else they have on that website. They have superfood bars. They have organic super greens. They also have bone broth protein. They have grass fed whey protein. They have essential electrolytes. They also have a superfood, golden milk, which is gonna be really good going into fall. So make sure you guys check it out, use the code REALFOODOLOGY,

and you're gonna save some money. Sleep is absolutely imperative to our overall health. It controls hunger and weight loss hormones. It boosts energy levels. It's also the key to our body's rejuvenation and repair process, and it impacts countless other vital functions. So a good night's sleep will improve your wellbeing more than anything else. I would say

for my health journey, sleep has really been my main focus the last couple of years more than anything else. And one of the ways that I started doing that was taking magnesium breakthrough from Bioptimizers. It contains all seven forms of magnesium. A lot of people are deficient in magnesium and magnesium really helps to calm down the nervous system, get your body ready for bed. I recently had the founder of Bioptimizers on my podcast actually, and we did an entire sleep hygiene episode.

So if you wanna go back and listen to that, we talk very extensively into why sleep is so important, how to get better sleep, what supplements really help. And one of the things that we talked about was magnesium breakthrough. And I can tell you guys, I've been taking this for about a year now. I travel with it and it helps so much. I wear an Oura ring at night to track my sleep and I've seen my REM and my deep sleep go up. So this magnesium breakthrough is a total game changer. If you guys want to get Bioptimizer's Magnesium Breakthrough today, make sure that you go to magbreakthrough.com slash realfoodology.

That's M-A-G breakthrough.com slash realfoodology and intercode realfoodology and you're going to get 10% off. That makes me really sad. You know, we've been, I was telling you this before we started recording. So I've been having a lot of conversations about this recently because I really want my audience to understand that the brands that are doing right by us right now

that are really going the extra mile to create real food, to create nourishing foods, they're up against a behemoth of like a, this is like a David and Goliath kind of situation where it's like you guys are the little guys and the food industry is, it has all these things set in place. And if you go, it's like you're swimming upstream right now,

like trying to create these products and also get them on the shelves and make them affordable, make them accessible to people. It is so dang expensive. And then you add on top of that, a piece that you've brought up a couple of times that I also want to reiterate is that I try to always tell people this, you want your food to go bad. You do not want that bread to be sitting on your countertop for six months and going rancid. And I think about like,

every time I look at the back of a package and it says like may contain wheat or does contain wheat. It's like, how old is that wheat? And is it rancid? Like we want our food to be going bad. Absolutely. Yeah. So in terms of flour, stuff like this is an interesting thing because a big part of the reason why that industrial system and the industrial milling process was created was to take out nutrients and the germs specifically, that embryo that had the living fats and oils, that was removed or is removed in the process. So white flour is just empty starch that can live forever. I think there's a two-year shelf life on it, but I don't think that anything would happen if you kept it for 10 years i mean because it's so loaded with preservatives and stuff yeah yeah there's just nothing in it it's like sand um why did we start doing that by the way from an industrial standpoint was it

because we didn't want food going bad and we were worried about because i know like a lot of this industrial like this whole shift in the industrialization of know like a lot of this industrial, like this whole shift in the industrialization of our food, a lot of it started with the war because we were concerned about famine and feeding everyone and like being able to store the food for a while. Yeah. Well, I think that's part of it, but I think it always comes down to economics. And once commercial interests can figure out ways to scale industry, then they're going to be able to capitalize on it. And you can make a lot of money if you centralize manufacturing. And so if all those 25,000 mills that were one time a part of our

community, just like going to the bank or going to the post office, you'd go to your mill and you would have living flour that you'd need to use soon but and that would that would imply that would provide better taste and better nutrition you know if if you can um if you can centralize all that manufacturing put it in one place and create it create an ingredient that doesn't go bad and you can ship it anywhere you want. I think you can make a ton of money. And I think that's what, that's what drives, I think that's what drives our food system. I don't think it's, I don't think it's ever, we don't prioritize the health outcomes. We prioritize corporate interest. And so I think that's, that's where it would all trace back. But on the shelf life piece,

so eliminating shelf life is great for big food, but not so great for health. Smaller business. But perfect, I think, for what we're doing. And it is much different. So if you think about a product that has indefinite shelf life, our flour, it's typically between seven and 10 days from when the wheat berry hits the stone and is crushed to when we bake with it. That's kind of our sweet

