The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Bragg Live Foods CEO Discusses Earth Day and Healthy Living

Episode Date: April 23, 2024

Bragg Live Foods CEO Discusses Earth Day and Healthy Living Bragg.com About the Guest(s): Linda Boardman is the CEO of Bragg Live Foods. She has a degree from Harvard University and began her career with Ocean Spray cranberries. Linda has a long history in the food industry, including working at Whole Foods Market and Applegate Farms. She is passionate about the natural food space and is committed to promoting healthy living through Bragg's products. Episode Summary: Welcome to The Chris Voss Show, where host Chris Voss interviews CEOs, authors, thought leaders, and visionaries. In this episode, Chris interviews Linda Boardman, the CEO of Bragg Live Foods. Bragg is a company with a rich history in the health food industry, founded over a hundred years ago by Paul Bragg. Linda shares the story of Bragg's origins and its mission to inspire and nourish healthy living. She also discusses the benefits of apple cider vinegar and how Bragg is making it more convenient for people to incorporate into their daily routines. Linda emphasizes the importance of education and providing access to healthy foods, and highlights Bragg's commitment to organic agriculture and sustainability. Key Takeaways: Bragg Live Foods was founded over a hundred years ago by Paul Bragg, a passionate health educator who promoted a healthy plant-based diet, exercise, and the use of apple cider vinegar. Bragg is committed to providing convenient and innovative products that make it easier for people to incorporate apple cider vinegar into their daily routines. Apple cider vinegar has been studied for its health benefits, including managing blood sugar spikes, supporting weight management, and maintaining healthy cholesterol levels. Bragg offers a range of apple cider vinegar products, including flavored varieties and convenient capsules, to cater to different preferences and lifestyles. Bragg is a certified B Corp and is dedicated to promoting organic agriculture, sustainability, and educating people about the benefits of healthy living. Notable Quotes: "We really try to look at our drinks and make sure that they're as healthy as possible and like putting a bunch of sugar in is just really gonna negate the health effect that our consumers are looking for." - Linda Boardman "If you can proactively take some vinegar every day in your water and up your greens content with a salad every day, isn't that a better solution than taking a handful of pills and hoping for the best?" - Linda Boardman

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There you go. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. We certainly appreciate you guys coming by. The Greatest Book of All Time the White House presidential advisors, the astronauts, the rock stars, the Pulitzer Prize winners, the great authors of all the latest books that come out on the market. We just love talking to the most brilliant people who bring their stories of life, teach you how to improve the quality of yours, and there you go. Go to goodreads.com, Fortunes Chris Foss, LinkedIn.com, Fortunes Chris Foss, Chris Foss won the TikTokity, and all those crazy places on the Internet that we reside, as it were. Today we have an amazing young lady on the show. Linda Boardman joins us on the internet that we reside as it were today we have an amazing young lady on the show linda boardman joins us on the show she is the ceo of brag live foods and today is earth day

evidently is that true yes it is all right we like the earth because you know let's just hang out for at least for now so linda if you're familiar you know we ordered the we've used so many other products the apple cider vinegar of course is popular for gut health and all that good stuff linda is a forward-thinking and innovative ceo she's passionate about the natural food space since assuming the ceo role in 2019 she's embodied bragg's values bold collaborative open engaged and proud she's active in the broader food industry, and she serves in the board of directors of Oregon Ice Cream and Reliance Vitamin Company. She lives out Bragg's mission to inspire and nourish healthy living in both her personal

and professional life. She's got a degree from Harvard University, began her career with Ocean Spray Cranberries. That's healthy too. Those are good for you. And her subsequent work leading the private label group at Whole Foods Market solidified her love and commitment to the health food industry. Welcome to the show, Linda. How are you?

Great. It's great to be here. There you go. It's wonderful to have you as well. Give us the dot coms. Where can people find you guys on the interwebs? Brag.com and you can follow us on all the usual platforms, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn. We're on them all.

There you go. In your words, give us a 30,000 overview of who Brag is and what you guys do. Yeah, I'd love to. And I think any story about Brag, you really have to go back because the company is so rich in history and it's really the company's DNA. So Bragg was founded over a hundred years ago by Paul Bragg, who was a passionate health educator. And this man was way ahead of his time. We're talking more than a hundred years ago. He was traveling, having great audiences come together, and he would talk about the importance of a healthy plant-based diet, daily exercise, water, breathing exercises to manage stress. And part of that, of course, was the use of apple cider vinegar as part of a healthy diet.

