#104 - Eric Smith @ Edacious - Helping Brands Prove That Regenerative Products Are More Nutritious

Episode Recap:

ReGen Brands Recap #104 - Helping Brands Prove That Regenerative Products Are More Nutritious - (RECAP LINK)

Episode Transcript:

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated with AI and is not 100% accurate.

Kyle Krull - 00:00:13
Welcome to the ReGen Brands Podcast. This is a place for brands, retailers, investors, and other food system stakeholders to learn about the consumer brands supporting regenerative agriculture and how they're changing the world. This is your host, Kyle, joined by my cohost, AC, who's gonna take us into the episode.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:00:34
On this episode, we have Eric Smith, who is the founder and CEO of Edacious. Edacious offers radically easy lab testing and intuitive nutrition software for food system professionals. They're working on turning nutrition data into actionable insights for people and planetary health. Eric's on a mission to redefine food quality using hard data. Through his work at Edacious, he's helping brands measure, benchmark, and communicate the nutritional value of their products so consumers can truly understand what they're eating. We explore why the current nutrition facts panel fails us, how nutrient density can drive real market demand for regen products, what kinds of data Regeneron brands should be gathering now, and how Audacious is building a first of its kind food quality benchmarking system. You'll hear Eric breakdown complex concepts like bioavailability and phytochemicals in clear, actionable ways. Plus, he explains how regenerative brands can use this data to differentiate themselves in a very crowded marketplace.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:01:28
If we weren't already super bullish on how nutrient density can increase demand for regenerative products, then we definitely are now. This episode was super fun and informative, y'all. Hope you enjoy it. Let's go. What's up, everybody? Welcome back to another episode of the ReGen Brands Podcast.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:01:46
Very excited to have our friend Eric Smith from Audacious joining us. So welcome, Eric.

Eric Smith - 00:01:58
Pleasure to be here. Thanks, guys, for having me.

Kyle Krull - 00:02:01
We're super stoked to have you, which I say every episode now. I cannot hear myself say stoked because AC called me out on that on episode a hundred. But I really am, like, really excited to have you here because this is kind of a deviation from our typical, brand podcast. So before we dive too deep into those details for basically all the listeners, I doubt many will be familiar with Edacious. Give our our audience a quick lay of the land. Like, what is it that you all do?

Eric Smith - 00:02:26
Okay. Yeah. So Edacious is a technology platform to differentiate food quality. Simply put, we help our customers to measure, understand, compare, and report the nutritional quality of their food. At its, what we're really seeking to do is connect the dots between agriculture and human health. Nutrition fundamentally starts in the soil and how that gets into the products that we consume that affect our health, and we're trying to map that journey and give people insights, basically from from soil to gut.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:02:59
Yeah. Yeah. And we had Mary from the nutrient density alliance on last week, so listeners will kind of be familiar with this topic. We've obviously talked about you and a lot of times on on previous episodes, Eric, and we've talked, I feel like, ad nauseam about how Kyle and myself and many people in the community feel like this whole linkage is the holy grail, the silver bullet, whatever we wanna call it for how we really spike demand in a significant way for these regenerative products. So, yeah, man. Excited to have you here and, excited to hear all the exciting, efforts that you have going on.

Eric Smith - 00:03:31
Really excited to get into it. I think, the data is emerging. The science is emerging. But there is a lot of nuance and complexity here that we have to unpack, and I'm really hoping that today's conversation will, illuminate some of those challenges and opportunities for your listeners.

Kyle Krull - 00:03:48
Yeah. Yeah. There's definitely tons of different directions we can go, and, I was it's almost, like, scary to think about what which rabbit hole we're gonna fall into and how long we're gonna be there. But before we dive into any of the specifics to try to tackle the complexity and the nuance, like, who are you? Why did you start Adatius? What what is your personal path been like in the food space, and why is this important to you to try to solve this problem?

Eric Smith - 00:04:10
Yeah. So I actually come at this from an environmental side. I have always just been really, deeply connected to the land. I've always found, a grounding and a motivation for, you know, restoring the land and and and trying to address climate change through how we manage the land. And so over the past, ten years, I've been working on a a myriad of environmental issues, but I like to tell people that I worked at the intersection of ecology and economy, which is basically how do we use, capitalistic tools to address environmental issues. And so I was working in auditing and environmental certification and understanding how we apply certifications and frameworks to practices so that that information gets communicated to a consumer. I did my MBA and my master of forestry at Duke, which helped me to understand how to manage forest ecosystems for carbon, water, biodiversity, and other benefits. And I translated that knowledge into, private markets where I was running, philanthropic giving and venture investing for a family office and a foundation, known as the Grantha Foundation. And so for the past ten years, I've been really, driving capital into environmental solutions, with a lens of how do we address climate change.

Eric Smith - 00:05:24
So I've been looking for opportunities to sequester, mitigate, introduce resiliency into our food and ag system to address the greenhouse gas intensity of that system. And it it's exciting. There's a lot of innovation. There's a lot of great things happening, but then we'll that'll take us into some of the core insights of how I got to audacious. But, ultimately, I got into this space because I was an environmentalist, and I really wanted to protect the land and and and restore, the beauty back to the land, so to speak.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:06:07
Yeah. It was I've been very personally convicted about this whole nutrient density connection, for a while now. But, Eric, when you left that previous role and kind of went all in on this, it was another marker to me just because I have great respect for you and your work and your kind of, you know, experience in the space and the fact that you were that con convicted that this is the thing that you wanted to kinda put, all your chips into at the moment. Talk about that. Like, talk about the myriad of potential solutions or solutions you had funded slash supported and why this whole nutrient density thing really rose to the top for you.

Eric Smith - 00:06:41
Absolutely. Yeah. So in my previous role as a, a venture investor for the Grantham Foundation, I was searching for the the best possible solutions for carbon mitigation and removal. And when you do all the math and look at all the solutions, nature is still by far and away the most, practical and and most economically viable and scalable solution we have. The problem is accounting and finance doesn't work perfectly with nature. And so we apply these, like, esoteric frameworks of carbon accounting to nature's beautiful biological system, things get complex. And so what I what I really learned through this process was was two things of investing in all of these different companies. One, without underlying systemic drivers that put a price or a market signal in place, we were never gonna have systemic movement on climate change. And what I mean by that is, in the absence of policy or regulatory frameworks that say, hey. You're polluting. I need you to pay for this.

Eric Smith - 00:07:46
We're never gonna have, scalable solutions. And what I saw, was not only there was never going to be those large scale universal frameworks for addressing climate change, but consumers also really weren't willing to fit, foot the bill for for climate change, so to speak. Yeah. And, all the innovation that we've seen over the past twenty, forty, fifty, sixty years, the sole basis of that innovation has been better, faster, cheaper. And so if you really wanna have somebody adopt something, it needs to be better, faster, cheaper. Mhmm.

Eric Smith - 00:08:28
And what I realized when it came to food and ag is that nobody was building better, faster, cheaper. Everybody was building more expensive with more attributes and more noise attached to it. And so it was really just hard to weed through. So the core insight that really came was, again, policy wasn't happening. Consumers didn't really seem to care. So we needed to find a way to be built better, cheaper, faster.

Eric Smith - 00:08:57
And this was about the time that I was starting to see evidence that was beginning to merge that showed a clear relationship between the health of the soil and the nutritional quality of the food. And that was, like, pretty transformational. And I and I definitely wanna call out the Bionutrient Food Association. Dan Kittredge had really seeded this movement in a big way and inspired me and many others to think about this issue. But at its core, why I got so obsessed with it is if we can link, climate friendly agriculture practices via regenerative agriculture to better quality food, we can create a direct link to consumers who care about the quality of the food that they're putting in their body. And all of a sudden, we have an indirect mechanism from how we spend our money every day and our own interest in our own health and wellness to indirectly affect what's happens back on the land.

Eric Smith - 00:09:49
And so, that was the core insight, and that's why I believe nutrient density is kind of the end all be all for food systems change. It's because we've optimized for all the wrong outcomes. We've optimized for yield. We've optimized for calories. We've loaded in a bunch of contaminants and toxicity. All of that has completely eroded our health. And now we're waking up and we're demanding, higher quality food.

Eric Smith - 00:10:20
We're demanding safe food, and and that connecting these two movements, the the the health movement, health and wellness, to what happens on the land, that is that that's the power of, this solution for, I think, getting us the right direction.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:10:47
Hey. Man, brother.

Eric Smith - 00:10:49
I'm I'm ready. I'm ready.

Kyle Krull - 00:10:50
I'm ready. I'm ready. I'm ready

Anthony Corsaro - 00:10:50
now right there. We we might just need to wrap. We might just need to wrap the episode. Yeah.

Kyle Krull - 00:10:54
That was a great episode. Just listen to it three more times. If I were genuine brands.

Eric Smith - 00:11:00
Yeah. Yeah. The story is just so easy. I mean, it's like every day. The quality of food that we put into our bodies is shit in this country. Not only is it loaded with all this nasty stuff, it doesn't even taste good anymore. Nobody wants to go eat fruits. And they're like, kids, go eat fruits and vegetables. And the kids are like, seems like cardboard. What do you why am I gonna eat this crap? And so, like, that like, I don't know why we're missing this great connection that, like, oh, it all starts in the soil.

