943: Chocolate As a Health Food: The Power of Chocolate + Adaptogens With Jonathan Pantalis

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Katie: Hello and welcome to the Wellness Mama Podcast. I’m Katie from barbaraoneill.online, and this episode is all about chocolate as a health food with some important caveats. We go into the power of chocolate, especially when combined with adaptogens, as well as really some of the pitfalls and caveats and things you need to know about chocolate sourcing.

I really enjoyed today’s guest. He’s someone I met through a mutual friend and I fell in love with his product before I ever got to meet him and have been using it regularly as part of my protein and micronutrient theory of wellness that I’ve talked about recently on a podcast. Jonathan Pantalis is the founder of a company called Living Ratio, and he began his journey similarly to me by questioning everything,  about for, in his case, the way chocolate was made and about how it can contribute or take away from health. He had at the time, low energy and fatigue, and he realized that the sugary processed ingredients were holding him back and that there was a way to actually make chocolate into an incredibly health supportive food.

So he re-engineered the process from the ground up, got rid of the sugar, sourced ethically harvested cacao, and using his craft as both a chocolatier and a chocolate maker created something called Cacao Calm. Which is a sugar free, adaptogen infused, chocolate drink that is delicious and it blends indulgence with wellness.

I first tasted this at my friend Todd’s House, who’s a mutual friend of Jonathan and I, and was blown away with the difference I felt from it, and it’s now part of my routine for that reason. And we go deep on all things chocolate and sourcing, and theobromide and anandamide and all the things you might not know about chocolate in this episode.

So let’s jump in.

Jonathan, welcome. Thank you so much for being here.

Jonathan: Thank you. Thank you for having me. It’s nice to meet you.

Katie: Nice to meet you too. We have, a dear mutual friend and I’m so glad we finally get to connect and how fun that we get to record our introductory meeting and learn at the same time. I’m really excited for this conversation and we’re going to get to go into some fun directions related to chocolate being a health food, to understanding adaptogens, to ways we can support our body in ways we might not have considered.

And before we jump into that, I have a note from your bio that you almost opened a pie shop and I would love to hear about this and how you’ve been formulating chocolate for over 10 years already.

Jonathan: Yeah, yeah, this I gotta be careful because it could be a long story, but I’ll try to give you like the crash course story. Basically, I was an overly ambitious 19 year old who convinced a real estate developer who was at the time a respectable, you know his reputation shifted, but at the time he was respectable real estate developer.

I convinced him that I had a food business. It was chocolate and pie and he really liked what I was doing. And you know, I really failed to get a lot of backing in the business and he just liked my.. he liked the pie and he liked the chocolate so much. I mean, his wife called me and she said that they’ve been all over the world and they’ve been to Europe and everywhere and my chocolate was the best they ever had. Now that wasn’t the healthiest, like super health chocolate at that time. I had certainly a health journey in between, basically with no co-signer, no backing, no nothing, I have signed a commercial lease at 19 years old to open a pie and chocolate shop. And then quickly found out that this guy that I had signed a lease with was in a whole lot of legal and financial trouble. So basically, long story short, he ends up getting arrested for like 30 felonies. And I have the keys to the space that he was supposed to build out and he never did. And unfortunately a very tragic story because after he was arrested and bailed out, he drove off a cliff and so things were in limbo for a really long time.

So it was, you know, he had lost the property, but taken out fake loans or taken out fraudulent loans to repurchase it. So, it took years before anyone knew even who the actual owner of the property was. The people that thought that they owned it, it was seized by the feds. So very crazy story, intro to business, like quite a trial by fire, but I’ve gotten better at summarizing the story because it’s a lot of, it’s a kind of a wild story, but certainly a crash course into things. But then over those few years where things were being sorted out, I had quite a health transformation. I was really struggling with energy and fatigue and just terrible brain fog.

It really inhibited my ability to focus and my ability to learn. I always loved learning. I always loved doing things. I was always like a nerdy kid that liked to experiment and do all those things, but I really really struggled with actually doing the things I wanted to do. And so during that time, I really took a look at my health.

I tried all sorts of diets and I basically decided hey, I don’t want to do chocolate that has all these ingredients like caramel and corn syrup and all this stuff. So I made a healthier sugar free chocolate and we did that for a very, very long time. We first, we were in grocery stores in the Bay Area California, and then, we went all online. And in the last year I pivoted away from that for a few reasons, to focus on the things that are really like at my core. Not that chocolate is over for us, I’m just reinventing that part of the business, but it’s, you know, those delicate truffles and stuff is still like a very big passion project for me, but the bigger passion for me is helping people feel better with clean food, because I believe that we can enjoy things that maybe don’t taste as healthy, and still consume them in a healthy way.

