The Live Lightly Podcast

Jessica Franklin (00:00)
Welcome to the Live Lightly podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Franklin. And today I am joined by Werner Forster. He is the co-founder and CEO of Revival Einkorn which is a product that is made with wheat that is non-hybridized. And we're going to get right into what that means. But welcome Werner. Thank you for joining me today.

Werner Forster (00:21)
Thank you, Jessica. It's so good to be here.

Jessica Franklin (00:24)
Yes, and first before we get into what non-hybridized wheat is,

I know you founded this, your co-founder is your wife I think that stories bring everything to life so I would love to hear about your journey up to the moment that you decided to to start Revival Einkorn.

Werner Forster (00:42)
Yeah, she is the matriarch for sure. Yeah, so we worked in the natural foods industry for over 30 years and just love it, right? Lots of good people, lots of good companies doing great things. And then we got into setting up land-based fish farms. It's kind of a big long story, but anyways, we ended up living overseas for a while. We've done in Chile for three years, Ecuador for four years. We did organic banana mango farming down there.

Then we wanted to live in Europe for a while. We moved to Portugal. I grew up surfing in Southern California, so we picked Portugal. It's an amazing, amazing spot. And then we started setting up some fish farms there to farm Dover sole and whatnot. And through the travels, you come across things once in a while that I think this would do really well in the States. People could like this, whatever it is. But when we came across Einkorn, it was probably closer to 22 years ago in Bulgaria, which is kind of in the region, the geography of the early Neolithic period.

You know, so it was very interesting to find it there through her friends who are involved in the, in the farm industry. And if you come from our industry and you discover Einkorn and realize, God, this is the very first week it's the, it's the, it's the way mother nature intended us to eat wheat. It's never hybridized. Thus it presents no health issues. All the health concerns that have created this whole gluten free category go away. You know, the whole thing just goes away. And so.

Jessica Franklin (02:04)
Mm-hmm.

Werner Forster (02:08)
then it also tastes amazing. It's different how it behaves, it tastes amazing. So if you discovered that it's kind of hard, and if you come from the natural position, it's kind of hard not to do something about it. it's been, I mean, it's not like we jumped on it right away. Developing a business around wheat is complicated, but it's been eight, we've been eating it for 22 years. It's been eight years since we started this project.

Jessica Franklin (02:31)
I just found it at my local farmer's market. That's how I stumbled upon it. I was at our usual bone broth booth where we pick up our weekly bag of bone broth. And it's actually soup made of this delicious bone broth. But anyways, and I saw the crackers at the booth next to it and I was very intrigued by some of the signage and what it said. And I had stopped.

given up crackers, stopped eating them at least a year or more ago, probably a couple years, and only on holidays, like, you know, when you get to load them up with all the fun fig jam and cheese and everything. But not like, I just stopped eating them as something that I would snack on because a couple of different reasons. think first off, just the quality of, you know, the cracker themselves, like they're just...

Now I feel like it's hard to find an organic cracker. And then if you can, it's just like, what's the health benefit of eating this, right? If I'm going to be paying money for this and eating something, my philosophy is that it should be providing my body some fuel and and fuel is nutrition, right? And so I just kind of felt like it was a wasted thing to be eating. And when I saw these crackers and I...

Werner Forster (03:42)
Thanks.

Jessica Franklin (03:49)
you know, talk to Razon and Richard a little bit about them and, you know, what are the ingredients and what's going on here with this? And I'm very on the nutritional up and up, you know, cutting edge of nutrition. And so I get like, wheat's been hybridized and that's why it's, you know, causing a lot of issues for people. Luckily, I am not one of those people because I would be probably pretty miserable. I'm Italian. So I love my pasta and bread.

Werner Forster (03:49)
you

We have a of opportunities to have a conversation with I think that that's I think it should happen. I think that's the only reason why doing this. I think we started off as kind of a hot side of the day. We started off as started off. I think that's the only reason off as a hot And I think reason started off a hot side

Jessica Franklin (04:18)
So thank goodness that's not been an issue for me, but I'm always just trying to find best quality of whole grains and things like that when I do eat bread and pasta. so I bought, I definitely tasted all the different, you know, cracker flavors and bought a box and was really just excited about the fact that like it was part of a meal, right? Like there's actually some fiber inherent in protein and you know, you can talk about all of that, but I just really enjoyed the fact that

it could be part of my meal instead of like, eh, it's just a cracker. So I'm really grateful that I found the product and I can't wait to, I actually don't know why I haven't tried the pasta yet. I think I just haven't seen it up in the stores just yet, but you guys have pasta too. yeah. Yeah, so.