Eric Smith - 00:11:21
Nutrition literally comes from the soil and ends up in the food. And when it's more nutritious, oh, it tastes good. Oh, and when we eat good food, we feel better. This is rocket science. And yet, it's all hidden from us. Every layer of this system absconds this data and hides these insights and makes it completely difficult for a regenerative brain to go and say, hey.

Eric Smith - 00:11:41
I'm doing something different here, and I should get credit for that because it's gonna make you feel good because it's clean and safe and it's more nutritious. And and so yeah. I'm I'm fired up. Like, this is this is it. This is the end all deal.

Kyle Krull - 00:12:06
I appreciate the fire, and I think you've done a really good job articulating the complexity of the problem and the simplicity of the solution. And it begs the question, you know, how do we deliver that that simple solution to the masses? But I don't wanna quite get there yet. I do wanna talk more specifically about the role Audacious plays in the type of collection you all do, what that process looks like, how the brands are using that information. So walk us down that path.

Eric Smith - 00:12:32
Yeah. Yeah. So there's been testing available for a long time. And, the the journey in food right now is kind of, like, ten to fifteen years behind what's happened in the health space. And what we've seen in really is just kind of there's a lot of labs. They're all messy. They they provide you with a certificate of analysis back on a few samples and don't put any of that information in context and don't help you build any insights or any strategy from that data. And so, Adatius kind of flips this whole model on its head. One is, you show up and you pay per analyte, and which means, like, I wanna know how much protein is. They give you the total cost of protein.

Eric Smith - 00:13:13
In our case, we we flip the script on the set, and what we say is, let us help you understand the nutritional quality of your food. So we offer a nutrient density panel, which is gonna look at the quality of the fat and the quality of the protein and the amount of vitamins and minerals. And if you're really excited, we're gonna help you look at bioactives and phytochemicals and go a level deeper. But with that complete profile, we can then put that information in context, and we're gonna help you to understand what those analytes are, analytes being nutrients, nutrients that are the code in our body that make us work. Right? So what those nutrients are and what they mean for human health, we're gonna help you understand how you're performing relative to others in your category, and then we're gonna help you share that information.

Eric Smith - 00:14:00
We're gonna be your third party validator to say, here's your food quality, and here's how good you're doing. And then all of that information get can get pushed out publicly via our website. And so brands, producers, those are our two, primary customers at this standpoint, are able to say, hey. Here's how good my food is relative to the average food on the market. And that is a big part of our strategy. So one, help you actually test for meaningful information. Test what actually matters. Two, put that information in context.

Eric Smith - 00:14:35
And then three, share that information with your customers or your customers' customers or your retailers or your buyers so that you can say, hey, you know, and stop trying to do all this gimmicky marketing because the nutrition is your most clear objective outcome of the quality of your product. So at the end of the day, we are walking our customers through a journey to turn nutrition into a strategic asset for their business to help them stand apart from the crowd. And we do that. And I'm and, like, we'd love to go into the weeds on how that all happens, but that's kind of the basis of how we work.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:15:20
Yeah. We would definitely we definitely will do that. I have, an interesting question on what you just shared, Eric, which is, like, what do you think was the single biggest contributing factor to why this space was such a laggard behind what's happening on the human biological side? Like, was it just because the dominant players in food don't want the data to be out there, so they never like, why would they push for it? Was it just, you know, the the VC and the investors never got into it? Like, what do you think was the biggest contributing factor there?

Eric Smith - 00:15:49
Yeah. Great question. I I don't think it's I don't think there's a nefarious magical force behind the scenes that's like Yeah. We don't want food to be quality. We want it, you know and so let's let's take a step back. Right? Right? The system design. The system that we have designed is all based on, volume. It's all based on how much we grow.

Eric Smith - 00:16:11
So if everything we do is pay a cost a a supplier or producer or anyone based on volume, our whole system is just how much am I getting for this dollar. Right? And that's it. That's been the from from every step of the journey from farm gate to that retail shelf, it's it's dollar per volume. That that that's it. And so when you have that system in place, everything we've done from designing and choosing genetics and breeding to how we put inputs into that system, to how we treat the soil and and the and the the quality of the fertilizer and all the things that go in and around that, it has all been to make things grow big and grow pretty and grow shelf stable so that it can get picked by a robot, and put on a shelf, on a truck and shipped across the country so that when I buy my my peppers in the Northeast, it looks the same as the pepper that's grown, and produced in California.

Eric Smith - 00:16:36
Right? So, it's it it is just it's the byproduct of the way that we've designed their system. Now for for exciting educational purposes to talk in in more scientific terms, two things happened. One is genetic dilution. So as we make things grow big and prettier, we're diluting the amount of nutrition that's in those things. And so what we've basically optimized for in our fruits and vegetables is sugar, starches, and water. We basically ship water across this country.

Eric Smith - 00:17:39
And so that actually isn't really interesting because that's a food waste problem. The more water and sugar and starch, the quicker that things decay. So genetic dilution and that has also happened on our animal proteins. We make things grow big and prettier. There's more water, more, you know, in the muscle, and that's dilution. The second part is the connection to the soil.

Eric Smith - 00:18:01
The the the health of the soil is so low in our farms that the nutrients aren't even available to get into the plant so that the plant could be healthy. So it's this combination of, like, how we bread things and how we grow things that we've ended up with this very low quality food. The second part of this, Anthony, is the nutritional facts panel. That is like, like, a foundational aspect that has, like, pushed us all into this box, literally. Literally. That says, this is nutrition. This is it. This is all that matters to you. You know?

Eric Smith - 00:18:39
Total protein, total fat, saturated fat, a few vitamins and minerals, and that's all you need.

Kyle Krull - 00:18:49
That's all you need

Eric Smith - 00:18:50
to know about. And the crazy thing is and this is the craziest thing that I've recognized. And most of our customers who show up, we ask them, well, how did you generate your nutritional facts panel? And and they're like, I don't know. I don't know how

Anthony Corsaro - 00:19:04
I got that data.

Eric Smith - 00:19:05
And then they go back, and they have to go back two years to some consultant that they hired. And that consultant finds that they pulled it back down for some generic database called the USDA food composition database, and it's been sitting on their box as their nutrition for the past two and a half years. And nobody has thought to ask, is this even representative of the product that we're putting on our shelf? And, like, that that's been one of the most mind blowing insights for me is that, like, very few people actually measure and actually think about and it's not expensive. Like, we offer a baseline entry fee, like, 6, $2,000 get in the door, get all your nutritionals, get your comparison data, start your journey, and, like, people are like, you know, they've never tested. And I'm like, wow. Okay. Well well, let's let's start that journey together.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:19:53
Yeah.

Kyle Krull - 00:19:54
Eric, I'm really struggling as a host here to just continue to listen to you blow my mind on stuff or to ask you questions and try to interrupt.

Eric Smith - 00:20:02
There there

Kyle Krull - 00:20:02
are so many different directions I wanna take this conversation. There's only a finite amount of time.

Eric Smith - 00:20:06
But I think one

Kyle Krull - 00:20:07
of the most important takeaways is, like, the this NFP, the interest of expandable that you just mentioned. And if I'm understanding this correctly, you're essentially saying that call it milk company a and milk company b. Might have wildly different practices, have consulted the same central database that is, you know, x number of years old, ten, twenty, 30 years old, and just put that kinda copy paste nutritional panel information on there despite the fact that in actuality, because of the practices on farm, they could have wildly different nutritional profiles that are not reflected on the packet. Oh.

Eric Smith - 00:20:39
It's even worse than that. And so let's unpack some of the craziness of that. Right? So, like, like like, one, there's just a minimum set of information there. So I encourage all of you to go into the store and start pulling some, like, you know, milk, chicken, kettle on fire. Pull pull kettle on fire off the shelf and hold up that NFP relative to some of the other NFPs that are sitting on the shelf next to it. And you'll see minuscule differences. Right? And that's like, what is that? I I can't compare two products on the basis of nutritional performance.

Eric Smith - 00:21:04
And so that's where we're, like, stuck in that mindset. So the other really interesting aspect is, for things that are called, things that are detrimental to your health, You can have up to a 20% of the value that you've listed. And for things that are positive for your health, you can have, up to 80% of what you've listed on that product. So right there, there's, like, a plus or minus 20% ban. Right? That's like going into the store and saying, and there's a sign that says five avocados, and they only put four in the bag.

Eric Smith - 00:21:44
And then you get home and you're like, where's my fifth fucking avocado? You know? Like, nutrition is being stolen from us every day, and they're being lied to. Right? So Right. And what's even worse than that, that plus or minus 20%, when customers actually test with us, we're seeing that it's it's 50 to a % off from what they've actually have on their labels.

Eric Smith - 00:22:01
Right? So yeah. And this is consistent. Right? So, we're we're seeing it across the board.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:22:19
Is it even possible for a brand to use someone like Edacious to do their own testing and substantiate changing the nutrition packs?

Eric Smith - 00:22:26
Nutrition It's the it's our core offering. Right? People come to us Yeah. And we and we upload their NFP, and we show them comparatively their new NFP so they can see how they're performing relative to what they've stated. And and I have to say, like, sometimes it's it's it's hard because they sometimes they're not performing as well as they think they are. They have stated 22 grams of protein per serving, and they're actually delivering 14 grams of protein per serving. Right? Yeah. And this is and this is, like, another really important part of the work that we do with these insights because, most labs are gonna make you pay per sample.

Eric Smith - 00:22:54
And in our discovery report, we're gonna give you six samples, and we're gonna give you six individual data points so that you can understand variability, and you're not working on a price per sample basis, which is what a lot of other labs do.

