The Live Lightly Podcast

Jessica (00:00)
Welcome back to the Live Lightly podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Franklin. today I have the pleasure of speaking with someone who is truly redefining the way we think about food, wellness, and the energy we bring into our kitchens. Chef Whitney is a health supportive personal chef based in Laguna Beach, California. Her journey into holistic nutrition and high vibration living began with her own struggles facing food allergies and stomach pains with no clear solutions.

Rather than accepting discomfort as the norm, she took matters into her own hands, studying at the Natural Gourmet Institute in New York City and learning how to heal through food. Believing.

that the healthiest meal you can eat is the one you make at home. Whitney is on a mission to empower others to take control of their wellbeing one meal at a time. She launched Star Seed Kitchen Organic Spices to help bring flavor and nourishment to home cooking. and in 2021, she expanded her reach with the High Vibration Living podcast where she explores wellness, beauty, travel, spirituality, and of course, the power of food as energy.

Welcome Whitney. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Whitney Aronoff (01:08)
Thank you, I'm happy to connect with you in chat.

Jessica (01:12)
I always like to tell listeners a little bit about how I connect with people And this is of one of those guided by the universe situations where I don't get on Instagram often, but every now and then I take some time to check in and see how everybody's doing.

saw a post by a mutual friend of ours and I did not obviously know you, but we both have her in our world and I immediately was drawn to the energy of your conversation she had posted that she,

had been on your podcast And so I stopped to look at it and then I explored a little bit deeper into what you're doing because food has always been kind of a personal little obsession of mine. And I was just like, oh my gosh, I have to connect with this like-minded, beautiful woman who has a very similar take on food, but you have had such

an amazing experience as I was on your website and doing a little bit more research. I just really knew that this is a conversation that I wanted to share with my listeners because Live Lightly is not only about how we treat our planet and Mother Nature, but also how we treat our own bodies. So I'm excited.

Whitney Aronoff (02:28)
Yeah, everything that you put on you and put in you is a part of how you feel. So it's all connected and everyone has a gateway drug, right? So for some people, it's changing their diet first. For some people, it's changing their beauty products first. For some people, it's changing the ways that they clean their homes and the products that they bring into the home. Everyone has their tipping point. And then once you make changes in one area, you'll ultimately make changes in all areas.

Jessica (02:51)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I agree. I it's unique to every individual. And like you said, they have their tipping point what catches their awareness maybe first. For me, it was food for sure. Like that was the very first time I ever started realizing that, everything out there.

Whitney Aronoff (03:08)
Mm-hmm.

Jessica (03:16)
is not necessarily good for us. When I started seeing an organic label versus everything else that was not labeled organic, I started to question things. And I've been on the journey and down the rabbit hole ever since.

Whitney Aronoff (03:20)
Yes.

Yeah,

just because something's for sale doesn't mean it's safe for consumption. And that's something that most people aren't aware of. And just because everything that's sold that's supposed to be edible, it may not be something that's safe and edible. We're in a time where it is about profits in the food industry. And so they're always looking for ways to repurpose their waste.

Jessica (03:34)
Yeah.

Hmm.

Whitney Aronoff (03:55)
And so a lot of the food that's sold to people today is actually waste product that nobody would have consumed 100 years ago. And oftentimes those are the things that are being touted as health foods. So it's really important for people to learn about food right now, traditional foods, modern foods, and figure out what supports their body, what their ancestral history is, so they can lay a really solid foundation for their health.

Jessica (04:22)
Yeah, would love to, that wasn't one of my first questions. I always like to talk a little bit about someone's journey, but I would love to dive a little bit deeper into what you just said about the ingredients being sometimes leftovers from other things that are being processed and have that.

Whitney Aronoff (04:31)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Jessica (04:44)
conversation just a little bit before you tell us about yourself and your background because I think that that is something that is not on people's radar at all, but it's totally happening.

Whitney Aronoff (04:56)
Yeah, and so anytime you see a new product that comes to market, especially if it's a word or an ingredient that you've never heard of before, you really need to find out where it's coming from. And oftentimes I also look at businesses, and I've just been doing this for like 15, 20 years, is what is this, what's the waste? Or just where's the final source? A great example would be whey protein.

So a lot of people, when they go and buy protein, they'll buy whey protein. Whey is the excess from the process of making yogurt and certain dairy materials. You can look at this one's controversial, avocado oil. So your avocado oil is just a waste byproduct. It's not a traditional oil. No matter how someone tries to tell you, at no time in history,

Has anyone been eating avocado oils, especially if they try to tell you that the Mayans and the Aztecs were consuming this oil? That's not possible because avocado oil is made from the skin of the avocado. So in the 90s, that's when mass production of guacamole started to hit the shelves at grocery stores because they were using citric acid to allow it to be on the shelf longer so it wouldn't change color because you all know if you make

Jessica (06:18)
Mm-hmm.

Whitney Aronoff (06:20)
Guacamole at home, it's going to turn brown within 24 hours, even if you add the seed in. So when you add citric acid, it allows it to stay green longer and shelf stable for anywhere from a week to two weeks to three weeks, even longer for those people that are buying pre-made guacamole at Costco. the avocado industry wanted to find a way to use.

We have these leftover seeds. have these leftover skins. Is there something we can get out of this? Because they're making mass amounts of guacamole. They figured out they could press the skins that made an oil. This started in New Zealand in the late 90s. At no time in the Aztec or the Mayan culture history were they making such mass amounts of guacamole that they would then press these skins in mass quantities to make an oil.

Jessica (06:51)
Mm-hmm.

Thank

Whitney Aronoff (07:13)
It's not what's happening. So when you see avocado sold as a health oil for you, it's just another processed oil. You know, we can get into that with canola oil and many of the processed seed oils. You can get into that with Crisco, which was a leftover car oil from World War II. The list goes on and on about the things that are repackaged. So what I always...

invite people to look at is, is this something that my great great grandparents could have bought? Because your grandparents and your great grandparents aren't old enough. We need to make sure that we're going back to the mid 1800s because there was even processed food being sold in the 1890s. So we got to go back to the mid 1800s, 1850, whoever that was in your lineage, see if that's something that they could have purchased. Now you know it's a traditional Whole Foods.

food that is most likely supportive for you.