Paul went on to inspire people to open health food stores way back in the 20s. Paul himself had one of the first health food stores in California. And as that took off, he decided that there was a business to be had by providing the products that would stock these health food stores. And that was really the history of Bragg. Paul Bragg, in fact, if you remember back in the day, even this was before my time, but Paul Bragg inspired Jack LaLanne. He was Jack LaLanne's mentor. And Jack Laulane became a big fitness icon back in the 50s 60s and really started that with one of the first exercise tv shows huge history and brag is what i'm getting at in terms of of healthy lifestyle there you go i remember i grew up watching jack lane i think he had a show and he would do all those things it. It was black and white. Boy, I'm old. No, I'm old.

You're old. I don't know. Dates things there. But yeah, you guys make some amazing products. I tried your, let's see, the organic salad marinades. Nutritional yeast is really good. Yeah. There was, it was Penn, Penn Jillette, who wrote the book Presto, who I'm now friends with crazy, with Cray Ray,

in the book Presto, who gave him advice on intermittent fasting. Yes. One of his tricks was nutritional yeast. Yeah. And using that as a cheese instead of cheese. Exactly. It's good for your gut health too. Liquid aminos. I have two of the apple ciders.

One is the apple cider normal, and then I have one, I think, that's honey cayenne or honey yes it's honey something honey cayenne yep yeah that must be what it is then there is there's apple cider vinegar with honey and apple cider vinegar honey cayenne both yeah yes and it's good for gut health and some people think you lose weight with it i don't know i it's always young people that say that so i can never trust. But it is good for gut health and cleaning out your system. And it's better than bleach. Don't do bleach, kids. That's just a joke. Let's get into a little bit of your history because people like to get to know our guests a little bit. I know since the bio, you've worked with a lot

of different companies that are healthy. Tell us about your upbringing and what kind of aligned you and brought you into the health company space as opposed to you know working for mcdonald's yeah great question i do have a long history in food i i i grew up in connecticut and then my father who had worked in business when he was in his early 50s he decided to make a massive career change become a college professor so we moved to a small town in upstate New York. Some people have heard of it if they're baseball fans, Cooperstown, New York, baseball fame. So that's why I went to high school. But I always had a big interest in food. And in fact,

my first job ever was at a grocery store as a teenager when you still had to get your blue card or whatever it was to work before you were 16. So I do have a long history in food. When I graduated from college, I was really fortunate enough to pull together a couple of the things I enjoyed most, my interest in food and cooking and gardening, and my love of writing. And I landed an entry level position in the communications department of Ocean Spray. Wow. Yeah. So I quickly learned at Ocean Spray that really where all the excitement was, was over in the other wing of the building and marketing. And they were the ones building the business plans and they had the profit and loss responsibility, putting together budgets, plans, new product recommendations, marketing plans.

So I moved over to marketing. And that's really where I got a lot of my kind of classic training. So after about five years, I decided I wanted to do something a little bit more entrepreneurial, creative. So I went to Whole Foods when it was still a relatively small company and originally worked on the retail marketing side, opening new stores and supporting the stores. But most of my time there, I ran Private Label, which was the 365 brand, if you're familiar with Whole Foods. There you go.

And that really turned out well for them when Amazon swooped in and bought them. Yes. Yeah. Yep. What a brand. Yeah, absolutely. And then how did you find yourself at Bragg? Yeah.

I ended up, while I was at Whole Foods, meeting the owner of Applegate Farms, and I went to work with him. Applegate Farms, by the way, work with him. Applegate Farms, by the way, is the number one brand of organic and natural deli meats. And he was a real pioneer in antibiotic free and organic processed meats. So I went to work with him, he really was looking to expand the company. It was your typical entrepreneur story where this guy was wearing a million hats and doing everything. So I went in to help him get the company organized and grow the company. And through that experience, I met with a group of investors that had worked a lot in the

natural food space and went on to work with them across a number of natural products companies. And when eventually Patricia Bragg, who was Paul's adopted daughter, she took the reins of Bragg in the 1970s on her father's death. She decided at the ripe age of 89 that it was time to retire in 2019. So that's when I came in. She handpicked a group of investors that would help bring her legacy forward. She remained until her passing last year, an investor in the company and really committed to its continuing her her legacy but yeah i'm the first non-brag to run the company which is quite an honor and kind of taking the reins to to pull this great brand forward into the future that's quite the brag i love it there you go i yeah i've had some apple gate stuff i had their frittatas and different things.

