Here are some alarming statistics for you: 67% of the average child's diet is highly processed junk food and 1 in 2 children have a chronic health condition. There is absolutely a direct connection. Junky food equals junky gut health and an unhealthy gut leads to disease. This comes without judgment and will full empowerment . . . Your Purchases Drive the Food Industry, How Are You Voting?
Today we have Parker, the founder of Lovebird Cereal joining us. Parker worked for the largest commercial cereal company and after experiencing his own health issues and becoming a father, he left. He was able to experience the profit over health industry first hand and was called to create a better option for children and families.
I invited him on because as consumers, it’s a real opportunity to learn from someone who has been behind the scenes. Parker has not only created a clean and delicious product, his impact is global. And so is yours. I cannot wait for you to listen to this conversation about how powerful your financial decisions are and how we, together, have the ability to improve not only the food industry, but our health and the planet as a whole.
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Transcript:
Juniper (00:00)
It also feels important for me to preface this episode by telling you I do not accept any affiliate payments from other brands. I only share what I genuinely believe in and share without the incentive of profit. Not that there is anything wrong with affiliate marketing but that is not my mission here. Okay! Let’s get into it . . .
Welcome to Follow Your Gut, Parker. We are so excited to have you here and hear your story. I know that you worked for a big cereal
Is that right?
parker (00:14)
That is the biggest, if not the biggest.
Juniper (00:16)
wanna hear a bit about that. I wanna get to know you.
You are the founder of the amazing cereal company Lovebird. And I wanna hear how you got here, where you came from, what lit this fire in you to start this amazing company.
parker (00:36)
Definitely. It's been a long journey. So I used to work at a really big cereal company that made everything from Cheerios to Trix to Cinnamon Toast Crunch. And while I was there, I was on my own health journey and learning how to heal through food and food is medicine and was trying a bunch of different things in that space. And it made me aware, kind of woke me up to the food I was selling at this large company. And
didn't really align with my values. And so when my daughter was born, that was kind of the impetus to just leave, right? That was sort of my Jerry Maguire moment of like, who's coming with me, bring the goldfish type move. And that's what was the creation of Lovebird in terms of it starting with a mission, right? It was never, hey, I'm gonna make a very clean, probably the cleanest convenient food in a box.
Juniper (01:19)
Yeah.
parker (01:34)
It really started with the mission of like, hey, how do I clean up all the junk food I had been selling and use the best ingredients? And then how can I help elevate our next generation of kids? Right? Like if you think about a lot of kids and really cereal is the number one breakfast for kids. And so if you're starting your day with a lot of the conventional, very junky high sugary cereal,
And then trying to go to school wherever that may be and trying to learn, it's very difficult, right? And so I wanted to create something that was gut health friendly by using very digestible ingredients and focusing on prebiotic fiber to help kids and families. Cause I also love cereal kind of start their day or whenever they may eat love bird, feel better after eating it. Right. And then also.
terms of helping kids with the food, but also we give 20 % of our profit to fight childhood cancer, which is the number one cause of death by disease for kids. And so just trying to, at a very high level, redefine what brands used to be and what they should be today. I think a lot of big companies are just kind of faceless corporations that care about numbers and not people.
And so for me, one of my goals is to kind of put the humanity back into brands, right? It's used to be like your local butcher or whoever it may be, and you would meet the person and shake their hand and they would sell you something. But we've kind of lost that in today's day and age. And I want to return that kind of significance of branding and brands with purpose to the front line. So I know that was a little bit more than you asked, but that was a...
kind of the journey and a long ramble there for you.
Juniper (03:22)
No, it's all so beautiful and I relate to everything you said so much because, you know, my business is different, but also very much the same. I think our values align so much and your mission is basically my same mission is to, you know, make healing accessible to families. And...
to really educate on the significance of our gut health and how it impacts our sleep and our mood and our development and every, our skin, every part of us is connected to our gut. And so when we are starting our day or inundating our bodies throughout the day with foods that cause inflammation in our gut, and not only that, but feed the bad bacteria and pathogens and yeast in our gut.
We're not thriving. And so can we go into that for a little bit? can we talk about some of the, you know, the main ingredients that make up the majority of cereal on the market? Because, so I have something I share. It's the Women's and Children's Got Rebalance Kit. It's a 64 -day cleanse that helps you kill the bad bacteria, yeast, parasites, gunk in your gut, and rebuild the good bacteria.
And as part of that, I have a course that comes with the kit that teaches what foods to avoid while healing the gut and potentially long -term because we all feel so good when we're not consuming those foods. And so I wanna talk about those foods with you because you were like in it, seeing it in the industry of selling it.
parker (05:07)
Mm -hmm.
Juniper (05:15)
and while on your own health journey. And so let's talk about some of those foods.
parker (05:20)
Yeah, and if you even go a level higher, yeah, ingredients, right? Exactly. And I think if you go even a level higher, right, like what is the goal of these big corporations is to sell as much product as humanly possible. And how do they do that? They use the cheapest ingredients that taste the best, right? And so the things you find specifically in cereal,
Juniper (05:21)
or ingredients.
parker (05:44)
None of it's really health additive really at best. Maybe it's neutral. Most often it's a negative effects on your health, especially your gut health. So like the top three ingredients in cereal are refined grain, refined sugar and refined oils.
And then you also have natural flavors or artificial flavors, which are pretty much the same thing. And just a lot of things to engineer the food to taste really good and to get you to eat a lot of it. Right. And so that's kind of the starting point for big business. Right. What I'm trying to do is essentially detox your cereal, right? Remove all of those bad ingredients, those inflammatory ingredients, and then add back in whole food flour in the form of cassava. That's also rich in prebiotic fiber.
and some other vitamins and minerals. Use coconut, obviously healthy fats, and then just use sweeteners that's even offensive to call honey a sweetener. It's so much more than that. There's a ton of health benefits. We've been consuming that for as long as we've walked this earth. It's an amazing ingredient, but use actual real food from the earth. Obviously all organic.
Juniper (06:41)
Yeah.
parker (06:56)
glyphosate free, which is a whole other tangent we can go down if you want to, but. So essentially detox your cereal and then rebuild it with really gut friendly ingredients that help support gut health and really do no harm, right? Just real food from the earth. And that's kind of been the goal. And, you know, part of what I do as well as put every single ingredient on the front of the box, which.
