192 Zuzanna Zielińska - Women's hormonal health starts with regenerative agriculture and the focus on quality and nutrient density food

A conversation with Zuzanna Zielińska, founder of HarvestCare, about women’s hormonal health, the PCOS syndrome, and the connection between regenerative agriculture and healthcare.  She is one of the co-founders of the Coalition of Health Professionals for Regenerative Agriculture.

HarvestCare is looking for a commercial co-founder passionate about linking the healthcare, food, and agricultural world: https://www.harvestcare.eu/co-founder.

The Coalition of Health Professionals for Regenerative Agriculture is an organisation that educates health professionals about the health benefits of regenerative organic agriculture, collects scientific articles about farming practices and nutrient density and connects relevant stakeholders that research nutrient density https://www.regenerativehealthcoalition.com.

This series is supported by the A Team Foundation, who support food and land projects that are ecologically, economically and socially conscious. They contribute to the wider movement that envisions a future where real food is produced by enlightened agriculture and access to it is equal. The A Team are looking to make more investments and grants in the space of bionutrients.You can find out more on ateamfoundation.org.
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More about this episode on https://investinginregenerativeagriculture.com/zuzanna-zielinska.

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The above references an opinion and is for information and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

Chapters

• 2:20 Why are you doing what you are doing? Why Soil?
• 32:12 Why our endocrine system is threatened
• 48:00 What is the status of Harvest Care at the moment?
• 53:30 What should smart investors, who want to invest in nutrient density look into?
• 55:32 What would you do if you were in charge of a 1B investment portfolio
• 58:08 If you could wave a magic wand and change one thing in the agriculture industry what would that be?

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

Healthy soils lead to healthy produce, lead to healthy gut system and lead to healthy people. The 60 pages of references on the book of Anne Bickley and David R. Montgomery clearly show this connection. If you want to know more, we interviewed them before and I will put a link below. So how can we use this fact to build scalable companies and reach the people that are currently not being reached? Our guest today decided to focus on women's hormonal health and specifically polycystic ovary syndrome, PCOS, which is the most common endocrine, which is a hormonal disorder for women of reproductive age. About 20% of women suffer from this. Why? Because all the toxicity in our current food system messes with our hormones and this can be managed by lifestyle changes and more importantly, diets. What are the connections between healthy farming practices, healthy soil, healthy produce, healthy gut, and healthy people? Welcome to a special series where we go deep into the relationship between regenerative agriculture practices that build soil health and the nutritional quality of the food we end up eating. We unpack the current state of science, the role of investments, businesses, nonprofits, entrepreneurs, and more. This series is supported by the A-Team Foundation, who support food and land projects that are ecologically, economically, and socially conscious. They contribute or get in touch directly info at a team foundation.org or check the information in the show notes below Welcome to another episode today with the founder of Harvest Care, Susanna, which we go deep into nutrient density, potentially my favorite subject of this podcast. So I'm very, very happy to have Susanna here. Welcome and thank you so much for joining us.

SPEAKER_00: 2:05

Thank you so much for being here.

SPEAKER_01: 2:07

So we met, I will put the link below, obviously with the interview we did with Bart through Thresh Ventures, but I would love to, which is a venture studio based in Rotterdam focused on regenerative agriculture and food, but I would love to know a bit more more about how like your story how did you end up focusing on soil and then focusing on the health side of of humans and that connection to healthy soil like what's the the meandering river into that or what's the story into that

SPEAKER_00: 2:33

Yeah, so I was very, very lucky because I have studied global health and nutrition in Denmark. And in our third semester, we had half a year dedicated for agriculture. And I remember sitting in that class and being taught about... I don't think it's

SPEAKER_01: 2:52

normal. Just for anybody that... I don't think many of these studies take, okay, let's start at the basis and let's start at soil. I think that's... You were lucky. Or did you pick that one specifically for that? No,

SPEAKER_00: 3:04

no. It was just the design of the program. And, you know, I remember sitting in the class and being taught about no-till agriculture. And back then, like, it didn't make any sense. I was like, what the heck is happening, you know? And then we even would go to, like, 30 kilometers from where my university was. We had one of the only, I think, organic farming school in whole Europe. So we would also have a tour out there. And, yeah, as you said, like, I'm super lucky. I think I would assume that it's one of the only universities in Europe that actually taught about the food production in quite a bit. And I think from then on something clicked, like something really clicked very deep in me. I think I never really resonate with the approach to dieting as something that you use to restrict your calories and something that you do to have yourself summer body. And I think there is so much toxicity coming from all sorts of industries that benefit on people, yeah, on making people feel uncomfortable in what they eat and how they look. And I think that was it. That was for me like a completely different look and a completely different approach to our food and what food means to us and to our ecosystem. And I think from then on, it was just like a a continuous path towards soil and agriculture.

SPEAKER_01: 4:37

but you didn't become a farmer. Like you decided to, or did you try that? Like what's the, did you go, what was the obvious next step after that study for

SPEAKER_00: 4:46

you? Yeah. So, um, yeah, that was one of the first semesters. I still had like many semesters to come because I actually just graduated my bachelor half a year ago. So everything is quite fresh. Um, yeah, I, um, so I was, I, uh, we had the chance to go on an internship and I, the, back then I was working in a coffee So it was kind of natural flow for me to work with a certain ingredient and to really wanting to discover what is the whole life cycle of the certain ingredients. I was planning to go on a coffee farm to Guatemala to discover the difference between organic and conventional coffee production. Then Corona happened. So that, of course, grounded me in Denmark. So I was very, I was gifted with the time to just, you know, have to freeze my time and do something with it. So I started to volunteer in an urban community farm, which also worked as a care farm. So they managed to get finances for people with mental challenges to employ them as gardeners, as food producers, to heal through reconnecting to nature. And this is where the first step of of learning something in class and then going to, you know, visiting farming school and then starting ideating about it and then putting my hands into action. And I think that was definitely one of the most impactful months of my life where I wasn't just being taught about something theoretically, but actually I put my hands dirty. And this is also where, especially the love to soil started because I was like really ideating, I helped them the most in this small half an hectare farm. And it really came to digging deeper into composting and seeing how I can utilize the organic materials from the city that are abandoned, as for example, coffee waste, which I could bring from, you know, after my shift, I would put it in my backpack and I would buy the coffee waste to compost that we have built and really trying to enrich the soil quality there. And this is how it started.