So that’s really my passion is like, allow people to enjoy the things that they used to enjoy and it may be because of what they’re doing, no longer can. So, yeah.

Katie: Well, I definitely did not have quite as wild of an intro into the business world as you did, but I say often that I sort of earned my real world MBA through some tough lessons, and I wouldn’t trade those lessons for the world, but I hope to not repeat them. And it sounds like we might share that in some like tough lessons we’ve gotten to learn along the way. And I’ll say I first got an introduction to you and to your product when staying with our mutual friend, Todd, and I’ll link to his podcast in the show notes.

And at night he made his wife and I this chocolate milk using your chocolate. And I was like, wow, what is this? Because A, it’s delicious, and B, I felt so good after it. And I love that you mentioned feeling better with clean food and not having to sacrifice something being delicious. I feel like that’s where the magic happens because compliance only lasts for so long when you’re like, I remember my days of drinking, like, spirulina straight in water, it wasn’t the most fun thing.

But when you have a product that tastes good and is good for you, that’s the sweet spot. And I also feel like chocolate has gotten an unfair bad rap, and I want to go through some of the reasons why, because there’s legitimate reasons, it seems, for some of the problems people have with chocolate, and we’re going to get to get into those.

But I would love for you to walk us through what is the actual story on chocolate itself, on true chocolate, not, and we’ll talk about all the additives and preservatives and horrible things that often go along with it. But it sounds like this has been part of your world for a very long time.

So I would love to kind of start diving into chocolate as a health food.

Jonathan: Sure, sure. So I mean, it really started, with me like  I would take Hershey syrup as a kid and I’d pour it on a dish and I put it in the fridge because I’m expecting it to freeze into chocolate, but then it didn’t freeze. And I’m like, okay, and then I put it in the freezer and it still didn’t turn into chocolate.

So I started figuring out what makes chocolate do this? So I’d melt down chocolate bars and then it would solidify, but it’d have all these streaks in it. Like everybody’s had that experience where a chocolate bar melts in the car and then it doesn’t quite freeze back up the same way. So there are a lot of components in chocolate that make chocolate what it is. So there’s the fat, there’s the solids, so it’s just the fiber from the plant, all the solids that are not fats, right. So that’s where a lot of your beneficial compounds are in there. Some of them are fat soluble, some of them are not. But then you have your sugar in a chocolate bar, right?

And then there’s other things in there. So for me, I  just had a long almost decade and a half of just asking why, I guess. Why does this ingredient matter? Why do we have this in here? And I just wanted, I had this hunch when I got into my health journey that if I could eliminate as many unnecessary ingredients, I didn’t even know anything about organic food, really. I was raised pretty standard American diet. My mom cooked a lot of food, certainly did her best, but it was still very standard American diet and so I didn’t think that fast food was bad for me, but I just had this hunch. I was like, you know, I probably need to eliminate a lot of these unnecessary ingredients because we just don’t know. It was just a hunch for me and I started to feel better. I mean, now that’s pretty well known information, but like 15 years ago, it really wasn’t. It wasn’t like people, it was just obvious that the toxins in our food were making us not feel good.

I mean, at least for me, at least for my upbringing and the way that I saw things. I just thought if they put it in our food then it must be safe, and I followed the food pyramid and I wondered why I felt so bad, you know? But anyways, yes,  back to chocolate. You know, I would just say, what is this lecithen in there?

And well, lecithen isn’t necessarily the worst thing that they put in chocolate. It certainly changes the taste. And the only real reason they put it in there is so that it’s more easy to manufacture at high scale. It’s more just an industrial additive. It’s doesn’t really have any inherent purpose other than to make it easier for the manufacturing process. So I thought why do we want to put this in there? And it also affects the taste and the flavor and everything dramatically, in my opinion, makes it taste waxy, just makes it not as good. So, yeah, those are your base ingredients in a dark chocolate, right? And then, of course, in a milk chocolate, they have milk that’s added to it.

And obviously different milk powders have different qualities. There are some really good ones out there now, but for the most part you’re dealing with all the growth hormones and all the other things. And just the general increasing allergy people are getting to the dairy to contend with.

