How To Source Wild-Harvest Ingredients & Pantry Staples for Better Health with Jose Lopez

Jose Lopez is the founder of Wild-Based, a wellness company on a mission to restore wild food as the foundation of human nourishment. Frustrated by how freely "wild" gets used as a marketing term with no real definition behind it, Jose built Wild-Based to source ingredients that are actually wild, traceable, minimally processed, and harvested from intact ecosystems. 

The brand currently offers three products: Canadian wild rice, American yaupon tea, and Ethiopian heirloom coffee, each chosen for its origin, integrity, and nutrient density. Jose believes human health can't be separated from the health of the living world, and his work is rooted in that conviction, connecting people back to the foods our biology was built on.

In This Episode, They Explore:

• What "wild" actually means in food, and why most products using that word don't qualify
• How to spot greenwashing in the food space and what to look for instead
• The story behind Wild-Based's three products: wild rice, yaupon tea, and Ethiopian heirloom coffee
• Why eating closer to nature matters for nutrient density, biodiversity, and long-term health
• How food transparency, knowing who harvested it, where, and how, changes the way we relate to what we eat

Follow Jose Lopez on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wildquetzal/?hl=en

Follow Wild-Based on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wildbased.co/?hl=en

 Shop Wild-Based on their website: https://wild-based.com

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to the High Vibration Living Podcast. I'm your host, Chef Whitney Aronoff, health supportive chef, founder of Starsea Kitchen, and creator of nourishing food rooted in real ingredients, intuition, and intention. This podcast is a space where food, wellness, spirituality, and everyday living meet. We explore how what you eat, how you live, and what you believe all shape your energy, health, and overall sense of well-being. You have a physical body, a mental body, an emotional body, and a spiritual body. And all need to be recognized and nourished so you can feel balanced and truly thrive. Only you know what your body truly needs. Let this be your reminder that you already have the wisdom to tune in to your food, your self-care, and your spiritual practices and choose what supports you best. Through personal insights and conversations with experts across food, wellness, and spirituality, we'll explore how to nourish the physical, emotional, spiritual, and energetic layers of who you are so you can feel your best and live with clarity, vitality, and purpose. Let's get started. Hi, friends, and welcome back to the High Vibration Living Podcast. In this episode, we are going to talk about wild-based foods. And I thought it was important to start having this conversation so you can better catch greenwashing in real time. So when you go out to the grocery store right now or to a farmer's market, you're seeing a lot of new buzzwords in the food space: organic regenerative, regenerative organic, regenerative farming, biodynamic farming. And another one that you're gonna see more of is wild, wild-based, wild sourced. And so I wanted to bring on Jose, who's one of the founders of a company called Wild-Based, which is working with very small farms using heirloom crops or truly sourcing wild. So their company currently is providing real wild rice, not wild cultivated rice. They are providing a wild tea from that naturally grows from the Carolinas down to Florida and into Texas. And they're doing an original heirloom wild coffee from Ethiopia. And we're gonna talk about more about what makes those three products wild, other wild products that he wants to bring into the market, but the challenges in sourcing and producing that, and just the overall better understanding of how the word wild is regulated when it comes to being labeled on your food packages and the questions that you should be asking. Because when it comes to wild, it's understanding why it's a wild food versus a modern food, the nutrient density, the energetic intelligence of the food, what humans are evolutionarily designed to eat, and the importance of the seasonality of the food and the biodiversity of it. So we get into all those things, but we keep it light and fun. And, you know, Jose is really passionate about bringing these quality, unique products to market and building a business that does it the right way, even if it means that sometimes there'll be that their product won't be available. You know, there'll be different seasons where it wasn't a natural great growing season. So they'll have a smaller stock. And they're okay with that because it's about producing a more traditional, nutrient-dense wild food rather than just a mass-produced food that's always available and in stock. So this is definitely the direction that we want to be going with food. And I I hope you are inspired by this episode to continue to buy from more small farmers, more small brands. And you know, this is this is the type of thing that excites me and makes me passionate. And I wanted to share it with you. So without further ado, as I'm kind of running on here, let me introduce you to Jose and Wild-Based and the products that we're gonna talk about today. Cheers. Hi, Jose. Welcome to the High Vibration Living Podcast.

SPEAKER_00 4:15

Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_01 4:16

I'm really grateful for you and your time today because I want to learn more about wild foods or products that are labeled wild-based foods or single origin foods. Um, that way we can just all approach building our pantry in a more health supportive way. Um, and I think most of us are wanting to know a little bit more about the products that we purchase and put into our bodies, which is the direction I like to see us all go when it comes to food and health.

SPEAKER_00 4:45

Yeah. Uh well, you just brought up a good uh thing that just made me think about something. You said uh things that are labeled wild. Uh, I think that's a good place to start because one of the things that I noticed is that there's a lot of stuff that is labeled wild, but the it's that term is kind of ambiguous, like there's not a universal definition for it. Uh so yeah, when you said that, I was like, I thought of a few companies that have wild in their name, but the ingredients aren't truly wild. So maybe we can get into some of that.

SPEAKER_01 5:14

Yeah. Well, tell me what is out there labeled wild and it isn't?