Juniper (06:59)
I would absolutely love to, actually.
parker (07:24)
Still a little funny to me that people will like flip it to the side because it's a trained behavior But I'm like, I'm trying to make it easy. They're all on the front
Juniper (07:30)
I really love that about your box and your branding so much. And so we received a big box of Lovebird and I wish so badly I had been recording on video because my four year old, he was like, this is the best cereal in the world, which is really, really sweet because my,
parker (07:49)
Ha!
Juniper (07:53)
kids haven't really had many cereals. You know, we'll get like organic brown rice crisps that it's just like sprouted brown rice, but we haven't really had cereal because just at the nature, even so many of the clean or healthier cereals, they're not the first ingredient is sugar.
And so we've not indulged in that. And for my kids to have an option like this is a real gift. And so thank you on behalf of my family, but also on a bigger scale too. There are so many families that come into my world who are just starting their health journey. And to get my Rebalance Kit and then dive into the course and it's like, okay.
you know, avoid wheat and refined sugar. This is really overwhelming. And so to be able to have a recommendation of this is a really clean option as an alternative is huge because there are so many people who. Traditional cereals are staples in their home and.
to be able to have an alternative is absolutely remarkable. And so can we dive into glyphosate?
parker (09:23)
Yeah, I mean, you talk about gut health, you almost have to talk about that. And within cereal, pretty much anything that's grain -based is going to have some trace residues of glyphosate ranging from very small, like even the glyphosate -free residue badge, like I've tested products that still have it, although at a very small amount. So it's almost impossible to avoid if you're buying grain -based products, right? And those...
Juniper (09:26)
You really do.
parker (09:50)
use that herbicide to really essentially make more money on their crop, right? They want to, you know, if they have a hundred bushels, they want a hundred bushels to be sold and not lose any to pests and things like that. And so it's really an efficiency play, but it's essentially, if it's designed to kill bugs, what do you think it's doing to the nutrients in the food and ultimately to you when you eat it? It's not good. It wreaks havoc.
wreaks havoc on your gut health, which obviously percolates throughout your entire body. I think there was a recent EWG study that found it in like 80 % of all cereals or something like that. And so for me, it was important not just to have a small amount, but just to be a non -detect. And so when you run labs on our product, it just doesn't even pop up. And so that to me, like at the end of the day, I made this product for myself and my family.
and I have to slide a bowl of it across to my daughter every morning. And if I'm not putting the best ingredients possible in there, then what am I doing? And so that was one of the areas that, you know, as I dove deeper into cereal and all the different things that you find in it, that was one that really popped up to me as something that's very abnormal, right? Like there's always some trace amounts of heavy metals in the soil and things like that. But glyphosate is something that's completely avoidable.
Juniper (10:55)
Yeah.
parker (11:16)
and has kind of been a recent human introduction in the past, I think it's 30 to 40 years and is now the number one globally herbicide in the world. And so we're consuming a lot of it. It's in a lot of our food. It runs off into waterways and gets into our water. There was a recent study where 90 % of Americans tested positive for glyphosate in their urine. So it's in our bodies, it's in our air, it's in our water, it's in our food. And...
Like many people that have gone down a low tox or no tox journey, you quickly or eventually realize it's impossible to avoid everything. I'm just trying to make it a little bit easier to have one more thing you can buy and feel confident you're not adding to your cup and eventually have that cup of toxicity spill over, but have an option that's convenient and easy and that you can trust doesn't have any of it inside of it.
Juniper (12:11)
So this kind of triggers a question for me. So I know that like corn, soy, and wheat, I think those are, and sugar beets are among the, highest GMO crops,
are the first ingredients in most cereals. And I know that the majority,
You know, they say the majority of these crops are used for like animal agriculture. But in your experience working for this very large corporation,
My understanding is that when a corporation is going for the biggest bang for their buck, they just want to have the cheapest ingredients and make the most that they can on every thing that they're selling.
That cereal is made with these...
highly toxic ingredients that are not just going into the animal agriculture field, right? It's also going straight into that box of cereal.
parker (13:19)
Yeah, I if you look at all of the major crops, right? Like corn, soy, wheat, oats, and kind of chickpeas and peas now are emerging as more popular. But anything at that scale is most likely GMO and most likely treated with glyphosate for farming practices to increase yields. And so...
You know, it's important to know what's in your food, obviously, and read labels. And as you said, right, like the first ingredient is the most important because that's usually what is most prevalent in the box that you're buying, right? It's sorted in order of percent of recipe. And so for me, it was important to make sure to find a whole food flour and cassava that's a non -detect and then also be mindful of things like honey that...
you know, bees travel throughout and making sure that the entire product and the entire cereal does not have any of that inside of it.
Juniper (14:20)
So do you, just for anybody listening, Lovebird is so beautiful and transparent. And as Parker just shared, his ingredients are listed right on the front of the box. I mean, it's like five, six ingredients, depending on what flavor you get. But I mean, it's hard to find any product right at the market that's like in, that's not in the produce section that has that few ingredients. So.
I have maybe kind of an unrelated question for you, but selfishly, my family loves Lovebird and I'm curious, do you have plans to expand beyond cereal or do you know right now or is like cereal your niche forever?
parker (15:10)
No, I mean, the mission is to clean up junk food, right? And so cereal is the start, just because it was the number one breakfast for kids, something I love and have a huge nostalgia for and knew was possible to make something better, right? I think.
the world's created and shaped by people who demand better. And I think every time you make a purchase, you vote with your dollar and you vote for the type of food future you want. And so, Lovebird for me was a natural place to start with cereal, but always thinking of different categories or areas of the grocery store to reinvent. But I'm also 100 % family -owned and kind of focused on cereal at the moment. And part of that and why that's important is that I don't have...
Juniper (15:48)
Totally.
parker (15:55)
any big name investors or parent company that's pushing me to cut corners, to make more money and be more profitable. I just simply want to make the cleanest cereal possible, free from refined grain, refined sugars, glyphosate. Obviously it's organic, which also means non -GMO. And just...
prove to others and I hope people copy it to be really honest and start putting ingredients on the front of potato chips or crackers and I think it's the highest degree of accountability you can have as a brand. It's like, all right, like anytime I consider an ingredient change or addition or subtraction, I have to look at the front of the box. I'm like, oh, like would that look good on there? Like, no, like that's not something I'd be proud to put on the front.
So it is, I think the highest degree of accountability and really just want to draw more attention to ingredients, right? I think, as we mentioned earlier, you know, there's countless studies on the impact of ultra processed food on your mental health and your gut health. About 60 % of our diet today is ultra processed food. It's even worse for kids at close to 70%. And you get ultra processed diets and foods. You get ultra processed diseases and all of these things.