SPEAKER_01: 7:14

I think many people underestimate the power of gardening or farming with those intentions or those practices. I don't think anybody would argue, let's have, let's say, a care farm on a large extractive GMO fed soil. Nobody would go there to get healed. That's not an approach, but somehow it really naturally fits, which is, I just realized it now, which really is an interesting way. You would go to farms like this to get healed, not only because you're doing physical work and there's the structure and all of that but also because there is something with working with your hands in the soil of course healthy soil that apparently seems to be healing did you like what was the biggest I mean you said it clicked with you was there a specific moment or was there some like something you saw like okay there's there's more than just okay this is nice because we're working outside you could also do woodworking but this is different this is there's something different about working with soil and working with food what you remember when it clicked for you

SPEAKER_00: 8:14

I actually visited this urban farm already a few times before and just each time like just stepping you know there will be a pavement and stepping out of the concrete into the soil like already would have such a transformational effect on my body and my spirit but I think that the society that we live in and you know the prevalent consumerism capitalists really make us feel so inadequate and so like feeling of lack all the time and being there with people with schizophrenia and depression and all kind of people that I would never imagine and being so grateful and honored that I can be around people that live completely different stories than I and still would develop a deep bond over planting sunflowers and I would just be able to see how other people interact with nature of some singing to the plants that they were harvesting, that they believe in, you know, in little fairies that are taking care of the well-being of the plants, which now when I think about soil microbiome and the soil food web, like it makes complete... They are the fairies. They are the fairies, of course. It's there, of course. They see

SPEAKER_01: 9:29

things we don't see, doesn't mean they're not there,

SPEAKER_00: 9:32

yeah. Exactly. And I mean, maybe we can see them as well if we take microscope, but they just feel they are there, you know. So I think for the first time in my life, I felt that I so deeply belong without having having to prove anything. So rather than, you know, it was not that me, I was helping the garden and the people, the garden was healing me. And I felt firsthand experience of what it means to feel welcome. And yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 9:59

Very interesting. There's, I think, a documentary out there to where we belong, something like that on farming as well. I'll put a link below. It's streamable, I think, for$10 or something. You can get it. Anyway, it's a very interesting sentence you've mentioned. But then you could have stayed there. You could have worked in your shifts in the coffee place. You could have biked with the coffee leftover. I'm not going to call it waste because it's not. With the coffee opportunity to this farm and you interned there and you volunteered there and And that would be a very fulfilling path. But you chose to take a different route.

SPEAKER_00: 10:37

Yeah. So, um, I think the coffee, the coffee, like really awakened me. And I know that it's obvious coffee awaits us every morning, but for me, it was much more on like a spiritual level that the coffee awakened me to start. How

SPEAKER_01: 10:53

much did you take?

SPEAKER_00: 10:54

Yeah, exactly. Like this will come in a second. So basically I understood that the coffee is like a systemic problem. So I visit every single coffee shop in my city, which was around 35 places. And I asked, what do you What do you do with your coffee? And beside one lady that was using it in her own garden, everybody else was just throwing it away. And of course, this is not just coffee that is such an abundant organic material in the city that we could be utilizing to make topsoil. And I think something that's really also encouraged me to do the topsoil is that the FAO conclusions that we have like 60 years of harvest left, But it was released a few years ago, so now we have 55 years of harvest left. And I was like, how is it possible that we are all not just making a topsoil? We're arguing if we should go on keto diet or vegan diet or paleo diet, but at the same time, we have 50 years to fix the crucial problem.

SPEAKER_01: 11:58

None of these diets matter if we don't have

SPEAKER_00: 12:00

topsoil. Maybe

SPEAKER_01: 12:01

if you go to an algae diet, you're sort of escaping that, but

SPEAKER_00: 12:05

still. So I asked everybody what they are doing and nobody was doing really anything. And then they started to teach other community gardens of like how they can build compost and how they can connect with the local entrepreneurs to take their biowaste. But I quickly realized that like just running it on my own, you know, just as a volunteer, like it was a systemic problem, basically. So systemic problem is a systemic solution, right? So then I thought, okay, well, nobody really cares what I'm doing as in my free time. But if I say that alternative with a product or if I'm basically want to step into the market suddenly you gain so much momentum and traction and people start listening and inviting you places I said okay let me try to figure out what can you do with coffee waste besides composting even I still believe that composting is the greatest way to deal with it and I reach out to people I just wrote on Facebook like hey I want to deal with this problem that somebody wants to join me and I was very lucky because I get I got three people joining, then two people from my activist group also joined, and this is how we formed Connecting Grounds. So Connecting Grounds is a startup which works on upcycling coffee waste into food products. And right now there's a lot of upcycling happening, and coffee is a very diverse material that you can use to various applications from biomaterials like bioplastic to cosmetics to pharmaceuticals, but I think being nutritionist and always putting, you know, the importance of us, first and foremost, feeding ourselves rather than putting something on our skin or having, you know, shoe made of coffee grounds, like it's great, but like, if you can eat it, eat it, you know. And we figure out that it's very simple to, like, it's very simple to upcycle it. All you need to do is have a dryer, dry your coffee waste, mill it to the right particle and you can use it, you can use this flour so it's naturally gluten free it's really high in fiber it has 60 to 70% of fiber it has some of the