Kyle Krull - 00:23:18
Totally makes sense. I wanna get back to you know, I think you mentioned a couple different problems with the NFP, the nutritional facts panel. Out of curiosity, based on the information you have, the things that you see, your understanding of soil health, human health, what key information is not reflected on The United States nutritional facts panel that should be there? And and I I while I was trying to make this a little bit more realistic, if you were to change and have the same amount of, like, real estate, what information would you be showing versus what's showing today?

Eric Smith - 00:23:49
Yeah. Great, great question. Okay. So, because it was designed it wasn't designed to get you not to eat the unhealthy aspects of food, but they it is definitely optimized to say, here's the total fat, here's the saturated fat, here's the amount of sodium, and here's the added sugar. Those are the primary things that they're showcasing to you. Right? So it's automatically designed to disadvantage products in which those things might be higher. That's not necessarily a bad thing in the case of ultra processed foods. However, many of our regenerative products that are high in saturated fat, we're we're, like, evolving way past this fat conversation. Right? So Mhmm. Let's take this in steps.

Eric Smith - 00:24:20
Fat quality. We need to start talking about omega threes, and we need to start talking about the balance of omega threes and omega sixes. This is such a key indicator of the health of the ecosystem and the health of the food and whether that animal product is actually gonna drive inflammation in your body or be anti inflammatory. And so we're bringing more nuance to that. So we should be and they've talked about this. DHA, EPA, these are essential omega three fatty acids that we should be putting on packages where these, omega threes are present.

Eric Smith - 00:24:58
Generally

Kyle Krull - 00:25:10
I I apologize real quick because you took a breath, and I saw an opportunity. Yeah. I've I've probably mentioned this on a couple different podcasts before, but there's an incredible book called Food Fix by Mark Hyman. And he talks about this omega three to omega six disparity in The United States, and there was a study I can't I wish I could remember more of the at the details, but there's one study they did in a prison where the only thing they changed was the addition of an omega three supplement, and the incident of violent and sorry. The the rate of violent incidents dropped by more than seventy percent

Eric Smith - 00:25:40
Wow.

Kyle Krull - 00:25:40
Just by providing everybody in the prison with the an omega three supplement. So multiply that, compound that by the entire population in The United States, and we start to optimize for that one single data point, one single piece of nutrition. All human behavior could change in the country, which is just insane to think about the power of these small changes that you're talking about.

Eric Smith - 00:26:02
I would I would love to nerd out on this omega six three issue. It is, I think, foundational. Like, the standard American diet, we are getting twenty five units of omega six to every unit of omega three. Historically, we are eating in a four to one to one to one ratio. And all of a sudden, these omega sixes and threes are competing for the same metabolic processes in our cells that are driving inflammation because there's too much omega six loading into the system. And and, like, let's like, I have to say it. Like, this whole seed oil conversation is ridiculous. Right? No.

Eric Smith - 00:26:32
Oil is not good for you any in any shape or form. Like, it doesn't matter what balance. It's a it's about the total consumption of oils in our diet. Right? So now and today, we're getting 30% of our calories from oils. Like, that is insane.

Eric Smith - 00:26:48
So, like, yes, you can substitute grass fed beef tallow, and you're gonna bring that six three ratio way down. And that is a good strategy. But it's about the total plate and the total diet, and that's where the omega sixes throw everything off. So, man, we're gonna I wanna come back to your question because, the the omega balance and the fat story is critical, but one of the more interesting ones actually is protein. And protein is we just talk about total protein, and there's, like, these things called amino acids that make up proteins. Some of them are essential.

Eric Smith - 00:27:21
Some of them our body makes for us, but the comparing the amino acid or the total protein of a can of beans to the total protein in steak is fundamentally not the same quality of protein. And we don't we miss that. We miss that conversation, and I think that's really important that we should be talking about, EAA nine, which is the nine essential amino acids and which foods do a better job of delivering that. And then to keep it simple, vitamins and minerals. We have to expand the list of vitamins and minerals, and that is a clear differentiation. And you've seen this with supplement companies.

Eric Smith - 00:28:03
Like, we need to pull a page from supplement companies because if you look at your jar of of protein or whatever, your greens, whatever it is, like, if you list every vitamin and mineral under the sun that the product has, they're saying this is a nutritious product. Look. We've measured all this stuff. We don't do that for whole foods, which objectively have better nutrition in a food matrix that absorbs into your body because of the the fact that it's in a food matrix. So yeah. I'm gonna pretend

Kyle Krull - 00:28:36
to be offended that you assumed that Anthony and I take protein supplements. I'm not offended. But just, you know, I'll say it out loud. But I think the protein piece is super, super important today, and I was actually talking about we had a team retreat last week, and I was talking about this resurgence of what I keep noticing more anecdotally than anything of vegans and vegetarian returning to meat products, animal based products in particular because of health issues that are arising, frailty issues that are arising, and a and a myriad of other potential underlying problems. And to your point that, like, you know, protein in a can of beans or, you know, whatever else, you know, seitan, you know, tofu, whatever meat alternative is the same just like gram for gram for a grass fed steak is just quite simply to your point not true. And I think one of the biggest takeaways I'm realizing, in this conversation is something that Edacious does well is recognizing the nuance that we need to understand the true impact our food has on our bodies. And I think that's like we we've way oversimplified the system today, and getting nuance back into a, quote, SOP for all of nutritional facts panels is daunting, difficult, and necessary.

Eric Smith - 00:29:50
And so brands can do there's so much that they can be doing to step out of out of that box and think about all the different ways that they can communicate the unique nutritional attributes of their product. And we're working with lots of these customers. And so I like to walk people through a five step journey. One is, like, where the where the NFP come from? Is it your data? Do we need to update it? Two, should we think about expanding that NFP to have more information? Three, claims.

Eric Smith - 00:30:10
So we have to get into the world of claims. There's all types of places you can make it, unpack, offpack, website, social, but this is health claims, source claims, structure function claims. And these are key differentiators for your product, relative claims. And we all of our software helps you go through that journey with claims. The third is, dedicated nutritional pages on your website. It's like actually getting in because most people just throw up an NFP and they're just like done.

Eric Smith - 00:30:41
That like, I I've checked my box. And it's like, no. Throw up a nice page and talk about this stuff and talk about what it means. And then four, you can take that into social media and start to educate your customers about the quality of the of the fat, the quality of the amino acids, the abundance of vitamins and minerals that are actually showing up in your product. And then the fifth is what's most important for us is you can leverage us as your third party verifier. Right?

Eric Smith - 00:31:10
So you point back to our pages where we show your testing results so that people can say,

Anthony Corsaro - 00:31:22
yeah.

Eric Smith - 00:31:22
I'm I'm I I've tested. Here's my third party. Edacious has verified my results, and here's how good it is. I've got someone standing behind me, and I'm not just making up a bunch of numbers. So Yes. Yeah.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:31:34
Is there any regulatory challenge there, Eric, where someone could potentially say, like, okay. Well, Edacious is incentivized to make the brain look good, so they pay them again for testing next year. Like, what's the or is that just not regulated? Or I don't know. Quick quick thought that I had around that.

Eric Smith - 00:31:47
Yeah. No. No. Basically, we are, an audited third party. So we maintain an ISO accreditation called ISO 17 o two five, which says best quality, laboratory management system and all of our data and software and how we move data is all audited and organized. But we we tell it how we see it. We are an objective third party. And and and if you just think for a second, if you think about an average, there's gotta be people above average, and there's gotta be people below average. And what we wanna make sure is that when you're below average, you understand what the people are doing over here so that we can help you get here. And guess what they're doing? Good sourcing. They're thinking about the quality of the products that come into their product. Right?

Eric Smith - 00:32:27
So, like, it all starts in the soil, and it starts with how that that that quality of food makes its way through the supply chain, gets processed, transformed, and becomes a final product. So, you know, it's it's not as simple as just testing and reformulating, but we can talk about that because there is, you know, you know, the reformulation formulation is definitely part of this game.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:32:56
Well, I love the five steps because it's really clear. Like, and I I it's new wisdom for me because brands are asking us to tell them what they are. So I'm super happy that you laid that on us so we can kinda relay it and be a be a, megaphone for it. I have one curiosity around, like, what you just articulated sounds like we can do all of that with existing tools and existing science. Right? There's no there's no lab data we can't get yet to go do any of those things. So is there stuff that y'all are building or trying to create the capacity to do that you think further opens the floodgates here, or is it just like, dude, what exists out there can get 80% of the job done and we really just need to do that better? Yeah.

Eric Smith - 00:33:37
Our our secret sauce and what we're building is public benchmarks. And this is really, I think the holy grail of systems change. It's when you can finally draw a line in the sand and say, here is the average quality of a chicken breast on the market today, and here's how different that is, and I can help my mom understand that, that's that's the floodgate. Right? That's

Anthony Corsaro - 00:34:05
Yeah.

Eric Smith - 00:34:05
Like, ma, you should eat this because it's got x y z. Like, boom. If I can't articulate to my mom in in three points why she should eat this chicken and not that chicken, like, I I haven't solved anyone's problem. And so for us, every time we run customer samples, we're also building this incredibly rich dataset of what's actually available on the retail, supply chain, so to speak. And so you're you're coming to us to get benchmarking data to see how you're performing. And if we don't have a benchmark for your product, we're gonna help you think through that, and then we're gonna bear the cost of of running some additional, tests to make sure that you have something to compare to.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:34:45
And the amount of total sample sizes to get a benchmark for chicken breast is a 10,000,000, a thousand?