Werner Forster (05:04)
We gotta get some to you. You're a local. You're a local in San Diego. We gotta get some to you. For sure. The pasta is amazing too. You boil it up and the steam that comes off the pot, it's just such a nice aroma. No, everything you said is the reasons why we got into it as well. Of course, we know quite a bit about it. We've been doing this. We're total nerds about einkorn.

Jessica Franklin (05:20)
huh.

Mm-hmm.

Werner Forster (05:26)
It's super potent in protein and antioxidants. It's got tons of nutrition, fiber. It's the perfect food. The first nutritionist we had on that developed our Einkorn explained booklet. It's extensive white paper. Dr. Susanna is an amazing person. She's got her nutritional license out of Boston University. She's a medical doctor here and so on and so forth. And I asked her at some point along the road, said, okay, so if you're stuck on the island, you you got your one album, what's that one food item? And it took her a while. She didn't want to admit it, but it's true.

It's just like the breadth of nutrition, the functionality of it. I don't know if you've ever come across folks who, back in the old school Europe, where they eat these large loaves of could be Einkorn, it could be Emmer, and these things would last for a month. And they would live off them. Water and a loaf of bread, well the reason is because of the amount of nutrition in them. It's unbelievable. I grew up probably like you think in flour.

Jessica Franklin (06:05)
you

Right.

Mm-hmm.

Werner Forster (06:22)
It's just water, throw some butter and sugar in it and make good things. You never think of it as super nutritious either, so it's an amazing little discovery.

Jessica Franklin (06:28)
Right, Yes, I agree 100%. And so if you could just...

go into a little bit of explaining the difference between non-hybridized and non-GMO just to make it clear.

Werner Forster (06:41)
Yeah. It's kind of funny. Totally. You know, we've done, we've, we've launched products before in the natural foods. We've gone through the whole non-GMO certification process. This one was kind of a bit of a laugh because it's like the most pure, you know, furthest from genetically modified ingredient in the world is probably EINCORN. And so, it wasn't too difficult to do it, but I think the biggest, a couple of really important takeaways are, effectively what we're learning over time. And this is by,

Jessica Franklin (06:52)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Werner Forster (07:10)
supported by a lot of experts in the field around genomics is that our bodies, obviously we take hundreds of thousands of years, sometimes millions of years to acclimate to things. And when you hybridize something, you're introduced a new molecular structure around each component of whatever that food item is. Most of the foods that we eat have been hybridized. You walk into the produce department, pretty much all that stuff's been hybridized at some point in time.

Hybridization has different levels of impact on the body. When you get into grasses and weeds, it really impacts the molecular structure of, proteins and starches and peptides and these things that later become really challenging for the body to assimilate, to digest, to know what it is. And then you have those issues around inflammation and so on and so forth. Not to get too into the weeds about it, but the least hybridized possible, the most in its natural state is always the best.

It's always well understood. The challenge is to find things that are in that state. I you can find some wild berries in the forest. They're probably not going to be hybridized. know, maple syrup off a maple tree. And there are things you can get, but most foods that we eat today are unfortunately hybridized and they've been hybridized in the last few thousand years, which is not long enough ago, you know.

Jessica Franklin (08:27)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, so that leads to a lot of problems. And so can you speak to some of the gluten intolerance and how EINKORN is different for people with gluten intolerance?

Werner Forster (08:41)
Yeah, so it has gluten. mean, got add glitins and glutinous molecules. add water and then you create gluten. So not until you add water that you don't actually have the gluten, right? That's how all wheats are. They all have those, but the structure of each, molecularly speaking, is what's different in every wheat. Einkorn comes from, it only has two sets of chromosomes.