So, yeah, those are your main ingredients, but then also chocolate that is sourced improperly can have a lot of heavy metals and things like that. Now, some heavy metals are natural in volcanic soil. So, it’s good to know the difference between chocolate that’s loaded with heavy metals that shouldn’t in there, like tons of lead, etc. And then, like, that little bit of cadmium that’s in just volcanic rich soil. That’s something I want to put out there. We source our chocolate for the lowest of everything, because that’s important. I mean, the less toxins, the better. But, what I will say is that the lead and the mercury and things like that are the big, big concern.

Those are the things that are the most correlated to tremendous health issues.  I was sourcing in the early days a biodynamic chocolate. It was like supposed to be the best, cleanest, most biodynamic, amazing chocolate. Every time I ate it, my skin would start to break out. And I didn’t understand because I was like, this is supposed to be the best stuff. Well, it had a ton of lead, like tons of lead. So I, overtime, we started to identify different regions that just were known for more of this, especially in South America, certain parts, there could be higher lead, higher cadmium. And you know, you just got to find the right regions. And so that’s been a big piece for me because I was aware of the heavy metal thing, probably like 10 years ago.

So I always just wanted to do sourcing that didn’t have it because everybody processes metals differently. Some people it goes right through them, other people, it accumulates very fast. So it’s just something that we have to be cautious about.

Katie: Yeah, I do feel like we’re hearing more about that, and that’s awesome that that’s something you already take into account. And a good reminder that trace amounts of these things are found in the soil and in the Earth’s crust and in our environment, so it’s not like an absolute all or nothing. It would be, from my understanding, almost  impossible to completely avoid those things, but being aware of our exposure and amounts I feel like is very important.

And like you, 15 years ago, I started questioning, is there more to food than just calories? Or as my friend JJ says, is the body more than a bank account and more of a chemistry lab? And that led to a much deeper understanding. And thankfully it’s much easier now. I remember back then having to order so many things online or source grass fed beef from an Amish farmer and buy it out of the back of  a carriage on a side road. So now things are much easier, but until that time, like you, I thought, like if it’s in our food, of course it must be safe. They wouldn’t let something unsafe be in our food. And now even in the mainstream, we’re hearing a lot about food safety.

And I feel like this is entering the mainstream conversation, but I feel like for chocolate, especially, this is so fascinating because it seems like with consideration of some of these factors, chocolate can either be a very health supporting food or something really not helpful to our bodies at all. And then understanding that distinction also is probably really helpful, especially because many people crave chocolate. Like there’s even jokes and memes about it because it’s so common to crave chocolate. And I would love to talk about some of the reasons that might be the case.

Like I know as women, we often crave it more or less at different times of our cycle. I’ve read some things about chocolate being a great source of certain things that we actually need hormonally. And that might be for instance, one of the reasons that we crave chocolate, but assuming we’re talking about well sourced chocolate and not any of the problematic things that we’ll go deeper on in a minute.

What are some of the benefits of true chocolate that might be some of the reasons humans do crave it?

Jonathan: Yeah, so it’s interesting because for many, many years, I ate chocolate every day, but I didn’t really know true chocolate. I didn’t really know what chocolate was. Actually, I brought, it’s funny, I bought this recently, this is a fresh Cacao pod. It’s drying up now, so the darker part is it drying up, but it started with this beautiful reddish color. And these pods grow on trees.

They’re usually a little, like this one was larger when I bought it, but it’s starting to shrivel up, but I just didn’t want to process it and turn it. I’m just kind of keeping it as a keepsake, not really. I was going to make chocolate bars with it, but I just, I need more than one to really make it worth the while. But there are beans in here and white pulp. And the beans are what makes chocolate. The beans are in a little skin, in a shell, and the chocolate is actually fermented. If I just opened this up when it was fresh and ate the beans, they would be so sour. They would almost burn your taste buds, they’re so sour. So we actually ferment, when chocolate is processed, it’s fermented and then dried.

So during that fermentation and drying process, that’s where like issues like mold contamination and things like that can happen too. So anyways, the benefits. So one of my favorites is the theobromine because it’s very similar to caffeine, but it has a different curve in your body. So, they’re both adenosine inhibitors.

So, they both more or less have a similar effect. But theobromine has a lot more of the circulatory benefits. That’s really where people, you know, they eat dark chocolate for health. I’d love to make a comment on dark chocolate, too, in a moment, but people eat dark chocolate for the heart health, of course. Theobromine is one of those big ones, but caffeine, you know, you drink a cup of coffee, you get the spike of energy, and then you have the crash. Well, theobromine takes a little bit longer to take effect, but it lasts longer. In combination with theobromine, there’s also anandamide and a little bit of PEA in there as well.