Eric Smith - 00:34:52
It's not as high as you think. So our we have for each food type, we have hundreds of samples per each food type in our database. And that's what we've been doing over the past two years. It's just like cranking stuff through our lab to build these benchmarks. And later this year, we'll start to be pushing them out publicly so that people can make those objective comparisons. And and so, like, just to be, like, transparent for your listeners, right, Adameishas is really focused on, whole foods and ingredients today. We will work with you if you are a, a formulated food company or a a processed food, but the benchmarks can be a little more difficult for that because then you're just talking about different ingredients and different manufacturing processes, and we should unpack some of that. But ultimately, today, we're about, like, lightly formulated, lightly processed. We're working with some tortilla chip companies, sausage companies, beef steaks, milks, fruits, vegetables, grains, breads.

Eric Smith - 00:35:39
We're really in this category. Oh, we just we just ran, seven, different, bone broths through the lab, and we have now a benchmark for bone broth because the customer was asking for that. We also have, like, fun projects. We're comparing, like, microgreens versus full heads of those, you know, comparative things. We're doing lots of leafy greens. Yeah. List goes on.

Eric Smith - 00:36:05
So we're whole foods, ingredients, and lightly processed formulated foods won't work with you if you have a super processed food, but we won't have, like, good benchmarking data for you in that case.

Kyle Krull - 00:36:28
Yeah. That totally makes sense.

Eric Smith - 00:36:29
There's Hold

Anthony Corsaro - 00:36:29
on, Kyle. You're to get one in. I just have I wanna make sure I clarify, and I'm coming to you for next question. For formulated foods, though, so brands that listen to this to understand, Eric, you can still do all five of those steps that you listed off. It's just for the benchmarking stuff that is really focused on the the whole foods and the ingredients.

Eric Smith - 00:36:44
Thank you. Great clarification. We can take you through the whole journey to assess and report and create value. It's just not gonna have, like, hey. Here's here's the the average retail benchmark for that formulated product. Cool.

Kyle Krull - 00:36:58
That's awesome. Appreciate the clarification there, AC. I wanna get to, like, some specific case studies you can share where you were looking at a specific commodity, you're benchmarking a category or whatever, and you look at a conventional practice, you know, commodity version of x versus a regenerative. Like, what are some of the insights you have seen, and how stark and how different are the results for those studies?

Eric Smith - 00:37:22
Yeah. So we we actually started with a lot of milk. Milk was one of the more interesting spots that we saw because it's a fascinating matrix of food and it's like the fat, the protein, the vitamins, the minerals. It's like Yeah. It's a it's a powerhouse product. There's no doubt about it. Some people can't digest it anymore because of the quality of the milk that we're producing in this country, and that's a whole another story. But we've done a lot of projects there.

Eric Smith - 00:37:49
The the story that I'll talk about is beef because I think it's just like, one of those ones that is really emblematic of the larger climate conversation, how we feel, and and really, where this movement could be heading. Right? So, and, we have so many customers I wanna talk about, but I didn't really ask them if I could talk about it on this call. And so, I'll just speak in in kind of vague terms. Right? So, with with nutrition starting in the soil, right, the quality of the pasture, and the health of that pasture is dictated by how well it's being grazed and the diversity of those forages.

Eric Smith - 00:38:18
The animals that eat that, those grasses, are either becoming, yeah, they're they're they're growing, they're becoming more nutrient rich. After that stage of that cow calf operator, our supply chain takes a very clear turn. Right? You that animal either goes to a feedlot where then it is loaded with, seeds and seed oils, or, mixed rations that include agricultural byproducts. And that animal is fattened up to a point where then it gets into a big four packer and hits the store shelf. The the the great irony of this whole seed oil movement is everyone's going to beef, and they don't realize that all that beef that they're eating has been grown off of seed and seed oils.

Eric Smith - 00:39:10
Right? And so that omega six three ratio is is awful in these conventionally fed animals. And so

Anthony Corsaro - 00:39:28
Yeah.

Eric Smith - 00:39:29
And that's not true. A lot of, you know, a lot that are really in the weeds on this stuff are hardcore grass fed. So, what we've seen on the grass fed side is there's just like the conventional side. So then that animal stays on pasture throughout its whole life. Maybe it has a little bit of grain finishing. Maybe it goes to a new place to get pasture finished. But that the quality of that animal is is a completely different product than what's coming out of that feedlot and what's coming out of that conventional system. And so what the data tells us from this experience is, the fat quality, ranges, and we talked about an omega six to three ratio from we're seeing as high as 20 to one all the way to one to one.

Eric Smith - 00:39:57
So again, for every unit of omega three, you're getting either twenty units of omega six or you're getting one unit of omega six. Mhmm. And you have to bring that ratio into balance. It's all about the balance. The protein we see, you know, well, the actually the protein story is fascinating, right? So, the ratio of protein to fat in those two products is totally different. Right? So you wanna be eating lean meat. We are used to eating lean meat.

Eric Smith - 00:40:31
We are not used to eating super fatty meat. That fat, that intramuscular fat that we've worked into these products is not good for us, especially when it has an a high omega six ratio. So that protein to fat ratio, really important and really fundamentally different between these products. B vitamin story is kinda all over the board. We're seeing really high levels of b twelve in some products, lower values of b nine and other products, but between conventional and grass fed, really high levels of b vitamins, but we're not seeing a clear story emerge. The fat soluble vitamins is a whole another story.

Eric Smith - 00:41:16
A, d, e, k, these vitamins are order of magnitude higher in the grass fed products that are regeneratively grazed, and that, I think, is really exciting.

Kyle Krull - 00:41:30
As a as a data guy, sorry to interrupt. When you say an order of magnitude, is that two x? Is that five x? Like, is there an actual specific quantifiable term? That means?

Eric Smith - 00:41:40
10 to 20 x. Holy shit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So and this is like oh, so when I share that type of metric, people it's it's hard to put that into context. Yeah. How I put that into context for people is you're either getting 1% of your daily value or you're getting 300% of your daily value. And that's what people that is nutrient density right there. Right? We're we're either getting an an insufficient intake of a vitamin and mineral or we're getting an adequate intake or we're optimizing below these stupid guidelines that have been set by bad science forty years ago and started to think about how do we optimize nutrition.

Eric Smith - 00:42:03
And, oh, in these products that have been grazed and done right with good ecology, you're getting superior levels of of of vitamins and minerals. Right? And minerals, you know, they, animal production systems are highly supplemented. And so I I I I'll say mineral profiles are generally high across the board. There's some where, like, selenium is really a lot higher when we see good grazing, but there's some soils where there's good grazing happening that are deficient in selenium. So we see it come in a bit lower. So there's there's, like, a bit of nuance there.

Eric Smith - 00:42:50
The last part of the story that I think is the future of all of this, and I'm happy to unpack this because I think this is where it's really exciting, the phytochemical story. Right? So, we talk about macros, we talk about micros, and then we talk about phytos. And when it comes to the macros, we're eating the wrong balance. Right? So our ratio of protein to fat to to carbs is off fundamentally.

Eric Smith - 00:43:14
We need to up the level of protein, we need to keep the fat of a high quality, and we need to minimize the amount of carbs. And they're not saying demonized carbs. Right? There's good carbs that are out there that can be incorporated the right way. Fiber, we need fiber. We need fruits and vegetables.

Eric Smith - 00:43:26
Like like, I'll argue with anyone all day long on that. The vitamins and minerals as a population, we are all getting insufficient levels of vitamins and minerals. There are some people who are getting, who are deficient in many things like vitamin D and zinc and magnesium and, and selenium. And so there's deficiencies. And then, and then when it comes to the phytos, this is where I think the future really is because these phytochemicals are signals and processes for our body that really confer health that we just haven't spent the time and and and money as a society to really research and understand. And we don't understand the full potential that the role that they could play in human health.

Eric Smith - 00:44:15
But we know things like carotenoids and flavonoids are essential for human health, and yet they're not on the NFP. We don't get educated on them. We don't talk about them. And the irony is that these are these same chemicals that actually make food taste good. One of our partners, Stephan Van Vliet at Utah State, when he gives his presentations, I think you guys had him on the podcast or going to.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:44:44
Oh, but very familiar with his work in Metchnitzel. Times.

Eric Smith - 00:44:47
Yeah. He's a legend. But he he highlights, and it's one of my favorite parts of his presentation. We were just together at Tomcat Ranch 2 2 Or 3 Weeks ago. And, he highlights this book from, like, forty, eighty years ago, and it's like a a story of the prairies in Montana. And it's this white guy, like, documenting indigenous diets. And the indigenous people he's interviewing say, like, they like, I'm gonna make the story up. But the the guy like, they're like, why don't you use salt and and flavors on the beef? And they're like, taste the the bison.

Eric Smith - 00:45:11
Like, it has all the flavor you could possibly ever need, and that is the land. That's the that's the nutrition of place. That's the the richness of all those plants and those phytochemicals coming into the beef. And now our food system, because how we practice agriculture is essentially devoid of these compounds. And there's this group I I've been telling a lot of people about this. This guy's name is, Bruce Ames, and he's got this triage theory.