Jessica (08:11)
Hmm. Yeah, it makes you think, right? Makes you wonder. I've seen some videos on Instagram that are pretty disturbing about those packages of like mixed vegetable and, you know, fruit medley that are squeezable for little kids. my gosh. If you saw that video, you would never do it. Yeah.

Whitney Aronoff (08:28)
horrible. Horrible. Any of this? Yeah. No, I don't understand why

you would give a child. And you know, I've looked at that. I don't have any kids. I wish I did. But I've definitely stood in the line at the grocery stores when the lines have been very long at Whole Foods. And you happen to be in the aisle that shows all the baby food. And you see those pouches. And I saw like banana in a pouch. Why wouldn't you give a child a banana? Why wouldn't you just take a fresh?

Jessica (08:51)
Yeah.

Whitney Aronoff (08:56)
Organic banana, which you have to buy organic because otherwise when they come into this country, they're sprayed to ripen them. So it's really important that you always buy organic so you don't get the spray on in the banana. But you just take a banana and you smash it, or you take the banana and you put it in a small Cuisinart or a Vitamix and you puree it and you give it to your child. It doesn't need to come from a pouch or a jar or a can that's not.

food, there's no life force energy in there. There's nothing going into the child. It's just hard board. So if you start looking at food as a transfer of energy because that's what it's doing, you'll start being more mindful of what you put in there. So you need the balance of the transfer of energy and pleasure because you should enjoy the food that you eat. It's not going to be supportive if you hate the meal. You got to love what you eat.

Jessica (09:31)
Mm-hmm.

Whitney Aronoff (09:53)
but it has to be real food. And if you don't understand what real food is, then we really need to take a few step back. But it needs to be made from scratch. It needs to be whole. It needs to be seasonal. It needs to have flavor. You need to know where it comes from and how it looked in its original form.

Jessica (10:15)
Hmm all such amazing things and it's like Wow, how did we get to the point where we need to be told? What real food is? You know, it's kind of sad because I think most of it has been marketed to not only You know just kind of the masses, but I think a lot of it has been marketed to mothers who are

Whitney Aronoff (10:23)
I agree.

Jessica (10:40)
caring and have the best intentions, but over the past 50 years, we've gotten busier and busier and busier. And it's a convenience thing. And so you've got all of the packaging that comes with it that's not good. And we'll get into the vibration part of it, but I want to dial back a little bit and let you talk about your journey into high vibration living and how that began with your

Whitney Aronoff (11:03)
Mm-hmm.

Jessica (11:08)
own health struggles and so if you could take us back to that moment and share what inspired you to turn to food as medicine

Whitney Aronoff (11:17)
Yeah, I think I'm like most women where I just want to feel good in my body. I just want to feel confident. I want to be able to wake up every day and be energized. And I want to be able to put on my favorite outfits and know that they are always going to fit. And when I was in high school, I just found that every time I went to bed at night, I had a stomach ache and I couldn't figure out what I was eating during the day that was causing this. And so I went to lots of doctors, went to your general practitioner.

He couldn't help me at all. He just kept telling me eat more broccoli and broccoli has always been my favorite food. I always eat steamed broccoli. So I was like, this guy's an idiot. He's not even asking me decent questions. And this was in the late nineties. And I didn't know what type of specialist to go to for my stomach pain. And it wasn't making sense. So I was just, you know, taking over the counter Pepto-Bismo thinking that like my stomach pains would go away. Not even understanding that when it comes to our health, there's layers.

Jessica (11:53)
You

Whitney Aronoff (12:16)
Sometimes it's the food, but sometimes it's emotion. Sometimes it's past life. Sometimes it's a spiritual awakening. Sometimes it's our mindset. Sometimes it's the toxins in our home. It's so many things. So I just went on that journey at 16 years old trying to figure out the root cause when the root cause wasn't even a conversation. And I went off to college having the same issues.

also struggling to understand what health food was, what eating real food was because we're often marketed that health food is something in a box, something in a container, a sepulant, a powder. And that's not health food, right? What we've learned over the years, it's just eating fruits, vegetables, high quality proteins, but just continually not being able to figure out what made my stomach feel good.

Never knowing that if this meal that I was going to eat was going to make me feel good or make me want to go to bed. I just started to have to educate myself and I spent years going to different doctors, spent years never feeling like I was getting better. So in my early 30s, I just decided that I'm in this body. I know what I'm experiencing. I know the inconsistencies and I'm going to go to a culinary school that's going to teach me just as many

Just as much information through working with registered dieticians as I was gonna learn about traditional diets around the world and how to heal myself through food. So I found a program that could do that for me. And what really, what was unlocked for me is when you dial in the food, when you eat quote unquote clean. So I'm just eating fruits, vegetables, traditional grains, root vegetables, high quality proteins and learning to prepare them.

prepare them properly, learning to wash my rice and wash my quinoa, making beans from scratch, never eating things from a can. What I found was my intuition really heightened. I was able to just better trust my intuition, my inner guidance, those gut feelings, my consciousness expanded. And that then allowed me to realize, wow, a lot of my gut feelings are just trapped emotions, are a lot of feelings I've stuffed down. So I got the food right.

Then I was able to process the emotions and kind of let those layers go. Then I was able to do mindset shifts, know, your confidence shifts, how you feel about yourself shifts. It's, and then I've just learned that it's never just one thing. It's the physical, emotional, spiritual and mental body. have all these layers that need to be nourished. And so yeah, you get one section right for you, but it's going to open a door of other parts of you that need to be nourished, healed.

released, adjusted.