One in two people now have a chronic health disease, which is, you know, magnitudes greater than it was 30, 40 years ago. Um, but you know, pros everything's processed to a degree. So I kind of look at it from a lens of what are those ingredients, right? Like you could call something a processed food, but if I look at the ingredients and they're good, like that's still something I'm going to eat, right? Cause.
I wish I had all the time in the world to cook from scratch and get back to pioneer days. That would be amazing, but we live in this modern world and I want some solutions that are easy for me and that I don't always have to cook. And so for me, it was like, hey, proving that it's possible, you can make convenient food with great ingredients and have it taste good. And that's kind of been the marching order. So in terms of...
Other categories like I always have my eyes open if there's any ideas. I'd love to hear them. I've been very like a head down trying to make the cleanest cereal in the world and you know grow the business and do it profitably so we can make our donations to fight childhood cancer and maintain ownership of the company because it's not you see a lot of
Brands that sell out like, and sometimes it works out and that's great. I'm not saying it's always a bad thing, but most often, you know, I've been a part of these meetings where you have a Lara bar or a Cascadian farm and it's just like, all right, like how do we make it more cheap? Uh, like that's the first question. Like how do we make more money selling this product? Not it's never, how can we make it better? Uh, it's how can we make it more profitable? And so I don't approach my, my business that way, my brand that way. Like for me, it's like, well, what's the best ingredient?
My cassava costs two and a half times more than what even a siesta uses. And what that means is that it comes from small family farms in Nicaragua where there's no heavy metals in the soil. So there's always trade -offs, right? With convenience and scale and cost, whether it's lower costs specifically, there's a trade -off, right? And so for me, it's like, Hey, how can I find the best ingredients?
And it costs more than your typical cereal, but I think it should. I think a lot of those products used heavily subsidized crops, whether it's corn, soy, wheat, or oat. And so essentially your taxpayer dollars are paying for reduced prices of those ingredients and they're produced at such mass scales with such harsh chemicals and herbicides and pesticides to help with profitable yields. But what you get in the end is kind of a box of nothing.
Well, that would actually be a good thing. It's a box of it. It's a box of inflammation, to be honest. If it did no harm, like have at it, but it's actively hurting your health and your family's health.
Juniper (19:54)
Or negative, really? Yeah.
Well, I appreciate that so much and I can relate so much because I am in the same place in my business of, you know, I get asked to like, will I expand into other categories of health? And I think the truth is to.
sustain having a business and making our impact, we have to be really focused and it can never come at the expense of compromising the quality of what we're sharing. And, and so whether you expand beyond cereal or not, your impact is tremendous. And I, I share this with you when, before we started recording, but you know, me and my kids were at, we live in a really small town and we're at the health food store and.
My youngest he's four, he's like, mom, there's love bird. And he was so proud that it was in our little market. And so I, you know, early in my business, I explored retail space and I have since come back to like, it's just going to be my website. I'm just doing it this way because it isn't sustainable for me to homeschool my kids and try to get into a retail space and for there to be any profit at all for.
my business. And so I am absolutely like, I have so much appreciation for you breaking down that barrier and getting into retail space because somebody listening, you, you may just, you know, be on the consumer side, but it is no small feat to get into retail space. Like you have we've since like, you know, so we saw you our little market first, but then we saw you in like our bigger co -op and in whole foods and.
I am amazed that you have established such a presence while holding this integrity to the brand that you take pride in.
parker (22:01)
I'm very great to hear that because I think when you're working on something every day, it just becomes part of the job and what you're doing and hearing stories like that. And then when we make our donations to fight childhood cancer and just all the good we're doing, removing a lot of those bad ingredients from the shelf, that's what makes it all worth it. And it does not happen without people like yourself and those listening and others that have.
Purchase lovebird, as we mentioned, you vote with your dollar, right? And so do you want to vote for a better food future or a worse food future, right? And I think cereal can be clean and convenient and taste good. And there's other places in the store that we could probably apply that framework to. But I look at business and all things in life, all change in life, as kind of these small incremental moments, the 1 % every day. And I think...
That's been the mantra with Lovebird is like, hey, we're going to water this tree every day, a little bit every day, a little bit every day and have it grow strong. Cause you see a lot of brands specifically in food that grow really fast. And then to do that, there's a bunch of things you have to do, whether that's take on outside capital and compromise your values, your vision, your product to get there. Right? Like there's a lot of big brands that went big really fast and
You can't really grow authentically and keep your quality if you're growing that fast. And so for me, it has been really fast. Like I feel it, but like I do fight every day to make sure that our standards, our ingredient standards, our values are never compromised. Because then what are we? We're not love bird anymore. And so, you know, my plan is never, this wasn't some sort of like.
business opportunity, white space exercise for me, it was, I want to make a difference in the quality of our food. I know our food system's broken. I know cereal is broken and I know how to fix it. And I want to serve products and cereal to my family. That's the best. And I've been absolutely humbled by people like yourself and others that have resonated and support Lovebird because it's.
you know, we're making a difference, which is crazy, right? Like, I hope you, it feels like you do, but I hope everybody who sees Lovebird out in the wild, like you feel a sense of pride, like we are making a difference. Like we are changing what the cereal shelf looks like. First it's co -ops, then it's whole foods, and then it's bigger mainstream grocery stores. And then you get people who've never read ingredients picking up Lovebird thinking like, oh, this tastes really good. And then they learn more about ingredients and the hope is that that's their start.
of their health journey, right? Knowing more and reading more and seeking information to understand what you put in and on and around your body really matters.
Juniper (24:52)
Parker, when did you start Lovebird?
parker (24:54)
Great question. Well, my daughter just turned five and I left a year after she was born. So Lovebird's been kind of like started working on it four years ago, did retail or direct to consumer. So it was just selling on my website for a year. And then the past two years has been retail and grocery stores that we just talked about. So it's been kind of a four year journey, three years kind of out in the open, actually selling cereal. And then
a year just to kind of figure it out and how to make it and making sure that everything was up to my standard.