Its origin wheat is different than all other wheats and then it was never hybridized. So clearly there's differences, but that's the one we're supposed to be eating. All the other ones, when you, you basically create bigger, stronger constituents or components, if you will. So the starches, you actually change the ratio of the starches from amylopectin, switch the ratio on all the other wheats and that creates.

a food ingredient that assimilates or converts to sugar quicker. Einkorn is a slower converting, so they consider it a lower glycemic index. Just because of the hybridization, it just happens to be that way. On the gluten side, a much lighter, easier to assimilate structure. Like when you bake with it, for example, it's pretty easy to see if you actually make bread or make dough with it. It just doesn't behave the way of all your other wheats. It's not as strong. It doesn't create that nice elastic, you know, so.

It's not as easy to make croissants, for example. So you can actually see the difference, but you can definitely feel the difference as well. I think one of the more important things for me is it's the only one that doesn't have any or has only trace existence of antigens, leading to inflammation. All other wheats have moderately high to very high, and including some of the ancient grains. it's like, forget about ancient grains. It's all about hybridized or non-hybridized.

Jessica Franklin (10:20)
Hmm.

Hmm.

Werner Forster (10:31)
So some of the ancient grains actually have higher levels of antigens than modern wheat, the modern wheat that gets all the blame. So I tell people a lot of times, don't differentiate between modern wheat and ancient wheat. That doesn't mean one is better than the other. It's only if it's hybridized or non-hybridized. That's really what you got to focus on. So if you're focused on that, you want non-hybridized, you got to make sure it's genetically pure. And that's what we did in the beginning. You know, we went through that whole process.

Then we built up a seed bank, set up the farmers, and then started making flour and working with bakers here in Barcelona and in Spain just to figure out how to work that gluten because it's challenging. And then eventually that led to us developing product for the states.

Jessica Franklin (11:12)
it sounds like definitely a process. And so it's grown in Spain. And can you tell me one thing that caught my eye that I love, in addition to the fact that it is pure and non hybridized and non GMO and all those things that you don't want, but also that it's on a regenerative farm. Can you tell us a little bit about that? because that's really

Werner Forster (11:16)
Yeah.

Jessica Franklin (11:39)
what it's all about, growing food the way that it's been grown for so long and not taking from the land in a way that is removing all of the minerals and all of the nutrients from the soil. So if you could go into a little bit about the regenerative aspect of your production.

Werner Forster (12:01)
At first, the idea of regenerative farming, there's a lot to learn until you can feel like you know what you're talking about. What we've learned is it seems like basically the way folks were farming einkorn 14,000 years ago was what would qualify as regenerative today. Just managing livestock, they figure out, if I plant einkorn after I planted lentils or garbanzos or whatever, some nitrogen setting,

plant, I get a better yield. And they were not working with the kind of fertilizers, you know, in modern day, in the modern day world, they're not working with hybridized plants, they're just work, they're just rotating really basic non hybridized plants and animals. And that's effectively what we do today. So we just rotate the same grains that they were consuming back then, which is garbanzos and lentils. That's what we do. So and then we have organic beef cattle that that graze.

And it naturally provides a cover crop because I Einkorn is a survivor. A lot, a lot of people who know they call it the survivor wheat. So, when it's maturing in the field, it's, it's, it's a competitor for nutrition. So it doesn't allow weeds to grow very much. But what happens when you harvest those weeds come up. So have all this beautiful like growth of wild plant that create a natural cover crop. And then, you know, the cows come grazing. So it's, it's,

pretty easy to do regeneratively. There's a few things you need to do to make sure the soil is really enriched and the microorganisms are thriving, you know, in terms of how you prepare the land and things like this, but it's one of the easier crops for sure to regenerate.

Jessica Franklin (13:41)
Mm-hmm.

I love that. Just working with the natural process and how it's supposed to be and caring for the land and caring for the animals.

Werner Forster (13:55)
Yes.

Jessica Franklin (13:59)
So that's always good to know as well. So we've talked a little bit about the nutrition aspect of it and the fact that, so do we find that people, because it is pure, people with gluten intolerances are finding that they can eat this because of its purity?

Werner Forster (14:19)
Yeah.

So, I mean, if I could just comment real quick on that whole side of it. First of all, we've discovered through studies that you have to develop celiac is what the understanding is today is glyphosate, a genetic propensity, you have to have a genetic propensity, and then having eaten a strong gluten.