SPEAKER_00 5:19

Yeah, so you know, with uh like USDA organic, for instance, like there's a certification process to get labeled, being able to use that uh term, right? But with wild, there's no such thing, there's no like governing bodies that are going to certify that your product is wild. So it's become one of those words that kind of gets thrown around. And I think people use it because there's a lot of power behind it, but a lot of times that power isn't in the substance of the product. So they'll just use the word to try to get some of the power or some of the appeal from the word without any of like the substance in their product. So uh for some examples, I won't call out by name, but um, there's a company, especially it's pretty big here in Mexico, actually, and uh it has wild in the name. And then I was really curious because I saw it on the shelf. Obviously, I'm into wild foods. I look, turn around, look at the packaging. Literally, like the first ingredient is like pea protein, like one of the most, you know, uh conventional uh foods or conventional ingredients that you could use. And I look out throughout the label, and sure enough, there's no wild ingredients at all. So that's when I realized, oh, companies are just I call it cosplaying wild. They're not truly wild, they're just kind of like putting on this facade that they are. But um, so so when we use the term wild or wild-based, we literally mean like wild harvested ingredients that are coming from a wild ecology. So we have this criteria that we have uh species, place, and system for how we categorize an ingredient. So the species refers to the genetics of the food, right? Is it uh a wild type genetics or is it a domesticated food? Because you know, there's differences in those two different uh species. And then um, place is like where is it growing? Is it growing in a wild ecology? Is it outside of its natural ecology, being you know, farmed somewhere else, or even worse, like in some you know, laboratory or something like that? And then the third thing is species place system. So system is like what kind of growing system is being used to grow the food? Is it organic? Is it regenerative? Is it just a wild ecology growing it right? So all those criteria for us end up giving us a definition of what we would consider wild, and that's what we're aiming at when we're choosing ingredients.

SPEAKER_01 7:34

So, what are the products that you decided to start with? When you looked out at the potential wild food products that you could single origin source and share with consumers, what did you end up choosing?

SPEAKER_00 7:48

Well, uh, there was a like a long list of different products that we were sourcing and trying to vet out. Um, and I think what we ultimately end up landing with was wild rice, uh Yopon tea, and we have Ethiopian heirloom coffee. Um, I don't know if those like that's was the first things that uh actually made it to fruition as a product. But yeah, though it turns out that those are all staples. So they're all things that you can consume regularly, you know, coffee, tea, and then rice. They're like pretty commonly, you know, consumed throughout the week for a person. It just happens that we chose very specific varieties of those things that many of them like people haven't even heard about, you know.

SPEAKER_01 8:32

What do you think is the one that people haven't heard about the most?

SPEAKER_00 8:35

Probably I'll say yopon tea. Yeah. So yopon tea is uh North America's only native caffeinated plant. And so in all of Canada, Mexico, the United States, there's about 30 to 40,000 native plants. And out of all those 30 to 40,000 native plants, there's only one that we know of that contains caffeine, and that's Yopon. And so uh yeah, it has a long history of use by indigenous cultures as a drink, both casually and in ceremony. And it doesn't just have caffeine, it has theobromine, which is the same thing that's in cacao, as theophylene, which is another powerful alkaloid compound. And it's a completely 100% wild-harvested tea beverage. You know, and people say the word tea is only for like Camellia sinensis, which is like the green tea plant, but we call it tea because it's the beverage that people know as tea, you know, it's where you're steeping the leaves and extracting the compounds. Uh so yeah, but it's a completely different plant, and so it has a lot of really cool properties, but it's kind of gotten lost throughout time where people aren't even aware that it exists.

SPEAKER_01 9:36

I hadn't heard of it until you guys had mentioned it. Um, so I was really excited to try it. I when did you first learn about it?

SPEAKER_00 9:44

I think I learned about it many years ago on a podcast as well. Um, and I was really my ears perked up because I love learning about like new stuff that I'd never heard about, especially like something that's like a native caffeine plant. Like obviously, we're all drinking coffee, we're all familiar with coffee, it's huge in the culture all around the world. But then you have this plant that's 100% native and local to the region where we live, and nobody has heard of it. So that's when I got really interested. And then um another side of it was that I started to learn about some of the implications of like the coffee industry and importation and some of these uh lower quality processes, and then uh Yopan positioned as a possible native source of caffeine really intrigued me because like what if we didn't have to import tea from China or Japan or India? What if we could source local tea from the United States, right? Our country comes from Florida, but Yopon grows naturally and wild all the way like from North Carolina down south to Florida and then well west to east Texas along the coastal plain. So it inhabits a pretty wide um, you know, uh region.

SPEAKER_01 10:52

Yeah, and in a region that I wasn't expecting at all. I re I thought you were gonna say West Coast, so that's really that's really neat that that's the area that it's from.

SPEAKER_00 11:00

Yeah, yeah, that's that's where it's native to. And there's uh there's different projects that are trying to do different things with it. There's a couple companies that are trying to popularize it at the market. So a lot of people don't know about Yopon. It's a relative of Yerba Mate and Guayusa, which are much more popular in South America. Those are consumed like culturally, like they're staples, like you know, people drink them like they drink coffee in certain countries, but it's literally like this the missing relative of that family that nobody's ever heard of. So people know those other ones, but in North America, very few people know about Yopan. So we're trying to bring it to the market, make it more popular uh as a native caffeine source, but also as an incentive to preserve these ecologies where it's growing wild.

SPEAKER_01 11:43

I love what you're doing on highlighting natural wild-based foods. It's something that I've been passionate about since I was a little kid. I grew up with my parents taking me all over California to see all the different places where my ancestral family lived. Um, I'm Spanish Californian, I'm Mexican Californian, and I'm California Indian. So I, as a kid, always wanted to eat what I would say, like what my people ate. Like I wanted to learn, I learn how to prepare food outside, like on the rocks, over a fire. I wanted to sleep outside. I wanted to do everything that my ancestral Californian family did. That's just what I was really interested in as a kid. And what one of the things I was always looking at was well, what was the local food that they ate beyond the seaweed and the seafood and the acorns and the pine nuts? Like, what were the other foods that they ate in California? And I used to harass my grandma about it all the time. Um, and I've gone and looked up books at different historical societies here in California, but you only get so far in the basic research that you do. Um, it tends to be like just a lot of greens growing on the side of streams and um just real simplified versions of what we used to eat here. Um, but I know that it goes a lot deeper. And so I that's why I love the work that you're doing. It's because you're kind of reminding us um what even my ancestors ate here 150 years ago. Um, it's not that long ago that some of these foods have been taken out of rotation in our diet.