So those are all known as bliss molecules that make us feel happy. So chocolate really is like, it’s more or less a tree nut, if you will, or a seed that has all these really incredible happy chemicals in there that are good for our neurotransmitters and of course good for our hormones.

So I really think theobromine a fascinating one because for people that don’t do well with caffeine, they can often do well with theobromine. So that’s why some people have a stimulating effect from chocolate. But once again, it’s much, much less than that of caffeine. So, and the amount of actual caffeine in chocolate is very, very, very small.

Like in our cacao product, it’s less than a half of a cup of decaf coffee, so you have to consume a lot of it to get a stimulating effect, but those other benefits that people feel the happiness and all that, it’s not you’re not consuming like large amounts.

Katie: Yeah, that’s so interesting. And I’ve heard of like anandamide and others, just like the bliss molecules. And I didn’t realize that chocolate had those as well. So that’s really interesting because of that link to neurotransmitters and feel good hormones. And from my understanding, that’s something we do like endogenously produce as well, but it can be really helpful to have supporting compounds exogenously also.

Jonathan: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, because they all play into caffeine and theobromine  both like those all play into our energy production in our body. I think theobromine seems to have less of a detrimental impact than the caffeine and then you have all those other happy chemicals. I mean, there’s really no harm in getting more things that make us feel good if it doesn’t have a detrimental effect and it’s supportive like that, it’s good. But the problem with the chocolate is once again, you have heavy metals, you have mold contamination in the raw, just unprocessed chocolate, and then your sugar and all your other additives that can be a big, big problem.

Katie: That makes sense. And I feel like also when we’re talking about most types of chocolate, obviously there’s an added component of sugar. And I feel like that is at least there’s a lot of awareness about that and people are being intentional at least about their sugar consumption and being aware of that.

But I’m now also seeing so many chocolates with alternatives to that, everything from ones that I would consider on the true more natural end like dates, for instance, all the way to not just sugar, but like xylitol, allulose, erythritol, monk fruit. So I would love your take on all the different sweeteners that are often included in chocolate, especially things to be aware of, because those are often marketed as sort of like healthy alternatives.

Jonathan: Yeah. So, I’m not a fan of Xylitol, I’ll say that right, right now. I know there are benefits potentially to oral health with Xylitol. I’ve used xylitol toothpaste, you know, sometimes in a pinch, I’ll buy a toothpaste that has xylitol. I’m not saying xylitol is like a toxic poison. Well, it can be for pets, so that tells us something about it.

But the other thing is, look at how it’s made. I mean, for anything, it’s like, look at how they make it. A lot of people will look at scary articles about different sweeteners and not really look at like, how is this made? How is that made? Things like sucralose is literally the adding of a bleach molecule, chlorine, to sugar, to sucrose. So things like that. And there are plenty of studies that show that it disrupts gut bacteria in mice. So it’s like,  I can’t say there’s a, you know, there’s no direct study on it, right. But the animal studies suggest that you’re basically nuking your good bacteria by consuming sweeteners like that. And if Xylitol kills bacteria in the mouth, I would imagine that it can do similar in your gut. So I’m not, haven’t been a big fan of that. And also just, if you look at how xylose is made, it is one of the most chemical processes. It’s actually crazy. It has toxic waste that has to be disposed of in certain ways.

There’s like all these hazards because it’s made from xylose. So if you look at like how xylitol is made, it doesn’t look as scary. But if you look at how xylose is made, that xylitol comes from, it’s like, it’s a chemical. It’s not just a food friendly food product. So it’s not found in very high quantities in a lot of foods. Erythritol is though, not everybody, does well with erythritol, but erythritol is. So, you know, it’s more found from fermentation and more of a natural process.

There’s no chemicals besides, you know, water and certain enzymes used to make things like erythritol. So, that one’s a little bit better, but once again, people can have issues there. With our product, we use monk fruit. I like monk fruit because monk fruit is the one that has no research to show that it affects your glucose and your insulin sensitivity. Pretty much all these other sweeteners, even stevia to some extent have an effect on our insulin sensitivity, regardless of whether or not they contain sugar. So for me, I like monk fruit because monk fruit is processed like this: they pick the monk fruit… And by the way,  the way they harvest and grow it affects the flavor tremendously because years ago, a lot of monk fruit tasted terrible.

Now it’s starting to taste a lot better because it’s really a juice extract. So the growing conditions matter. So we took a lot of time to figure out the sourcing and really understand like why certain batches taste good, certain batches taste bad. Well, you know, we’re still pre testing each batch before we buy large amounts, just so we know that it’s gonna actually have a good flavor, because it varies year to year. So we have a few suppliers from monk fruit just to make sure that we have good flavor. But monk fruit, they juice the fruit, they filter it with just a very simple filtration.