Jessica Franklin (14:24)
Of course, please do.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Werner Forster (14:44)
Wheat if you do those three it dramatically increases the likelihood of developing celiac So if we never hybridized wheat or there was never a hybridized wheat in theory You would never have celiac or glyphosate of course, but we can't we can't solve that one Then the the the amount of folks that you know There's two things around the the kind of gluten intolerant not all so sure that it's actually gluten. It could be certain fibers

And then you enter the FODMAP discussion, right? And try to remove those things from your diet. But by far, majority of the folks who are affected by gluten are not at celiac or diagnosed celiac level. And the science is very clear that you can definitely consume einkorn, which is amazing. And we have, I mean, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people that, I mean, there's thousands out there eating it that are gluten intolerant, but we have many that are communicating back and forth with us on a regular basis. We have friends here that's been going on for years.

Jessica Franklin (15:21)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Werner Forster (15:40)
that they have serious reactions and they have absolutely no problem. they eat a lot of our pasta or so on and so forth. So for celiac, legally we cannot say to eat it. We know the research suggests that often there's not an issue, but that's a tricky area because celiac's a very serious health challenge that you don't wanna have any issues with.

There's a lot of great research on our website. We have a science menu on the bottom. You can download the Einkorn Explain, and it goes into the details about this. It can help provide a little bit of guidance for folks on this subject, too.

Jessica Franklin (16:13)
that's good. I really think that that's a great resource to mention because if you are celiac, I feel like, you know, there's not a lot of healthy options to replace bread and crackers, you know, like you're just getting into a bunch of other undesirable ingredients for gluten free eating. And oftentimes those are heavily processed and not organic.

and so on and so forth. Can you speak to that a little bit? like, looks like you have something to say on the...

Werner Forster (16:47)
When we started this thing, it's so funny. I don't know if you've done this before. We got this marketing study done and basically what it confirmed is that everybody wants to wheat. If we could eat wheat, we want to wheat. We don't want to eat pizza made with whatever or crackers from soybean. You know what I mean? Let's just eat it with wheat. The problem is we got to solve the wheat problem. Yeah. And then because it introduces other issues, one thing that does happen, which I didn't appreciate

Jessica Franklin (16:59)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, potato starch. Yeah.

Werner Forster (17:15)
until I was really involved in this project, is that when you change ingredients in your diet, you're also changing the input of every single one of the nutrients it has. So it's not that easy to wipe out wheat because wheat is rich in protein. So if you shift around, you got to replenish that protein or fibers or other minerals So when you switch to other gluten-free ingredients,

Jessica Franklin (17:30)
Mm-hmm.

Right, yeah, and enzymes.

Werner Forster (17:40)
Then you have the glycemic index issue depending on the type of gluten-free ingredient. If you're using rice or whatever else, you well, you got to be careful about that as well. And then, you know, if you look at wheat, the ones that are lowering glycemic index, I mean, first of all, einkorn just naturally is because of the type of starch it has. But if you look in general, wheats, well, the more fiber you have in there, so the more stone ground, the less processed it is.

Jessica Franklin (17:43)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Werner Forster (18:07)
we're guessing something like at least 98 % of the gluten-free consumption is not associated with celiac. A fair amount is associated with gluten intolerant, if it's truly understood that that's what's happening, because there's many reasons why we feel the way we do in our gut. But then a big part of it too is just the sense that

Jessica Franklin (18:23)
Mm-hmm.

Werner Forster (18:31)
It's part of my fitness program. feel like my belly's just full or it's making me bloated or whatever. And you get that. We all want to try to do everything we can to be as fit and look as good as we can. it makes sense. The wheat belly in these books, I think there's just a mass amount of the population just wants to eat wheat because it doesn't work in my fitness regime. That's the beauty of this. It's like we have athletic teams here. We've talked recently FC Barcelona, right? And Barcelona football, whole, those guys.

We just recently started talking to them. They're loving it because it's something they can actually feed the athletes, pasta, right? It's something you can actually eat a lot of, really rich in protein, easy to digest. It actually shows some, we have some studies showing anti-inflammatory properties, you know? So I think there's just tremendous potential on that side as well. We've got some ultra-distance runners that are around here that also eat it by the pound.

And they're loving it and it's wheat. It's just the right one, you know, so Yeah Yeah, she knows what she's doing

Jessica Franklin (19:26)
you

Yeah, it's just food, What mother nature provided, she knows, right? Like we don't know better. And yeah, you're right. So many people avoid gluten. I don't know how many times my husband has kind of gone on that roller coaster of like, well, maybe it's gluten. you know, maybe I should take that out. And, you know, I try to just focus on whole grain and...