SPEAKER_00 13:18

Yeah, and especially in California. California is so rich in a diversity of different ecologies, and there's so many foods. And like you're saying, like a lot of this stuff like isn't like readily available because a lot of it is like ancestral knowledge that has been passed down like orally, or it's just kind of like been uh overintellectualized in like biology books or anatomy or you know, botany books and stuff like that. Um, so like the living knowledge of people actually using and interacting with these things isn't as common. But um, I think what I've been looking for, and Swanji, funny you mentioned acorns, um, because there's like certain crops that are more accessible on larger scale. And that's one of the issues that we've actually are trying to solve for is how do we scale up the unscalable? Like what I say is like, how do we scale wild, right? Because it seems to be one of those things that is a challenge. That's why we domesticated food, because in order to scale up and produce, you have to do certain things, or at least that's been the narrative so far. But what we're trying to investigate and look into is is there a place for larger scale wild production? And when I think about that, acorns is one of those uh crops that is prolific. You know, it grows in many parts of the world, there's many different oak varieties. And so I thought about um creating a product with acorns and actually was going to be one of our first products. It was a wild acorn pancake mix that I wanted to do. And I hope we still do it because it was really good recipe. Like I really feel like I cracked the code on that, um, just the like a nice balance of the recipe using like completely, pretty much completely wild ingredients, you know, with with the exception of maybe like salt or whatever. I mean, salt, I actually that's all salt is pretty much wild, but with the exception of like maybe baking soda or some of these more common things. But yeah, if we can create you know, with pancakes, everybody loves pancakes. So if we can create something that's easy to consume, that's like um convenient, that tastes great, and it comes from a wild ecology, for me, like that ticks all the boxes because a lot of these foods are just going to waste. I mean, they're going back to nature, they're being recycled, but they're not being used for human consumption. And we do have a lot of traditional lineage throughout many cultures, not just in California, but all all the way down to Mexico. I just I learned that even here, there's uh they recently, like a couple years ago, they just discovered a variety of oak that's like uh endemic to um a state here in Mexico. So it's like um, you know, there's all kinds of stuff that I'm learning about the range of some of these foods. And if we could uh find a way to utilize them and integrate them back into the food supply, I think that would be great.

SPEAKER_01 15:55

Yeah, I've always wanted to eat acorn mush. I'm one of those, like literally, I've always been interested in it. It's kind of like when you go to Hawaii and uh you finally get a chance to eat, is it poi? Yeah, it's like just there's these uh these staple foods that existed in cultures that you know are so nutritionally dense. And it may take your palate a little bit of time to um to get used to that flavor profile, but uh you still want to eat it because there's something there that your body needs. And I think with some of these ancestral foods, there's almost like a code in it for your body. A quick pause to share something I truly use and love. I'm Chef Whitney Arena. And as a personal chef, I began sharing my Starseed Kitchen organic spice blends with private clients when I couldn't find high-quality seasonings that met my standards for their meal prep. My clients are people who care deeply about what goes into their food and how it makes them feel, just like you. Every Starseed Kitchen blend is made with the highest quality organic spices with no added sugar, no MSG, no anti-caking agents, and no fillers. Just clean, real ingredients that support your body and elevate your cooking. Two of my most loved blends are 11 Magic Herbs and Spices, a go-to everyday seasoning that works on just about everything, and Starseed Kitchen Adobo, a light, bright, anti-inflammatory blend designed for modern, health-supportive cooking. Every jar is prepared with intention, charged with kundalini mantras, quartzkies of crystals, and blessed by a shaman. Because spices and the food you prepare with them are not just nourishment, they're a transfer of energy. You can find Starseed Kitchen Spices at all Erawan locations or online at starseedkitchen.com. Use code Starseed for 10% off your online order. Now let's get back to the conversation. There's like a depth of nutrition that you can't get from more of these um these modern, you know, agriculture foods. Have you do you look at food that way? As sometimes it carries codes and information for our body to translate?

SPEAKER_00 18:04

Definitely, yeah, absolutely. Um, I think you're spot on with that because um yeah, we're just looking at food like as a lot of times we look at food as just satiation, just flavors. And I love what you said about like having to get used to it because we do come from a palate that's been very curated, right? Like a lot of these domesticated foods are just they they uh give you that dopamine, but as far as like uh the richness of the flavors, it a lot of times is lacking, even with something like our wild rice, right? Yeah, it has a different flavor than standard white rice because white rice has been stripped of uh the brand, the fiber, and a lot of the nutrients, right? Because they're polishing it. And so you end up with something that is basically just a macronutrient, a carbohydrate at that point, which is great if you just want to get quick energy. But if you're looking for something that's deeply nourishing, what are the qualities? What is the taste of nourishment? Like that I like to ask that question because a lot of times uh the nourishing foods, we don't have a good association with how they taste. Think about like liver, for instance, one of the most nutrient-dense foods. People struggle with it, you know, because they're so used to eating like um just uh refined foods, things that are ultra-processed. And so when we get something that's nutrient-dense, we don't even know how to interpret nutrition at this point with our palate. So we do have to like understand that there is going to be a sort of like um period of readjustment to these wild foods. But I think what you're talking about is like once you do get adjusted, like you know and you recognize the value, not just from a nutritional point, but but like you're saying, from a deeper, almost like genetic component level that's like nourishing you, and like it's deeply familiar in a way that uh these foods in modern time aren't.