spot. Before COVID, we were selling two-pound bags of flour at retail. And when we did that, we had a 90 day shelf life on it. And so, you know, it's much different, much different product. And like I said, closer to being kind of like a vegetable than to being like a bag of chips. Yeah. There needs to be a reframing around the cost of food because we don't fully understand what the true cost of food because we don't, well, one, we're paying subsidies to farmers. So we don't actually know how much it really costs because a lot of that is being subsidized with our tax dollars. And then on top of that, we're not taking into account what it's doing to our body, the inflammation and how sick everyone's getting. So yeah, maybe you're saving a little bit of money upfront at the cash register, but we're not thinking about how much are you spending on medication and doctor visits and

surgeries if you have to get surgery. Yeah. I mean, the short-term view of cheap food is going to have some long-term consequences, which we already suffer from it. I mean, beyond human health, it's the state of our environment. And so on the ag side, the way that we are farming is going to kill us too. And wheat is the number one crop that we grow. And so I think it all ties together, but you're right. I mean, um, we cheap food is not cheap, but at the same time, you know, we can't just expect the consumer to walk in and choose one mighty mill. Our bread is, you know, our bread is more expensive or it's as expensive as the better for you loaf that we sit next to.

But it's our job to make sure that a consumer knows why it should cost that. And that's really hard. But, but I mean, I will never, I mean, it is such a hard fight that we're fighting and it's, and it's like a broken system. But the last thing you can do is sit here and complain and just whine about it. Because in the end, if you want to make a change, then you got to push. And so I think what we fall back on is we got to make stone milled. The term stone's the stuff that has to happen. If we're going more. Because otherwise, if they don't know the difference, then of course they're going to pay 99 cents for a loaf of bread that is going to end up just turning to sugar and cause terrible health outcomes over a long period of time. Yeah.

What are some of the differences that maybe either you have found or maybe some of your customers have come back telling you the difference between how they feel, maybe how it tastes and your bread and other breads that they've had? That's a great question. So like I said, the product has to taste better. And I'm totally biased, but we do as a company, we do these sensory taste tests every quarter. So every three months, our entire company comes together. We have a head of quality control and we evaluate how ours tastes against every, not every other brand, but like the brands that matter, right. That we compete against. And, you know, and we try to be super objective, but it puts us in a state of mind where it's like we really have to be as objective as we can.

And I do think just based on our internal testing that our products do taste better. They are undeniably better for you. So a couple of cool things happen to us almost on a daily basis. So our first mill and bakery is in a city just north of Austin. And so we run a retail bakery there. So we have a mill in the window. It's highly educational, but we feed a community. And so that gives us a chance to do real-time R&D.

And always has since day one. We opened the mill before we ever, we opened our bakery and sold to the public before we ever sold to grocery stores. So we've always had firsthand experience with the consumer in our place. And our Google reviews are great. But the other thing we have is we have people who come directly to us, who tell us they have gluten sensitivities,

who find us out, eat our products, and then come back or either in real time, because they typically takes 10 minutes for them to, to whether it's, they break out in a rash or they have some kind of stomach issue. They tell us in real time. And it was so funny because when we started, when we, before we even opened our bakery, we needed to do R and D and we were doing R&D in a school cafeteria. And we had an intern who didn't tell me at the time that he was gluten intolerant. And he was helping us. We were rolling bagels, making bagels. And on like day three, he said, hey, he said, no, I have a severe gluten intolerance.

And over the course of the next couple of weeks, I basically convinced him that he had to try it. But going in, even though I knew wheat was so messed up and that what we were doing was going to have a huge change on diet, I never considered that this gluten intolerance thing was even probably viable. Because in the restaurants that we were running, gluten intolerant make gluten free. You don't introduce any kind of bread product. But this intern ended up eating a bagel and having no response. And so this was very early days. And immediately, that was like the light bulb went off. And while we can't, like the challenge is like, you can't make claims in, in food that you can't, you can't go on a package and say gluten friendly,

um, or whatever, you know, phrase we would, we would state, but we do know for sure that, um, a lot of people that have sensitivities that eat real wheat and real flour are completely fine. And the other, the other place besides our own mill, in that one anecdote with our intern, is a Costco roadshow or all these demos we do at grocery stores like Whole Foods. So we are talking to thousands of people and there's a very large percentage that self-identify as gluten intolerant. And occasionally, or more, pretty often, people will be willing to experiment. And similarly, it's typically we get great feedback. I mean, that was me. And when I came by, I was like, I don't know. I talk about this on the

podcast. Sometimes I will have like a bite and I'm okay. Because I also, I healed my gut a lot in the last like 13 years. So I don't have the same response to wheat that I did when I first got diagnosed. One, I will say your bread tastes absolutely incredible and the bagels too, they're so good. My producer and I were like freaking out. You're welcome. Like at Costco, we were like, whoa, this is so good.