Jessica (15:10)
that's beautiful that you learned all of this layer by layer and just followed your own intuition. I'm sure that you picked up a lot at the natural gourmet Institute and that helped you shape some of the philosophy about food and healing and kind of gave you a platform, you know, like a foundation to build on. so I have a little bit of, I want to talk a little bit about the gut.

connection to the heart and the brain. Can you speak on that? Because I feel like what you were talking about is connected to that heart, brain, and all of the messages that they're constantly communicating and sending to each other. And it sounds like that was part of how you learned how to listen to your gut, your intuition.

Whitney Aronoff (15:39)
Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Jessica (16:03)
and

to heal your emotions and almost on a spiritual level, an energetic level of healing. Can you talk about that?

Whitney Aronoff (16:11)
Yeah, absolutely. And that was a big part of what led me to go to culinary school because I kept having the gut feeling that I needed to go to culinary school. And I kept having the mental download that I needed to go to culinary school. And my heart was ready for a change in my career. And I knew the space I was working in was no longer right for me. And so you followed the breadcrumbs, right? So I woke up from a dream.

And I just heard Natural Gourmet Institute. had that mental download. I just heard Natural Gourmet Institute, Natural Gourmet Institute. Went to work, looked it up online, saw the culinary school, emailed and asked for an application. Took it home, filled it out, sent it in, and just prayed that something would happen that would allow me to take a sabbatical from work so I could go and just do this for my own personal evolution. And then just through meditation,

continuing to work on my diet, continuing to learn about food, continuing to work with different spiritual practitioners and just personally grow, the sounds got louder. I couldn't fight what was coming into my brain, what I was seeing in my dreams and meditations. I couldn't fight what I was feeling in my heart and I couldn't fight what my gut was telling me that I needed to do. And so what ultimately happens, right, is the universe will make it happen.

And so days after mentally deciding, you know what, I'm gonna make this happen somehow or some way, I got laid off from my job and I had no reason to not just go to culinary school. So I took a day to cry as we all do when we lose a job even if we don't like it very much. You know, there's just that rejection and fear. You process it and then you say, right, the universe is clearly...

lining the path for me to go this new direction and here we go. And again, I don't think I would be able to have understood the signs and the feelings if I hadn't start to work on my food and my health as well as my mindset and my spiritual practice. They really work synergistically and you have all those things, the gut, the heart.

Jessica (18:24)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Whitney Aronoff (18:37)
the mind. And then I would say, you you have your third eye and your pineal gland. So there's, there's, there's a few things going on up here. but there, they will all sink together when there's a step that you need to make.

Jessica (18:53)
Yeah, I think we've all kind of had those moments where we know that there's something different that we need to do it sounds like you part of getting clarity on your end was clearing the path first off with your diet.

And so can you tell me a little bit about, know that you believe that eating is a transfer of energy. Can you explain what that means and how we become more intentional about the energy in our food?

Whitney Aronoff (19:20)
Yeah, so, right, so we eat for energy. So we can do yoga and we'll gain energy from it. We can do breath work. We can gain energy from it. There's a bunch, we can spend time in the sun and we can gain energy from being in the sun. But the easiest way for most people to get energy is to eat food. Now, how much energy are you gonna get from the food you eat? You're not gonna get very much from processed food. So let's take

a burrito from Taco Bell. If you're gonna go through the drive through, you have a tortilla that's shelf stable for years. You have beans that are being opened up out of a can. You're having cheese that is probably not 100 % pure dairy. You're getting low vibrational food, dead food, food that's processed, that's shelf stable. There's not a lot of energy in it. Food that's super fresh, that was just picked, that's from 100 % organic raw dairy.

flour that's freshly milled, anything that's fresh from the ground, from the source, it's going to be full of life force energy. And so this is a great thing that you can experiment on yourself. You can go to a farm stand and eat a piece of fruit that's from the farm stand. It's going to be super flavorful, super delicious. You're going to get full. And then you can go to the grocery store and you can buy a piece of fruit that's been sitting out for a week. It has wax on it.

We don't know when it was picked maybe two weeks ago, maybe a month ago. It's not going to be as flavorful. You're not going to like the texture as much. It's not going to fill you up. You're not going to be satisfied. You're going to eat that piece of fruit and still want to reach for something else. So that's a great way for you to experiment and figure out what's full of energy and what's not. And you'll find the more fresh and high quality food that you eat, you get fuller faster because you're getting more energy from

the food. It's just simply an energy transfer. And if you take it a step further, you can look at how your food grows and it will tell you how it's going to make you feel. So if you want to feel grounded and rooted, connected to the earth, maybe you've had headaches recently, maybe you felt a little bit about a body, a little dizzy, you've been struggling with clarity.

You're gonna wanna eat root vegetables and what are root vegetables? Anything that grows into the ground, under the earth. So carrots, parsnips, potatoes, beets, anything that's growing down under the dirt is a root vegetable. It's gonna make you feel rooted. And that is especially what you wanna feel in the winter time versus in the summertime.

We want to feel light and airy because we're wearing less layers, it's hot outside, maybe we're playing in a park, going to the beach, swimming in a river. You want to feel light, so you want to eat foods that are full of water and that are growing towards the light. So that's when you're going to eat stone fruit that's growing up in trees. You're going to eat grapes that are growing up a vine. You're going to eat green beans that are growing up a vine. They're all growing up towards the sun.

because, and they're full of light, the tomatoes are full of light from the sun and that light's being transferred into you and you, we can all agree that the summer food makes us feel lighter versus the winter food makes us feel a little heavier and grounded and like we want to hibernate and it's all like that for design because that's how we need to feel in those seasons because those

Those are the seasons our body needs to follow. And so we have to start just remembering the ebbs and flows of the seasons and start to just get comfortable with our life slowing down in the winter and maybe speeding up in the summer. Or just spending more time at home in the winter, spending more time outside in the summer. Food shows us nature's cycle.

But it's not just nature cycle, it's our physical life cycle as well.