SPEAKER_01 19:52

That you can't unlock it through words, but you know, you know the feeling and you know how it shifts you when you when you eat it. You know, most people don't even know that celery used to be a bitter. Celery was really, really bitter, and it wasn't until it was grafted in the early 1900s. You can read about this in the book, um, The New Whole Foods Encyclopedia. It explains how celery has been grafted in a way to lose its bitter feeling, the bitter taste. So it's more edible. So a particular celery farmer could sell more celery. Um, so they've um they've essentially moved that bitter flavor out of celery to make it sweeter so they could sell more celery. So people need to understand so much of what we're eating is not the original version. It's been changed for um maximal size, um for flavor profile changes. Like everything's been edited in small ways. Um having somebody bravely, you know, create a company that sources more wild ingredients is I think exactly the direction we need to go. Um it's just the realization that it's gonna be done on kind of a smaller scale in order to take care of the ecosystem or to get to the quality version of it that you deserve.

SPEAKER_00 21:14

Right. Yeah, that's a great point. And that's part of the mission with Wild Bays because it's like when you start telling people, you know, your salary's like fake, basically. Like, you know, this has been ultra, you know, manipulated. People start feeling like very uh what's the what's the word, like nihilistic, or they just feel like, man, they don't want to hear it, right? Because it's like if you don't give them options to like alternatives, it's like, well, everybody shops at the grocery store, what do you expect me to buy? Right. And so a lot of the mission with Wild Base is how do we make these things more accessible? Because I don't just want to expose like the food supply and make and leave you there with no tools to like reintegrate real foods into your diet. And so with Wild Foods, um, with Wild Base, I should say um we're trying to give people an opportunity. To interact with more wild foods in an easier way because obviously the best thing you can do is go to an ecology and go hunt, go forage, go fish. But if you're not going to do that right away, if you have no connection or lineage to the natural world, it's very unlikely that you're just going to go out there, right? Um, like that was part of my journey, is I grew up in California and you know, uh San Bernino, and I wasn't familiar with where food came from. I was so oblivious to the origin of food. And this journey really led me down a path of getting back to the source and understanding where food actually comes from. And one of the things that I had to do was, or that I wanted to do was like go hunting and go foraging. And so last year, six years living in Hawaii, like I learned how to hunt and I learned how to hunt different animals with different methods and the whole process of processing the animal and doing the making food with that uh meat and all that. And so um it's a process, right? It's a process, most people aren't just gonna jump into it. But if we can provide resources for foods and then people get curious, they kind of start to inch their way back to the natural world. And now when they hear about these things, they're not so uh foreign to them anymore. It's it's a little more familiar, you know.

SPEAKER_01 23:10

How did you find someone to teach you how to hunt?

SPEAKER_00 23:13

Oh, that that's a that's an interesting story. So I was just like really ready for that, and so I was just talking about it all the time. My ears were pricking up for whoever was talking about it. So one day I'm just at the gym, I'm in the sauna, and this guy just comes in and and we're just sitting talking, and then he says, like, he's a hunter, and I'm like, Oh, you hunt? Boom! And right there from there, we just started talking about it, and literally, like maybe the next week he took me with him hunting, like he hunts with uh dogs in Hawaii, like that's pretty popular. That's that's how they hunt. They put GPS collars on a pack of dogs, they send them out into the forest. The forest, um, I mean, the dogs um uh find the pigs in the forest, they round them up, and then we come and like basically uh dispatch the animal.

SPEAKER_01 23:56

Amazing. So is it mainly in on the big island? Are you hunting for boar?

SPEAKER_00 24:00

Yeah, well, interestingly enough, people don't really know about on the big island, you have a lot of boars, uh, you have a lot of sheep, wild sheep, and wild goats. And so all three of those are pretty abundant. Uh like if you drive through uh Saddle Road up Mauna Kea, you're just seeing them on the side of like by the hundreds, entire herds. So I got into uh boar hunting. I mean, sometimes uh boar is just a male version of the wild pig, but sometimes you get the female version as well. But um a lot of people hunt them also. They like with a tusk, it's like a cultural thing as well. Uh, but I learned that and then I wanted to learn bow hunting. So I went out into the mountain with a bow and I got uh sheep and goats with my bow and I got to have some really great experiences up there, really uh transformative stuff because it's just so different when you're out on the land and you're having those experiences as opposed to like going to the grocery store or whatever. Like it's just it's just a deeply immersive experience. And I always say, like, the process in itself is nourishing. It's not just the food at the end, the byproduct that you get, it's the process of you going through it, having experiences, the ups and the downs, feeling like you're not gonna get anything, it's hot, like you're going through all the different emotions, and then if you do get something, it's just that much more rewarding.

SPEAKER_01 25:16

And then what about when it comes to foraging plants, nuts, seeds? Did you get a chance to do that while you lived on the big island?

SPEAKER_00 25:22

Yeah, so there's there's uh different, like they have uh uh uh blueberry variety that's like native now to Big Island. Um, so there's also a bird, the Nene, that was like um it's like a Canadian geese. Like so the story goes that the uh basically the Canadian geese somehow or another ended up in Hawaii and it had in its stomach the seeds of the blueberries, and so it populated itself and also the blueberries on the big island, and so now you have those. Um, yeah, so there's uh different things that you can forage for in Hawaii. Um, I didn't get to do too much foraging, I did get some berries and different things. They have diff uh several different kinds of berries, but I know some of the ferns are edible as well. Ums there, yeah, yeah, exactly. Um, I I know someone on Oahu that does like guided tours of like foraging for like um different mushrooms and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_01 26:19

Very cool. That's what I'm super interested in, and you know, just need to look more for are those, you know, unique foraging classes and just being able to take advantage of that. I think it's just a great life skill to have. Um definitely when you guys chose coffee, you know, and the coffee that you wanted to source, how did you did you immediately know you wanted to go to Ethiopia for your coffee? How did you approach that?