I went on a whole binge back, I think it was about 2016, where I read, once again, is it Sean Penn? No, that's a different, that's an actor. I remember the pen author is, I forget his first name, but of a Penn and Gillette comedy duo. And I read Presto, and I was 350, 370 pounds, something like that at the time. I was just finally reached that point of sickness and I read that he lost 100 pounds and so I said, well, I'm going to read his book and see how he did it.

He was able to break the barrier through because he showed how he broke his belief systems and the belief systems were really the thing that were holding him back. You know, stupid shit like rewarding yourself when you go to the store, like buying candy and junk. And I was drinking 10 to 15 Mountain Dews, I think at the time, a day.

And then vodka at night. So there was that. And I just kind of had this epiphany moment after reading his book and getting some of his belief system rules down and i quit mountain dew i started eating i went i bought veganese is what i call it because you know there's 5 000 variations of veganese and people will write me so i call it E's. I basically started eating healthy live foods and I started living in the produce section as opposed to living in, you know, all the nasty parts that you're not supposed to be in with the dead food in the center of the store. And it changed my life.

You know, eating stuff like what you guys do with the apple cider vinegar for gut health, gut health, you know, learning to eat live foods. I lost 100 pounds. And people were really angry with me, especially women, because I was losing like three pounds a day. But you had to realize I was drinking 10 to 15 Mountain Dews a day. I mean, there was a lot of stupid crap going on. And then thankfully, in 2020, I just gave up booze because I was listening and so in tune with my body.

I'm just like, I can feel the effects of this for three days. It's not fun anymore. So it made all the difference. And you guys have kind of come into your own. You guys were ahead of your time, like you said. Yeah. Even the originator was ahead of his time. And, you know, for a long time, it was probably being out there in the desert a little bit

because, like, everyone's like, hey, these McDonald's and these Whoppers are awesome. And you guys are like, hey, we have some healthy stuff over here. They'll make you live longer. And they're like, fuck that. We're fine. I'm sure that there's, I'm sure these burgers that will last 20 years, if you just let them sit without deteriorating.

I'm sure those are fine. But you guys have finally come to your own where the, you own where people went through the same journey that I went through of waking up and going, this crap isn't good for us. And now you guys are kind of like, I think, top dog or getting there. Yeah. Well, I love your story because I think it really resonates with Bragg's mission of meeting people where they are, making a healthy lifestyle easier. And that was really Paul and Patricia's focus. And part of their Bragg healthy lifestyle was eat a salad every day. So they developed healthy salad dressings that would help people have that

more convenient and have healthy ingredients to top their salad. They, as you've already mentioned, they launched nutritional yeast in a sprinkle bottle. more convenient and have healthy ingredients to top their salad. They, as you've already mentioned, they launched nutritional yeast in a sprinkle bottle so that it was really easy for people to use that instead of using cheese as a non-dairy flavor replacement. And it's a complete protein, which is amazing for people who are in a plant-based or semi-plant-based diet. Liquid amino, so you toss in a stir fry easily. And then as we came in in 2019, what was the next chapter?

We knew that a lot of people were really looking for the benefits of apple cider vinegar. There have been a number of studies over the past, well, 20 plus years, but even a new interesting study was just released this year from a group in Lebanon. So apple cider vinegar is being studied for its health benefits more and more. And the totality of the science is really pretty exciting in terms of kind of three studied health benefits. One is helping to manage blood sugar spikes. And that is kind of related to your observation and people using it to help manage their weight.

And then the third is helping to manage healthy cholesterol levels. So as people were looking for ways to bring this into their life, the traditional way to use it is to put a tablespoon in a glass of water and drink that. But that's not overly convenient for people on the go or some people don't like the taste. So we started really looking for ways to make apple cider vinegar more convenient and relevant, whether that be the flavors, like you mentioned, the honey cayenne, we have a ginger citrus blend, a cranberry apple blend, or a convenient way to take it. So in 2021, we introduced the only apple cider vinegar supplement that has an effective dose of acetic acid. So it's the equivalent of acetic acid in three capsules as a tablespoon of vinegar.