Jessica (23:34)
It's a rhythm. Yeah. The seasons are showing us the food is showing us what our bodies, our physical bodies need energetically to support us. I want to talk a little bit more about seasonal eating because I feel like right now there's kind of a buzz going about for a while. I mean, there's always all the like fad diets and I'm more of a in balance

Whitney Aronoff (23:47)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Jessica (23:58)
seasonally

because I feel like that's more going to benefit and nourish a body than eating one particular way or even this whole movement of like eat 30 to 40 different fruit, vegetables, herbs, and spices in a week.

Have you, mean, that's your chef. so you probably can get close to something like that. But you know, cooking at home and

I do use a lot of fruit and vegetables, but mostly seasonally. I'm like, it's really like I tried to do that once. And I was like, that's kind of maddening to try to get to this 30 or 40 and eat the rainbow. I'm like, I don't know, that just doesn't feel right. It sounds good. but it doesn't feel like that's, can you speak to that a little bit? Yeah.

Whitney Aronoff (24:46)
Yeah, I'm very

anti that. You and I are both familiar with Dr. Joseph Michael Levery and he has a line that is simplicity is divinity. And your gut will tell you the same thing. There is a lot to be said about a simple meal. You know, if you just start with a simple prepared vegetable, a simple prepared healthy traditional starch and a protein,

Jessica (24:54)
Yeah.

Whitney Aronoff (25:15)
your body's gonna feel great. So if you blanch or steam some broccoli and carrots, if you bake a potato or a sweet potato, if you simply bake or grill a piece of protein with salt and pepper, add a little healthy fat to that, a little butter, a little ghee, a little olive oil, your body's gonna feel good. It's light, it's simple, it's clean. Now,

Jessica (25:37)
Mm-hmm.

Whitney Aronoff (25:40)
Now you've understood and you know how to put all that together. Now you can play with spices. You know, I have my own line of organic spice blends called Star Seed Kitchen, which are my adobo blend and my Star Seed 11, because that's how I love to season my chicken and my salmon and my steak and my shrimp. But you you can start simple and then you can add some organic spice blends that can add some more flavor so you enjoy your meal more. Because when you enjoy your food, you'll digest it better.

You know, when you're happy with a meal, you'll have more joy afterwards. And that will support digestion, but just support your life. But more is not better. It's just more for your body to digest and process. So there's a time for lot of ingredients and a lot of spices. You're making a particular soup, a curry, you're following a recipe, but life doesn't need to be like that every day.

Jessica (26:17)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

I agree. I think that you can get the nutrition and the vitamins and minerals that you need from the foods that the earth is providing at the time that it's providing it. And in the winter, I think that's when people maybe stumble a little bit because it's more of those root vegetables, as you talked about, like the potatoes and the onions and squash and things like that. And so I think

sometimes cooking foods that are maybe a little bit less familiar might feel overwhelming I love that you gave some advice to just keep it very simple.

simplicity is divinity. And can you give any more tips for people who feel a little bit overwhelmed when it comes to cooking at home? Like what advice do you have for someone who wants to start making healthier meals but doesn't really even know where to begin?

Whitney Aronoff (27:31)
so I find that as a personal chef who has cooked in many people's homes, what makes cooking challenging and difficult even for a trained chef is the kitchen equipment, meaning the pots and pans, the baking sheets, the parchment paper or the lack of parchment paper. It's actually the equipment. So if you have been shopping for your equipment at Target and Walmart, you need to toss that out.

You can't go cheap on your kitchen equipment. I'm a big believer of do it right the first time. Quality versus quantity. So you don't need to go out and buy a big set. You just need no more than five pieces, but they need to be quality. They need to be stainless steel or clay. You need to have a Dutch oven. There's a bunch of different brands that you can buy out there, but quality is everything.

Don't go and buy some gimmick that you've seen on Instagram or something that looks pretty. Good kitchen equipment is really important. Good baking sheets, solid baking sheets are really important. And that's what makes cooking fun. So I also have the mindset that I don't like to bring anything into my kitchen that doesn't make me happy. So I'm really mindful about every wooden spoon, every peeler.

every grader, everything that I buy, I wanna love it. I want it to be pretty, but I want it to be functional and sturdy and safe and non-toxic. And when you like the space that you're working in, you're gonna have a lot more fun cooking, which is gonna transfer into the meal and the meal's gonna taste better. Your attitude as the cook really affects how the food's gonna come out. And again,

I highly encourage you to experiment on everything that I am sharing. So if you are stressed and you come home from work and you just try to quickly prepare a meal that you've made a hundred times, it's never going to taste good that night because you are moving through it as fast as possible and you're in a bad mood. But when you make that meal on a Saturday or Sunday when you're in no rush and you have plenty of time and you're in a good mood, it tastes great. You love it. That's why it's your go-to meal. So

your kitchen equipment, your attitude and making sure that you like your space is really important off the bat.

Jessica (29:49)
Yeah, I love those tips. Cleaning out the clutter, would be one of the things to start with, it sounds like, because a lot of people already have all their kitchen stuff. And so to maybe just like go through and decide, you know, I have three potato peelers, which one is going to be the one that I'm going to love using, right? And then you don't need to have all the excess things laying around.

Whitney Aronoff (29:54)
with you.

Jessica (30:16)
the kitchen and also the quality. I talk a lot about toxins and making sure that we don't add toxins to our food that we've mindfully sourced. I think is a very important thing to hone in on that you mentioned is making sure that what you're cooking in doesn't add and like basically bring the vibration of this beautiful food that you've just sourced from a farmer's market or wherever with mindful intent.

of it being high vibration, we don't want to bring that down and layer on all of the chemicals that nonstick pans that we've been sold, you know, as convenience. Convenience is not always what it's cracked up to be.