SPEAKER_00 26:43

So the way I think about products is I'm like I'm like kind of obsessed with wild to the detriment of like my business partner because I'm always trying to like, uh well, is there a wild version? You know, like so with coffee, I was like, what is there wild coffee? Like, let's explore that. We're let's start there, you know. Um, because it does come from nature. At some point it had to be wild. Every domesticated food ingredient has its origin in wild. So uh we did some research. Obviously, we found out that wild coffee is a thing, it still grows in Ethiopia, but it's not being like um harvested in large enough amounts to like bring to the market as a product. It's kind of like very, very small, like production of that, you know, if if any at all, maybe for personal use from some certain groups. But the next best thing was we were able to find the Ethiopian heirloom coffee. So we we ever we're always going to the place where these things grow. So coffee originates in Ethiopia. Now it's being grown worldwide, South America, all over the world, right? But its origins, it's uh native to Ethiopia, specifically the Yurgoshef region in the montane rainforest in Ethiopia. And so that's where we went to source the coffee. So we said if we can't get like 100% wild, we're gonna get the next best thing, which is heirloom varieties. So heirloom varieties are essentially varieties that have been handed down for many generations in a certain part of the world. You know, a lot of these things have lineage. So if you think about heirloom foods, they're saving the seeds, passing them down to the next generation, and so on, so on and so forth. So they tend to be tend to be more adapted to the region and they're closer to wild, right? They're not super domesticated or homogenized, there's still biodiversity. And so, yeah, we went to Ethiopia, which is the birthplace of coffee, and we got uh different um heirloom varieties. And so that's what we did with our coffee. And then um, so it's so it comes from smallholder farms. So smallholder farms are like one to five acre farms that are usually run by families. So it's small production, very meticulously cared for. So our coffee is 100% hand harvested, and then from there uh it's going through these different processes, raised beds, uh, depending on what kind of process they're they're doing, whether it's washed or honey, um, they're taking care of the coffee, and then we're getting the green beans and then roasting them fresh in very small batches, just uh so that we can, you know, have not have it on the shelf for too long. We want to get the super fresh stuff. So that was the process that we uh came to in trying to like get the most high quality, closest to wild coffee.

SPEAKER_01 29:15

I love that process and I love learning that. Um, and it's a great coffee. Um, I you know, and I actually much prefer grinding the beans fresh. Um that's you know how I like to have my coffee. I think it gives better flavor. So that's a a wonderful process. Um, can you tell us a little bit more about the wild rice?

SPEAKER_00 29:36

So, with the wild rice, that was something that um I've been wanting to get into for a long time. Like when I first had wild rice, true wild rice, I was just blown away because before that I had had like the store-bought stuff that was like it says wild rice, but then you cook it up and it never gets soft. It's like hard and gritty still. Yeah. And it's just not really a good experience, you know. So when I had like uh truly wild rice that cooked up soft and chewy, I was so impressed. And ever since then, like I've just been passionate about wild rice. But unfortunately, uh sometimes it's hard to have consistent supply of wild rice. Some of these suppliers are small, they're not really, you know, just there's not really streamlined for production. And so that's kind of another thing that we're trying to bring to the market is just a more streamlined, consistent process for these wild ingredients instead of like being a hit or miss, or sometimes, you know, the website's up, but it's not really operational, or they're out of stock, but they just don't update it. We're trying to like bring like a higher standard to when it comes to wild ingredients and wild foods and do things at a higher level uh in terms of like the whole ordering and um production process. So with wild rice, we said let's do wild rice so that we can have a consistent you know supply for the people in our community, in the wildness community. And so we sourced some wild rice, some truly wild rice, and we vetted different sources and we're able to finally find some truly wild rice from Canada. And so uh, yeah, this is 100% um wild harvested wild rice, and it's uh wood parch, which is a traditional method of drying it out. They dry it over wood fire, and that imparts a smoky flavor and essence to the rice, and then they scarify it, which they scratch the outer surface of the rice, and that's what makes it permeable to water, and that's why it cooks up soft and chewy in like 20 minutes, as opposed to the other stuff that you know you can soak it for 24 hours, you can cook it for an hour, still gonna be hard and gritty. Yes, because I tried like I've tried to make it work. Um, you know, because I I posted about that rice, the store-bought stuff, and somebody said, Oh, you just gotta soak it. And I'm like, Okay, let me soak it. I soaked it for a whole 24 hours. It was still it was still not the same, it was still hard and gritty. So I just realized like there's a difference between the processing. So um, and a lot of the store-bought stuff is actually also uh cultivated, it's not actually truly wild. So um, like if you turn over the Lundberg, which is like a really popular brand, it'll say it's it says wild rice on the front, but if you turn it around, it'll say uh grown in California, regeneratively grown in California or something like that. But a lot of the quote unquote wild rice is actually patty grown, cultivated uh rice that they grow in either California or they they grow some in Canada, but a lot of it is coming from California because they grow it as an agricultural crop, just like conventional rice, but it just happens to be the genetics of wild rice. But in the process, you get a lot of differences in terms of um the processing and the end product. Doesn't it's not the same, you know. So uh we realize that. So a lot of the education is bringing that to the light and awareness because a lot of people don't know that. They go to the store, they buy what they think is wild rice, and it's not actually wild, and then they have a negative experience with it, and then they're like not enthusiastic about consuming it, you know.

SPEAKER_01 32:54

Yeah, I really thought I was getting, you know, the rice that are from the natural fields up in North Dakota and the area just south of the Canadian border where wild rice is supposed to be from. So that's good to know. It's just more, you know, farmed rice.