It’s not like some crazy filtration techniques. It’s very similar to like water filtration, just to get the very small particles and then its dried out. That’s it. This is the only ingredient added is water to dilute it and make the filtration better. But  it’s not a chemical process whatsoever. So for me, I like that, we’re just consuming fruit juice. And monk fruit on its own is sweet. So you could consume monk fruit and get the sweetness from the fruit. And it’s actually found in a natural amount, in a significant amount naturally. So I’m a fan of monk fruit for that reason.

I think allulose is kind of the new one, which we don’t use, but I am looking at using it for some future products. I think it’s very interesting because it’s not metabolized like sugar. But our body does, how do I say, it’s not metabolized like sugar, but it is considered a sugar. So it’s not, it doesn’t have that same gut effect and processing issue that some people might have with erythritol. I was on the fence about it for a long time until I did some deep research.  I just didn’t, I wasn’t convinced that it was a cleanly produced product. But once again, it’s a very gentle enzymatic process that it’s made with. So, the two that I really don’t like are the xylitol and the sucralose. Those are the most common in like chocolate products, protein powders, any sugar free products really.

Like if you’re looking at any of these protein bars that you find in  your big box stores, they’re using sucralose and sometimes like dextrin and dextrose, which are, I mean, it’s basically maltodextrin. I mean, it’s a slightly more complex sugar. So it’s slowly metabolized, but I just, I think in small quantities, those things are okay. But as the primary sweetener, there’s a lot to suggest that there’s some issues with those as well. And for me, my philosophy with how we do it, if we know better, we do better. So if there’s a better option for a sweetener, then we’re we’re going to use it, we’re going to switch and use it. But right now we’re pretty happy because  we have many, many years of research with monk fruit and also just thousands of years of history in Chinese medicine. Monk fruit is not a new product, you know, it certainly has thousands of years of use.

Katie: That’s so fascinating. And I know another term that often comes into play, especially when we’re talking about chocolate is the fair trade certification. And I know for me, when I first started understanding,  kind of the things that go on in the chocolate world, that was the reason I actually avoided a chocolate entirely for a long time, because that seemed like no possible benefit was worth the risk of that.

And now there are ways to know. But, I’m sure people have seen that certification on chocolate or heard that mentioned, but can you explain what that actually means and why it’s important to be aware of that?

Jonathan: Sure. So I think if you’re shopping for chocolate, well, first of all, there is a child labor issue with chocolate still. Big companies say there isn’t, but there absolutely still is a child labor, or you could say slave labor because they’re not really paid enough. So, basically the way it goes is the families cannot afford to feed their children and in certain developing countries, particularly in Africa, and so they basically give them, get them to work in these farms, and they’re really just making enough to eat. And they’re pretty well indebted, indentured to the farmers. So it’s not a good practice at all. It’s not just children. It’s also just people are being paid the very bare minimum. This is mostly your big chocolate companies. There’s your big three, if you will that are doing that. There are…and for that reason, a lot of people have avoided chocolate from Africa. Now, chocolate doesn’t come from Africa, it comes from South America. So the original source is from there.

And any of these farms that are doing these practices are usually monocropping and growing these little shrubs and slash and burn. They’re not really following very good farming practices. So the amount of processing that’s required for that chocolate to even be good is tremendous. So, my main concern, of course is the ethical human part of it, though. But it’s still a problem with your big, big chocolate companies. But if you’re buying directly from a farm, if you’re buying directly from maybe a co-op of farmers, then that’s not an issue. They might not have a fair trade certification.

They might not want to pay for a fair trade certification. That’s pretty common, but they can command a much higher price, especially if they have higher quality chocolate. There was some big shortages in the last few years of chocolate. Chocolate prices have more or less tripled. It’ll be interesting to see in the next few years how that impacts things because the industry has been, in Africa not so much in South America, has been hit pretty significantly. So, I am curious what will happen with all that. It’s just something we’re gonna have to keep an eye on and see what the impact is. That happened with vanilla too and vanilla prices never really went down again. So, the good, big question is, will that ever pass down to the farmers?

But, what I will say is this. Fair trade is very important when you’re buying from larger companies or you’re at Whole Foods or wherever, and you’re just shopping the shelves. But if you’re buying from someone who is sourcing more direct to farmers, then it’s not something that is necessarily like, you know… a lot of times these certifications cost a lot of money and add a lot of logistics to the small farms, so they just would rather not do it, but they charge significantly more.