Whitney Aronoff (31:01)
Yeah, so you can take two dishes and this happens to me often. I'll make a dish at a client's house and then I'll come home and make it for myself and my client will maybe only have nonstick pan. So I make the dish in that pan and then I come home and I make it in either a cast iron skillet or my clay skillet by extrema cookware and it tastes better in the cast iron skillet or the extrema cookware because the sauces were able to cook down. Things were able to caramelize that can't happen when you're on the nonstick cookware.

Jessica (31:18)
Mm-hmm.

Whitney Aronoff (31:30)
So I highly encourage everyone should have a cast iron skillet. And I really love my clay extrema cookware. It also adds a really great consistency as well. But the pots and pans you cook in really can change a recipe and how it turns out. And it's night and day.

Jessica (31:53)
It's definitely an investment to make. also have the Extrema. It's in my guide as one of the go-to things for your kitchen because not every ceramic

I believe that's sort of like there's stainless steel, then there's cast iron, and there's ceramic. Those are the only three things to be cooking with, but ceramic you have to be very, very mindful of as well because if it is made in China, if it is made with cheap ingredients and cheap coatings, those coatings over time can begin to crack and leach whatever chemicals might be in them. So not all ceramic cookware is completely safe.

and free of chemicals, you do have to do some digging and research, but that's definitely the one that, the only one that I've put into my guide for home detox and sustainable living. So I second that And it's just like, you know, do make an investment in it you'll have it forever. Take care of it. You'll have it forever.

Whitney Aronoff (32:52)
Yes.

Jessica (32:53)
And I would like to also talk a little bit about sourcing because I know that not everybody is able to go easily to a farmer's market to source food that has just been picked before they pack up their truck to go to the market.

Within days probably rather than like you had said before at a grocery store It's been maybe sitting there on the shelf for a week and prior to that It was picked a few weeks before and brought in a truck to the store and then sitting You know in the back of the store waiting to actually get to you So if people are not having an easy way to access a farmers market Can you share some of the tips that you have for people?

Whitney Aronoff (33:27)
Yeah.

Well, you can go online and you can try to find a box where fresh produce is delivered to you. So maybe it's something that's about a hundred miles away, but it's still a great option. There's so many people that are still picking and delivering within 24 hours. You can source your proteins. That's an outstanding option. It can be more economical and can give you better quality. 100 % grass-fed, grass-finished, pure pasture raised chickens.

you can go online and find so many options anywhere within the US. Because when you go to the grocery store, most of your meat is going to come from overseas. And like with lamb, you know, you can go to the grocery store, talk to the people at Whole Foods, the butchers will tell you so when lamb comes into the country, it sits in a locker for three months, and then they're able to send it on to the grocery stores. So if you can find American made lamb, if you can American made, you know,

American raised and butchered lamb. Any American, you know, meat farmers like it's going to just be better quality and it's local and it's going to connect you closer to the land that we live on. You can go with salt. You can buy better quality salt. I'm a big fan of Redmond real salt. And then I also pick up salts wherever I travel. So

Jessica (34:37)
Mm-hmm.

Whitney Aronoff (35:02)
You can kind of look at everything that you're purchasing and just see how can I, how can I tweak this? How can I upgrade it? Just a little bit. Maybe you're buying extra virgin olive oil in a plastic bottle. Start looking for it in glass and then start looking at the origin and just try to find single origin. It comes from Spain. It comes from Greece. It comes from California. Just one location, not a blend. Little, little upgrades with everything. And then

Jessica (35:14)
Yeah.

Whitney Aronoff (35:31)
Just start to see what's happening within a hundred mile radius from where you live. None of us should be living in a place where food doesn't grow. So there's something growing where you are. That's the reason why people have been able to settle and live there for as many years as they've lived. Maybe it's nuts, know, maybe it's a grain, maybe it's a seed. There's something in your area. So just try to find one thing that's local, find out when it's in peak season, and then treat yourself to that.

Jessica (35:39)
True.

Whitney Aronoff (36:00)
And it is tough with pricing, but just think quality over quantity is gonna serve you over time.

Jessica (36:10)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think that that's kind of something that we get hung up on as a culture and as a society is thinking that food should be cheap Why should it be cheap? It's what is keeping us alive and healthy and giving us our vitality and our energy every day I feel like if anything it should be an expense because there are people behind that food who

Whitney Aronoff (36:20)
Yes!

Yes.

Jessica (36:38)
are making a living creating that food for you, growing the food, planting, you know, planting the seeds and tending the gardens and harvesting and getting it ready for you. That shouldn't be cheap. I just think, you know.

Whitney Aronoff (36:54)
Yeah, there's a lot

behind it that I don't think people understand, especially when it comes to restaurants and the cost of the building, the cost of all the equipment inside, the cost of the insurance, the cost of the employees. There's a lot of things that go into why your food costs what it costs. It's not black and white. There's just so many elements, but it's food. And I think we've been conditioned because most of us have grown up seeing commercial ads and thinking that

$1.99 for a burger is a deal because that's what we've been told. And instead we need to just kind of re-engineer our brains and question why a burger could be sold to us at $1.99, what's really in it. And for those of us that have questioned that and we look and see what's in it, we know that it's not beef that's being sold. Yeah.

Jessica (37:45)
Could you talk a little bit more to that? Because I feel like when

I put that out there to moms, I kind of get looked at like I have more heads than one. Yeah.

Whitney Aronoff (37:57)
Yeah.

What is it in particular that they don't believe?

Jessica (38:03)
that it's not what it says it is? You know? Yeah. Well, it-

Whitney Aronoff (38:06)
yeah, mean, you guys, I mean, at this

point, people can look that up. I mean, I had a good friend who got a job offer to be the accountant of the company that's in downtown LA, it's in Vernon, and they make the pink slop that is the burgers for McDonald's. It's a pink goo, you know?

Jessica (38:12)
Thank

Whitney Aronoff (38:33)
It's it's not a hundred percent beef. It's a bunch of filler So a great example is let's say you do laundry your laundry detergent is a concentrated detergent It's halfway filled with water. Let's look at milk, right? So there's no such thing as non fat milk because milk is fat So you always want to buy a hundred percent whole milk and ideally you're buying raw or A2 From a cow. That's a hundred percent grass-fed grass finish

Jessica (38:36)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Right.