SPEAKER_00 33:12

Well, what I learned is that every industry has its like secrets. There's even if it's like natural foods, even if it's wellness, I'm sure you know there's all kinds of secrets in manufacturing and production and marketing. And so with wild rice, there's that too. You sometimes you get people who are selling wild rice as wild, like harvested when it's actually cultivated, you know, because it's actually much more profitable to, you know, uh cultivate it because you can control a lot of the factors with wild harvesting, you're relying on the natural ecology to produce. So you're at the mercy of what the natural world wants to give. Any given year, uh, some years you have uh really good harvest, other years are more lean. And so with nature, there's all these ebbs and flows, and it's not just like a homogeneous steady crop every single year. So agriculture, that's what it wants to do, it wants to force and impose production year-round, and that's always like at a high level, but the natural world always has its cycles. And so I think honoring that more so and working with systems that honor that is a better approach, in my opinion, because in the in the long run, you get better production, more nutritious with that wild-based uh food food form, food of produ that wild-based production of food, you know, as opposed to trying to force it to be something. So yeah, you know, so a lot of these things with agriculture is like short-term uh gratification. It's like in the in the short term, we get really good yields, we get really uh bountiful harvest, but in the long term it starts to dissipate, and then the soil gets depleted, and then the crop becomes endangered because it's it's just a monocrop, it has no biodiversity to protect it, all kinds of issues you run into in the long term with domesticated foods. And so what I learned is that the better an ecosystem is, it tends to wild. And so if you can emulate wild, you will have a healthier crop and a more nutritious crop. And that's just been the pattern I've observed. If you look into some of these systems like regenerative agriculture, permaculture, they're all trying to emulate what nature does. And so I said that makes sense why wild foods are the most nutritious and the most ecologically aligned, because they are the purest form of what nature naturally wants to do. They're organisms that have their own will, they're sovereign beings, just like we are, and they're expressing themselves. And what I learned, and it's something that echoes to me, and also as a life lesson, is that one of the things that Wilde taught me is that when you allow something to be what it naturally is and what it wants to be and express itself in the way it wants to be, not only does that organism benefit, but everything around it benefits as well. When you try to suppress and make something be something that it's not, you get an organism that isn't in its full capacity. And as a result, you get an ecology. If you keep doing that, you get an ecology that's not uh flourishing like it should, you know.

SPEAKER_01 36:03

I want to take a moment to share how Team Starseed Kitchen can support you beyond the podcast. I'm chef Whitney Aronoff, founder of Team Starseed Kitchen, my personal chef and custom meal prep service. This is for people who want to eat well, feel better, and be supportive of nourishing food without the stress of planning, shopping, or cooking. Through Team Starseed Kitchen, I work with a trusted team of health supportive chefs who prepare fully customized meals based on your needs, preferences, and lifestyle. Whether you're focused on clean eating, hormone balance, digestion, energy, or simply having high-quality food, ready for your week, we meet you where you are. All meals are made with real, full ingredients, no seed oils, no refined sugar, and no shortcuts. Just thoughtfully prepared food designed to support your body and make your life easier. This service is deeply personal. It's about having food in your fridge that you can trust, food that supports your health, saves you time, and helps you feel grounded and cared for. If you're ready for consistent nourishing meals made just for you, you can learn more about our service and apply to work with us on starseatkitchen.com or follow the link in the show notes. We have chefs ready and available across the country, and we so look forward to nourishing you. Now let's return to the episode. Yeah, amen. That's absolutely it. And what I like about what you guys are doing is the transparency. And I think there's more and more people like me that are l that would rather work with a transparent company, meaning, hey, I know I might as well get my coffee now because it might be out of stock in a few months because it was a different type of harvest year. And that's okay. I'm willing to wait for it to come back in because it's done right. And that's what I hope, you know, podcasts like this and people who are working in the food, health, and wellness space, like you and I, are helping people understand, you know, enjoy it while it's available, you know, understand why it's not at certain times. And, you know, you you have to have kind of respect for that and lighten up about it, and then just wait till the good harvest comes back again.

SPEAKER_00 38:08

Right. And it's like you enjoy it that much more, right? Because if you have it year-round, it just becomes like you you neglect it, you take it for granted. But there's something about seasonality that I think is really potent. And that's why I encourage like local farmers markets and things like that. You get all these really rare varieties that you know, maybe they're not available year-round in your grocery store at every grocery store on, you know, in your city, but you know, they're seasonal. It's just that's what nature does, it produces things in season. Very few things are available year-round. And most things, even if they are available year-round, they have a part of the year that they're way more abundant, you know, and so trying to honor that within ourselves is just restoring us back to being connected with a part of nature that we forgot and we've expected everything to grow year-round and be available all the time. But it's like that's not how things work, you know. And we have to start to condition ourselves to just understand that and be at peace with that, but also enjoy the fact that okay, if it's not one thing this season, there's probably another thing that's gonna be really good and that I can tap into this season, you know.

SPEAKER_01 39:12

You nailed it. It's like people thinking that they can have a good apple and a banana year-round when there's really only a season for it. Um, we you know, we just if if you step away from the grocery store for your fruit and only go to the farmer's market, you'll see that that apple and banana are not available year round.

SPEAKER_00 39:28

And then the flavor too is so much more potent and better. Like I've tried, like here, uh, you know, like if I'm it's mango season and we're eating mangoes, there's so great flavors, so many different food, uh fruity notes. And then you get off in the off season and you want to keep eating them, they're being imported from some other country, and it's just not the same. It's like I I gotta I just have to learn. I keep seeing them, and I'm just like, no, just don't buy it because it's not the season, it's not gonna be the same, you know. And I think, you know, it's something that we have to wean ourselves off of almost because we're so used to it, you know.