Juniper (25:30)
Wow, and so somebody listening who wants to buy Lovebird, I'm always protective of a small business owner because I know how much you put into this. And so for sure, somebody going to your website gives, pays you the most versus going to a retail, but you can really find Lovebird anywhere. So if you want to try Lovebird and you're kind of thinking ahead,
I'll link Parker's website in the show notes and you can go, you can buy it in bundles. You can buy, my kids and I went on there to figure out what we're going to order next. But, but you can also, so I'll attach that so you can buy it directly from love bird. But you can also find it in many retail stores. Is it, are you in Canada too? Are you in the U S right now?
parker (26:26)
So in Canada, we have, you can buy it on Natura Market, which is kind of an e -commerce website. And then we're working to get into retail in Canada, just because there's been a lot of people there that want clean cereal. But yeah, I mean, our website.
We also have our store locator. I don't mind wherever you buy Love Bird is fine by me, whatever is more convenient to you. You know, I'm just happy you're buying a box and voting with your dollar and helping us march towards a better and brighter food future.
Juniper (26:59)
I really love how you use that term voting with your dollar because it is so true. And whether you are speaking of food or supplements or clothing, whatever you are spending your dollars on, you really are. You are, your money is a very powerful vote. And so, you know, whether you opt for a $7 box of cereal that very likely
glyphosate and inflammatory ingredients or nine dollars for a box of lovebird those that two dollar difference it it goes beyond what you're getting in your box it it really makes a universal statement of where the industry is going and if as a society we keep pouring our dollars into
foods that are wreaking havoc on our health and then therefore having to pour so much money into the healthcare industry that to be quite honest doesn't really care about our inflamed bodies. And like there's this disconnect right between the inflammation in our bodies and the one of two people that suffer from chronic disease and our healthcare industry that you know,
Medicates and we don't fix we don't go back to the roots. It's it's very rare for Doctors to be like, you know, let's go take out all the inflammatory foods from your diet. And so as a whole we get to start from the ground and invest our money in foods and in our health and It speaks louder than just ourselves it speaks to what is needed and I
I love what you said earlier about, you know, you hope that other companies will replicate what you're doing and that you're not the only one on the shelf that's offering this. I feel very strongly about my business. My dream is to someday be out of business. I hope that our food supply and our environment gets so clean that we don't constantly have to focus on healing our guts, that it's just a natural part of our world.
again. And so, yeah, I align a lot with that.
parker (29:34)
100%. And I think, you know, I struggle with, and you know, on our Instagram, like I've run the entire thing and create all the content and you're bombarded with what people have kind of labeled as fear mongering, right? And there's a lot of scary stuff out there, but I think people need to be informed. But I think at the end of the day, our bodies and nature, one in the same are very resilient, right? So if you remove a lot of the things that are,
weighing you down or causing you inflammation, like your body will rebound. Like it is a miraculous thing that occurs. Like we're able to clean up rivers, we're able to clean up restored grasslands. You know, our cassava is also regenerative agriculture certified. And so like we're trying to, you know, clean up cereal or trying to restore regenerative farming practices. And as it relates to your health, like we're...
ever you may be on your health journey, like there's a hundred percent hope. There's a hundred percent of way to get back to feeling great again. And your body is resilient. It just needs a little bit of help sometimes. And that's removing some of those ingredients that are causing you inflammation and not doing anything positive. And so I think for me, like the vote with your dollar, there's always hope. And we're making a huge difference together is what keeps me going because there's a lot of.
whether it's glyphosate, whether it's all the plasticizers that have been getting publicity, there's a lot of things that we have done to our environment, but there's always a way out. It just takes time and knowing what you're putting into your body. So we can make a difference, we are making a difference, and together we make an even bigger difference.
Juniper (31:16)
Well, I love that so much because you're totally right. Like a lot of times, especially on social media, you can't, I mean, the, the way to educate is to speak about what is happening. And there are those people that are like, Oh my gosh, you're just, this is just fear. You're just trying to scare people. And, you know, also as somebody who, like I, I run everything I'm doing my social media and buying every message and email and everything. And.
you are faced with the people who have been jaded, I guess. They have somewhere have been influenced in a negative way and our messages hit that nerve, which is okay. But as a culture, I think that it's so important that we, I mean, we have to bring light to what is happening. And, you know, we,
We've touched on it a little bit in our conversation about how.
glyphosate and these farming practices that are used to make these staple ingredients in the majority of cereal and all processed foods really is so disruptive to our health, but to the earth and to the planet. And I love talking about the resiliency of both because we can come back. We have to make the choice though. And
The earth is reliant on us making those choices. And something like cereal, somebody listening, cereal might seem
insignificant for our earth. But the bigger picture is it's really freaking significant because I think it is, I think maybe you said this, I think I read this somewhere else that it number one breakfast for children. And that is significant. What we are eating is directly impacting the earth and the animals and the water and the air.
and all of our surroundings. And so the more we invest in cleaning up America's number one breakfast, we're directly cleaning the earth.
parker (33:41)
100%. And I think...
As with any change or any fact, right? There usually is stages of grief and the first one is denial, right? And I think when people hear a lot of these things, it's like, oh, like we're fine. Like, you know, I grew up eating this stuff and I'm okay. So my kids can eat it too. And it's like, are you okay? Do we not have the highest rate of cancer among young people in the history of recorded medicine? Like there is something wrong. And so like the first step is to admitting there's a problem and then.
Oftentimes that problem can seem overwhelming, especially when you look at it as a full mountain, but every journey begins with a step, right? And so it's just 1 % every day, one swap every day. Then pretty soon you're going to clean up your diet. And when you clean up your diet, you clean up our food system. Cause guess what? If you stop buying conventional cereal, they're going to stop making conventional cereal, right? It's a very clear dynamic of what gets purchased and what gets made.
Juniper (34:37)
Yes.
parker (34:41)
And so that's where, to me, where change is possible. It takes a thousand different people rowing the same boat to do it, but it is possible. And we've seen it with high fructose corn syrup and other ingredients, especially trans fats and things like that, that were popular and pushed by the medical establishment and their doctors funded by big food budgets. But eventually truth won out, right? And those ingredients.
trans fat is banned, but high fructose corn syrup use has plummeted. And so your purchases, your thoughts that you translate into a purchase, like make a huge difference. And it doesn't happen overnight. It doesn't happen with one person. But if enough of us do the same thing over time, like we will drive change and we will create a better food future. And that's what gives me hope.
Juniper (35:37)
Absolutely. Parker, this has been such an honor having you on the show. Is there anything else we want to touch on before we wrap up?
parker (35:50)
No, pleasure was all mine. I'm obviously very passionate about these things and I think just people being aware of what they put in their bodies is just step one, right? Like read your ingredients. They're ranked in order of prevalence, so the first ingredient is the most...