SPEAKER_01: 14:16

minerals so basically we're talking about the leftovers so you make your espresso you make your french press and then you always have this sort of cake left which is I think 96 97% of the coffee bean like there's a very small percentage in your coffee which is great that's the whole industry and the rest is but you say you can simply grind it and it becomes flour which is very very interesting

SPEAKER_00: 14:37

yeah and then And then like the craziest part of it is that once you, what the caffeine content that you extract to your cup of coffee, like it's almost nothing. Like you extract 200 milligrams of caffeine in your espresso cup. And then we run the test for a lab and you, in the leftovers of coffee grounds, you have around 600 milligrams of caffeine. Can you imagine? Like we are only extracting like one fourth of all of the caffeine that is available from this resource that travel from Latin America and Africa And, you know, it was like so much work, so much energy. And then we have 25 seconds for this, you know, piling up. And that's it. Like, that's it.

SPEAKER_01: 15:18

And when you say we can eat it as flour, what makes you say then you still believe that compost is better as the composting is? Is it better or is it equally? Why would you say that if there is the option to eat it?

SPEAKER_00: 15:31

Yeah, so first and foremost, I question if we have a healthy diet and we follow the lifestyle medicine approach where we take care of our nutrition and physical activity and sleep and we have the contact with other humans and stress management, will we really need a coffee to wake up? I think if you need a coffee to wake up, there's a few problems before that that you should look at rather than just going for an easy quick.

SPEAKER_01: 15:59

Good point, good point.

SPEAKER_00: 16:00

It's a solution. So as a

SPEAKER_01: 16:03

person that just had a coffee just before this interview, that's me.

SPEAKER_00: 16:06

I'm not a shamer. Coffee is delicious. I'm also having it from time to time as a treat. So basically my problem is that when I started looking into the whole supply chain of of coffee. I always wanted to create this startup with the thought of bringing new economical streams from the farmers because we know that with the climate change, especially the farmers who cultivate Arabica, most likely in 25 years to 30 years, most of the land will be unusable because Arabica needs very specific conditions. We need to drastically rethink how much we use of our coffee. We are drinking as it would be water, as it would be something that you You're just like, yeah, I just go to my garden and I pick up my coffee beans. Well, actually, in Italy, now with the climate change, you're able to grow a coffee very south of Italy. But still, I don't see coffee bushes just abundant in Holland, where I am. And you're treating it as it would be abundant. And so right now, I'm not in the startup anymore. I decided to exit it because I came and I embarked on this new adventure and I really wanted to commit to regenerative culture and I knew that this is my path and I was keep on pushing my team like hey guys but like let's remember the farmers really remember the culture and that was just not fitting the whole solution so

SPEAKER_01: 17:28

because it's so far like that the coffee farmers are on the other side and in this case you're providing a solution for the quote-unquote waste and and of course it doesn't impact it impacts a full energy side life cycle assessment etc but doesn't impact the farmer whatsoever and so it makes it made a lot of sense but not easy to to because you sort of also become part of that startup, like your identity is part of that, like, and then having to, not having, wanting to exit that and take that road to either left or right, whatever the cut is, is not a, is not an easy step. And then, I mean, then you came to Fresh, you came to Rotterdam, like that's quite a drastic, a drastic cut.

SPEAKER_00: 18:05

It was a really drastic cut. And when, when I was, when I was here during the program, I was still with that, with the, with my startup. And, and, and as you said, like it became a huge part of identity. You become a obsessed right and you're just so deeply wants to fix this problem and you know the more you know the more you want to get engaged but I just felt that because we are dealing with upcycling on the upstream the more the closer we were getting to go on the market the less my motivation was there because the more I understood that we'll have to still deal with you know the current food supply chain which is maybe upsetting this coffee waste and then trying to sell it to a b2b product that can you know use it to yeah have a sustainable ingredient and and it's just like i think i'm a bit too extreme into what has to happen to be able to go on those compromises and i just i just yeah it's just too difficult for me

SPEAKER_01: 19:11

so how did you find fresh

SPEAKER_00: 19:13

Well, they actually reached out to my best friend, Marco Nardini, which is a regenerative agronomist, and he loves your podcast. Hi, Marco. Hi, Marco. I don't

SPEAKER_01: 19:26

think we ever met, but I see you on LinkedIn.

SPEAKER_00: 19:28

Yes. And then they reached out to him because they had a really wide reach, and he's really engaged with what he was doing in Italy, so it wasn't for him at this moment, and he thought, oh, maybe this is something for you. And I look at it, and And I was like, well, maybe, you know, back then I was still writing my bachelor's. So it was, you know, I was still in a different mindset, but I thought, okay, you know what? Like, let me try. And, and I was just applying. And it's so interesting that most of those things in my life that, that really have a huge impact. They are the ones that I put the least effort in a sense, you know, because I was just like, yeah, there's a

SPEAKER_01: 20:04

lesson there. There's a lesson there.

SPEAKER_00: 20:06

There is a lesson there for sure. Like the more, yeah. And so I just, so I just did.