SPEAKER_01 40:02

So when I lived out on the east coast, um, so I grew up on an avocado farm in San Diego. And when I lived on the east coast, I didn't eat avocados for the entire time I lived out there because I knew they were just being shipped in and the they wouldn't taste the same. And so I did my own little like seasonality location protests, and I refused to buy avocados while I lived out there because of taste, flavor, location, price. It wasn't worth it to me. And I would only eat them when I came back home to California when they were available. And I forced myself to eat more local seasonal food while I lived on the East Coast, and I have to say the food that I had was so much more delicious.

SPEAKER_00 40:47

Yeah, and then you get to experience and learn new foods, right? Like you don't just try to stick to in you know what you're familiar with. Like I've experienced that in different places that I lived. Like we try to copy and paste whatever we are familiar with other places instead of just honoring what's already there, like in Hawaii, right? Like people want to bring the American culture there, and it's like, well, it's not gonna be what it was anymore if you just copy and paste where you're coming from. You know, instead of embracing the things that are already there, which what makes it rich and diverse, anyways. You know, that's just that's my opinion.

SPEAKER_01 41:21

Let me ask you a few rapid-fire questions as we wrap up here. Okay, just so we can learn a little bit more about you and your preferences. Coffee or tea?

SPEAKER_00 41:30

Coffee. It's funny you say that because I'm like trying to like get off of coffee for a little bit and get get more focus on the tea.

SPEAKER_01 41:40

There's there's a season for both.

SPEAKER_00 41:42

Right.

SPEAKER_01 41:43

Uh favorite superfood.

SPEAKER_00 41:44

Chilogy.

SPEAKER_01 41:45

Most underrated food people should be eating for their health.

SPEAKER_00 41:49

I'm a little bit biased, but I think wild rice.

SPEAKER_01 41:52

Food everyone should avoid.

SPEAKER_00 41:54

Probably like uh high fructose corn syrup. If you can label that a food. I mean, the things that I want to mention, I wouldn't even call them foods, but yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:01

Absolutely. I think anything processed. Um favorite spice.

SPEAKER_00 42:05

Well, I was thinking of cinnamon, but um cooking. Um, I actually have a uh a really good uh like superfood like seasoning, which is funny enough, another another I know it's supposed to be rapid fire, but um basically it's got like uh organs in it, and and you can uh easily with it.

SPEAKER_01 42:25

Like the brand pluck.

SPEAKER_00 42:27

Exactly, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:28

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I that's a that's a brilliant um product idea that that guy created. I I love it. Um I have it on my counter too. I actually just haven't used it yet, but I have it. Um it's good.

SPEAKER_00 42:39

Do it with some I do like homemade fries with it, it's good.

SPEAKER_01 42:42

Okay, great. Uh, best health habit you've added into your life this year.

SPEAKER_00 42:46

I'm trying to think what have I done that's new. I feel like everything I've been doing is is has been happening for a while already.

SPEAKER_01 42:53

What's something that you're that you like doing right now for your health that you wish more people would consider adding to their life?

SPEAKER_00 42:59

Exercise, moving your body. Yeah, to me, that's I think really important. I think a lot of times in the wellness specifically, like we try to do everything with food and um nutrition, and I think there's something for moving the body and getting the heart pumping and moving those nutrients around all the places where they need to go, that's important.

SPEAKER_01 43:18

Last question if someone listening wants to improve their health through food, what is one change you suggest that they make?

SPEAKER_00 43:25

Focus on Whole Foods. I think just focusing on Whole Foods is is a big game changer. Like if you can remove processed foods and just whether whatever the whole food is, like that's gonna make a big difference uh in your health. It's because it's hard to overeat on Whole Foods, it's hard to eat bad on Whole Foods. Like Whole Foods does a lot. Just just focusing on like you know, whole entire ingredients instead of like a bunch of processed stuff.

SPEAKER_01 43:51

Yeah, it's so easy to simplify your plate with just a real protein, a real vegetable, a real starch. Um, it's so easy to get that back. Using real fats. Um, but you know, some people are so overwhelmed they don't even know what the real is, you know?

SPEAKER_00 44:08

Right. It's it's definitely like a rabbit hole you start going down. Like you start thinking just Whole Foods, and then you get into like the genetics of the food and the how they grow it, and you start to get more and more refined. And you know, I don't want to tell people like you got to go all the way 100% this way with it, but I think just becoming more familiar. That's why I like like the Whole Foods conversation because it's a reasonable start to somebody who might be completely oblivious to health, is just start with more Whole Foods.

SPEAKER_01 44:37

And I would love to know since you've moved to to Mexico in the Tulume um area, what are some of the foods that you're eating now that weren't available to you in Hawaii and California that you love?

SPEAKER_00 44:49

It's interesting because it's very similar stuff. Like um, I'm eating still a lot of tropical fruit, which is what I was doing in Hawaii. So, you know, a lot of papayas, there's just different varieties. Like here, they have different varieties of papaya, different varieties of bananas, but it's a lot of the similar trip tropical fruits. Um and then they obviously have fish here, but obviously, uh, surprisingly enough, there's not as big of a seafood culture specifically here as it was in Hawaii. Um so yeah, not not a lot of big differences in in the things that I've been consuming. Um but I also haven't explored too much, to be honest. Uh, here I've been just kind of sticking to some of these health food stores, getting some more, you know, like uh seasonal stuff, but I haven't dove too deep into some of the cultural stuff here. Um, like there's a restaurant that was really cool that uh was serving more traditional foods. They had like some of the cultures here were eating insects. Uh, they had like some grasshoppers on there and stuff like that. Uh, so I would like to get more familiar with some of those um just lineages of food that is available. There's so much richness here and diversity of the culture. So yeah, I look forward to getting more into that. I've just been kind of like acclimating of that transition. Um, but yeah, a lot of similar stuff, definitely.