Wow. There you go. And you take them in the capsule. I think I've seen the capsules. Yeah, you guys have really expanded the brand from when I early remember it in recent years where you have so many of you got the salad dressing and different things. You know know for those out there one of my i think most of my people on my facebook know my hacks you know i i usually when

i when i go on a weight lossing binge i i weight lossing binge the i just make it whatever i want it's my it's my it's my language poetic license folks the so anyway one of the hacks that i use for intermittent fasting was people get hungry when they're intermittent fasting you know their brain or gut starts mucking with them and so i learned a hack that i think i got from pendulet on his book presto but one two of his tricks or three of his tricks was amino acids apple cider vinegar and the nutritional flakes and of course i went to the store and went, where do I get nutritional flakes or nutritional yeast?

And they're like, you go down there, and you guys had it all. Yep. So you guys are like the gateway to healthy foods, I guess. Yep. You're the gateway drug to health. One of the hacks that I have from intermittent fasting is in the morning, of course, I'll have a coffee, black, no milk, no sugar, just dark and black. And so I'll have that and then I'll go as long as I can. And then once I start feeling those little pangs of my brain mucking with me,

I'll have a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar and then I'll fill my coffee glass with water. So it's kind of diluted down. And after a while you get used to the taste. You just have to, you just have to, you just have to, you know, pull your pants up and put your belt on and you're, you're, you're big, be a big boy about the whole thing. And so after a while you kind of get used to it. So I take that and man, that apple cider vinegar, I'll make my hunger pains disappear. I don't think most people know that. And then later in the day, I'll have lemons when I start feeling pains again. So I'll have a couple lemons and put that in some water and there you got some lemon juice.

And those don't disrupt your insulin hits with intermittent fasting. And then if you really want to push it, it depends upon what sort of intermittent fasting you're doing. I can do another round of apple cider vinegar, and then another round of lemons and get my 16, eight hours in my 16 fasting, eight hours eating. And I got to tell you that apple cider vinegar, it's so great at killing hunger pains. It really is. I don't know what i have never tried that that's what i'll have to try but i do take my vinegar every day and i think i i just get very excited by people's personal stories it's one of my favorite parts of this job is having

people come and we actually want one of my team, he joined the company about a year and a half ago, started taking apple cider vinegar every day, went in for his physical. His doctor couldn't believe how much his cholesterol had dropped. These are the things that make me really happy to hear stories like yours and people finding such benefits and supporting their health. I teach it to all my people on Facebook. I'm like, here's my little recipe, my little trick recipe.

And it just works. I don't know what it is. A little tablespoon of apple cider vinegar and you fill the glass with water and you just man up and take it. It's really like you kind of get used to it after a while. You're kind of like, yeah, this is kind of a nice little taste. And it's not too sharp if you just do a tablespoon and then you fill the whole glass with water.

It goes down. It's got a little apple flavor to it, you know, but it'll take away that hunger pain. Like it just kills it. And I'm just like, this is great. I can go two or three more hours. Of course, lemons are good for you as well. But, you know, plus it's good for your health.

So it gets in there with your gut empty. And, well, I don't think your gut would be be empty with your stomach and some of the lower intestines maybe but it really helps with that you guys have expanded with the drink line the blends supplements do you guys have other products you're working on right now yeah we're always working on new products most recently we've been introducing some expanding our supplement line. As I mentioned, we know that people want to have the convenience of being able to take apple cider vinegar on the go. So we introduced our apple cider vinegar capsules back in 2021. But since we've expanded that, so we have apple cider vinegar with additional benefits. So there's, for instance, our energy supplement, which has apple cider vinegar plus B vitamins to support energy levels. We have an apple cider vinegar glow, which is phytoceramides that help with skin. So it's really been exciting to be able to take this into new directions and provide increased benefits to consumers. Now we've got a bunch of stuff in the hopper that

is too early to talk about, but we're really kind of going back now and looking at our food line. And we have some exciting opportunities to continue to make a healthy diet journey easier, more convenient, better tasting. So lots going on at Bragg these days. There you go. Lots of products. The salad dressings are excellent. You know, all the great things there.