And also like when I ate it, I didn't have any sort of symptoms at all. I've tested a few times back and forth and I again I don't know if it's like the flour that I was eating but I've mine's more like I get skin stuff that happens like a week later which I didn't get after I ate yours by the way so it's interesting also how it manifests in everyone differently. But this is where the education piece comes in, where you guys need to educate people that some people are just having issues with the wheat and the way that we're doing it. Of course, there are people that have celiac disease and they can't do

that. That is a totally different thing than what we're talking about. But a lot of what people are experiencing right now when they talk about how they can't have gluten, they're probably having a reaction to one of three things, either how it's processed and devoid of any sort of nutrients, or they might be getting affected by the glyphosate that's getting sprayed on the wheat right before it gets harvested. Or the other issue is uh the quality of the seeds so this is another question i wanted to ask you um i did get some questions

on that video where people asking um do they use a more like ancient version of wheat because i know that's been some of part of the conversation with like people having issues the gluten is that what we eat now in the united states and how much we've like hybridized it, we've messed the seed. It looks nothing like what our ancestors used to eat. So what do you guys use a more like ancient heirloom seed or how does that work? Yeah, I mean, so we're committed. We only use organic. We have direct relationships with our growers. We have our own supply chain standards, which were really designed by the first farmer that we worked with.

When we started One Mighty Mill, we had this mission. It was focused on this idea that you could rebuild a local food system by building a mill and connecting it to a local wheat farm just like just like the the system that used to feed our ancestors and so the first farmer we met uh was up in northern maine there's there's hardly any wheat being grown in new england it's uh it used to be what they called the bread basket of of uh i guess of the northeast um but we we were lucky we we met a a father and daughter up in northern maine um they were the first people to bring organic wheat back to the state of maine and they are like the ogs like they taught us everything and really kind

of pushed pushed us forward in terms of our education and what was important and they were using a a heritage breed that was like native to maine and for two years we only sourced uh we only sourced with one with one grower and uh and we we outgrew we outgrew that network which is a great thing um we built we built 10 more mills um over the five years um which is why we saw you in the west coast because we built uh've built 10 more mills um over the five years um which is why we sell in the west coast because we built uh we built three mills in northern cal california and so we've always so our supply chain standards are very focused on sustainability and healthy soil they are not they are not explicitly focused on the uh the heritage of the wheat, although we are committed to a heritage varietal. In some cases, natural selective breeding had to happen so that certain wheat could

grow in certain places. And so we do our absolute best. But I can tell you one thing, the farmers we work with, they are completely committed to sustainable regenerative. And we built this kind of local supply chain, which in California is, you know, maybe what we're most proud of in terms of mission fulfillment, because our mills are in Sebastopol, which is in Northern California.

And they are less than 90 miles from Sacramento Valley, where we grow, where we source 100% of our wheat. And then we bake it, you know, five miles from our mills in Petaluma. And so, you know, that system is pretty powerful in terms of when we think about why we started the business and we started on the East Coast, but to be able to dial it in and to kind of fulfill at that level with that kind of infrastructure is exciting. What I was thinking about when you were telling that story about how local it is,

it's so cool because now what you're able to do is put money back into the farmers that are growing our food instead of all the money going into these large corporations, which is just incredible. And it's putting money back into the community, which is what we want. This is how we rebuild our food system. This is how we rebuild our communities. Is this something that's possible to scale? Because something that you mentioned earlier, which is a great point from the food manufacturer side of things, of course, they want to have one big conglomerate. They want to be able to do everything in one place and then just ship it out everywhere. Doing it this way, stone milling, is this something that could potentially scale

to the point where we need it to be in our food system? Well, I think it's absolutely scalable because it's what fed our country since the beginning. But you have to break down kind of the existing infrastructure and it starts with changing consumer attitudes. And so if you think about our, well, the systems we've built, so we built, we have our first mill outside of Boston. We have three mills in Boston. We have three mills in New York and we have three mills in California. And we were, I think we but we believe we're going to do it. And we went all in. And so our, our facilities only, only run at about 20% capacity.