SPEAKER_01: 20:12

Perfect. And then like, what was that? Because we've talked to Bart, but it was beforehand, actually. Before the program started, I will link it below. But what was the experience like? I mean, I was a bit involved, but obviously not inside inside. What was that process of going through a venture studio? First, the online bit, which I remember then it was very intense offline in person. And then you came out basically joining the studio with a company. We'll go there at the end, but like, how was that process for you? It sounds very intense.

SPEAKER_00: 20:43

It It was extremely intense and also extremely, like it was the most growth period time of my life that I think set me off on this path, but not only me. I mean, what's so beautiful about the Fresh Studio is that they believe that you first invest in people and then this investment will pay back in creating a solution with a real impact. So they invited 35 people with all different paths of life and I don't think there was two people in the room that would have the same background and they just throw us to a huge room and say okay 12 weeks try to figure something out so of course there was so much you know like we get to know each other through online program but it's such a different dynamic and then you go and you're like oh you're actually way taller or you know like I didn't expect you have this kind of yeah

SPEAKER_01: 21:37

it was a very intense online piece I think on a lot of the knowledge I mean you knew already but like going deep in food and ag and then you moved offline in person and still visited a lot of farms a lot of food companies and things like that and then really started working on solution paths and and at some point okay what what kind of companies or solutions could grow out of this how but how was that switch from offline to online what what happened there because it was still also in covid time so it was interesting but like you you got into this pressure cooker and knew okay for 12 weeks we're going to be here thinking building iterating being uncomfortable like what was that Did it fly? Was it very long? What was your feeling in that in-person piece?

SPEAKER_00: 22:20

I think if you would ask each of the members, for sure everybody would have a different story to that, right? Because for some, it was coming from abroad to Rotterdam, so it was also a life-changing event. For some, they're actually Dutch or they live here. And I think the online program was a really great start for all of us to get a basic knowledge. Well, it was not really basic, but knowledge from the terrestrial system and landless systems aquatic because some of the people actually have not been within the food system so for some it was quite a repetition for others it was all new but I think it was very important to get this vocabulary so we can also communicate and understand each other of what we are talking about but I think everybody was super excited to just be finally together and of course after a very long time of COVID and a lot of people being in isolation but just ideating via Zoom and even if you use like all of the wonderful technologies, mirror or whatever, like it's never the same as feeling each other and being in the room and, you know, feeling the vibrancy and the energy of each other and just like the passion and the motivation. So, I mean, for me personally, the program was quite, like it was an emotional rollercoaster as well. I mean, I'm so deeply, you know, excited. very passionate but also very scared of where we are and I'm really feeling that there's you know now we are behind the steering wheel of this society all of us that are alive on this planet and there's a huge responsibility for us to do something so of course like there is so much desire to to understand the problem and do something about it so it was really like from week to week it was like so many emotions happening and and the way the program was designed is that you first um committed to like digging into that problem for six weeks and then the next six weeks you were slowly supposed to be transitioned from a problem to a solution. So we kind of divided each other into learning groups and me and another wonderful woman decided to look at the nutrient density, which is your favorite topic and our favorite topic as well. So that was really wonderful to find another person that is also with the same mindset because the problems that people were working on were so diverse, from fixing the holistic raising problem them, to farmer transition, to creating products from regenerative outputs to nutrient density. Through us, really, we cover all of the supply chain and all of the problems and solutions that you could think of.

SPEAKER_01: 25:04

And then how did that deep dive into the problem side, which you knew, obviously, how did that then transition into harvest care? Was it a very natural one? Was it very uncomfortable? How did that process over, in this case, 12 weeks or six weeks deep in the problem and then slowly transitioning to solution side? How did that happen?

SPEAKER_00: 25:27

It wasn't definitely not a linear process, and I think nothing in the planet is linear, nor our hormonal cycles, nor the lunar cycle, nor the season cycle, nothing is linear. So I think we present for most, like the biggest learning for me was to get away from thinking that any of this process will be linear and just accepting the constant flow. Yeah, so... So the current problem with the food system is that we are continuing to produce food as it would be still 90-50 and as would still be scarce in calories, right? I think some people say that the food system is broken. I think that the food system runs just as it was designed, which is producing the most calories with the calories that are the easiest to process, the easiest to transport, store, with no endpoint no human considerations, and also even economical considerations. Because, I mean, in 1985, the Common Agriculture Policy, which was implemented by the European Economic Community, was taking up 70% of the whole budget, right? So this system was never designed to really serve anybody besides creating huge abundance of calories.

SPEAKER_01: 26:50

Which it did, which it's doing.

SPEAKER_00: 26:52

Which it's continuing doing, totally.

SPEAKER_01: 26:55

So you're saying the system is not broken. It works perfectly the way we, the global we, designed it. But now it's time to redesign because, yeah, we have solved for the hunger side of things. For most cases, obviously, there are huge distribution issues. But in most cases, we don't go to bed hungry, but we go to bed like malnutritioned or not fed. And that's a design question or that's an incentive question or that's a condition question of this food system. And so what to do?

SPEAKER_00: 27:28

Exactly, exactly. As you said, our current problem is the nutritional insecurity. People have often the access of calories, but they're missing essential nutrients as vitamins, minerals, fatty acids, bioactive compounds, and so on, that are only present in our whole foods. And whole foods by design should be harvested and consumed in a very short time so they also have the highest nutrient density. So most of the people, right, now in the Western, in Europe, are dying from lifestyle diseases, right? Which is from diabetes to cancers to strokes to heart disease. And those diseases are taking 86% of all of the deaths in Europe,

SPEAKER_01: 28:11

right? 86. Let's just sink that in, people listening. 86. That's an eight and then a six, which means almost all, basically. We have 14% left for our leftovers, but

SPEAKER_00: 28:22

that's

SPEAKER_01: 28:23

insane.