Common ingredient in that product, you'll see a lot of brands being like, oh, made with grass fed, whatever. And it's like the ninth ingredient. Like there's just enough in it for them to make that claim. And so read your ingredients, the order matters, how many typically matters. If you can't pronounce it, typically I'd probably put it back on the shelf. Anything that ends in os is a sugar.
And just be aware and conscious of the decisions you're making because they impact you and then they impact the environment and it impacts everybody. So we're all in this together.
Juniper (36:43)
are making an incredible difference and we are all so grateful for you. Thank you.
If you have a second to spare will you please scroll down and leave a review? It helps others find Follow Your Gut and together we can make the most beautiful impact. Juniper (00:00)
welcome to Follow Your Gut, Parker. We are so excited to have you here and hear your story. I know that you worked for a big cereal
Is that right?
parker (00:14)
That is the biggest, if not the biggest.
Juniper (00:16)
wanna hear a bit about that. I wanna get to know you.
You are the founder of the amazing cereal company Lovebird. And I wanna hear how you got here, where you came from, what lit this fire in you to start this amazing company.
parker (00:36)
Definitely. It's been a long journey. So I used to work at a really big cereal company that made everything from Cheerios to Trix to Cinnamon Toast Crunch. And while I was there, I was on my own health journey and learning how to heal through food and food is medicine and was trying a bunch of different things in that space. And it made me aware, kind of woke me up to the food I was selling at this large company. And
didn't really align with my values. And so when my daughter was born, that was kind of the impetus to just leave, right? That was sort of my Jerry Maguire moment of like, who's coming with me, bring the goldfish type move. And that's what was the creation of Lovebird in terms of it starting with a mission, right? It was never, hey, I'm gonna make a very clean, probably the cleanest convenient food in a box.
Juniper (01:19)
Yeah.
parker (01:34)
It really started with the mission of like, hey, how do I clean up all the junk food I had been selling and use the best ingredients? And then how can I help elevate our next generation of kids? Right? Like if you think about a lot of kids and really cereal is the number one breakfast for kids. And so if you're starting your day with a lot of the conventional, very junky high sugary cereal,
And then trying to go to school wherever that may be and trying to learn, it's very difficult, right? And so I wanted to create something that was gut health friendly by using very digestible ingredients and focusing on prebiotic fiber to help kids and families. Cause I also love cereal kind of start their day or whenever they may eat love bird, feel better after eating it. Right. And then also.
terms of helping kids with the food, but also we give 20 % of our profit to fight childhood cancer, which is the number one cause of death by disease for kids. And so just trying to, at a very high level, redefine what brands used to be and what they should be today. I think a lot of big companies are just kind of faceless corporations that care about numbers and not people.
And so for me, one of my goals is to kind of put the humanity back into brands, right? It's used to be like your local butcher or whoever it may be, and you would meet the person and shake their hand and they would sell you something. But we've kind of lost that in today's day and age. And I want to return that kind of significance of branding and brands with purpose to the front line. So I know that was a little bit more than you asked, but that was a...
kind of the journey and a long ramble there for you.
Juniper (03:22)
No, it's all so beautiful and I relate to everything you said so much because, you know, my business is different, but also very much the same. I think our values align so much and your mission is basically my same mission is to, you know, make healing accessible to families. And...
to really educate on the significance of our gut health and how it impacts our sleep and our mood and our development and every, our skin, every part of us is connected to our gut. And so when we are starting our day or inundating our bodies throughout the day with foods that cause inflammation in our gut, and not only that, but feed the bad bacteria and pathogens and yeast in our gut.
We're not thriving. And so can we go into that for a little bit? can we talk about some of the, you know, the main ingredients that make up the majority of cereal on the market? Because, so I have something I share. It's the Women's and Children's Got Rebalance Kit. It's a 64 -day cleanse that helps you kill the bad bacteria, yeast, parasites, gunk in your gut, and rebuild the good bacteria.
And as part of that, I have a course that comes with the kit that teaches what foods to avoid while healing the gut and potentially long -term because we all feel so good when we're not consuming those foods. And so I wanna talk about those foods with you because you were like in it, seeing it in the industry of selling it.
parker (05:07)
Mm -hmm.
Juniper (05:15)
and while on your own health journey. And so let's talk about some of those foods.
parker (05:20)
Yeah, and if you even go a level higher, yeah, ingredients, right? Exactly. And I think if you go even a level higher, right, like what is the goal of these big corporations is to sell as much product as humanly possible. And how do they do that? They use the cheapest ingredients that taste the best, right? And so the things you find specifically in cereal,
Juniper (05:21)
or ingredients.
parker (05:44)
None of it's really health additive really at best. Maybe it's neutral. Most often it's a negative effects on your health, especially your gut health. So like the top three ingredients in cereal are refined grain, refined sugar and refined oils.
And then you also have natural flavors or artificial flavors, which are pretty much the same thing. And just a lot of things to engineer the food to taste really good and to get you to eat a lot of it. Right. And so that's kind of the starting point for big business. Right. What I'm trying to do is essentially detox your cereal, right? Remove all of those bad ingredients, those inflammatory ingredients, and then add back in whole food flour in the form of cassava. That's also rich in prebiotic fiber.
and some other vitamins and minerals. Use coconut, obviously healthy fats, and then just use sweeteners that's even offensive to call honey a sweetener. It's so much more than that. There's a ton of health benefits. We've been consuming that for as long as we've walked this earth. It's an amazing ingredient, but use actual real food from the earth. Obviously all organic.
Juniper (06:41)
Yeah.
parker (06:56)
glyphosate free, which is a whole other tangent we can go down if you want to, but. So essentially detox your cereal and then rebuild it with really gut friendly ingredients that help support gut health and really do no harm, right? Just real food from the earth. And that's kind of been the goal. And, you know, part of what I do as well as put every single ingredient on the front of the box, which.
Juniper (06:59)
I would absolutely love to, actually.
parker (07:24)
Still a little funny to me that people will like flip it to the side because it's a trained behavior But I'm like, I'm trying to make it easy. They're all on the front
Juniper (07:30)
I really love that about your box and your branding so much. And so we received a big box of Lovebird and I wish so badly I had been recording on video because my four year old, he was like, this is the best cereal in the world, which is really, really sweet because my,
parker (07:49)
Ha!
Juniper (07:53)
kids haven't really had many cereals. You know, we'll get like organic brown rice crisps that it's just like sprouted brown rice, but we haven't really had cereal because just at the nature, even so many of the clean or healthier cereals, they're not the first ingredient is sugar.