So when you think about, can one mighty mill scale, well, we can be five times bigger than we are today. We just, we just can't change. We just can't get people to understand quickly enough, you know? And so, so just, just that one piece is, is doable. And then the ability to put more farm, more mills closer to more farms in the Midwest, you know, in the, in the Southwest, there's, you know, that, that was, that's always been, that's always been our dream. And I think we're, we're, we've been able to prove that

we can start, we can make, we can make progress towards it. So what are some of the biggest hurdles that you guys have faced as far as being a smaller company, swimming upstream, trying to do right by people? What are kind of the biggest things that have been hard on your company? I mean, there's a lot of challenges. And I don't like to complain because we've been given so many opportunities. You know, the retailers that have taken us in have is, is diminishing and decreasing is, is a fact, but if you can convert and you can introduce people and educate them on why

they should come back to the bread wall, then that's, that's huge value. I think, I think the challenges are, um, that number one, I think the biggest challenge will always be,

um, can one mighty mill convince a consumer who has been brainwashed to think that their food, like a loaf of bread, I'm sorry, it can't cost 99 cents. Like, it doesn't make sense. I don't, there's no way you can back into how that could work. Because at the beginning, you have to understand that the retailer is going to probably make 50% of that dollar.

So if you're buying something for 99 cents, then that means the retailer is probably getting it for 50 cents, which then you back out cost, the cost of transport or freight to get it to the store, the cost of the packaging, the cost of the marketing that happens to move the needle or to buy space on shelf. And so you're left with what do the raw ingredients cost

the company that makes that. And that's generations of, I think, learned behavior that we should be squeezing our budget to feed our kids and our family that kind of food. And so that is such a huge challenge and something that your work is really helping move the needle and getting people to understand that like, hey, if you can pay six bucks for a latte, then, then you know what, like you don't have to pay 99 cents for you, for, uh, for a loaf of bread. So I think that's the biggest challenge. And then there's, you know, there's all kinds of other challenges with, which goes into like media and why this

whole gluten, like why, you know, there's so many layers to this gluten thing and why it has become, um, you know, it's like, it's like it's been identified as almost a toxin in a way. And so when we go to demos sometimes, like we'll see, we'll see customers who they don't, they have no idea what gluten is, zero, but they know the word is supposed to be something that's bad for them. And that is a huge disconnect. And that's just the reality of, I think, the consumer culture, the food business, and the way that consumer attention works. And it's always on to the next quick fix or the next quick enemy that you need to stay away from. Did you guys know that over 70% of sodium in the US diet is consumed from packaged and

processed foods? When you adopt a whole foods diet, you're eliminating or hopefully eliminating these processed foods and therefore sodium from your diet. Now, the solution is not to reintroduce processed foods in your diet, but by not replacing that sodium, you can actually negatively impact your health and performance. If you guys listened to my episode, The Salt Fix with Dr. James Dinnick, we learned that sodium is actually a really imperative mineral for the body. Sodium helps maintain fluid balance. It's an electrolyte, so it helps keep us hydrated. It also aids in nerve impulses.

It regulates blood flow and blood pressure. It's incredibly important. And if you're eating a whole real food diet chances are you're probably not getting enough sodium also this is probably going to be a shock to hear but if you are just drinking water without adding minerals back into your water you're not actually hydrating my personal favorite way to stay hydrated throughout the day is through drinking element every day that's lmnt it's a delicious tasting electrolyte drink mix that has everything you need and nothing you don't. So that means lots of salt. There's no sugar in there. It's formulated to help anyone

with their electrolyte needs and is perfectly suited for people following keto, low carb, and paleo diets. It has a science-backed electrolyte ratio, a thousand milligrams of sodium, 200 milligrams of potassium, and 60 milligrams of magnesium. I drink one of these every single morning. They have a ton of amazing, super delicious flavors. I know a lot of us listening are avoiding natural flavors, so they also have an unflavored one, which is my personal favorite. I love to put it with lemon. But if you want the flavored ones, they have a great variety of different flavors, and they have given me an awesome offer to share with you guys. So you guys can claim a free Element sample pack when you make a purchase through the link. The link is drinkelement.com slash realfoodology. And in the element sample

pack, you're going to get one flavor, one packet of every flavor so that you can try all of them and see which one is your favorite. I hope you guys enjoy it as much as I do. Again, it's drinkelement.com slash realfoodology. That's drinkelement.com slash realfoodology. That's drinkelement.com slash realfoodology. It's so true. We just bounce from enemy to enemy. It's like gluten. And then now like everything, everyone's like promoting like keto stuff now. So like sugar is the devil. And look, I think sugar is really bad for us, but I'm just, it's funny how we like make out these enemies. And before that it was fat and that really screwed us up as a society.