Werner Forster (19:38)
Exactly.

Jessica Franklin (19:56)
quality and organic, of course. But it's definitely a challenge when you like bread and pasta to be kind of doing that balance and juggling act, So yeah.

Werner Forster (20:11)
If you can get a good baker in your neighborhood, you love eating bread and you don't have access to einkorn bread, try to get one that's long fermented, like a truly long ferment, 12, 24, 48 hour ferment, which some of those bakers are doing. And that really helps pre-digest the the gluten. So that helps. That's the best way to eat all these other glutens.

Jessica Franklin (20:16)
Yeah. Uh-huh.

Mmm.

the other gluten's like, you're saying like maybe a sourdough or something like that bread. Yeah, yeah.

Werner Forster (20:40)
Yeah, sourdough, that specifically because sometimes they can just throw some starter yeast in there and it's two hours and they call it sourdough. You want to get one that no, that's been fermenting for 24 hours or for 12 hours or whatever. Then you know that it's actually been pre-digested. It starts breaking down the glutens and peptides and it reduces the inflammation and everything. That's way they do it in Europe. That's one of the reasons. Yeah.

Jessica Franklin (20:47)
Okay.

Hmm.

That's a good tip.

Yeah, so for anyone listening out there, I know I have a bakery local that does do it that way. And they are also at our farmers market, and that's where I get a lot of my bread product. But yeah, I know that's a great tip for a lot of people who maybe have a local baker that, you know, it's a good question to ask. And yeah, good point.

Werner Forster (21:13)
awesome.

Our crackers are actually long fermented as well. We do sourdough, and that's why they're sourdough, but they're real sourdough. We use the natural bacteria and then we've sourdough them just like you do a nice loaf of sourdough bread and then we bake them in bread ovens so that you get that really nice texture. It's a little more costly and whatever, a little more artisanal, but it just turns out a really nice product.

Jessica Franklin (21:34)
huh.

So that brings up another point, I think, and it's so true. It's an amazing cracker. And I want to talk a little bit about, there must be, the reason why they've hybridized wheat is to produce a higher yield, right? Is that sort of the main reason why it's been done? So what kind of challenges have you come across so far doing it this way?

Werner Forster (22:05)
Exactly.

Yeah, so mainly to increase the yield and then also to kind of protect it from high winds because the natural, the einkorn wheat is a really high wheat. It's beautiful when the wind blows. It's like waves blowing through the fields where your modern wheat you've seen in the weeds. Normally it's just a stubby little plant with a big wheat thing. That's also part of the hybridization process. So it's easier to, it's easier to harvest. It doesn't blow over in the wind.

Jessica Franklin (22:19)
Mm-hmm.

mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Werner Forster (22:40)
And then they also hybridize the husk and natural protection out of it. So they don't have to de-haul it, but then it's susceptible to insects, you know? And so it naturally came with its own protection, all these things, but that also requires the challenge. also requires more processing. There's more to yield loss. Lower yields mean we have to pay more per kilo. I mean, it's four or five times more costly to farm,

Jessica Franklin (22:48)
Mm-hmm.

Werner Forster (23:06)
our box of crackers aren't the cheapest on the shelf and, you know, if they're priced tomorrow or less around a premium gluten free and then pass that down, it hits the farmer and then the farmer's got enough income to make this exciting for them to commit to, even though the yield is a fourth of what it is for all your other weeds, you know.

Jessica Franklin (23:25)
Hmm. Yeah, so you've found the right balance of all of that then over the years it sounds like

Werner Forster (23:31)
Yeah, you you have to educate because not everybody's willing to pay a certain price. But when they know what's in that box and even just on the protein, if you look at it on a protein basis, how much protein it's not too difficult to rationalize. I mean, they're not that expensive either. They're they're pretty normally priced. But yeah, that's that's probably, think, the the biggest challenge from a farming perspective. We haven't seen yet major challenges like you have in some of these other monocrop.

Jessica Franklin (23:47)
Yeah.

Werner Forster (23:59)
culture industries from a weather perspective. Like I was saying, einkorn is a survivor and it tends to kind of know what it needs to mature. It deals well with droughts. Like we can grow einkorn in substandard soils, which is super interesting in terms of creating a purpose again for a lot of land that's been overlooked with more modern type farming. So it's mainly the education process I'd say is number one for sure.