And so we've not indulged in that. And for my kids to have an option like this is a real gift. And so thank you on behalf of my family, but also on a bigger scale too. There are so many families that come into my world who are just starting their health journey. And to get my Rebalance Kit and then dive into the course and it's like, okay.
you know, avoid wheat and refined sugar. This is really overwhelming. And so to be able to have a recommendation of this is a really clean option as an alternative is huge because there are so many people who. Traditional cereals are staples in their home and.
to be able to have an alternative is absolutely remarkable. And so can we dive into glyphosate?
parker (09:23)
Yeah, I mean, you talk about gut health, you almost have to talk about that. And within cereal, pretty much anything that's grain -based is going to have some trace residues of glyphosate ranging from very small, like even the glyphosate -free residue badge, like I've tested products that still have it, although at a very small amount. So it's almost impossible to avoid if you're buying grain -based products, right? And those...
Juniper (09:26)
You really do.
parker (09:50)
use that herbicide to really essentially make more money on their crop, right? They want to, you know, if they have a hundred bushels, they want a hundred bushels to be sold and not lose any to pests and things like that. And so it's really an efficiency play, but it's essentially, if it's designed to kill bugs, what do you think it's doing to the nutrients in the food and ultimately to you when you eat it? It's not good. It wreaks havoc.
wreaks havoc on your gut health, which obviously percolates throughout your entire body. I think there was a recent EWG study that found it in like 80 % of all cereals or something like that. And so for me, it was important not just to have a small amount, but just to be a non -detect. And so when you run labs on our product, it just doesn't even pop up. And so that to me, like at the end of the day, I made this product for myself and my family.
and I have to slide a bowl of it across to my daughter every morning. And if I'm not putting the best ingredients possible in there, then what am I doing? And so that was one of the areas that, you know, as I dove deeper into cereal and all the different things that you find in it, that was one that really popped up to me as something that's very abnormal, right? Like there's always some trace amounts of heavy metals in the soil and things like that. But glyphosate is something that's completely avoidable.
Juniper (10:55)
Yeah.
parker (11:16)
and has kind of been a recent human introduction in the past, I think it's 30 to 40 years and is now the number one globally herbicide in the world. And so we're consuming a lot of it. It's in a lot of our food. It runs off into waterways and gets into our water. There was a recent study where 90 % of Americans tested positive for glyphosate in their urine. So it's in our bodies, it's in our air, it's in our water, it's in our food. And...
Like many people that have gone down a low tox or no tox journey, you quickly or eventually realize it's impossible to avoid everything. I'm just trying to make it a little bit easier to have one more thing you can buy and feel confident you're not adding to your cup and eventually have that cup of toxicity spill over, but have an option that's convenient and easy and that you can trust doesn't have any of it inside of it.
Juniper (12:11)
So this kind of triggers a question for me. So I know that like corn, soy, and wheat, I think those are, and sugar beets are among the, highest GMO crops,
are the first ingredients in most cereals. And I know that the majority,
You know, they say the majority of these crops are used for like animal agriculture. But in your experience working for this very large corporation,
My understanding is that when a corporation is going for the biggest bang for their buck, they just want to have the cheapest ingredients and make the most that they can on every thing that they're selling.
That cereal is made with these...
highly toxic ingredients that are not just going into the animal agriculture field, right? It's also going straight into that box of cereal.
parker (13:19)
Yeah, I if you look at all of the major crops, right? Like corn, soy, wheat, oats, and kind of chickpeas and peas now are emerging as more popular. But anything at that scale is most likely GMO and most likely treated with glyphosate for farming practices to increase yields. And so...
You know, it's important to know what's in your food, obviously, and read labels. And as you said, right, like the first ingredient is the most important because that's usually what is most prevalent in the box that you're buying, right? It's sorted in order of percent of recipe. And so for me, it was important to make sure to find a whole food flour and cassava that's a non -detect and then also be mindful of things like honey that...
you know, bees travel throughout and making sure that the entire product and the entire cereal does not have any of that inside of it.
Juniper (14:20)
So do you, just for anybody listening, Lovebird is so beautiful and transparent. And as Parker just shared, his ingredients are listed right on the front of the box. I mean, it's like five, six ingredients, depending on what flavor you get. But I mean, it's hard to find any product right at the market that's like in, that's not in the produce section that has that few ingredients. So.
I have maybe kind of an unrelated question for you, but selfishly, my family loves Lovebird and I'm curious, do you have plans to expand beyond cereal or do you know right now or is like cereal your niche forever?
parker (15:10)
No, I mean, the mission is to clean up junk food, right? And so cereal is the start, just because it was the number one breakfast for kids, something I love and have a huge nostalgia for and knew was possible to make something better, right? I think.
the world's created and shaped by people who demand better. And I think every time you make a purchase, you vote with your dollar and you vote for the type of food future you want. And so, Lovebird for me was a natural place to start with cereal, but always thinking of different categories or areas of the grocery store to reinvent. But I'm also 100 % family -owned and kind of focused on cereal at the moment. And part of that and why that's important is that I don't have...
Juniper (15:48)
Totally.
parker (15:55)
any big name investors or parent company that's pushing me to cut corners, to make more money and be more profitable. I just simply want to make the cleanest cereal possible, free from refined grain, refined sugars, glyphosate. Obviously it's organic, which also means non -GMO. And just...
prove to others and I hope people copy it to be really honest and start putting ingredients on the front of potato chips or crackers and I think it's the highest degree of accountability you can have as a brand. It's like, all right, like anytime I consider an ingredient change or addition or subtraction, I have to look at the front of the box. I'm like, oh, like would that look good on there? Like, no, like that's not something I'd be proud to put on the front.
So it is, I think the highest degree of accountability and really just want to draw more attention to ingredients, right? I think, as we mentioned earlier, you know, there's countless studies on the impact of ultra processed food on your mental health and your gut health. About 60 % of our diet today is ultra processed food. It's even worse for kids at close to 70%. And you get ultra processed diets and foods. You get ultra processed diseases and all of these things.
One in two people now have a chronic health disease, which is, you know, magnitudes greater than it was 30, 40 years ago. Um, but you know, pros everything's processed to a degree. So I kind of look at it from a lens of what are those ingredients, right? Like you could call something a processed food, but if I look at the ingredients and they're good, like that's still something I'm going to eat, right? Cause.