Whitney Aronoff (39:01)
Now, if you so choose to buy non-fat milk, all you're getting is that whole milk mixed with water, as well as other chemicals, so the water and the milk doesn't separate, so it stays blended. So at this point, you can take everything that you're hearing from people about our food, and then you can question it and do your research yourself.

Jessica (39:10)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Whitney Aronoff (39:31)
but you can't keep denying that this is happening because it's, it's happening and the proof is out there. And over time, you will start to taste the difference. It's like, I can't eat anything that comes from a can. I can't make a soup or a chili or anything where I've opened a can of tomatoes or a can of beans. Cause I can taste the aluminum. and the food doesn't taste good.

Jessica (39:39)
Mm-hmm.

Whitney Aronoff (40:01)
I don't feel good after I eat it. So when you start to make these tweaks, you're going to feel so much better in your body. But also the things that you used to eat that you thought were healthy that really aren't, they will start to fall away because you won't vibrate with them anymore. You won't connect with them anymore. They won't taste good to you anymore. It's just like people, right? So like as we work on ourselves and evolve and grow,

Sometimes we just don't see certain people anymore because we they literally vibrate out of our life. We are Just we we enter different levels of this of this game And food's gonna do the same thing for you and there's nothing to be sad about it's actually kind of exciting You know if you're someone that grew up eating Doritos or Frito Lay or chips There's gonna come a day where you don't like the taste

And then there's gonna come a day where you don't even think of that food. You don't even remember that exists, because you're not even shopping at a store that carries that anymore.

Jessica (41:04)
Yeah, absolutely.

A good example is my son was raised on, well, I guess I'll go back to I was raised on all of the stuff that we shouldn't be eating, right? Like all the processed foods and canned vegetables. And when I started learning about food and not eating processed food and the Doritos and the sugary cereals, then every now and then it's like you're on vacation and there's nothing

really available at the grocery store and so you're like nostalgic and you maybe pick up a cereal that you remember fondly from childhood and you taste it and I always just am blown away by the fact that it doesn't appeal to me at all. Nothing about it. Yeah. The texture? Nothing.

Whitney Aronoff (41:54)
Yeah, it doesn't do it for you anymore. Yes, I know. And then the fascinating thing is

look at the ingredients. Because I started looking at the ingredients of my food when I was in high school in the 90s. And like, you know, I went through a phase where I loved shredded wheat and kashi and like those single ingredient cereals, because I thought it was healthy. But I also really liked the the dense flavor.

Jessica (42:16)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Whitney Aronoff (42:20)
And they were just one ingredients. It was

wheat, it was the puffed wheat, puffed millet. And now when you go and you look in the ingredients, there's 10 ingredients in there and they've added soy somehow. And they do this because again, filler makes the product cheaper. And so over time, the winning recipe will change.

Jessica (42:33)
Mm-hmm.

Whitney Aronoff (42:46)
They will add more ingredients to make it cheaper for them to produce. They'll put less in the box. And unfortunately, you always have to check your ingredients even just every three months. Like there is a mustard brand that I loved using on some recipes for clients. It was a whole grain mustard from France. There used to be no sugar in it. Now there's sugar in it. There was no sugar in it five years ago. So.

Jessica (43:11)
Mm-hmm.

Whitney Aronoff (43:14)
Everything's evolving and changing. Brands are constantly evolving and changing. So you find the brands and products that you love, that you feel safe with, that you trust, that you've done your research on, and you just kind of have to revisit it every quarter.

Jessica (43:28)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I agree, especially lately. That's been happening more and more as the cost of food is going up. I feel like that's been happening with a lot of things across the board, even the things that you find at your health food stores. That's why it's best to just as much as you can, just whole food, fruit, vegetables, whole grains, beans, you know, all of that. Yeah, I mean, it's easier.

Whitney Aronoff (43:43)
Yes.

Yes.

Jessica (43:53)
You don't have to really, there's not a learning curve to having to figure out what's on that label. But yeah, I try to have like a 10 ingredient or less. And then I have certain ingredients that are just like, absolutely not any sugars that would ever have a different name than sugar, you know, just things like that. If you can't read, you know, if you don't know what it is, then it's not food and it's probably a preservative or an emulsifier or something that's used to make you want more of it.

So no, thank you to that and all of that stuff is chemicals as well So it's just less of a toxic burden for your body to have to sort through and deal with at the end of the day It has enough toxic load of just living in our modern world

Whitney Aronoff (44:41)
I feel the same way.

like, can't control the weather. I can't control what's being sprayed up in the air, what's being sprayed on the soil, what is in our water, even if I have a filter. I can't control it all. And unfortunately, my budget can't prevent it all either. But I can do my best. So I always kind of approach things with food, good, better, best. And then I always plan.

Jessica (44:48)
Right.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Whitney Aronoff (45:10)
to purchase things not on my grocery list, if it's on sale. So I love doing curries because it's a great way to throw a bunch of vegetables in a pot. Great way to get a lot of turmeric, a lot of bone broth. you can mix up the proteins, but when I make a curry, I add, you know, one thing of coconut milk. And when you go to the grocery store, you'll see two to three different coconut milk brands. And you can find there's one coconut milk brand that has no guir gum. So it's pure.

Jessica (45:29)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Whitney Aronoff (45:39)
just coconut, water, and meat. That's the one that you want to buy, but it's more expensive. I just plan everything on the grocery store goes on sale. And so I just plan to stock up when it's on sale. So if you are feeling overwhelmed with like making little edits for your pantry,

Just remember everything goes on sale. So walk the aisles, identify the products that you really want to try, and just know at some point it's going to go on sale and that's when you purchase it and try it.