So fair trade in a nutshell is just standardizing the price that you have to pay the farms and the workers and checking it. I’m a big fan of it. A lot of the cacao that we buy is fair trade certified. It’s almost all of it.

Katie: Well, and that’s a great point to understand.

Jonathan: And when I say almost all of it, we’re, of course, avoiding the slave labor.

I just want to preface that too. I’m not saying that we cut corners in that way, but it’s a huge issue that I’ve been aware of for a very long time. So most of our chocolate comes from South America. The South American cacao, it’s a much different structure than Africa. So, we’re not dealing with those issues really. So, but it’s still important to know your supply chain and know where it comes from. It’s just super, super important for every part of the process.

Katie: That makes sense. And it seems like similar to how I think of like an organic certification, like having a hands on knowing of where it actually came from and the story and the sourcing kind of trumps the certification, but the certification is there when you can’t do that due diligence. Like when I shop at the store, I buy organic. When I buy from my local farmer who I talk to and I know they’re not spraying things I wouldn’t want them to spray, I don’t care if they’re certified organic or not because I hear the story and know what’s actually happening with the meat or the food that I’m buying versus needing the government to go verify or a certification to go verify or whatever it may be. So that makes total sense to me.

And I love that you guys are sourcing from places where you have that pulse point and you know the story, you know the sourcing, you know the farmers probably. Llike it’s. that’s a whole different level than just to me, like a check mark or a certification. I feel like another thing that’s unique to what you’re doing is the addition of adaptogens. And I know that word is floating around a lot.

We’re hearing a lot about adaptogens on social media. We’re seeing a lot about cortisol on social media. And I would love if you could maybe give us an overview of what adaptogens are and talk about some of the specific ones that you researched and chose and why you use them.

Jonathan: Sure. So, Todd, our mutual friend knows that when he used to come to my chocolate factory in Northern California, that I would always have different chocolate projects. Here, try this, try this, try this, but I’d always make him some sort of adaptogen elixir. This is long before our actual products with adaptogens, but I’d always be making different elixirs.

And I was always excited, probably more excited about sharing something like that than I was the truffles and the chocolate bars that we were working on. So it was kind of like, It made me realize when I started pivoting more towards this product that it’s  closer to my passion and just sharing these experiences with people.

But, adaptogens, like for ours, we use three primary adaptogens, ashwagandha, cordyceps and reishi mushroom. Adaptogens are herbs that can more or less adapt, so if you need more energy to kind of help you get more energy. If you want to calm down, it helps you calm. So they kind of help regulate, right? They help you reach a more of an equilibrium, right? So that’s really what the idea of an adaptogen is. So we wouldn’t really call caffeine an adaptogen because it just makes you, gives you energy, right?  So, the reason why I made this product was because I was having issues with my own compliance of taking adaptogens. I had for many years been taking them daily and I was a very, very big proponent of doing it.

But unfortunately, in 2017, I lost a home in a fire. And, it’s a traumatic experience to go through and it’s been a long time now, so it’s no big deal anymore, but at the time it was a very, very traumatic and very like a hopeless, I was in a very hopeless state for a very long time for several years. I really got dysregulated and I couldn’t really maintain a routine. It’s just something was going on where I just could not… I was in super, super fight or flight mode for years. And that put me in a very, very tremendous disbalance. So one day I’m just like, this is enough.  I’m like, I can’t like, you know, I’ll take like ashwagandha to help me and then I’ll start to feel better. And then I’ll go out of whack again. I couldn’t keep myself in compliance to actually reset my system. Then I was like, you know what? I like chocolate. I wanted to eat chocolate every day, I always craved chocolate. And it’s just crazy because I’ve been making chocolate for at least five years at that time.

I was literally surrounded by chocolate every single day. I was just like, I still love chocolate to this day, I gotta have some chocolate all the time. And I was like, what if I just made a hot chocolate that tasted so good? Like I just, I just make it so good that it tasted unhealthy, just I was a little kid drinking Swiss Miss or something. So I spent probably six months just making that flavor base.

And then I was like, what I’ll do is I’ll add as much adaptogens to it as possible without ruining the taste. That was my thought process. If I can do this and then I can just put it in a jar, and then I can just scoop it into hot water. Then I’ll do this ’cause I’ll have tea in the morning, et cetera.