Eric Smith - 00:45:40
And his triage theory is basically when our body is getting insufficient levels of essential vitamins and minerals, it goes into, like, survival maintenance mode, and it starts to, like, underinvest in some of the longevity and long term processes that actually, like, help our body survive. And it's like these phytochemical compounds that are they're trying to call them longevity vitamins that, like, actually help you get there. And one of them is, ergothioneine. And ergothioneine is like, it comes up from the fungal ecosystem. It enters the rhizosphere, gets into the root of the plant, and we can measure the level of erythogonine, which is an amino acid derivative, but also a vitamin, and that is conferring health in our body. And then so it's like, I think this is the future of, like, food and health is a lot of it's like, we gotta switch the balance of macros.

Eric Smith - 00:46:34
We gotta get more vitamins and minerals, and we gotta get these phytas into our vernacular and into our foods.

Kyle Krull - 00:46:50
Again, overwhelmed with a number of questions and comments I thought I need to make in a really positive way. First, you you made a comment about the fat in the in beef. Right? I think it's really important that we we talk about this, and I've probably mentioned it on a couple different podcasts, but it's so backwards how we measure the, quote, quality of beef in The United States. It's almost like the worst it is for you, the more you pay the premium for it. You know, because it's like, oh, well, this one's extra marble. This was extra obese.

Kyle Krull - 00:47:17
You know, it's like the extra full of bad fats to bad ratio, which is just and and that's what we as Americans are trained to think, you know, prime is the best. Like, when my dad's buying a brisket, he's buying the fattiest piece of meat he can and paying extra for it even though it's worse for him, which is just mind boggling. But you did you talked about the claims. And in my mind, when you're talking about, like, the 10 to 20 x higher on those a d e k vitamins and, you know, the range from 20 to one to one to one on on omega threes, like, in my mind, this is like like we talked about way in the beginning of the episode. Why would somebody pay a premium for this product? Because if you're just walking in and you say, hey.

Kyle Krull - 00:47:53
I can buy beef, ground beef, you know, maybe $4.99 a pound, or I can pay $8.99 a pound for grass fed, Does it really matter? But if you can link that $8.99 to a one to one omega three to six ratio and ten to twenty x higher, you know, a d e k vitamins, that to me is justification for that premium. So from a regulatory perspective, what can these brands say on pack in store versus online or other places where they can try to get this message out?

Eric Smith - 00:48:27
Yeah. So as long as you have data, which we would help you to generate, you can say whatever you want. And so this is the the the the regulatory guidance that we've learned and from lawyers is just like, it has to be truthful, but not misleading. That's that's your guidance for when you're talking about this stuff. Truthful is easy because you can say the concentration of that thing that has been measured in your product, and we can help you tell the the relative amount in that other product. So you don't have to take this risky proposition and, and, and, and make up a bunch of stuff. Generate the data. The data is gonna tell you the truth about what's in the quality of your product.

Eric Smith - 00:49:05
Then you can lean into talking about the fat balance and the fat quality of your product or the protein quality of your product because we're gonna have data. We're gonna have actual numbers behind that. So, that's how I would, like, get around this regulatory risk. There's not really a risk. And and just to say, like, the the FDA in its current state, nobody is pulling Whole Foods off the off the shelf and saying, do they actually have what they say in it? Like, there's almost zero regulatory scrutiny. I'm like, was that NFP actually factual? So, I shouldn't laugh, but it is fun.

Kyle Krull - 00:49:46
It's fun. I mean,

Eric Smith - 00:49:47
it's yeah. Right? But I mean, like and and prior to this current administration, they were trying to go after the supplements industry because there was a lot of untruthful and misleading information coming out of that space. So but, Kyle, the I think the core of this and the what we are building and bringing to market this year is what is called a nutritional profiling system. And so this is what takes 250 nutrients and turns it into a single score that allows you to understand relative quality. So when our customers come to us, yes, they're gonna see all the individual nutrients and they can talk about all of them, but then they're gonna also be able to talk about their domains. And their domains are fat quality, protein quality, vitamin quality, mineral quality, phytochemical richness. But then we take all of that and we sum it up into a total score.

Eric Smith - 00:50:34
And that total score is really the helpfulness of that product on a relative comparison. So our customers come to us because we make possible apples to apples, apples to oranges, apples to fruit, and then apples to Cheerios comparisons all possible. And you can't get that anywhere else because everything else is too complex or oversimplified to allow them to make those types of relative comparisons.

Kyle Krull - 00:51:10
I'll say there's one of the place you can get that information, and I don't trust it at all, but it's the the recent I think it was the Harvard, nutritional support that came out. What was it? Is it Tufts

Eric Smith - 00:51:21
food contest? Tufts. Right?

Kyle Krull - 00:51:22
Is it is it the one that that That's poured, I think it was, like, Cheerios above grass fed beef? You know? Like, I I can't wait to see your version and their version and compare them. You know what I mean? That's gonna be

Eric Smith - 00:51:33
eye opening. Irony of this is we're actually using that system, but amending it to fit the purpose of actually fixing the problem of making, conventional beef compared to grass fed beef, conventional to conventional, conventional to grass fed, conventional to, a different cut, and then conventional to, a mushroom steak. I don't know what the alternatives. And then and and, like, a steak versus Cheerios. Right? And, like, that I think we're building upon that system and fixing some of its shortcomings. Amazing.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:52:07
I have three questions, Eric. I think you can handle all three. And if you need reprompting, I can I can help you with that? Yeah. Usually, I can kinda call to do the the super multipronged questions, but I'm gonna take that role today. I'm trying to put my brand VP of marketing CMO hat on and think of some of the questions they would ask had if they were a fly on the wall for the conversation. And I think two of of the recent things we just talked about, one is, does Adatius offer any regulatory support where it's, hey. Go talk to this CPG attorney that's helped approve a 50 claims. Or, hey. We did that in house or something around regulatory support, is question one.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:52:30
Two is, I think I understand really well now kind of macro, micro, Fido. Right? And I understand the application of macro and micro through the five steps and the pathways that you talked about earlier. Is Fido the same thing, or is that gonna have to be expressed, like, for the product in some new way that maybe doesn't exist? That's question two. And then question three is back to the the MPS, the nutritional profiling system.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:53:01
Is your goal that that becomes, you know, like, as prevalent on product packaging as the USD organic label? Is it just something that you think is a cool tool? Like, what what is the what is the end goals for that thing in in your mind?

Eric Smith - 00:53:22
Yeah. So we're absolutely here to support you, with regulatory guidance. If we don't know the answer, we can point you to someone who will help you find the answer. That we've spent a lot of time and money understanding all of this. And so

Anthony Corsaro - 00:53:37
I bet. Yeah.

Eric Smith - 00:53:38
And that's, like, that was one of the key insights for all these all your the the companies that you guys are working with, they do not have the horsepower, the time, and the resources to do this stuff. And so we're gonna help you quickly through software say, these are all the things that you can say based on your test results. And that's all we've we've done that. If you also wanna get, you know, a a compliance type consultant or a lawyer consultant to look at something, we'll we'll help you do that as well. Where we have seen most legal and lawsuits, come about is because they couldn't actually substantiate the data. So someone calls them out and they have nothing behind them. So just the fact that you're testing and getting some data generated is is almost enough to say, hey. Just just look at Adasis.

Eric Smith - 00:54:17
And that that lets us be the bad guy. It lets us be the source of truth, and it lets us be, you know, kind of the objective thing. I don't know if you guys have saw this, but, like, with something like Kodiak Cakes, you know, they they went through a major lawsuit because they were overstating by a huge amount the amount of protein that they had in their product. Not into that. We should talk about the quality of that protein because that's not different than, you know, what other protein is on the market. And so they actually settled that lawsuit. And and that is it's part of what happens here.

Eric Smith - 00:54:51
And part of that is the science of understanding how protein even gets measured. So, yes, we're here to answer the regulatory questions. Phytochemicals and talking about that stuff is the future, but I think it is important. And so I'll give you an example, antioxidants. Right? Mhmm. Phytochemicals are antioxidants.

Eric Smith - 00:55:05
Not all sorry. Not all phytochemicals are antioxidants, but we can tell you and help you understand how to communicate the antioxidant impacts of your body. And like, that's a term that people understand. So would I recommend that someone go talk about their carotenoid levels on pack right now? Probably not. Like like, that's not gonna land with my mom. Right? Yeah.

Eric Smith - 00:55:37
So, but, for for for the nerds out there that are in all these people in the health and wellness space who are starting to ask these questions and coming to all these meat companies and coming to all these comp and asking, it is a it is a leg up to be able to say, we have three times the amount of carotenoids in our beef than than this guy. So, and then flavonoids and and and all these things. So, and then the third question, yes. I hope edacious is the definition of of food quality in the market. Like, absolutely. Yeah. No.

Eric Smith - 00:56:19
I mean, I like, we're gonna give everyone the tools to do that on our site in a in a relatively low risk way that they can point back to. If we start getting traction where people are saying, you know, I I, you know, I'm in the the seventy fifth percentile, then then, like, people are gonna reference that stuff. So, like, we're still toying with some of that design and some of that product feature, but, like, at its core, when it comes to nutrition, we need to help people understand the total package that's being delivered, not just these individual nutrients. And that's where I think we're doing all sales a disservice by just putting brands of protein all over the spot. And that's like, you know, the protein craze is gonna crash. Like, I I I like, it's not gonna stick around forever.