So yeah, it is interesting to hear that from your lens and thank you for sharing that. And the reason why I asked that question is not to sound like negative. I want people to understand how important it is for us to put our money into the companies that are doing right by us. Because we need to understand too,

that not only do we wanna be buying better foods for our bodies, for ourselves, for our families, but we also want to be giving the money to the companies that are doing right by us so that we can continue this journey. Like we need you, we need you. And so we need people to be putting money into companies like yours that are actually doing this

because this is how we get society to be well again. This is how we change our food system. It's these little tiny movements that create this full change because when people start buying more of your bread and then there's talk about, okay, what is this stone milling? Like, wait, so gluten's not that bad for us. It's what we've done to the wheat. Like that's how you drive the consumer

trends and you get more people to buy in that direction. And then the larger food corporations are like, oh, wait, people aren't asking for this like cheap 99 cent bread anymore. They want bread that actually has nutrients in it. So it's just, you know. Yeah, like, so like the external impacts. So I think when you make a decision to support a company like One Mighty, and there's so many food businesses that are just like us, like mission-based, that want to do something good, you know, and I think want to be proud of the product they make and the change that they're leading. But I do think if you just looked at it through our lens,

you support One Mighty Mill, you're not just investing in your health, you are supporting organic farming, which if One Mighty Mill grows, our demand grows, more organic acreage, healthier soil, better. And organic, forget about the environment like organic organic soil organic healthy soil is what we need for new basic nutrition and so so you buy one mighty mill you're supporting that you buy my mighty mill and this is kind of on a side benefit but um you know we we're a b corp so we uh you know we are audited and we bow you know a quick explanation of b corp is it's kind of like this next generation of companies that balance purpose with profit. And so, you know, we live our mission in a couple ways. One thing is we, when we started, we intentionally, we built a beautiful bakery and mill and we wanted to hyper-educational, but we didn't want to put it in, I don't know the equivalent in California, but maybe it'd be like Rodeo Drive or who knows.

We intentionally wanted to put it in a place that we felt in downtown Lynn. And we wanted to feed a neighborhood that we thought would probably not have a Whole Foods or have our products in it. And we did that intentionally. And then we also decided that we were going to try to feed kids, even if it was a symbolic level. And so we've always fed some pretty large urban public school systems. And so this has all been on the East coast, but we, uh, every kid in Lynn eats our bagels on Friday, same bagels that we sell, you know, whole foods and premium retailers. We do it at a very large public school system in Western mass called

Springfield. It's 30,000 kids. Uh, we designed a stone milled whole wheat pizza crust, uh, kids in Springfield, 30 30 000 kids eat that pizza um and uh and like and so that's that's like a side benefit of when you when you put your when you vote with your dollar um you know you can you can have all these downstream good things happen if you um if you kind of put your money where your mouth is or you put your money where you know you and you and you want to and you want to uh kind of you want to push for change so that's not in the biggest thing to note is like nobody should buy our product because we we were we believe in

in you know in food justice or feeding feeding kids that kids that wouldn't have access to our type of food anyways. But you should buy our food because it tastes better and it's better for you and your family. But you should feel good about buying it because you know the type of people that or the type of organization that wants to rebuild this food system is also going to do some good things along the way. And so I'm with you. I think people can vote with their dollar. Yeah. And one, what's so cool about it too is we're also helping the environment because you mentioned earlier that part of your supply chain is only buying from farmers that practice regenerative practices. And we don't have to go into that because I've talked about that a lot on the podcast. This is also helping our earth. And so we're putting our money not only into our own

health and then also the downstream effects of what you were just saying, and then also the regenerative piece of it. And what's so amazing about that, I was just, I was reminded of this TikTok that I saw very recently where this woman, and I was very shocked by this because she was a farmer. She literally lives on a farm and grows her own food. And she did this video basically saying like, I'm going to continue, or she goes, stop with the food elitism. I'm going to continue buying these cheap products because they're affordable and accessible and not everyone has, you know, the elitism. I'm going to continue buying these cheap products because they're affordable and accessible and not everyone has the elitism to have the more expensive food. And my immediate thought was, what is more elitist than putting all your money in these large corporations that

do not care about your health at all? And you are just lining the pockets of these massive corporations that are not putting money back into their massive corporations that are not putting money back into their communities. They're not putting money back into regenerative farming that's helping our soil. They're not putting any money back into community health or our own health. What more elitist is that? And I just was thinking about your downstream of how you guys are helping. Such confusion, right? You're paying the shareholders of that company. Exactly. You're talking about elite people.