So I was like, then I’ll be able to comply with this. So that’s literally why I made this product. It wasn’t even intentionally a product. I know a lot of people make things because they want to market a certain thing or sell a certain thing or their main intent is to sell a mass amount and mass market it. I made this for myself originally and then it just turned out that, oh, this is actually pretty good. I should probably make this into a product. But my theory was I need to take ashwagandha every single day and enough of it so that I can keep my cortisol, start getting it back to a baseline. And ashwagandha is very, very powerful for regulating cortisol, regulating hormones, regulating testosterone, regulating a lot of female hormones as well. There’s dozens of studies that we can actually say lowers cortisol. We can actually say lowers stress response. A  lot of supplements don’t have the research that Ashwagandha does, but the one that we use, the KSM 66 has tons of very deep verified studies. So that’s been my, that was my thing.

And what’s interesting is a lot of companies are putting just the right amount so they can make the claims on the label. But for me, I know that the safe amount and the safe amount that’s been studied, the upper levels of study has been like 6 to 8, 000 milligrams a day, whereas people are putting like 20 milligrams of ashwagandha in their products. Like they’re putting a pinch. It’s just enough to say it’s on the label. And for me, yeah, I mean, we would have a more profitable business or something if we did those types of practices. We’d probably blow up faster like some of these other companies, but for me, I just cannot. I made this because I wanted it to actually have a result. You said when you consumed it, you felt good, and that’s what I want. I want something that when somebody drinks it, they know it’s actually helping them. A lot of times there’s just placebo amounts of these adaptogens in a lot of these products. So, for me, the dosage matters.

And so, that’s why every serving of ours has a thousand milligrams. Not like your… we could get away with 200 milligrams. We could get away with 40 milligrams maybe. But it’s just not, then we’d be selling an empty promise in my eyes. That’s how I see it and I just don’t like that. So ashwagandha was a very huge centerpiece for this formula. And then, I added the medicinal mushrooms in there to support it. The reishi mushroom is good for the heart, good for calm, and focus. And then also the cordyceps adds a little bit of… your cordyceps is good for oxygen utilization, blood flow, etc. So it kind of just helps, it’s not a stimulant, but it does give you a little bit of your body a little bit more juice, I think, to process it. That’s at least the theory behind the addition of it.

Katie: That’s super fascinating, and I’m glad that some of these things are getting talked about more on social media, and I did not know that a lot of the things people might be taking, trying to address their stress issues and cortisol, like with adaptogens, might not actually even be providing that threshold dose to actually accomplish what they want. And it sounds like in the way that you’re using them, these things are almost  kind of like a nutritional, food based product as well. They’re actually providing the body’s basic kind of support, versus being like a supplement that you would just take for a specific purpose.

I know I alternate a lot of supplements. I don’t take most things every single day, but it sounds like these, especially in a modern kind of fast paced world might actually be more as like essential micronutrients type or like food based almost things our body needs versus a thing we might just take once in a while. Or do I have that wrong?

Jonathan: Totally. I think that if we look back, you know, hundreds of years or even like 150 years, we used to consume a lot of these things that are now these really special herbs. We used to consume them more as foods. I think that was literally how we ate. We used to not always have access to all the foods that we do.

So we would be consuming a lot of seasonal, powerful herbs and roots and different things like that. So I don’t think that… I think we’ve more gotten disconnected from what are, depending on our region, what those foods are that have those effects. So, absolutely. I think that that’s the beauty of adaptogens too, like the more you take them, the better the effect is. Cause for me, I took my product every day for like two, three years and it really made a tremendous difference for me.

And then it kind of allowed me to not need to take it. But the cool thing is, I want to because it tastes good and it’s only gonna benefit me. I think that’s also a thing with cortisol and stress is you kind of have a bank account with your neurotransmitters. We know this now, the science shows us we only have so much dopamine, we only can have so much cortisol to expend, right? So by taking adaptogens when we’re not under stress, and stress comes in many forms, as you know. It’s not just like, I’m stressed about my job or I’m stressed about, whatever is going on in the world or whatever. It can be physical stress, it can be emotional. There’s so many different levels and layers to stress, right?

So, and of course, as we know, cortisol is a big, big piece in how we metabolize fat and sugar. So, there’s also that element too. So people that have chronic stress tend to store weight in different parts of their body. So it’s kind of, especially I know for my genetics, it’s always in my stomach,  so I always wanted to… I found that for years of extreme stress that I just literally had that stress, my body, my weight wasn’t bad, but it just, I was holding on to stress in my body.