Eric Smith - 00:57:02
People are gonna wait, like, vitamins and minerals, I hope are gonna be the next thing because, you know yeah. Anyways.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:57:17
The the the thing to me that I wrote down a lot earlier is, like, this is our opportunity to separate the winners from the losers. And I hate that terminology, but it's good, like, capitalistic business terminology, and I think we see it in a lot of other industries a lot better expressed. And I see the both end in your strategy of, hey. Let's give every individual actor the data to go do that themselves in their category and their in food more broadly, and let's also do this benchmarking on the MPS store so that we can kind of also do it collectively. Yeah. I think that's that's super wise and compelling. So love it.

Kyle Krull - 00:57:51
Yeah. I'm curious to to bring it back to the I'm I'm not gonna pronounce this right. The car carotenoid. Is that is that the right way?

Eric Smith - 00:57:57
Carotenoids. Carotenoids. Right? Which is it first, it's kind

Kyle Krull - 00:58:00
of the yellowish orange hue. And this is this is really prevalent right now because there's like the beef tallow craze. Right? Beef tallow is everything everywhere right now. And I think a lot of people associate high quality beef tallow with that really premium kinda white, which is actually not the highest quality. It's the more yellowish when you want the entire carotenoids, which I already mispronounced again. But so so, like, long story short, like, how do you get consumers to understand that level of nuance with something new, like that specific phytochemical so they can make the decision that actually aligns with their values?

Eric Smith - 00:58:37
Yeah. And and this is like we've we've talked about this all the time. Right? So it's like, what role do we have to play in this educational journey? And I think it's incomplete for us to just say, hey, customer, here's your carotenoid level. Good luck. Right? Yeah. When when when, our customer's customer clicks on our page and and clicks in and says, well, oh, they've got a high carotenoid level. They should be able to click into that carotenoid and figure out what the hell a carotenoid is. Right? And so yeah.

Eric Smith - 00:59:02
So carotenoids are, they're basically a fat soluble compound, so they stick around in that fat. They are antioxidants, so they neutralize free radicals in our in our blood, in our cells. They are pro vitamin a activity, and this is really important. They are precursor to vitamin a. Vitamin a is essential for our vision. It's essential for immune function, immunity. It's essential to make our cells grow. Like, I don't know.

Eric Smith - 00:59:25
Let's talk about eye health. Let's talk about skin health. Let's talk about staying healthy. So you need more carotenoids in your diet. But because carotenoids is a difficult word, people are like, I can't get a hang of that thing that you're talking about. And I'm like Are

Kyle Krull - 00:59:51
you talking about me specifically? Because I have

Eric Smith - 00:59:52
still no idea what that word. So That's okay.

Kyle Krull - 00:59:56
I like it.

Eric Smith - 00:59:57
Yeah. Yeah. But, yeah. It it it is an important thing. And so we've basically, and and, like like, go pull a a stick of Kerrygold off of the shelf. Like, that is high quality. That butter is yellow. That that is what the color of that butter used to be. And that's vitamin a. It's vitamin a showing up. And so, you know, we need to start seeing color. We need to start sensing and relying on our nutritional wisdom to, like, get that back.

Eric Smith - 01:00:21
So, yeah, you know, it's, it's it's an education journey, and I I it's challenging for us to be like, okay. We're building a testing platform. We're building a a context platform. Oh, and we're gonna build this education platform all of a sudden. Like, my investors love me. You know? They're like, cool.

Eric Smith - 01:00:39
Another project, Eric. Like, great. Right. Yeah.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:00:54
I feel really, like, whole and complete about the tactical stuff. And if I was a brand, having listed this episode, where to kinda start, what does Adeshia do, how can we work with them. I have three or four kinda burning more questions that I'd love to get your take on there.

Eric Smith - 01:01:08
Do it.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:01:08
Y'all ready to go there or anything else to wrap up the okay. I'm getting some head nods. Cool. The first one to me that I think maybe doesn't get asked enough is, like, do you see a way for the system to be gamed? Like, do you see a way for I don't wanna say bad actors or nefarious actors, but, you know, conventional ag

Kyle Krull - 01:01:28
optimization towards a specific metric.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:01:30
Yeah. Or, like, I mean, conventional ag did this with yield, and it's why they are the dominant paradigm. So, like, is there a way to also do that with nutrition with a bunch of unintended consequences that we didn't expect or want here?

Eric Smith - 01:01:43
Yes. So it all starts with how we designed and breed crops. Right? And so we've been breeding for different outcomes, but when you bring all that, if we're successful and there becomes nutritional benchmarks for crops, all of a sudden, value and money is aligning on designing for nutrition because there's finally an objective system to measure against. And that's the problem. There's no objective system to measure against. Right? So, so all of a sudden you have people designing for certain outcomes. And this is the difference between a single nutritional outcome versus building for a profile.

Eric Smith - 01:02:20
And so my, hedge and my way to protect against this is I can match profiles back to healthy land and healthy soils. But you're always gonna have these companies breeding for higher levels of lycopene or antioxidants in purple tomatoes or introducing wheat varietals that have high levels of magnesium. So there's always gonna be the ability to, like, toggle switches to try and, like, juice certain outcomes, but I think the profile ends up telling the story. And so I like, we did with the beef project with with with Stephan and the BFA, what we did is we can look at the profile of the beef that comes off a really well managed, well grazed, healthy regenerative ecosystem and say that that's up here. That's what that profile should look like. So then other people are gonna go and design it and try and optimize for certain outcomes, but they're never gonna hit that profile. So that's my protection against this.

Eric Smith - 01:03:21
The other side of the coin is is food formulation. Right? And, like like, I you can't ignore the fact that most of the food in this country is formulated, processed, pulled together in some type of way. And and and and yeah. You know, most of and this is really interesting. We're working with, Wildfarmed,

Kyle Krull - 01:03:53
in The UK and one of

Eric Smith - 01:03:55
our customers. And, you know, there's laws in The UK that say you have to formulate your wheat. You have to add back niacin and, zinc and and copper and and something else. And, like so it is legally required to add nutrition back to the back to the food. The irony is it used to be in the wheat when we used to do it the right way. And because of how we bred the wheat and treated the soil, it's no longer present. And this is, like, important because, I mean, you guys know this stuff, but, like, how that wheat gets grind really determine what gets left in the flour. Right.

Eric Smith - 01:04:25
And we've we've basically designed a system that rips all the nutrition out of our food as it gets processed. And so processing is a big part of this conversation and is gonna be a big place for for innovation. I was on stage at Google Food Lab last week, and I I, I I had a very funny joke that I didn't even realize. And and someone asked me, you know, on stage, like, what are you really excited about on the stage? Like, what innovations are you seeing coming down the pipe? And I'm like, yeah. Freezing and canning. Yeah.

Eric Smith - 01:05:00
Those are the best, like, nutrient preservation technologies that we have is to, like, seal it up and make it and and yeah. Yeah. So I mean,

Kyle Krull - 01:05:19
it really does feel like at least the innovation I'm most excited about, you know, mirroring you is is kind of going back to basics. You know, like, I buy frozen spinach instead of fresh because it retains more nutrition.

Eric Smith - 01:05:30
But I think it's a pretty wide margin. I think you you'll probably safe.

Kyle Krull - 01:05:34
Right. Yeah. I think it's, like, 70% of the nutrition in in the leaf of spinach drops in the first three days post harvest, and it takes typically a week or two to get to stores. Bingo. So to your point, yeah, if we can not only optimize the growing practices, the next phase is okay. Like, how are we actually going to preserve this food to get it where it needs to get so that it still retains some of the nutritional density we've worked so hard to cultivate for the end consumer? Because if we don't if if that goes away, it doesn't really matter. Right? So it's a really good point. Like, how do we get it there?

Kyle Krull - 01:05:59
And it sounds like you're most bullish on freezing and canning, which is both hilarious and probably the truth.

Eric Smith - 01:06:12
Yeah. We don't and this is the problem. We don't know objectively where we start and where we're ending. And but we do know that, like, you know, a lot of these water soluble vitamins are essentially depleted as that that that food item moves through its journey to get to, from from soil to shelf. One of the one of the best examples I love is is apples. Right? It's just just like apples are now available year round in any store. And and, like, that apple is essentially a big sugar bomb just sitting there. And, like, you should eat an apple and, you know, I I got my CGM right on right now and, like, eat what a in season apple does for you nutritionally versus, like, an out of season apple that's been in cold storage for a year.

Eric Smith - 01:06:48
I'm like, I don't need to tell you. You could taste the difference. But people still go and think they're getting health every time they buy that apple, but they're just getting a giant bomb of of fructose. You know? So, like, devil's in the details, I guess.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:07:17
Yeah. Another one of of, I think, our collective curiosities, Eric, is AI. I mean, how is AI playing into just from an audacious application and development perspective? And also, like, what are you predicting for its effect just overall in that kind of food and ag and how how that's gonna play out?

Eric Smith - 01:07:36
Yeah. So, just mentioned I was at Google Food Lab last week and and kind of get into these conversations a little bit. The one of the the foundational problems that Edacious is trying to solve right now is cannot be solved with AI. We we we just need more data, and the data doesn't exist. It it literally we we started, with a, an LOM in which we're pulling data out of academic papers. And then he realized the data is shit in all these academic papers, and it's not replicable, and it's not repeatable. You know? So, like Yeah. So we're, like, okay.

Eric Smith - 01:08:04
Like, let's let's invest in the lab and generating all these benchmark databases, and that data doesn't exist. Like, nobody understands variability and food quality the way that we do in only two years. And that's that foundational set allows us to go faster to all the things that we wanna be doing. So as we benchmark the nutrition, we're also capturing metadata to understand how that food was produced. So the holy grail of this and the rainbow at the end of the tunnel is the insights. Right? Is why did you get this level of nutrition? You know?