SPEAKER_01 46:14

Yeah. Do they do a lot of um pork there? Is that the main protein source?

SPEAKER_00 46:19

Yeah, Mexicans love pork. Yeah, we I think uh pork is pretty popular here. Um, I've heard there's wild pigs. I haven't seen any like in Hawaii. I would see them on the side of the road, yeah. Running everywhere here. Uh, I think because it's a lot more populated, there's not as many like animals that are visible. Like uh, you know, they're not just roaming around, they're kind of probably more on the outskirts. So I would love to find some like local hunters, but it's just a whole different culture here. Like in America, you can look up all this stuff, you can register online, you can download the maps, you can, you know, get your certification online. Here is like there's no information online, I don't even know what the laws are. So, you know, I think the best thing would be just to connect with somebody like I did in Hawaii.

SPEAKER_01 47:05

Yeah. And and then I think they might have wild turkey down where you want.

SPEAKER_00 47:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:10

Yeah. Which is one thing I've really wanted to learn to cook down in the Yucatan is do the turkey in the banana leaves in the ground. There's just a lot of really beautiful cooking prep preparations um that exist in that part of Mexico that really fascinate me.

SPEAKER_00 47:27

Yeah, the cuisine is huge. Yeah, like there's so many the cuisine. I mean, I love I'm Mexican, I love Mexican food. Um, you know, with uh the way they prep prepare it under the ground, like um, like you're saying with the leaves and stuff. Um, it's it's interesting because they have a similar version of that in Hawaii too, where they're doing, you know, uh the pig uh cooking it underground as well. And so yeah, they have deer here as well. Uh so I look forward to getting more intimate and and connected with the land and knowing people who kind of can help me out with that process. So if anybody's listening that is from here or knows somebody from here that wants to connect us, that would be great too.

SPEAKER_01 48:06

Yeah, if I ever find anyone, I will definitely let you know because it's been a long time since I've been down um to that area. So I'll keep you posted. And if you find someone who is great at teaching on how to cook turkey in the ground, you let me know. Um, because I'd love to learn that one. Um well, where can people buy your products and continue to learn from you and with you?

SPEAKER_00 48:27

Yeah, so the website is wild-based.com, and that's where all our products are. And we're on TikTok, Instagram, uh, Facebook, as well. Um on Instagram, I think we're at wildbase.co, and then TikTok is just at wildbase. So, yeah, those are different platforms. We're always talking about education. That's primarily my first thing is like I want to educate. We have all kinds of frameworks that we've developed to help organize food and the whole food matrix because it's a whole that it is a matrix, right? It is like a lot of information, a lot of stuff. We're not really about, you know, being dogmatic. We try to just share information and you know, allow people to apply it as they wish. You know, uh, we're not like 100%, you got to be 100% wild. The way we look at it is wild is the goal, it's the target, but there's a whole spectrum leading up to there. You know, you have heirloom foods, organic stuff, you have wild cultivated, all kinds of uh layers on the spectrum, but we use wild as our north star, something to aim at, you know, and so however much people want to interact with that and participate, great. And if it's helpful along the way, then even better.

SPEAKER_01 49:39

Yeah, your website is beautifully done and it's really easy to read and navigate, um, and is very educational. So well done.

SPEAKER_00 49:47

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 49:48

Is there any other products that are going to be coming out this year that we should be watching for?

SPEAKER_00 49:52

So I guess I'll just share like some of the things that we're working on. Um, we're so I don't believe like in the whole like secret stuff. Like if anybody wants to produce the product and they can, cool, like spread the wild foods. So, like I said, the wild acorn pancake mix is something that I would love to get into production. Uh, we have like some wildflower lectuaries that we want to do with like some rare, like wild ingredients like ginseng, American ginseng, uh stuff like that. Um, what else do we have? We have like some like water systems that we're working on. Like uh, so my business partner has a big background in like water filtration, and essentially what we are working on is like a system that emulates the way nature produces water. So kind of like a spring at home that does not just filtration but reminis remineralization, kind of emulating the way springs produce water. Uh, so that's like a whole separate thing, and then we also have like a um a couple of like elk products that we want to develop as well, like organs and maybe like a jerky or something. So, yeah, uh we have all kinds of stuff that we really want to bring to market. Um, and right now we have three products, but we would love to have much more because, like I said, it's more about uh making these ingredients more accessible. Like we're not just a wild rice company, we're just not just a Yopunk company, like it's way bigger than that. And we hope to be able to like be able to get there at some point where we have all these products launched.

SPEAKER_01 51:19

Well, I love this. I'm I'm a full supporter. I understand what it takes to get CPG products off the ground. Super impressed by what you guys are doing and your ethos. And I'm really grateful that you were able to take the time to come on here and and share what you guys are doing with more people. So thank you.

SPEAKER_00 51:35

Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. Uh I really enjoyed the conversation too.

SPEAKER_01 51:38

Oh, my pleasure. Everybody wins, you know, when we all eat healthier, um, healthier, more whole foods. So thank you guys for doing this.

SPEAKER_00 51:48

Yeah, thank you.

SPEAKER_01 51:49

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the High Vibration Living Podcast. If you enjoyed today's conversation, I'd love for you to leave a five-star rating and a written review wherever you're listening. It truly helps this podcast reach more people who are looking for this kind of support. And if something resonated with you, please pay it forward and share this episode with a friend or loved one who could benefit from it. To learn more about Starseed Kitchen in my organic spice blends, you can visit starseedkitchen.com. You can also follow along with me on social media at Whitney Aronoff, where I share recipes, behind the scenes, chef life, and everyday inspiration. You can also follow Starseed Kitchen and Team Starseed Kitchen on Instagram as well. Thanks again for being here, wishing you nourishment, balance, and a vibrant life experience. I'll see you in the next episode. Cheers.