Jessica Franklin (24:20)
Mm-hmm.

educating the consumer that you're putting dollars into nutrition versus just a product that is not necessarily as nutritious. And that's something that I think across the board is the challenge with healthier food products is that it does cost more to produce this in the right way.

but you are actually buying the nutrients that your body needs to fuel itself. And so there's going to be less hunger, less of a void to fill when you're filling your body with what it needs, the protein, the fiber, the vitamins, the minerals. Like when you said about the husk in the hybridized wheat, it's my understanding that the hybridized wheat, and because of that situation, you're taking out

the psyllium content or not psyllium, silica, silica, yeah. which is a mineral that's important for our hair and nails and whatnot. Like that is the mineral that is depleted from hybridized wheat, is that correct?

Werner Forster (25:22)
brand, yeah.

Yes.

That's right, yeah, Magnes, Magnesium, absolutely.

Jessica Franklin (25:36)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, so when you look at it that way and you're educating the consumer about, you know, buying food for nutrition and for what your body needs to fuel itself versus just something to put in to fill the hunger void, then I think that people understand like, it's worth spending a little bit more money because that's why I'm eating. I'm eating to

fuel my body and to feed it these micro and macro nutrients that actually it needs versus the potato starch and the gluten-free thing that's super expensive too. Yeah, yeah.

Werner Forster (26:11)
And that's what mean.

Exactly. So I the nutrition part is massively important and it's been for a time. I think one thing that's interesting, a positive takeaway from the pandemic that we went through was, there is any, is aside from seeing how nature came back and thrived in the oceans and whatnot, is that we all learned about inflammation and the importance of inflammation and disease, the underlying issue, right? It's like before we really didn't pay too much attention to it.

Jessica Franklin (26:37)
Yeah.

Werner Forster (26:48)
So now it's really important when you eat, you eat for nutrition, like you're saying, you got to get the breath and the depth, the potency, the concentrations of, but you should also be trying to eat to reduce inflammation in your total diet, right? That's extremely important to do as well. And if you can at the same time, be making choices that deliver those for you, but also support regenerative farm practices, organic farm practices and practices that support farmers.

as well. I then you've got, you've really got something, I think, you know, you them all together.

Jessica Franklin (27:14)
Mm-hmm.

That's what I love about your product is that it does take care of all of the different layers of sustainability because that's something that's so important to me is that you're looking at a product that is taking care of the land that is providing the food for us, right? But also taking care of the people who are growing it and.

their health and their prosperity as well. And so I think it's a beautiful way to be able to contribute as a consumer to the greater good of all. So it's like a, it's an energetic exchange, right? Instead of just like, hmm, what can I get for the least amount of money, right? Yeah, that's sort of.

Werner Forster (27:57)
I love it.

Yes.

Jessica Franklin (28:09)
a different way to, if we could just like shift our perspective a little bit, I think around what we spend on money, it won't feel like it's, you know, a loss if we spend more on a higher quality product.

Werner Forster (28:23)
100%. I mean, it's the value of your podcasts and things is just helping people get this good information. Right. I think it boils down to that. Really, it's just educating yourself on these things and then being able to find them as well.

Jessica Franklin (28:36)
Yeah. Cause it is so hard to find the truly, truly good within all of the noise out there of marketing and greenwashing that's happening right now. so yes, that's, I'm really trying to sift through all of that and bring the best of the best to, if I'm, if you're hearing it on my podcast, it's because I have, you know, vetted it to be of the highest quality and integrity.

Werner Forster (29:02)
awesome.

Jessica Franklin (29:04)
because I want to support that for the planet and for all of the people who are like you having a business that is you're doing all the right things and you're not a big corporation who's just worried about the bottom line. So that's I think if we not only are educating ourselves and raising our own awareness but also talking about it and sharing it is a great way to help you know just friends and family as well.

So sharing this episode with someone and maybe that is eating gluten free and That way they can be a little bit more on the up and up about the latest and greatest, which is revival einkorn, right?

Werner Forster (29:46)
I love it. Yeah, I for sure.

Jessica Franklin (29:47)
We're about to see you on the shelves of Whole Foods, right? I mean, we're talking, it is like mid-November 2024 right now. And Razan told me that you guys are about to hit Whole Foods.