Jessica (46:08)
Yeah, that's a great tip. I do the same thing. I just go down all of the aisles And when it's on sale, whether or not I need it, I stock up on that thing and I just have it on hand. And that way, yeah, you're spending more in general on everything that you buy. But if it's on sale, then it helps. And if you're not buying as much

processed food, food in a box with a package inside that has to be then thrown away and be a burden on the environment. And also just all of the materials and resources that it takes to make that packaging. So if you're, you know, if you can say no to as much of the processed and packaged food that's pre-made and pre-packaged, then I feel like that is a huge weight off of the pocketbook.

and it frees up so much energy, financial energy, to be able to buy more of the good stuff, right? And fruit and vegetables doesn't, it doesn't always go on sale, but seasonally, you're gonna find that those foods are less expensive.

So, you know, there's all sorts of benefits to everything that we've talked about. And this brings me to wanting to talk a little bit more about

Like Beyond Food, I know that you explore wellness and spirituality and energy alignment on your High Vibration podcast. So what are some of the key daily practices that help you stay balanced and in harmony with your body?

Whitney Aronoff (47:37)
Yeah. So my routine right now is a mix of kind of some guidance that I've gotten from Dr. Joseph Michael Levery, as well as another practitioner I work with, Dr. Scott Robinson. So the things that I do every day are a few spiritual practices that they've both given me. One includes a 15 minute meditation every morning and every night.

So I do 15 minutes just to pull light into my body and to get clear on the things that I want, to get clear on my priorities, to get answers, just to get grounded, to release emotions, to offer up my burdens. It all depends what I need in the day. But I definitely do a 10 to 15 minute meditation every morning and night. I go through my phases of doing

even just 15 minutes of Kundalini yoga. I'm trying to get back to just doing 15 minutes a day every morning and then adding that back into my evening routine. And there are simple things that also help that sometimes can be overlooked, like making sure you shower every day and using a high quality soap or soap that's been blessed, you know, washing off the day or purifying yourself at the beginning of the day.

is a big part of a spiritual practice and can affect your field and your shield. I try to take a moment every day also just to create a shield, a protective bubble around myself. About every other day, I cleanse my home. So I burn an incense or a sage and just adjust the energy of my home.

And then I also make sure that I turn off a lot of equipment at night. So before I go to bed, I make sure to turn off printers, cell phones, laptops. I try to lessen the amount of electromagnetic energy in my space so my body can truly, truly rest.

Jessica (49:43)
And when you say turn them off, want to be very clear and specific is that it's not just close the, you know, close the laptop, it's turn it off. Yeah.

Whitney Aronoff (49:50)
Yeah, no, I turn them off. My

whole family knows, you know, I'm not married, I don't have kids. But my parents and my brother know that I turn off my cell phone at night. And if there's emergency, you're going to need to drive over to the house and knock on the door. But I, but there also should be no emergency, right? So like, we also need to set the intention that there is no emergency in the middle of the night, we're all going to get to sleep safely and soundly.

Jessica (50:01)
Mm-hmm.

I'm sorry.

Whitney Aronoff (50:19)
So I make sure to turn off the laptop because if your laptop's on, it's still emitting energy and frequency. There are certain times where I unplug the wifi as well. If I know I really need to get a deep sleep, I don't need the wifi to be plugged in. I'm not making calls. I'm not checking the internet in the middle of the night while I'm sleeping. I can unplug these things. It's really important too for people to understand that anything that's plugged in is still emitting.

Jessica (50:38)
Mm-hmm.

Whitney Aronoff (50:48)
an energetic frequency. It's going to create that cloud in your house that you can't see it, but you can sure feel it when you become more energetically aware. And so your refrigerator, your oven, your dishwasher, those things are always plugged in and always on even your microwave if you don't use it. you know, I had my microwave removed from my house, but before it was removed, I unplugged it. So it still wasn't emitting a frequency. Don't keep your blender plugged in all the time because

Jessica (50:51)
Mm-hmm.

Whitney Aronoff (51:18)
when it's plugged in and you're not using it, it's emitting a frequency. I make sure I always open windows when I cook so the gas gets out of the house. So I'm not constantly breathing it in. Whether I'm using the stove or the oven, a window is open at my house or wherever I'm cooking. And that's also just allowing fresh energy to come in, which is gonna make me feel better in my body and kind of give me some mental peace of mind. So.

Jessica (51:28)
Mm-hmm.

Whitney Aronoff (51:44)
It's not just like my own practice. It's also the house. It's the container that I'm in.

Jessica (51:53)
Yeah.

Well, because it has an energy as well. the energy that's in the container can affect us as well. And we're so lucky that we get to open our windows basically every single day and that we can open our windows when we cook. And I just want to offer something to people because I did grow up in Colorado. So when you're in Colorado in the middle of the winter, it's not pleasant to have windows open while you're cooking, maybe a little crack if you have a gas stove or if you get a little smoky in your kitchen.

Whitney Aronoff (52:12)
No!

Yeah.

Jessica (52:24)
obviously that's you know one way but you can also get an air purifier and put it in your kitchen and that will help your air as well and I recommend that for anyone to have an air purifier in their home and if you can open your windows even for five minutes a day it's really really good for

for energy and just to, you know, we have a lot of toxins in our inside air just as, well, they actually say now that our inside air is probably more polluted than the outside air, depending on where you live. So air purifiers are one way that I would say it's something that needs to be plugged in and it needs to run, but if you can't open windows for the majority of your day, I would definitely say that that's one thing that you could.

be safe in saying that having that run is going to lighten up the environment a little bit of what you're breathing in because there's energy in the air that we breathe, prana. And so we definitely want to keep that as clean as possible.

Whitney Aronoff (53:20)
Yes.

Jessica (53:25)
And my gosh, we've talked about so many amazing things and I know that we could go on and on and on. But before we close, I do want to talk a little bit about star seed kitchen because you have this amazing, these spices that are high vibration. And what role do herbs and spices play in overall well-being? And how do you create a high vibration spice blend?