SPEAKER_00: 28:24

And And those numbers, they are not only humans suffering behind, which I think for me at least is the most painful, but also they are a huge burden of our economies. You know, they take 25% of the total health care spending in Europe and they are just being expected to be on the rise. But they also, you know, create a huge loss of human power and huge capital because of those disabilities And I think at least for me, we really need people healthy and ready because we have real environmental challenges to fix. And we need to be people on the point with their health, right?

SPEAKER_01: 29:09

Both mentally and physically, we have a lot to do and we're not in great shape. I think that's a conclusion there. We're not ready at all for this ecological transition because we're not being fed or we're not feeding ourselves with the right kind of food. of nutrients the right kind of foods to to even mentally have that be able to to go through this and physically let alone i mean we need to plant a lot of trees and we need to do a lot of work physically and and yes they're going to be augmented like we're going to have technology helping us for many things but let's not kid ourselves this is not a laptop revolution this is a very very different so we need to get in shape

SPEAKER_00: 29:46

exactly exactly and and it's very difficult to get in shape when our when the food we consume even if we consume whole food which we know is really not the case for a majority of the population, simply also because the organic or whole foods are so expensive and they are inaccessible for most of the society. But still, within the conventional agricultural practices, we are lowering the nutrient density, right? So the studies in the US show that on average, the nutritional value we lost is around 38%. And those are big numbers, and those are numbers from essential nutrients. which are needed for healthy functioning of our body. And then beyond that, just to finish it off with all the food, it's not only what this food is missing, but also what is present in our food that we don't want those molecules to be present. And there was an annual report published by European Food Safety Authority in 2020 showing that at least half of the fruits and vegetables in Europe consist of pesticide residue. And out of this, half at this one third consists of a cocktail of up to 15 recipes and we have no idea what happened what is happening in our body once so many chemicals that should not supposed to be there are running from our bloodstream and what is so now i'm going to the transition because you asked me like what was what was you know what's the transition this is

SPEAKER_01: 31:15

very depressing like how this sounds so big like okay we we can see the problem and now it's like okay where what's the entry point what's the because that of course you are forced in a venture studio to start thinking about venture like what's the we can be an activist on this side we can do amazing scientific work but that's not the role I mean you are an activist but that's the role you chose the role as an entrepreneur so what's the entry point

SPEAKER_00: 31:39

yeah exactly so the entry point became an endocrine system for me so endocrine system

SPEAKER_02: 31:45

explain

SPEAKER_00: 31:46

yes let me explain so the endocrine system is specifically threatened by all of the all of the pesticide residue, as I just mentioned, because in those pesticide residues, there's something called endocrine-disruptive chemicals. And those are chemicals which mimic or disrupt our hormones in our bodies, and they send confusing messages and cause all kinds of dysfunctions. So what is the

SPEAKER_01: 32:13

endocrine system? Just vary for everybody that English isn't their first language.

SPEAKER_00: 32:16

Endocrine system is basically our hormonal reproductive

SPEAKER_01: 32:20

system

SPEAKER_00: 32:21

on the

SPEAKER_01: 32:22

women's side.

SPEAKER_00: 32:23

Or also

SPEAKER_01: 32:24

men

SPEAKER_00: 32:25

also men I mean everybody has an endocrine system everybody is basically governed by our ecosystem I mean we are governed by our biology and I think too often we are forgetting that we're part of the nature so both men and women have you know systems and we're

SPEAKER_01: 32:40

getting like we're getting we're being threatened or it's being exposed to so many toxins that are hormones which are completely governing our our emotions our health etc are getting either confused or actually very badly, let's say, sending signals you don't want in your body.

SPEAKER_00: 32:58

Exactly, exactly. And as you said, they cover so much. They cover our mental health, our reproductive health, our metabolism, our energy level, our microbiota. Basically, whatever you think of us performing, endocrine has an influence.

SPEAKER_01: 33:14

So our operating system is being hacked, basically. And not in a good way.

SPEAKER_00: 33:19

Not in a good way. And you were the one, Kun, that you helped me also like going to this direction because you have during the fresh program you send me the white paper released by insurance company saying that due to the low grade accumulation of toxicity exposure in our food but not only in our cosmetics and plastic products we have a huge infertility challenges and they're predicting that with the current decline in sperm activity with next 35 years only 15 to 20% of the cap is will be able to conceive naturally right so in next 30 years basically our biology

SPEAKER_01: 33:59

just let us have that sink in for a second people that's i will put a paper below it's written by jeremy grantum a very famous investor on the institutional side founder of gmo which is funny because it's his name it has nothing to do with gmo and they are a supporter of the podcast as well through their foundation and he has been hammering down this like the the toxicity Toxicity is a real, real threat. We don't know exactly where it comes from. No, we know where it comes from. We don't know exactly what it does or how it works. We know what it does because we see the outcome. And he said a famous sentence somewhere in that white paper that he published or actually in his normal, like his normal, let's say, investor newsletter where he was talking about sperm count and toxicity, which I already find hilarious that in like pension funds, et cetera, they get this white paper, they read it because it is Jeremy Grantham and they talk about sperm count which is not the normal thing they discuss in these boardrooms but anyway he said the famous sentence if you want to become if you're planning to to have children over the next years and both men and women and we come back to to this piece which is you just mentioned have to eat i have to avoid all toxicity possible which means eating organic preferably beyond but that's maybe too much to ask at the moment but we get there like this toxicity is so threatening to us like we're we're not reproducing at the level we need for our pension system for all the work we need to do for like couples are going through hell to get pregnant naturally and you say that's just going down further and which means very expensive programs a lot of pain a lot of suffering or not getting pregnant in a natural way which sort of seems to be should be a right for anybody if you want that but apparently we're losing that ability which is very scary so you thought okay this is the entry point for where there is so much pain and where there is so much possibility as well.