I wish I had all the time in the world to cook from scratch and get back to pioneer days. That would be amazing, but we live in this modern world and I want some solutions that are easy for me and that I don't always have to cook. And so for me, it was like, hey, proving that it's possible, you can make convenient food with great ingredients and have it taste good. And that's kind of been the marching order. So in terms of...
Other categories like I always have my eyes open if there's any ideas. I'd love to hear them. I've been very like a head down trying to make the cleanest cereal in the world and you know grow the business and do it profitably so we can make our donations to fight childhood cancer and maintain ownership of the company because it's not you see a lot of
Brands that sell out like, and sometimes it works out and that's great. I'm not saying it's always a bad thing, but most often, you know, I've been a part of these meetings where you have a Lara bar or a Cascadian farm and it's just like, all right, like how do we make it more cheap? Uh, like that's the first question. Like how do we make more money selling this product? Not it's never, how can we make it better? Uh, it's how can we make it more profitable? And so I don't approach my, my business that way, my brand that way. Like for me, it's like, well, what's the best ingredient?
My cassava costs two and a half times more than what even a siesta uses. And what that means is that it comes from small family farms in Nicaragua where there's no heavy metals in the soil. So there's always trade -offs, right? With convenience and scale and cost, whether it's lower costs specifically, there's a trade -off, right? And so for me, it's like, Hey, how can I find the best ingredients?
And it costs more than your typical cereal, but I think it should. I think a lot of those products used heavily subsidized crops, whether it's corn, soy, wheat, or oat. And so essentially your taxpayer dollars are paying for reduced prices of those ingredients and they're produced at such mass scales with such harsh chemicals and herbicides and pesticides to help with profitable yields. But what you get in the end is kind of a box of nothing.
Well, that would actually be a good thing. It's a box of it. It's a box of inflammation, to be honest. If it did no harm, like have at it, but it's actively hurting your health and your family's health.
Juniper (19:54)
Or negative, really? Yeah.
Well, I appreciate that so much and I can relate so much because I am in the same place in my business of, you know, I get asked to like, will I expand into other categories of health? And I think the truth is to.
sustain having a business and making our impact, we have to be really focused and it can never come at the expense of compromising the quality of what we're sharing. And, and so whether you expand beyond cereal or not, your impact is tremendous. And I, I share this with you when, before we started recording, but you know, me and my kids were at, we live in a really small town and we're at the health food store and.
My youngest he's four, he's like, mom, there's love bird. And he was so proud that it was in our little market. And so I, you know, early in my business, I explored retail space and I have since come back to like, it's just going to be my website. I'm just doing it this way because it isn't sustainable for me to homeschool my kids and try to get into a retail space and for there to be any profit at all for.
my business. And so I am absolutely like, I have so much appreciation for you breaking down that barrier and getting into retail space because somebody listening, you, you may just, you know, be on the consumer side, but it is no small feat to get into retail space. Like you have we've since like, you know, so we saw you our little market first, but then we saw you in like our bigger co -op and in whole foods and.
I am amazed that you have established such a presence while holding this integrity to the brand that you take pride in.
parker (22:01)
I'm very great to hear that because I think when you're working on something every day, it just becomes part of the job and what you're doing and hearing stories like that. And then when we make our donations to fight childhood cancer and just all the good we're doing, removing a lot of those bad ingredients from the shelf, that's what makes it all worth it. And it does not happen without people like yourself and those listening and others that have.
Purchase lovebird, as we mentioned, you vote with your dollar, right? And so do you want to vote for a better food future or a worse food future, right? And I think cereal can be clean and convenient and taste good. And there's other places in the store that we could probably apply that framework to. But I look at business and all things in life, all change in life, as kind of these small incremental moments, the 1 % every day. And I think...
That's been the mantra with Lovebird is like, hey, we're going to water this tree every day, a little bit every day, a little bit every day and have it grow strong. Cause you see a lot of brands specifically in food that grow really fast. And then to do that, there's a bunch of things you have to do, whether that's take on outside capital and compromise your values, your vision, your product to get there. Right? Like there's a lot of big brands that went big really fast and
You can't really grow authentically and keep your quality if you're growing that fast. And so for me, it has been really fast. Like I feel it, but like I do fight every day to make sure that our standards, our ingredient standards, our values are never compromised. Because then what are we? We're not love bird anymore. And so, you know, my plan is never, this wasn't some sort of like.
business opportunity, white space exercise for me, it was, I want to make a difference in the quality of our food. I know our food system's broken. I know cereal is broken and I know how to fix it. And I want to serve products and cereal to my family. That's the best. And I've been absolutely humbled by people like yourself and others that have resonated and support Lovebird because it's.
you know, we're making a difference, which is crazy, right? Like, I hope you, it feels like you do, but I hope everybody who sees Lovebird out in the wild, like you feel a sense of pride, like we are making a difference. Like we are changing what the cereal shelf looks like. First it's co -ops, then it's whole foods, and then it's bigger mainstream grocery stores. And then you get people who've never read ingredients picking up Lovebird thinking like, oh, this tastes really good. And then they learn more about ingredients and the hope is that that's their start.
of their health journey, right? Knowing more and reading more and seeking information to understand what you put in and on and around your body really matters.
Juniper (24:52)
Parker, when did you start Lovebird?
parker (24:54)
Great question. Well, my daughter just turned five and I left a year after she was born. So Lovebird's been kind of like started working on it four years ago, did retail or direct to consumer. So it was just selling on my website for a year. And then the past two years has been retail and grocery stores that we just talked about. So it's been kind of a four year journey, three years kind of out in the open, actually selling cereal. And then
a year just to kind of figure it out and how to make it and making sure that everything was up to my standard.
Juniper (25:30)
Wow, and so somebody listening who wants to buy Lovebird, I'm always protective of a small business owner because I know how much you put into this. And so for sure, somebody going to your website gives, pays you the most versus going to a retail, but you can really find Lovebird anywhere. So if you want to try Lovebird and you're kind of thinking ahead,
I'll link Parker's website in the show notes and you can go, you can buy it in bundles. You can buy, my kids and I went on there to figure out what we're going to order next. But, but you can also, so I'll attach that so you can buy it directly from love bird. But you can also find it in many retail stores. Is it, are you in Canada too? Are you in the U S right now?
parker (26:26)
So in Canada, we have, you can buy it on Natura Market, which is kind of an e -commerce website. And then we're working to get into retail in Canada, just because there's been a lot of people there that want clean cereal. But yeah, I mean, our website.