Whitney Aronoff (53:53)
Yeah, so spices and herbs are full of life force energy because they're the concentrated form of the fresh food. And so they've always been used as cooking as a way to preserve that fresh food, the cilantro, the parsley, the cumin, the coriander, the bell pepper, the pepper, like all these spices, know, turmeric, ginger, they've been dried and ground throughout history.

for when that food is not in season as a way to season food, to ways to add color and vibrancy and excitement to your meal. Because like we talked about when there's joy with what you eat, it just creates more life force energy, more vibrancy, and we digest our food better. And when we have more joy, we just have more energy to enjoy our life. So I find that a lot of people don't know how to use spices and herbs.

Jessica (54:25)
Mm-hmm.

Whitney Aronoff (54:51)
and they tend to like buy a cinnamon and have it on their shelf for five years. you know, spices are like anything. It has a shelf life. You're using it for the health benefits as for the flavor. And I wanted to make it easy for people to add delicious flavor to their food without cooking and processing their proteins and vegetables further. So you can take a really good dry rub.

with all organic ingredients and real sea salt. Your dry rubs, your spice blends shouldn't have any added sugar in it, shouldn't have citric acid, shouldn't have anti-caking agents. And I wasn't finding that on the shelves. And I have been making my own spice blends for over 20 years. And I just wanted to show more people that you can take a delicious spice blend and rub it all over a piece of protein. You don't need to add any oil.

and you can grill it, you can bake it, you can pan sear it, and you can have really good food, or you can put it on your vegetables, whether you're just lightly seasoning it, roasting it, grilling it, and it makes you just enjoy your meals more, brings more joy into your life. It's what I've been doing for myself and my clients for many years, and I just wanted to help more people enjoy delicious, healthy meals at home.

And then I thought, how can I take it to the next level? I can't be in everyone's kitchen, but I want to put an energy that's going to upgrade and uplift their life. So I did that in little ways through sound frequency, through having shamans come and bless the product, to using a special kind of quartz, giza crystal. So I use a few different methods so we can make sure that there's a high frequency of the product.

and then that can transfer to your home and then into you and your food.

Jessica (56:47)
I love that and ever since I found you I'm like telling myself I need to order it I need to order it and now I'm definitely gonna order it and I'm just a very simple salt and pepper kind of gal like you know just seasoning everything with salt and pepper and You know, I'm Italian. So I definitely use the Italian Seasonings when I'm cooking with those flavors and I do have a little bit of like cumin and turmeric on hand for

Whitney Aronoff (56:54)
thank you.

Yeah.

Jessica (57:14)
some variety, but your spices do look like it just adds that next level up of enjoyment to what might normally just be some chicken.

Whitney Aronoff (57:15)
Mm-hmm.

It makes your protein taste absolutely amazing.

So if you or anyone would like to try either of my two star seed kitchen spice blends, you can purchase it on starseedkitchen.com and use code star seed that'll give you a discount at checkout. Or if you happen to stop by the Butchery in San Diego or Costa Mesa or

or any Erewhon location in LA, you'll be able to find the spices there, but I would highly recommend the adobo spice because what I did there, it was a way that I could get more turmeric into my diet, but by not necessarily tasting turmeric, just tasting just great flavors. So that's a beautiful anti-inflammatory spice that's great on chicken and salmon and roasted cauliflower and grilled veggies. I like to use it in soups.

If you're going to try one, definitely check out the Starseed Organic Adobo for kind of all your good anti-inflammatory health benefits.

Jessica (58:30)
Okay, I'm gonna actually order both of them and I'm gonna experiment with both of them and also experiment with some of your beautiful recipes. You have some amazing recipes online as well that I wanna direct people to because it will give you some inspiration and a platform to start on if you're not used to doing a whole lot of home cooking. And I do a lot of home cooking but I kinda have my like go-to staple, you know, and sometimes I get really burned out.

Whitney Aronoff (58:33)
thank you.

Yeah.

Jessica (58:59)
And I'm just like, my gosh, I need some inspiration. So I'm definitely going to pick up on your spices and some of your recipes and experiment with some new flavors. And I like that even though it's a blend of a lot of different spices, that it's already done. it.

it kind of still plays into the fact of keeping things simple while also still being able to enjoy your food and add a little bit of literal literally adding a little bit of spice to your life. Yeah.

Whitney Aronoff (59:31)
Exactly. then

remember, give yourself three times when you're trying a new recipe or a new technique, because it takes about three times for you to really master it and make it your own. So the first time you follow a new recipe, you're just following the recipe. The second time you're making a tweak for how you like things to taste. And the third time you've really now edited it to be something that you love that works with how you cook in your kitchen, the equipment that you have.

So give yourself three chances. And also each time you prepare that dish, you'll get faster and faster at it.

Jessica (1:00:02)
Mm So true. I love those tips. And the fact that you say feel free to make it your own in some way. Because if there's something you didn't love about it, you can always tweak it. doesn't mean it doesn't work. The whole thing doesn't work. It just means like, well, tweak that one thing about it and make it your own. I think that sometimes recipes become so overwhelming for people because they're like, that's really far away from or I don't like that ingredient. If there's some part of it that you don't like, like, take that out and maybe add some

Whitney Aronoff (1:00:09)
Yes.

Yeah?

Jessica (1:00:31)
else or just take it out.

Whitney Aronoff (1:00:33)
if you're finding that you're too regimented about something that you're eating or cooking, then maybe there's just some areas of your life where you're too regimented where you need to lighten things up.

Jessica (1:00:44)
I agree. Yeah, keep it light. That's what.

This podcast is all about is helping to give people some inspiration and empower them to lighten up whatever areas of their lives they can. Yes. So thank you so much, Whitney, for sharing all of your wisdom and tips with us today. I've had such a fun time talking to you about, like I said, one of my original obsessions, which is food quality and nourishing our bodies through

nutrition and food.

Whitney Aronoff (1:01:15)
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me, Jessica.

Jessica (1:01:18)
Thank you.