SPEAKER_00: 35:57

Exactly. And just to summarize this endocrine, I think what I spend a lot of time reflecting and I'm really fascinated about is that endocrine disruption and climate change have a common origin, which is the fossil fuel consumption and production. Because many of the pesticides include all kinds of chemicals as ethylene and propylene and methane, which we have access thanks to the petroleum. So I think it's like nature showing us middle finger right in your

SPEAKER_01: 36:27

face yeah you thought you could burn this stuff yeah good luck with that so we're running ourselves into the ground basically literally like this is where we're i mean you just have to look at the numbers it's it's really really scary so what on the let's let's show the path to solution yes like is this quote unquote easily fixable like are there examples studies like if you stop exposing yourself as a couple like what what's that connection to I mean there's a very easy outcome do you get pregnant naturally or not like it's sort of that's quite an easy test like what has been going on in that world have people been doing research there experiments exposing people to let's say beyond organic or organic whole foods etc

SPEAKER_00: 37:12

yeah so I didn't look like my I took the focus of endocrine but not specifically on fertility but on woman endocrine system and with specific I was focusing on polycystic ovarian syndrome which is the most prevalent endocrine disease among women it's up to 20% of us that are suffering from it and the way it happens is basically your follicle cell cannot mature so instead of being released from your ovaries it's transformed to cysts and then with time you accumulate more and more cysts and then they stop or they hugely impact your hormone cycle and there's a ton of research out there and a ton of it examples, how you can manage this disease with lifestyle, which includes healthy diet, physical activity, preferably like hormonal yoga. So you also adapt your physical activity to your predisposition from your mood and also stress management because elevated stress hormones can also negatively influence this disease. And women are managing to heal themselves. I mean, it's not a disease that you can just go on treatment and then get better and then just quit. That's not how it works. have to transform your life and i think that's one of the challenge of in

SPEAKER_02: 38:37

general yeah

SPEAKER_00: 38:38

it's just like one of the challenge of using food as medicine is that we are so used to being like very passive when it comes to our health um our health and body literacy and also food literacies are extremely low um and and here we are talking about you know transforming your lifestyle so I think the reason why I love regenerative agriculture, because indeed, like it's so easy to get caught up with all of the problems and how difficult the challenges are and, you know, complex. And the more you understand them, the more you want to dig in. But, you know, the approach of regenerative agriculture, which have the solutions of how to heal the food system always pulls me back. It's like, okay, like focus on what can we do right now? And there's few benefits from regenerative agriculture in particular for using food as medicine and then the kind of, help. First is that if regenerative agriculture is produced organically, then of course it won't have the endocrine discharge of chemicals, which is very important. But additionally, and I don't want to go too much into it because you had Dave Burrow of the Nutrient Density before me here and David Montgomery and other people, which explained beautifully everything, and I don't want to even try to repeat anything. I will link it

SPEAKER_01: 39:52

below. But I think it's interesting. What does it add now? You said women are able to heal themselves with the right type of yoga, meditation, stress release, eating well. What does it add now to go beyond and say, no, we're actually going to use regenerative practices to create, quote unquote, to grow food as medicine? What do you see there as the opportunity? Why do you think that's an interesting path?

SPEAKER_00: 40:20

So we need to heal ourselves and we need to heal the planet at the same time. And regenerative agriculture allows us to do it because we know that if we will not disturb the soil, we will plant the cover crops, we will have intensive crop rotations, we will have the positive effect on the soil microbiome. The positive effect on soil microbiome will lead to higher nutrient density, which will allow us to access food that will heal us faster while healing the soil of Europe or the world or whatever. So this is why, and now I will go to the Harvest Care, which is like the venture that came out from the Fresh. The idea behind Harvest Care is to build an organization of a digital food pharmacy that supports women endocrine disorders using medicated food, blended care approach, and community building. And then in later phase, I hope to also include regenerative food provisioning to help them to restore their hormonal balance at the same time and regenerative soil in Europe. And I know that there's lots to unpack there, but is it okay if I would just take the time to... Please go.

SPEAKER_02: 41:30

Please unpack.

SPEAKER_00: 41:32

I'm unpacking it. Well, then let's start from the meditative food. Basically, meditative food is a diet that is prescribed for a specific disease for a specific person. And I think what's super important for me as a health professional is that I see a lot of reductionist approach to looking at it diet of, you know, people may be filling out the questionnaire and saying like, okay, well, if you want to lose weight, you should be eating this. But it's completely out of the context. Like it doesn't take into account any kind of, you know, behavioral psychology, how we work, how we, what, you know, what is the process behind forming a new habit. And I just don't believe that any kind of software without the human touch will be able to facilitate this. So instead of like creating just an easily scalable solution, What I really want to do is scale up the accessibility to health professionals which use food as medicine. This challenge comes from my personal experience that as a nutritionist, I am not really part of the Western conventional medicine and the healthcare. So I think, first and foremost, creating a place where we can really scale the accessibility and the easiness of accessing people who can help your diet is for sure important. The reason why those diets should be super personalized is to not only help to people understand of what they should be eating, but also guide them through all of the process of gaining new knowledge, gaining new skills, changing, you know, how they relate to their self, how they relate to their body, to their food. And this, I really believe like people need people approach. So that would be definitely one of the part of the solution. Then I decided to focus on woman hormone health um because well first and foremost because i can and i think it's amazing uh and you know our cycles are really overlooked in the society we live in a very linear society which disregards all of the biological cycles including those running in within our bodies and i also i i strongly believe that i'm i'm committing to harvest care for many many years ahead of me so i think having at least at the beginning like a very strong personal motivation to do it's also really important. And then I mentioned blended care. So once I stopped digging in, heavily digging into agriculture and the healthcare connection, I started looking at actually what is the best approach to form a new health enhancing behaviors and what is the science behind there. And then this blended care really emerged as something that is the future of the healthcare. So the blended care takes one-on-one person visit. We can either be online or offline with a health professional. So in a harvest care example, it will be dietician or nutritionist. And then they use technology to help you to nudge you to perform this. To actually