In fact, I think that I used to do, I think there was a salad dressing when I was first eating salads and lost my 100 pounds. I think there was a salad dressing that I used to use that used apple cider vinegar. And it was like a vinaigrette, a balsamic vinaigrette, without any sort of sugar and stuff. And I think it was apple cider vinegar, shallots, shallots, and shallots. Shallots. I just make it whatever I want.

Shallots. Welcome to Chris Vaughn Show. And balsamic vinegar. And I think it was some mustard like some it was some dijon mustard and it was like this great salad dressing you get out of it anyway today's earth day yeah well you know i what i what i really resonate with what you said is people don't realize how many salad dressings have added sugar and that was a real key thing for the brags they always, we're not going to put

all this junk in the salad dressing. We can have something that's delicious and you don't need to load it with high fructose corn syrup or bad oils that are not good for your body. So you can end up having what you think is a healthy meal, a nice tossed salad, and then you're putting a bunch of junk on top of it that's really not great for your body. So I think that's an excellent point. There you go. And speaking of oils, you guys even have a healthy olive oil. Yes, we do. Our olive oil comes from Greece. And so you've got all the benefits of having olive oil in your diet. It's really one of the best tasting olive oils.

I tell everyone I speak to, as of course you saw in my resume, I worked at Whole Foods a long time and I've tried a lot of olive oils and Bragg olive oil is really delicious. That's cool. That's from Greece. You know, the one problem with a lot of olive oils, people don't realize in the market, is they have an algorithm. They have a combination of all sorts of different olive oils, and you never can trust them.

Sometimes you're not even sure if they're virgin or not. Yes, and I love that you said that. Our QA group found a test. We actually test our olive oil now, and we can go back to make the that when we say it's coming from this specific olive from greece that that is indeed what's in the in the jar right now there's a olive shortage in the world a short crop so there's been increased scrutiny to make sure that people aren't you know putting some corn oil or some other oil, mixing it in with their olive oil due to the short supplies.

There you go. See, I learned a lot when I lost weight. I really got in and educated myself. And I think that's really what the difference was, just educating yourself. And then one of my friends taught me a great trick. He said, you know, the outside of the store has what are called the live foods. They're living foods. I mean, they're cut down, but they're, they're live. They're fresh. They're, they're, I think sometimes they're still alive. I don't know. But the reason they're on the outside of the store is because

they constantly have to refill those stocks because they go bad very quickly because they're live and then that's where the healthy foods are and then he goes if you look at the way the store is built in the rows the closer you get to the middle the deader the food is so usually near the center of the hot the center of the store is the frozen food which is usually heavy heavily blanched with oils and salts you know everyone's like i'm eating the frozen broccoli it's not as healthy and then there's the chips and the sodas right around them usually the chip aisle and then you know there's a candy aisle with all the candy stuff on it and so my friend taught me he goes here's what you do when you go to the store,

you do your shopping on the outside. And he goes, if you need to move to the middle, you just know which aisles you don't go down. You don't look down them. You don't go down them. You just know you don't go down those aisles. So I don't go down the frozen aisle. I don't go down the chip aisle. I don't go down the candy aisle. That's the last place I need to be is the candy aisle. And I just learned to avoid certain, I just know where they are. I don't have to look down on them and stuff and get tempted. And so I just learned, you know, where those, those areas are and half that that's like half the battle because, you know, one of the things that I learned from the book Presto from Penn Jillette wasette was if it's in your house, it's in your mouth. Like that Faustian bargain we play with ourselves at the store. We're like, I'll buy the whole thing of Oreos and I promise I'll only eat one a day.

And then we all know you get home and you're like, half that bag's gone by the time it makes it to stock. There you go. So what I love to is that you mentioned about your journey really starting with this education component and you just really got at the heart of Brad. I mean, that was Paul and Patricia after Paul's, their passion was educating people on health and these tricks to try to adopt healthier lifestyles and just adding one little habit after another, whether that's a salad to start your lunch. And then if you can add on the breathing exercises, if you can just keep layering these things on. And we really are committed to keeping that educational focus moving forward and providing new content, whether it's on our social platforms or updating our website. We've got some big plans on that.