Eric Smith - 01:08:37
What practices, what processing, what supply chain, what what brought you that nutrition at the end of the day, and how can you optimize it? So, that's one of the places that we're investing in. And then I think the you know, when it bring comes to human health, I think understanding how to optimize nutrition in our diet based on our own, you know, health, goal, health history, genetic, code. I think nutrition is gonna play an essential role. But, again, we need data about and this is okay. So this is a great example. Right?

Eric Smith - 01:09:20
So, like, function health, superpower, all of these concierge medicine services.

Kyle Krull - 01:09:33
Yeah. I've

Eric Smith - 01:09:34
done I've tried a few of them. And at the end of your journey with them, you know what they're doing? They're giving you diet recommendations. They're telling you what you should go eat. Yeah. And they're saying, you know, go eat mackerel, go eat salmon, go eat, beans, go eat kale, go eat all this. Like and that's not right. Like, people some of that stuff is not good for some people. That's those are too simplistic.

Eric Smith - 01:09:50
And so we need to bring more nuance to these conversations. So instead of, you know, eat you should be eating grass fed meat. It's like, oh, well, you can get grass fed meat from these producers who have some of the best healthiest ratios, on the market. Right? And so we can connect the dots with everyone who's on this health journey, especially now that food is medicine is like a huge growing area and something that you guys should explore, and, connect people on their health journey to superior nutrition coming from Whole Foods.

Kyle Krull - 01:10:31
Absolutely. You know, I'm curious. Are there any brands now who are taking these relatively complex claims that go beyond the scope of the NFP, and they're really, like, messaging it well and their consumers are starting to pick it up. Are there any examples you can share, though, of, like, brands who are who are doing that now?

Eric Smith - 01:10:50
The the brand that has done it the best, we've we've both both worked with Kyle. Right? So, like, Maui Nui is, definitely has led in this space in a big way. Huge kudos to Jake and and Cas and the team. They're a customer of ours.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:11:06
Yeah.

Eric Smith - 01:11:06
Yeah. You know, they you know, setting that foundational nutrition page and showcasing their product relative to other products, they they've inspired me in a big way. And I, like, love nerding out with Jake. And the listener is Joe Rogan podcast from years ago, and he he talks about the nutrition of place. Right? And each one of those animals that he harvested has a different story depending on where where it went across that landscape. And so I just I I love that story, and I think he's leaned into it really well. And I'm starting to see a lot of people catch up. Right?

Eric Smith - 01:11:35
Like, force of nature is really catching up and really doing a good job of out messaging the impacts of their sourcing and the quality of their beef. And and I I can name a host of others. Maple Hill is one of our big customers. They are, messaging that. The Alexander family is doing a great job of talking about the individual nutrients, the difference between their products and their farms. And then we're we're now moving into fruits and vegetables in a big way, which I'm really excited about and helping those growers, connect those dots as well.

Kyle Krull - 01:12:14
I really wanna know from my own personal consumption is, like, the Cosmic Crisp apple nutrient profile versus everybody else because to me, that is the superior apple. But I really appreciate the shout out for some of the other brands who are doing it right. A lot of our our favorites here on the on the podcast. There was another question I had lined up, and I completely distracted myself, and it's gone. So

Eric Smith - 01:12:34
I'll kick

Kyle Krull - 01:12:35
it over to AC to see if you got another question.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:12:38
I have a curiosity, Eric, around bioavailability. Is there ever gonna be a way for us to test for that? Because it's, like, one thing for the nutrition data to exist, but how do we know you can actually absorb it?

Eric Smith - 01:12:49
Okay. Yeah. So glad you asked this question. This I think this is the future. Right? So, just for example, like, we measure heme iron versus other forms of iron. Right? Because, like, the the bioavailable iron is important. You have to differentiate that, And that's not called out on those NFPs back to our regular conversation. Right? Yeah. I think the science will continue to improve. However, the bioavailability is highly individualistic, and it really depends on your microbiome and the health of your gut.

Eric Smith - 01:13:10
And people don't realize this, and this is hugely problematic.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:13:26
Dependent on the recipient than the actual product is what you're saying.

Eric Smith - 01:13:29
Bingo. A %. Right? If you're putting, a highly nutritious vegetable into someone's gut that can't digest and absorb that nutrition, they're not getting it. And it's probably causing more pain than anything else, at

Kyle Krull - 01:13:46
the end of the day.

Eric Smith - 01:13:47
And and the so this factor, this this gets compounded on two levels. Right? So when you look at the total diet and all the stuff that's going in, it's mostly ultra processed. It's changing the structure of the microbiome. But the other big problem and the thing that we haven't talked about is contaminants. The contaminants and the quality and the and the volume of the contaminants in the food is off the charts. Heavy metals, pesticides, PFAS, PCBs, microplastics. Like, it is showing up at every level. We send stuff out.

Eric Smith - 01:14:17
We get sometimes we just, like, we're building our dataset on those stuff, and we've built some internal capacity. But it is off like, we are seeing heavy metals show up places you should not see heavy metals show up. And that's that's, like, really concerning. And so but I think especially when it comes to, like, pesticides, we know that those pesticides are absolutely destroying our gut. It's destroying our gut lining, and and it's destroying all of the biological processes that make that nutrition available. The story that I like to tell people is, if you if you're talking about soil health, you need to be talking about gut health as well because that what's happening in that soil is basically an open environment.

Eric Smith - 01:14:50
Right? And so it's their roots are exposed and there's incredible biological diversity of things happening and that nutrition is making its way up through the fungal ecosystem, into the rhizosphere, into the plant, and then into our bodies. And then when it gets in our bodies, it's basically you take that and then close it in an environment and you put it in our gut. And all of that is trying to do the exact same work to unlock these processes to make that nutrition available to us. The problem is everyone's gut health sucks in this country, so nobody's even getting the nutrition that they think they need. So, like and then it yeah.

Eric Smith - 01:15:29
So, bioavailability is gonna play a big role, but until we fix gut health, I don't know how we're gonna, like and it's the same thing. You know? It's like the recommended daily alliance, allowance for iron is gonna should be different from me than a woman of childbearing age versus a five year old kid. And if we can't bring that bioavailability conversation to the different demographics and races, like, we're we're missing some nuance, but, it's a complex system we work in. Yeah.

Kyle Krull - 01:16:09
Yeah. I've got two comments and a question. Number one, again, just wanted to hone in on this, like, recurring theme is we as a as a country, maybe as a planet, need to get better about allowing for the nuance in food and everybody's individual needs. And I think that's really hard for us to do, and very necessary for us to do. I already forgot my other comment, but I did remember the question I forgot before. Do you see and and I know there's tons of manufacturing and logistical complexity that would go along with this. But, theoretically, if that were to be solved, do you ever see a reality where we can have individual, like, NFPs that are batch based instead of static? So it's like every, you know, next round of Alexander Dairies farms, like, you know, that specific day's worth of production is, like, that day's profile of nutrition.

Eric Smith - 01:17:03
Yeah. Yeah. It's it's possible today. So, seasonality plays a big role here. Right? And seasonality played a huge role in how we evolved as a species in terms of what's available and how we moved across landscapes. And I think we should bring some of that nuance to this conversation. The Alexandras actually took the first step of, like, posting their fat results and showing how the fat quality changed over the course of the year. Like, that that's our important first step on the conversation. And it's guess what? It's more than plus or 20% off of that NFP. Right? So Mhmm.

Eric Smith - 01:17:29
So how do we bring that nuance to conversation? I think it's complex, but I think it's possible. And I think with AI and, basically, a hyperspectral plus infrared, we can, like, see profiles in a meaningful way and and enable in supply chain predictions. But before I start investing in some of those stuff, like, I have to find core value prop for just, like, totally the data useful and, like, how do you create use out of it? But, yeah, that is coming. Okay.

Kyle Krull - 01:18:11
Yeah. That that might be step seven, you know, and it sounds like we're we're we're at step maybe negative two right now.

Eric Smith - 01:18:17
So there's a

Kyle Krull - 01:18:18
lot of work to be done, but it it's cool to know that that's a potential reality and maybe within our lifetimes. Yeah. I think it'd be so cool to be able to see that. And and in particular for fresh produce, like, I I don't remember what the name of these, like, some kind of spectrometers or something where you can, like, wave the wand over the app when it gives you the nutritional profile. I would love to walk into the store and have that information available and have that guide my decisions for purchase.

Eric Smith - 01:18:39
Well, I'll give you a story, which I I think really elicit illuminates just how challenging this is. So, we have some some some pretty conventional beef contracts where we're looking at, the relationship between breed and feeding system and, like, what what what the quality of the product that's ultimately produced. To unlock that project for our customer, we have to pull pretty conventional samples, out of feed lots, which means as it moves from the feed lot to the packer, I have to, like, someone's gonna be in there and get us samples. And basically, these giant the big four, the packers, right? Cargill, JBS, Tyson, they can't track carcasses through their so they have no idea. Like, they have no idea what what goes through their system. It hits, and then when it's finally being graded oh, and Kyle, you nailed that point.