SPEAKER_01: 44:45

do it. To implement it, to not forget, to build that habit change, which is so difficult. Changing habits is... insanely complicated and but extremely important so you do that mix of in person either video or in person and then implementing that new habit of or the new habits basically in trying to trying to deal with that syndrome

SPEAKER_00: 45:17

exactly exactly and I think the human element is really there to like there are studies showing that if there is a health professional involved like people motivation to adhere to a forming of a new behavior is higher but then why also not use technology which can help you on you know the moments that we cannot be together and we are very lucky because we are rocketed in Rotterdam where there is the Erasmus Medical Center that is really pioneering the blended care approach and we are even looking at possibility of testing um our blended care solutions to you know to strengthen the validity behind it um and then another element um that I really want to work with is a community aspect. And I know that nowadays a lot of companies are throwing communities just, I think, to put a bit of a human perspective for the businesses. But the reason why I believe, I strongly believe is that you need to build communities around your new behavior is that you're transforming your life, you know, and you need people around. I think we've

SPEAKER_01: 46:17

learned that in addiction, like AA meetings are successful for many years because there's community and we have many, many examples of accountability showing up being with other people going through similar things or a bit ahead or a bit behind. I mean, that's what we do and that's how we function.

SPEAKER_00: 46:35

We are social animals and with your new experiences you shift your priorities and you want to have people in your life where you'll be able to resonate and maintain those new, you know, you have new skill like suddenly fermenting became a super important part of your diet. Like you want people around you which also want to ferment and you want to have Friday's fermentation days you know and we need to be

SPEAKER_01: 47:01

able to ask questions like is this bubble normal or should it be smelling differently

SPEAKER_00: 47:05

exactly and it's just yeah so super important and one of the way we want to test this is that we are going to hold workshop about endocrine health for women with PCOS on the farm and we want to see if them being exposed and like, you know, experiencing like what does health means and where does health begins if it will have, you know, increasing their willingness to implement those changes.

SPEAKER_01: 47:39

Very interesting. Let's just repeat once the syndrome slowly. So everybody who's writing can Google it as well. I'll put a link below definitely. But if you're currently thinking, I just didn't catch it because it was too fast. Like what's the syndrome, but slowly.

SPEAKER_00: 47:52

It's called polycystic ovarian syndrome, PCOS. Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 47:56

PCOS. So you can definitely find more. I'll put a link below. And so where are you now? It's very early in the journey of the company. I had to convince you to come on because you said it's early. I don't know yet. I said, yes, but I would love to talk to you now and then talk to you again in a year in two years and just keep following this because that's what we do so what's the current we're talking the end of August 2022 we're at the end of summer in the northern hemisphere obviously what would you say the current status is or what do you how would you describe Harvest Care as of this moment

SPEAKER_00: 48:31

yeah you really had to convince me because I wasn't you know you have so many amazing participants that have done so much and then I come here with my dreams and hopes, but sometimes I will treat it as a manifestation into the world. Um, but so currently we are, so, you know, we, we have

SPEAKER_01: 48:48

a community of two and a half thousand people that are going to hold you accountable.

SPEAKER_00: 48:52

I am, you'll be good. Um, so we, we, I mean, what was super cool with fresh is that they are really helping me to, because I'm not a person that, you know, if, if I would have to create a business as, as usual, I would never be doing it, but they are really encouraging me to saying like, don't worry, we will find business models that will serve the purpose and the mission that you want to accomplish and something that is crucially important for me and this is long term is to also see how can I work with insurance companies because I just I can so easily see how regeneration and nutrient density can be easily used as another luxury product like imagine that you know I test your microbiota and then I say okay now I will design a perfect nutrient density diet for you to diversify your microbes and I just, I could not look into a mirror if I would go this path. For me, what's really important is to see how can we serve those who are not served. And there is such a strong economical proofs and reasoning behind, you know, showing that prevention is cheaper than intervention. And in the US, especially, they have, and you also have the founder of Cirrus Community, where they manage, right, to subsidize healthy food and teach kids how to cook medically tailored diets. And, um, so it's something super important, but of course this is long term and you first need to prove your value or like the value of the model that you design. So, so this is what we are doing right now. We, we want to, you know, take those elements that we found both from like NGO awards and business world and, and put them into our, uh, pack, our model and, and see what works, what doesn't. So as I said, like the first phase is to invite women with PCOS, uh, on-farm experiences, workshop, but also cooking workshop with educational bits, sharing, community creation, basically what Harvest Carry wants to do, but just on a tiny, tiny scale and see how are we being able to deliver this value. Another track, which is super important for me, is to also spread the knowledge about regenerative agriculture to other nutritionists. So we also want to invite nutritionists and dietitianists on the farm to spread the information about the benefits of the healthy soil for healthy humans. And then in phase two, it will be building a software of a digital food pharmacy, which will connect and facilitate the relationship between people with diseases that can be treated and managed through food as medicine. And I like to think about, you know, the behavior change a bit of like learning a new language. So I would love this software be a place where you don't only meet your dietician but also the dietitian or nutritionist can you prescribe you like a homework as watch this video of how to manage your glucose level while using indigenous grains which are now cultivated by the regenerative local farmers and then step three would be to integrate this applications or this food prescriptions with vertical supply chain of regenerative food and I I don't want to, like, I'm very, very, you know, my spirit is very collaborative and I know that the solution would require involvement of many people and I don't want to necessarily create a supply, you know, regenerative supply chains. There are already amazing people working on it. It's all a question, like, how can we match and mix together? And then once, hopefully, we'll manage to prove that the harvester is, you know, helping people, is helping farmers, then we'll have enough of evidence to go to insurance companies and say, hey, you look, this will save you money and save people lives and will transform people lives. So please help people to access food, which should be our basic human right for those who cannot do it right now.