So by having something that manages that for the longterm, when you hit those stressful moments, you’re able to handle it better. So for me, I look at it like a bank account, basically. I’ve gotten to a point where I feel like I’ve regulated my system well, but I also want that insurance policy so that if I do encounter a moment of extreme stress, hopefully not a fire or anything like that, but if I do encounter that, I have more reserves to handle it. So that’s really my perspective with adaptogens. They are absolutely good to take every day, and get as many different beneficial foods and herbs as you can.

Katie: Yeah, I actually just recorded a podcast on this. I don’t know if it’ll have aired by the time this one airs, but kind of what I call my protein and micronutrient theory of health. I feel like we were reductionist in our just focus on macros for a long time or just focus on calories. And back to that idea of the body being a chemistry lab, not a bank account.

For me, I noticed a drastic difference when I stopped thinking about macros and stopped thinking about like a balance sheet of what was going in my body. And instead, just ask the question, how can I maximize the micronutrient and macronutrient density of any food I’m going to eat in a given day?

Essentially, how can I most nourish and support my body, which is also a much more positive mindset place to come from when you’re talking about supporting your body versus restricting it. Bbut that opened me up to so many, delicious for one, but also really nourishing foods that have become part of my routine.

And it’s amazing how really getting that dialed in makes a drastic difference in how you feel as well. And your product is absolutely one that is on my daily list these days. It’s part of my nighttime ritual and I love it. And we’ve talked about it peripherally, but I would love for you to make sure we mentioned it specifically.

I’ll put a link, of course, for anybody listening on the go. But what is this product that we’ve been talking about and where can people find it?

Jonathan: Sure. Well, usually I don’t actually have it handy. So this time I was prepared with a cacao pod and the bag here, but it’s called Cacao Calm. So it’s basically like I described earlier, it’s just a delicious, hot chocolate drink that you can add to water, add to milk, add to coffee.

It’s a great coffee creamer because it has organic coconut cream and then it has all your adaptogens in there. We use a very special Madagascar vanilla bean. Once again, very in touch with the farmers on this. There are things on the label that I guess I can talk about here that aren’t really anywhere on the side or on the label. But we source our sea salt from New Zealand. We’re not just using sea salt, we use a very pure sea salt from New Zealand, it’s from some of the purest waters from the Arctic. So it’s not contaminated to the same level as maybe like a French salt, which everybody’s freaking out about now, everybody’s concerned about the Celtic salt and heavy metals and lead and stuff like that.

So, we’ve been aware of that for a while. We originally formulated it with Celtic salt, and then after doing some testing, we never released it with that. I ended up using New Zealand salt, organic coconut cream, and the adaptogens. But anyways, yeah, the vanilla plus the coconut cream plus the chocolate and then that little hint of monk fruit and sea salt just makes like an incredible drink. You’ve had it. So it’s just a very delicious, very easy to mix hot chocolate drink. Or like I said, you can add it to a smoothie. Anytime I’m making anything chocolate flavored I just use this. Then I’m insured from anything. So even if I get protein powders, I’ll get vanilla protein, and then I’ll add this to it, because it just adds so much body.

I’d rather do that than doing a chocolate one, because I get the extra benefits. So it’s very versatile, but primarily, the way that I started with it was just adding it to hot water. I was formulating it, adding it to various types of milks, but over time I realized it’s actually just really good in water.

That’s creamy enough for me, for my taste. So it’s just a very enjoyable, versatile way to get all your adaptogens and then of course get an actual usable, reasonable amount of ashwagandha every day to help regulate your stress response and regulate cortisol. That was the real intention behind the product. So, yeah.

Katie: Well, like I said, I love that it’s become part of my routine, and that’s why I was so excited to have you on and get to hear more about everything that went into making it as well as the benefits. And I personally love this liquid form of cacao and chocolate. It’s delicious for one, but I feel a difference from it much more.

Plus I feel like at night it’s light, it doesn’t interfere with my sleep or my digestion or anything. And it’s part of that idea of getting as many micronutrients as possible and supporting the body across a lot of different sectors and in that micronutrient and adaptogenic way. So I love that we got to go deep on this today.

I’m, like I said, a huge fan of the product and I’m so grateful for your time and for all that you’ve shared and for the work that you do in bringing things like this into the world. Thank you so much for being here today.

Jonathan: Definitely, definitely. Yeah, it was great meeting you too. Yeah, I appreciate you having me on.

Katie: And thank you as always for listening and sharing your most valuable resources, your time, your energy, and especially your attention with us today. We’re both so grateful that you did, and I hope that you will join me again on the next episode of the Wellness Mama podcast.