Werner Forster (30:01)
We are about to hit Whole Foods. It's supposed to be on shelf there. I think it starts week one of February, week one, week two February. And that's the pasta line, not the crackers. but the pasta is awesome. So it's great product to have. You can just eat it all the time. Imagine having a pasta that there's nothing bad with it. It tastes great and it's super nutritious and it's easy to eat. It doesn't fill your belly. You can eat a ton of it and you don't feel bloated in the morning or what.

Jessica Franklin (30:07)
Okay.

Werner Forster (30:26)
You know, so yeah, it's so it's it's hitting they're gonna they're they're launching it in like three, huh? They said 347 stores. It's all the big stores around the country. They have some space in it. So look out for the revival pasta

Jessica Franklin (30:28)
I'm excited for that.

Wow.

Good for you, that is great. Yeah, and so it's hard to know if you see a new box on the shelf. Sometimes it's hard to know like, what is this now? Or just like it might not even be on your radar. So that's why it's so important to share this episode with somebody that you know that loves pasta and is avoiding it or is eating like, you know, a different kind of pasta that's maybe not quite as nutritious for them.

Werner Forster (30:54)
You know what? Yeah.

I think what could be helpful to just because that your listeners, mean, if they want to, we are, we have been, if you go to our Instagram, example, revival line corn, and you dig deep into the Instagram, there's a lot of quality content. What I mean, scientific based, you know, it's got substance for, and we just put it in there. Maybe it's not the most, you know, trendy for, for tick tock and all that kind of stuff. We, look at it more as just a platform for people to source good information. And that's what we put into our, our, Instagram. And then on our website,

They can sign up for email. We're starting now even more regular communication, educating, resource, because we know it's a big long story and it's wheat though, so it's relevant. If you can really get to know it and work with it, our intention is to keep introducing other categories of product based on fine corn wheat. So maybe there's frozen pizzas in the future, or sliced frozen bread, or whatever else along the way.

Jessica Franklin (31:44)
Good.

Werner Forster (32:07)
Like quinoa, know, quinoa is so funny. 10 years ago, he kind of didn't. We lived in Ecuador. I quinoa soup all the time when I was growing up 12 years old, you know? But now it's just everywhere, although it's not as functional, you know? And it does have a little different taste. So I think, know, einkorn could be something similar.

Jessica Franklin (32:18)
Yeah.

I agree. Yeah, I totally can see it in your future. And yes, so definitely connect through your website and through like you said, your Instagram is a great resource and just a nice something to see in your feed that gives you a little bit of keeps you on the up and up. So what is your Instagram handle? Share that with us.

Werner Forster (32:33)
Haha.

Hahaha

It's just, it's easy. Just Revival Einkorn. That's it. And then website RevivalEinkorn.com.

Jessica Franklin (32:56)
Perfect. And your website.

Okay, and sign up for the newsletter and look for it on coming to your Whole Foods shelves in February and also you can order off your website if you can't wait. Just, they can order it and have it shipped, right? Yeah.

Werner Forster (33:04)
That nice and easy.

We get tons of orders on the website. Every day we're shipping people all around the country. If you're in Southern California, we're in quite a few stores around the country and you can find that information on our website. But in SoCal, like Arowans and Lazy Acres and Jimbo's and just a lot of amazing stores supporting the project. So, super happy.

Jessica Franklin (33:28)
Mm-hmm.

Very true. I saw the Jimbo's the other day and I bought two boxes. It was on sale. So I grabbed a couple and one of them is already gone. Of course. Well, I'm definitely a new customer for sure and a new friend. So I appreciate your time Warner. Thank you for joining me.

Werner Forster (33:44)
Nice. Thank you.

Excellent.

So good to be here. Thanks so much, Jessica. Thanks for spreading the word.

Jessica Franklin (34:02)
Of course, I love to raise awareness and if you haven't picked up my Sustainable Living Guide yet, please go do that. It's on livelightly.eco, that's livelightly.eco. It's under the tab that says free guide and you'll also be signing up for my newsletter which has some great recipes and weekly tips, reminders for sustainable.

things that you can swap out at home and also just introducing my next podcast episode. So if you haven't already done that, please do so and I will see you on the next episode. Thank you for listening.