Because to your point, that's the most important thing is helping people figure out how to get there. Everybody wants to be healthier, right? Nobody wants to be unhealthy. How can we help that journey? Yeah, definitely. And so today's Earth Day. Congratulations, Earth. Just one day we recognize you and the rest of the day we pollute you. Tell us about what you guys are doing on Earth Day and the commitment that you guys have to Earth. Yeah, I love that. One thing when I think about Earth Day is that Paul Bragg was a really early

advocate of organic agriculture. When I first came in as a CEO of Bragg, I went through some of our archives and I found pictures, him talking about organics before that was really in the mainstream vocabulary. He was very concerned from the onset about the use of industrial chemicals and really committed to educating people about the benefits of organic when most people had never even heard that term. So that's part of what we are committed to moving forward. If you think about our primary product of apple cider vinegar apple growers organic apple growers are trying to get the best return for their crop but if you have an apple that doesn't look great if it's misshapen and it's not great for the fresh market what are you going to do

you've got to have some outlet for that and be able to keep your orchards going so we work with these organic farmers to make sure that they have a place for their crops. Most of the organic apples in the United States come from the Pacific Northwest, the state of Washington, and Bragg has longstanding relationships with growers in California and Washington state. And I think that's a real part of our legacy. Most recently, very recent news, Bragg has just become a certified B Corp. You familiar with that?

Yes. Yeah. So we went through the scrutiny on our environmental, social governance practices. And that is a new addition in terms of our certifications. So we've been certified organic for many years and we've got GMO free products. And now we've got kind of the next step up

in terms of our social, environmental and governance commitments. So I think we just keep building on this foundation that our founders set for us and trying to expand that in terms of our impact on our communities and providing more access to healthy foods across the United States. And talk to us a little bit.

You touched on something that I was going to ask you next. Talk to us about the certified organic thing because a lot of people don't realize that there's a lot of scams going on in organic or there used to be. I don't know if things have gotten better. Yeah. So the National Organic Program established the requirements. It's been quite a while. I was back at Whole Foods. It's been quite a while now.

But previous to that, there were separate organic certifiers, so they had different standards. As a certified organic company, all of our record keeping and all of the tracing back to the ingredients has to take place so that you know when you're saying, hey, this apple cider vinegar is certified organic, that it's been every step of the way from the apple through the processing up until it gets to the consumer. That chain has been kept there you go are you guys on tiktok yes there you go there's a lot of influencers over there who swear by apple cider vinegar and and they're kind of like apple cider vinegar gurus i think i've seen so you guys have quite the following i think you guys have built an amazing brand that people are incredibly loyal to and the reputation is there where people

know that it's a good brand. It's an established brand. It's a brand that walks its talk as opposed to, you know, I don't know. My candy cereal brand is always trying to convince me it's healthy. But I'm not sure Coco Coco Coco Puffs or whatever is really the healthy one. Yeah, right.

It has more health in it. I don't know what that means. It's kind of like when McDonald's came out with Chicken McNuggets after the lawsuit of Frank and Me and said, Hey, we're putting chicken in the chicken nuggets now. Come back. I know. And that's one of my pet peeves is some of the kind of fake health language that you see in products.

And I think people are smarter than that in many cases that, you know, something that's just full of sugar and has a couple, you know, has a fiber content. It doesn't make up. It's not equal. And in our industry, one of the big examples of that is people think that they can get the benefits of apple cider vinegar by taking a gummy, an apple cider vinegar gummy. And so we try to do the education you know really it would have to be 30 gummies to get the acid in one tablespoon of apple cider vinegar or three or capsules 30 of

those gummies and think about how much sugar it's just it's as much as going out and ordering a full dessert yeah i'm not even sure i have those gummies like ever really dissolved. I'm, I have some questions about that. You know, I think I've heard something about how they don't really dissolve and maybe they dissolve more in your gut than they do in your stomach. But yeah, I've always kind of wondered about that. I took gummies for vitamins for a while and I think that was a dumb idea, but I was having, what was, I was having issues. If there's a certain vitamin that if i take it the coating on it will make me will make me we'll just not make things work right let's say it'll come back up and centrum that's who it is that whatever that coating is man i my body has not