Eric Smith - 01:19:27
The grading system is, like, it has taken us so far the wrong direction. It couldn't be, like, you know, it's not even good anymore. The the the quality, the fat, you're just, like, a visceral mouthfeel. You're just, like and so, but, yeah, they can't even track. So, like, we can't we had to, like, flip the script on the whole project because we couldn't actually track the carcass that we paid through through, a giant packer. So it's just like insane. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. But there's there's just so much innovation that's gonna happen in this space.

Eric Smith - 01:20:01
And I think from specialty crops are gonna be a big one. And I was I was hanging out with my friend, Rob Rob Hurlburt, who runs AgCap, and, he's he's the guy behind the Sumo, oranges. And, I mean, god, like, can you imagine how many acres and acres and acres of those Sumo oranges they grow all over the place and and they and it hits the market from January to April. And I can enjoy the best tasting, and I pay, you know, $354 for each time for that orange because it is sweet, it is tasty, and it's a great evening experience. But, like, the operational complexity of delivering that quality eating experience in a uniform way over a four month period across the Continental US, like, that that just blows my mind every time. You know?

Anthony Corsaro - 01:21:04
It's like

Kyle Krull - 01:21:04
real life Santa Claus. You know? I I live in window.

Eric Smith - 01:21:09
I live in Portland, Maine. You know? Like, I get all of my fruits and vegetables from the other side of the country. And thanks to a a magic place called Whole Foods, I'm nourished. You know? So, like, it's wild. Yeah. Supply chains are wild.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:21:24
Y'all y'all are making me think back to all my produce days where we talked about a lot of this stuff, not necessarily from a nutrition angle, but there there still is some some know how in that world about the seasonality and and certain things, and there still has retailers that that really understand it. Like, hey. I don't want early crop Chilean stone fruit that's been on a barge. I'll just wait to get into stone fruit when the California gets here and a thousand other examples. Yeah. Eric, the only other, like, macro thing I was curious about was nutrition, not nutrition, human health studies. Like, is that the next step that we have to go do?

Anthony Corsaro - 01:21:46
I don't think that's, like, an audacious responsibility, and, obviously, you need to focus on what you're focused on. But, like, what is the relationship between your work and human health studies and us cracking cracking this problem?

Eric Smith - 01:22:07
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, somehow we've, successfully avoided talking about anything with the Maha movement. And so, well, maybe we'll stay the course on that, but, I think it it is it is this recognition that the quality of the food is making us feel like shit and look like shit and that ultimately we have to fix the food system if we're gonna fix our health. And so I'm really excited about the movement and what it represents. I'm less excited about the loss of, like, science in that process. And they are sitting in such an interesting, intersection where he could be funding all of these human health studies to prove his points. And I, like, I don't know why that's not a bigger part of the narrative of, like, actually investing in the human health studies to showcase this work. That's one comment. The other comment is, like, when you like, human health testing is so expensive. Right?

Eric Smith - 01:23:06
You have to get people and you have to have them stay, you you know, for twenty, thirty, forty, sixty days.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:23:20
Food, buy all the food.

Eric Smith - 01:23:21
Food, all their food. And and the problem is that 30 to 70% of the calories being consumed right now are ultra processed foods. So as soon as you switch anyone to any whole foods in their diet, their health takes a radical rebound. Right? So, like, that's what we see. Food is medicine. Get people eating whole foods. Get people eating clean meats, fruits and vegetables, you know, the but and then, like, that is a huge win, and and, like, that's where food is medicine is going to be going.

Eric Smith - 01:23:44
Applique, has a big study coming out, but they've been investing with the Hormel Institute to actually look into this omega three, omega six, and, like, what does it actually do? Stefan has done some work there. It's it's hard to, like, weed through the noise right now, but they start to look at biomarkers in the blood and say, okay. Are these short term biomarkers after you've eaten indicated of good metabolic processes or bad metabolic metabolic processes? And so, like, I think we will start to see some more of this, come through. I don't think it's necessary to activate this space because Yeah.

Eric Smith - 01:24:24
You and I empirically know if I could go to the store shelf and someone's gonna tell me that this carrot is better than this carrot, I'm gonna pay for the better carrot because I think there's more nutrition in it, and it's gonna taste better. So it's gonna be a better eating experience. So I think that's enough to kinda catalyze this space. And there's a lot of food as medicine program happening right now. The Rockefellers are funding it in a big way, and they're funding a lot of, like, okay. What happens if we source regeneratively grown fruits and vegetables into these programs, and could that impact, the health of the people receiving these produce prescription boxes, in a different way.

Eric Smith - 01:25:01
So, I think there's gonna be baby steps in that. I think from the administration, we're gonna see a lot more movement on, the purging of the food supply, so really trying to eliminate, the bad that's showing up. So more more regulation around heavy metals, more regulation around pesticides, you know, glycophosphate phosphates, things like they're everywhere. They're everywhere. It it's like we we we spray 800,000,000,000 pounds of pesticides all over this country. It's in everything.

Eric Smith - 01:25:39
And even if you're trying to eat organic and you go out, even to a nice restaurant, all that shit's covered in pesticides. So, like, I don't know. Small baby steps. Right? Like, take the wins where you can get them.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:25:59
Yeah. Man. Kyle, you got anything? You're looking at me.

Eric Smith - 01:26:06
So

Kyle Krull - 01:26:06
It's too much. I was I was debating. I mean, we've talked about this before, and one of the things that it gets me so excited, the potential for different constituents who are historically opposed to come together on some of these issues. Now, Eric, you mentioned before that you you come from a place of environmentalism, and we're talking about Maha. Right? And it it really does feel to me like nutrition and agriculture and the linkage of these two things can kinda become that purple bridge to get people to really realize, like, hey. This should this shouldn't be a politicized issue. This is really about human health and, I mean, economic viability long term and resiliency. Right?

Eric Smith - 01:26:47
Productivity. Yeah.

Kyle Krull - 01:26:49
Yeah. So it it it just feels like there's so much potential. I don't know really where I'm going with this sentence. I kinda feel like Michael Scott in the office. You know, sometimes I I start a sentence. I don't know where it's gonna go.

Eric Smith - 01:27:01
You you could fix it

Anthony Corsaro - 01:27:02
that all that's true, and it's now associated with two of the most polarizing political candidates in the history of our country. So I think that's where the

Kyle Krull - 01:27:09
Yeah.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:27:09
That's where the rub is. You know?

Kyle Krull - 01:27:11
I appreciate you coming in to finish that sentence for me, AC. That was that was well done.

Eric Smith - 01:27:17
You know, the the the great I like, the irony is that, like, Michelle Obama tried to start this movement,

Kyle Krull - 01:27:23
you know

Eric Smith - 01:27:24
Right. Whatever, ten, fifteen years ago with, like, just getting kids healthy and talking about some of these issues, and it got totally poo pooed. Obviously, our health just keeps on getting worse and worse. So it's like we're at the breaking point as a society where we're like, what is going on? Like, we're the the rate of cancer in 30 year olds right now is off the charts. It it it is it is scary. So I'm I this is, like, one of my big things. I was not bullish on consumers, and now I'm, like, bullish on consumers.

Eric Smith - 01:27:50
And, like, this is the big bet that you guys have been making and trying to make is that if we can activate and I hear you say it all I see all the time. You know, how do we activate that consumer base? Like, regen's not gonna go anywhere without pull from consumers. And so we have to connect their health to the regenerative movement. And that's that's the win here, is to be able to show people that by treating the land right, removing the contaminants, getting nutritious food, we can actually restore and regenerate their own health at the same time. And so we have to connect those dots, and we have to connect it in a way that my mom can understand.

Eric Smith - 01:28:33
And and, like, it's it's just that's where and that's where I'm so excited because I think so many of your listeners and the brands that you guys work with, they are good marketers. They are, grassroots, like, you know, like, they are figuring out every day how to punch through so much noise that's out there. And I think by showcasing clean food, nutritious food, and the data to prove it, They're gonna break through that noise, and they're gonna educate and activate the base that we need it to be. And so, yeah, I'm I'm all in on this. I I I hope that I'm doing this for the next forty years. I I I can't think of something that's more important to, like, restore our own health while restoring the health of our planet. Yeah.

Kyle Krull - 01:29:30
It's so good to hear somebody else talk about the stuff that we love so much. So it's been a joy to have you on, man. This is great.

Eric Smith - 01:29:37
Yeah.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:29:38
Yeah. And and Eric didn't even need the prompting to answer the final question because he just answered it right there. So, brother, this has been amazing. Really appreciate it. For anyone that wants to learn more, we'll obviously have it in the show notes, but it's edaci0us.com, Edacious Com. Yeah, man. Just appreciate all your work. Look forward to, to working together on all this, and just thank you for being here.

Eric Smith - 01:30:02
Thank you both for having me. Continue to fight the good fight, and, I'll be be here to support you guys. So yeah.

Kyle Krull - 01:30:08
I appreciate it, man.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:30:13
For transcripts, show notes, and more information on this episode, check out our website regen-brands.com. That is regen-brands.com. You can also check out our YouTube channel, ReGen Brands, for all of our episodes with both video and audio. The best way to support our work is to give us a five star rating on your favorite podcast platform and subscribe to future episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. You can also subscribe to our newsletter, the ReGen Brands Weekly, and follow our ReGen Brands LinkedIn page to stay in the know of all the latest news, insights, and perspectives from the world of regenerative CPG. Thanks so much for tuning in to the Regen Brands podcast. We hope you learned something new in this episode, and it empowers you to use your voice, your time, your talent, and your dollars to help us build a better and more regenerative food system. Love you guys.