SPEAKER_01: 52:54

So your strategy is really to, to prove this at a scale and at a scalable way, let's say, and then go to the insurance companies to make sure it gets, it becomes accessible also for those who cannot afford it on their own, or don't even know it exists or would never be exposed to it. If we don't act now, it might take 10, 20 years or whatever before this, this knowledge is out there. Um, and so. What would you tell me you're diving deep into this space of, of nutrient density and the quality of food and the connection to region ag. And I think investors are listening or people are listening. Like, what would you tell them after you're emerging out of this basically now a year later or eight or nine months later without giving investment advice, obviously. But what would you tell investors to look into or to dig deeper into in this quality piece or this quality space or the nutrient density space? Where to look, where to dig deeper, where to ask more questions?

SPEAKER_00: 53:55

Yeah, I'm just a humble nutritionist now, so I'm not sure if I am capable. And a startup

SPEAKER_01: 54:00

founder.

SPEAKER_00: 54:01

And a startup founder, but my perspective is very much like human and ecosystem well-being. But definitely development of machinery that we can measure the nutrient density, and we know that the Bionutrient Association is already doing it, but having this as investing more money into this area where, basically every consumer could be equipped with this kind of little tool that would be amazing but also what kind of scares me a bit maybe it's like how much investment goes to this alternative protein and now we know that actually this alternative meat production can influence our genome and it's quite tricky so I would if we really want to change people's health and want to act fast we need to invest much more money in humans just as harvest as fresh did with us. We need to start running programs where we increase people's food awareness, food literacy, health awareness. So rather of maybe investing so much money in a single product, which maybe is great to gain money, no health comes from a single product. Just as health in the ecosystem comes from diversity, it's the same as our health comes from diversity. So So investing in paradigm shift and the mindset shift, I think, at least from my perspective, it's crucial.

SPEAKER_01: 55:33

So what would you do? I mean, this is a natural bridge to the one billion euro question we love to ask. If you're in charge of a billion euros, what would you, with a very long time horizon, but it definitely should be put to work with the idea it comes back, what would you focus on?

SPEAKER_00: 55:51

So I strongly believe that there is way too high accumulation of human capital in cities and that we need to start going away from centralized location and then spreading this human capital. So I would start investing in creating hubs like social, food, knowledge hubs around regenerative farms, where they create possibility of young people, of young families, but also older generation to come in and start leading a drastically different life. Life based on community, life based on localization. And with this kind of capital, I think, like looking at the city, really the design cities in a way that they don't benefit any of our, you know, physiological needs and they don't respect our physiological cycles. So reshaping how we live and making regenerative farms as like the central hub of life and of creation of an ecosystem, human ecosystem. This is how I would spend this one billion.

SPEAKER_01: 57:01

Fascinating. And probably, I mean, this would go a very long way. I mean, you don't need a hundred million per farm, like you need way, way less. And you can, it's a very interesting, a whole different rabbit hole to go into the urban and rural divide and the future of that, which sort of seems to be crumbling now with COVID, with remote working for many people as possible, with the city has its advantages, but it's also lost a lot of the shiny stuff we used to see. So let's see what I think it's going to be a very defining moment now that many people, not everyone or most people actually, but a big chunk of people could practically work from anywhere and maybe they do. And maybe they, hopefully they choose interesting places to be, which in my case, obviously are regenerative farms and they will bring an energy. They will bring some finance as well. They will bring questions, but also interesting answers to these places that often have been depopulated over the last decades or last few hundred years, while we're move to the big shiny city so that's a very interesting um we're going to see how that plays out and if you could change one thing overnight in the food and agriculture system what would that be if you had a magic wand

SPEAKER_00: 58:15

so with my magic wand i would um design the food system in a way that always prioritize human health throughout all of the all of the processes from from the process production to harvesting to storage to processing because if we would really focus on what is needed for our health we would get rid of most of our problems we would get rid of monocultures we would get rid of agrochemicals we would get rid of junk food and would just have completely different experience on this planet as humans and also would allow for nature to have a different experience with us being on this planet with her.

SPEAKER_01: 59:06

I think it's a perfect way to end this conversation. I couldn't agree more. And I want to thank you so much for coming on. It wasn't easy. I mean, I know you wanted to be further along, but I think it's really good to check in now and follow this over time as we love to do in this podcast. And I want to thank you so much for the work you do and for coming here and share about your journey.

SPEAKER_00: 59:27

Thank you so much, Kun. And I'm super excited to come back in one or two years and reflect and say, wow, that was a journey, right? Will

SPEAKER_01: 59:37

do, will do. Thanks again and see you next time.