We also have our store locator. I don't mind wherever you buy Love Bird is fine by me, whatever is more convenient to you. You know, I'm just happy you're buying a box and voting with your dollar and helping us march towards a better and brighter food future.
Juniper (26:59)
I really love how you use that term voting with your dollar because it is so true. And whether you are speaking of food or supplements or clothing, whatever you are spending your dollars on, you really are. You are, your money is a very powerful vote. And so, you know, whether you opt for a $7 box of cereal that very likely
glyphosate and inflammatory ingredients or nine dollars for a box of lovebird those that two dollar difference it it goes beyond what you're getting in your box it it really makes a universal statement of where the industry is going and if as a society we keep pouring our dollars into
foods that are wreaking havoc on our health and then therefore having to pour so much money into the healthcare industry that to be quite honest doesn't really care about our inflamed bodies. And like there's this disconnect right between the inflammation in our bodies and the one of two people that suffer from chronic disease and our healthcare industry that you know,
Medicates and we don't fix we don't go back to the roots. It's it's very rare for Doctors to be like, you know, let's go take out all the inflammatory foods from your diet. And so as a whole we get to start from the ground and invest our money in foods and in our health and It speaks louder than just ourselves it speaks to what is needed and I
I love what you said earlier about, you know, you hope that other companies will replicate what you're doing and that you're not the only one on the shelf that's offering this. I feel very strongly about my business. My dream is to someday be out of business. I hope that our food supply and our environment gets so clean that we don't constantly have to focus on healing our guts, that it's just a natural part of our world.
again. And so, yeah, I align a lot with that.
parker (29:34)
100%. And I think, you know, I struggle with, and you know, on our Instagram, like I've run the entire thing and create all the content and you're bombarded with what people have kind of labeled as fear mongering, right? And there's a lot of scary stuff out there, but I think people need to be informed. But I think at the end of the day, our bodies and nature, one in the same are very resilient, right? So if you remove a lot of the things that are,
weighing you down or causing you inflammation, like your body will rebound. Like it is a miraculous thing that occurs. Like we're able to clean up rivers, we're able to clean up restored grasslands. You know, our cassava is also regenerative agriculture certified. And so like we're trying to, you know, clean up cereal or trying to restore regenerative farming practices. And as it relates to your health, like we're...
ever you may be on your health journey, like there's a hundred percent hope. There's a hundred percent of way to get back to feeling great again. And your body is resilient. It just needs a little bit of help sometimes. And that's removing some of those ingredients that are causing you inflammation and not doing anything positive. And so I think for me, like the vote with your dollar, there's always hope. And we're making a huge difference together is what keeps me going because there's a lot of.
whether it's glyphosate, whether it's all the plasticizers that have been getting publicity, there's a lot of things that we have done to our environment, but there's always a way out. It just takes time and knowing what you're putting into your body. So we can make a difference, we are making a difference, and together we make an even bigger difference.
Juniper (31:16)
Well, I love that so much because you're totally right. Like a lot of times, especially on social media, you can't, I mean, the, the way to educate is to speak about what is happening. And there are those people that are like, Oh my gosh, you're just, this is just fear. You're just trying to scare people. And, you know, also as somebody who, like I, I run everything I'm doing my social media and buying every message and email and everything. And.
you are faced with the people who have been jaded, I guess. They have somewhere have been influenced in a negative way and our messages hit that nerve, which is okay. But as a culture, I think that it's so important that we, I mean, we have to bring light to what is happening. And, you know, we,
We've touched on it a little bit in our conversation about how.
glyphosate and these farming practices that are used to make these staple ingredients in the majority of cereal and all processed foods really is so disruptive to our health, but to the earth and to the planet. And I love talking about the resiliency of both because we can come back. We have to make the choice though. And
The earth is reliant on us making those choices. And something like cereal, somebody listening, cereal might seem
insignificant for our earth. But the bigger picture is it's really freaking significant because I think it is, I think maybe you said this, I think I read this somewhere else that it number one breakfast for children. And that is significant. What we are eating is directly impacting the earth and the animals and the water and the air.
and all of our surroundings. And so the more we invest in cleaning up America's number one breakfast, we're directly cleaning the earth.
parker (33:41)
100%. And I think...
As with any change or any fact, right? There usually is stages of grief and the first one is denial, right? And I think when people hear a lot of these things, it's like, oh, like we're fine. Like, you know, I grew up eating this stuff and I'm okay. So my kids can eat it too. And it's like, are you okay? Do we not have the highest rate of cancer among young people in the history of recorded medicine? Like there is something wrong. And so like the first step is to admitting there's a problem and then.
Oftentimes that problem can seem overwhelming, especially when you look at it as a full mountain, but every journey begins with a step, right? And so it's just 1 % every day, one swap every day. Then pretty soon you're going to clean up your diet. And when you clean up your diet, you clean up our food system. Cause guess what? If you stop buying conventional cereal, they're going to stop making conventional cereal, right? It's a very clear dynamic of what gets purchased and what gets made.
Juniper (34:37)
Yes.
parker (34:41)
And so that's where, to me, where change is possible. It takes a thousand different people rowing the same boat to do it, but it is possible. And we've seen it with high fructose corn syrup and other ingredients, especially trans fats and things like that, that were popular and pushed by the medical establishment and their doctors funded by big food budgets. But eventually truth won out, right? And those ingredients.
trans fat is banned, but high fructose corn syrup use has plummeted. And so your purchases, your thoughts that you translate into a purchase, like make a huge difference. And it doesn't happen overnight. It doesn't happen with one person. But if enough of us do the same thing over time, like we will drive change and we will create a better food future. And that's what gives me hope.
Juniper (35:37)
Absolutely. Parker, this has been such an honor having you on the show. Is there anything else we want to touch on before we wrap up?
parker (35:50)
No, pleasure was all mine. I'm obviously very passionate about these things and I think just people being aware of what they put in their bodies is just step one, right? Like read your ingredients. They're ranked in order of prevalence, so the first ingredient is the most...
Common ingredient in that product, you'll see a lot of brands being like, oh, made with grass fed, whatever. And it's like the ninth ingredient. Like there's just enough in it for them to make that claim. And so read your ingredients, the order matters, how many typically matters. If you can't pronounce it, typically I'd probably put it back on the shelf. Anything that ends in os is a sugar.
And just be aware and conscious of the decisions you're making because they impact you and then they impact the environment and it impacts everybody. So we're all in this together.
Juniper (36:43)
are making an incredible difference and we are all so grateful for you. Thank you.