like that coating so i was taking the gummies for a while but then i found a good healthy men's vitamin but i'm glad you guys are committed to earth i'm glad you guys are committed to earth glad you guys are committed to health you know the other plug i can give you and to our audience too is if you're complaining about the cost of what food costs like it's been killing me these people are complaining about how the hash browns and the and the and the burgers at mcdonald's have been costing more and and i'm just like well you should see the open-heart surgery cost you're going to have to have from eating that crap. What I used to do when I was losing all my weight was I would go to the store

and I'd buy all my live foods and I'd take a picture of my basket. And then I'd take a picture of my receipt. It's so much cheaper to eat live foods and eat healthy, not only at the cash register, but the doctor. Absolutely. And absolutely. And that was really part of, of Paul and Patricia's mantra was, was, and our, our most loyal brag users, they talk about their healthy lifestyle as a way to avoid medical problems, to be proactive, taking control of their health and trying to avoid these use of medications later on in their life.

So I agree with you. If you can proactively take some vinegar every day in your water and up your greens content with a salad every day, isn't that a better solution than taking a handful of pills and hoping for the best, right? Yeah. I mean, I recently took a ZebPik for, what was it, two or three months? I think it took it for three months. Didn't lose anyway. It did do the thing where you don't feel like eating anything.

I was going to ask you if it had side effects. I didn't have the side effects that I guess most people have. I guess about 50% of the people, really, it doesn't work with their system. But I drank hard for 20 years, and my mom was a horrible cook. She's a lovely person, but a horrible cook. So I have an iron stomach other than centrum. But it just didn't do anything for me when it came to losing weight. Part of it was is you

know i started working out more and i got on testosterone replacement so you're usually when i'm you know working out and building muscle but you really didn't do anything for me and after three months i just quit it and i actually can lose 10 pounds just by using the little trick in for intermittent fasting combo that i told you using your as a cinnamon or apple cider vinegar. And so it's to stick with a simple thing within this world that, you know, everybody wants to take a pill for everything. And then half the time you got to take a pill to fix the side effects of the other pill you're taking. Then you got a whole deck of pills sitting on your thing. Like I have vitamins and it's just not healthy for you in the long run.

Just eat live foods, eat healthy. You'll probably save a whole lot of money too. I mean, I think, you know, I think costs have gone up for produce a bit, but it's still cheaper than like, I'm just astounded when I see some of the expensive foods out there that are just complete boxes of crap, like some of the pre-made cereals and stuff like that. And I'm just like, seriously, why don't you just, you know, I always imagine grabbing, when you read the back of the nutrition label, I always imagine just, why don't you just take like a whole fistful of sugar

and just shove it in your mouth? Because that's basically what you're doing. There's a great guy on TikTok who does these videos where he takes his sugar content that's in anything, like any product. And he basically has a scale. And then he has cubes of sugar. And he will literally pour into whatever the container is the amount of sugar that's inside of that product. So like a Coke. And it was like 30% or 40% sugar.

So he'll fill like a glass. And you can see how much sugar that's in there and then he'll stack the the sugar cubes and it's shocking too you're just like holy crap that is a handful of sugar i'm just shoving into my pile hole yeah and that's not that's not healthy in any way shape or form and sugar can be hidden in so many things, too. Oh, yeah. We mentioned earlier salad dressings with sugar. But when we were updating our drinks line, Bragg has a commitment not to add sugar. So some of our drinks, like you mentioned, we put honey in our ACV, ACV and honey. But we really try to look at our drinks and make sure that they're as healthy as possible. And putting a bunch of sugar in is just really going to negate the health effect that our consumer is looking for.

There you go. And honey is good for your gut health, too. You should have a little bit of honey every day. Lots of benefits. Lots of benefits. Well, happy Earth Day. And thank you very much, Linda, for coming on the show. Give us your.com so we can find you on the interwebs.

Brag.com. There you go. Simple and easy. It is. B-R-A-G-G. Follow him across the social media there, folks. Thanks, Linda, for coming on. Thanks to Ronis for tuning in.

Be sure to eat healthy. I know I put a plug in for Presto, how I made over 100 pounds disappear another magical tales from panjulet he was kind enough to reply to me several times when i thanked him for saving my life and he turned me on to the yeast the amino acids and of course those were made by brag and so good nutritional yeast like you put that on popcorn you can put on you put on everything and it's just so good for your gut. Thanks, Mattis, for tuning in. Find us on all the social media things that we're at across social media.

And be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you guys next time.