What are you talking about? It's a function of just confusion in that organic healthy food is for certain people, right? It's not, it's for everybody. And that's why education, in our little pocket of the world, it's like, for us, it is about making stone milled undeniably the choice, right. And, and making it accessible. Like we, we really hold ourselves to being, we're not the most expensive bread on the wall. We try to be right in line with kind of the,

the leader in the category. And in some ways, we feel like we have to be because we want people to switch and at least try our products. But yeah, that's crazy, that example of that farmer. I was like, wait, what? I was like, oh, that's way more elitist in my mind. I just, I want to commend you for doing this and for going out of your way to put your money and your business and your time into products that are actually creating real nutritious, real food for people. It's so incredible. And I just love so much what you guys are doing. Okay, I want to ask you a question that I ask all my guests at the end, and this is just a personal one. What are your health non-negotiables? These are things either you do daily,

maybe weekly to prioritize your own health. So my health daily is I have to work out in the morning. And I think it's probably more mental than physical. And so I already know tomorrow I have to go to Denver and I have to be on a really early flight. And I'm already like, how the hell am I going to work out? And it's dry. And it matters like, it's, it matters to me and it shouldn't because it's like, it's just one day, but I feel like I'm not going to be as sharp and I'm not going to be, uh, I'm just not going to feel right. So I think that is, and then, you know, I try, I try my best to eat, uh, eat something from one mighty meal every day. So if I put those two together and I'm feeling pretty good.

I love that. Well, please let everyone know where they can, if you want those two together, then I'm feeling pretty good. I love that. Well, please let everyone know where they can, if you want to be accessed, where they can find you, if they have any questions. Also, where they can find One Mighty Mill and maybe some major retailers that you can drop to for people to go pick it up. Awesome. Yeah, thanks for giving me that chance. So everybody out there, we're in almost all Whole Foods. You have to look for us in the bakery department. We're not always on the bread wall, so you have to dig a little bit and look for us closer to kind of the artisan breads.

But our bagels and breads are there. We are in an amazing retailer in New England called Market Basket, if there's any New England people out there. And we are getting close, thanks to Courtney's help, I think, in meeting her. We're getting really close to a rotation with Costco, which we're hoping is in February and March. And it would be, we think, maybe all of California. So if there's some Californians listening,

then please find us in Costco early this winter. And hopefully we'll be on the floor giving out samples and we'll meet some of the people that are listening in. So thanks again. Oh, and also our website. So you can order our products on our website. You can order our flour on our website. Our website is onemightymill.com

and we run a direct-to-consumer web business there as well. And then you guys also have an Instagram, which is just onemightymill, right? Yes, yes, we do. Okay, so people want to go follow you and check you out. And I thought it was so cool, actually, that we didn't mention this. That was your brother that I met who was on the video, right?

That was Tony. Or like co-founder? My business partner, yeah. Oh, okay, okay. I wasn't sure. Yeah, that was David. And he nailed it. Oh, he nailed it. Oh, okay, okay. I wasn't sure. Yeah, that was David. And he nailed it. Oh, he nailed it.

That was amazing. He nailed it. So thank goodness that all came together. Well, and he let us mic him up too, which I love because sometimes people get really nervous, you know, if I ask. But we had an extra mic

and he's like, let's do it. Let's go. And then he just goes off and I was like, this is incredible. Like it could not have been planned if we tried. Like it was just perfect. Yeah, he killed it. Yeah, let's go. And then he just goes off. And I was like, this is incredible. Like it could not have been planned if we tried. Like it was just perfect. Yeah, he killed it. Yeah, it was awesome.

Oh, well, thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate your time. And again, like I said, thank you so much for what you guys are doing for our food industry. It is so badly needed right now. And just know that you guys are making a difference. Thanks for what you're doing.

You're doing hard work. We need people. We need you. Thanks. Appreciate you. Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of The Real Foodology Podcast. If you liked the episode, please leave a review in your podcast app to let me know. This is a Resonant Media production produced by Drake Peterson and edited by Mike Fry. The theme song is called Heaven by the amazing singer Georgie. Georgie is spelled with a J. For more amazing podcasts produced by my team, go to resonantmediagroup.com. I love you guys so much.

See you next week. The content of this show is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not a substitute for individual medical and mental health advice and doesn't constitute a provider patient relationship. I am a nutritionist, but I am not your nutritionist. As always, talk to your doctor or your health team first.