Dr Rupy: Karen, great to have you back on the podcast again.
Karen: Thank you.
Dr Rupy: I want to start off with a conversation about what you think is wrong with bread these days. What is going wrong with the bread that most people can get their hands on in supermarkets and stores across the UK and beyond?
Karen: I'll start with a blunt answer. That really isn't food. That is a calorific substance that is probably just spiking sugar levels in your body and it's contributing to a huge amount of anxiety. So, bread fundamentally at its very core is meant to be flour, water and salt, fermented together or soaked over a period of time. Commercially made bread that's on supermarket shelves across the world is made in under a couple of hours and is on a van to a supermarket for you to squish its softness and consume it a couple of hours later. So what's wrong with bread nowadays is it's being built to make money, it's not being built to nourish. And so how do we tweak that and how do we give someone bread that is good for them is we give them the ingredients to do so. You give them the ingredient for them to literally mix some flour, water and maybe a fat at home, soak it overnight, lob it into a bread tin the next day and bake it. And really what we've done is we've just, we've complicated food so much because there are ways of masking health conditions, whether it's through a vitamin supplement or an ibuprofen. And so my biggest problem with supermarket bread and with the bread industry at large is bread is sold alongside medication. You go into a supermarket, one aisle sells paracetamol, the next aisle sells a crap bread. And that's what's wrong with the bread industry. It's being sold alongside medicine. There's a great report that I will share with you called Are We Well Fed? and it was commissioned in the US in the 1940s. And it basically came off the back of governments worldwide in the early 1900s agreeing conclusively that the health condition of everyone across the world had changed because we were now not eating in the same way we did in the 1800s. And the only change was we discarded the bran from the grains that were being made, we were making bread with. And so in the early 1900s, you have this landscape of people who are now eating white bread, commodity farmed grain, and they are feeling anxious, a whole host of conditions and especially autoimmune, lots of inflammation is happening, lots of brain disorders are happening, lots of neurological disorders are starting to happen. And globally, governments are like, we've got to invest in this problem. And so they hire scientists to extract vitamins and minerals from food. And so in 1938, when they were making, starting to make B vitamin at scale, they were making it from food. And when they were making B vitamins from food, it cost them $350 per gram to to make B vitamins. And then three years later, when they started synthesising everything, it cost a few cent to make B vitamins. And so I guess I use that as an example because it shows the power of food to do good and it shows the value in food. So when you are nourishing yourself through food, it's got a price, it's got a value. As soon as you build chemistry into food, of course it devalues, it devalues the food, but it also devalues the human body.
Dr Rupy: And when when people think about bread these days, I think it's led to a bit of fear around the whole macronutrient of carbohydrates because people see bread and they know it's not great and they hear that it's ultra-processed and there's a lot more awareness I think these days of just how processed these daily staples quote unquote are, that it's led to an overall fear of bread as a food in itself and also that being tied to carbohydrates in general. And I think we, and this is what you do so well, is you're re-educating people about what real bread looks like and also how to pack in more nutrition into the bread themselves. So we were talking just earlier when we were cooking about sprouting, soaking, fermenting. Perhaps we can talk about those processes and why they extract more from the whole grain and perhaps even going further upstream talking about the quality of the grain itself and why that has a massive impact on the downstream consequences of nutrients and nutrient bioavailability.
Karen: So we need a whole host of vitamins and minerals to stay alive. Our organs need a whole host of vitamins and minerals to function, our nervous system, our immune system, everything is dependent on food. So we've got to recognise and remember we were alive before modern day medicine and we were alive before vitamins and minerals came in plastic bottles. So before that, we were obviously hunter gatherers and then let's talk about the time in which we settled. So when we started farming because community was good for our own health. So like when we started to farm, that's when health was probably at its best ever. And we were farming grains, nuts, seeds, peas, legumes in these fields. And so when these fields were harvested for flour to make bread, you could have had 60 different ingredients go into that bag of flour. So that flour is milled on a stone mill which is milling at a temperature that isn't too hot to burn off the enzyme activity in the grain. So, you know, intuitively and scientifically, we've got a product that is high in all the vitamins and minerals that are conducive to keeping us alive and organs working. We've got something that's conducive to bowel health, that's just got the right amount of soluble fibre to insoluble fibre. So before the industrial revolution, before capitalism, we were farming in a way that had inherent right ratios in the food we were eating. So most people should be eating three parts insoluble fibre to one part soluble fibre and that was the chemistry of our soil, that was the chemistry of the grains that we were growing until we changed things around the early 1900s. So back then, we, the whole grain was milled down, so you had whole grain bread. And in that bread there were peas, there were flowers, there were like all this diversity. Our microbiomes were 60% better then than they are today. We were eating more sugar than we are. But all over the world, whatever culture you were from, you had a process of making bread, whether it was a flat bread or a risen bread, whether it was predominantly made with oats or teff or amaranth or wheat or some form of corn. But mostly around the world, humans were living off grass. So meat consumption wasn't where it's at today, veg consumption wasn't where it's at today. We were predominantly eating grass. Bread culture is the most widespread culture there is across the world. Every country has bread culture. So in the early 1900s, when we started to, you know, really commoditise food, to commoditise food, you need to build systems that can make things at scale. And industrial equipment does not like enzyme activity. Industrial equipment does not react well with all the bran and all the, you know, the positively and negatively charged ions that that essentially are magnesium, zinc, you know, calcium, etc, etc. So capitalism basically just was like, well, hey, we want to make money off food now. So we don't care about people's health. And so, for example, in Ireland, in the late 1800s, we had about 400 working mills and those mills were maybe run by river energy, um, or wind, um, or or maybe electric. Um, but those mills just died off as food became a commodity. So really, like bread as we know it today ended as soon as markets opened and countries started competing, you know, for for scale and for price. Um, and so kind of around the 1930s, 1940s, that's when gut health really started to plummet because the seeds that we were growing to make the breads that we eat, to make the vegetables that we eat, they were commodity seeds that were were were just put in the ground to grow one plant and then done. Just we had this discard extraction mentality. So we went from a way of food production, especially bread production that was around crop husbandry and respecting the terroir, respecting the soil, respecting everything around it to extraction, extraction, extraction, yield over quality every time. Um, and so from kind of the 1940s up until the present day, microbiome health has just depleted, depleted, depleted, inflammation has gone up, autoimmune diseases are at the highest they've ever been. What's really fascinating me now, Rupy, is neurological disease. So 17% of Irish people today are living with a neurological like condition. That is directly correlated to not enough B1 and B6 in the diet. B1 and B6 are not in the diet because they are consuming supermarket bread. So 86% of UK people are now eating bread from the supermarket. Unless that has been fortified with B1 and B6, you're on the way to getting a neurological condition. Um, in Ireland, they've defined neurological conditions um as anything from like if you're getting a headache more than three times a month, that's a sign that you're deficient in the in these vitamins and minerals. So, um, when I set up the Happy Tummy Co, my first goal was to replicate what we were doing in the field before the industrial revolution. So build recipes that have a huge amount of diversity in them. So it's not just a single corn variety, it's not just a single grass. There is seeds, there is nuts, there is um legumes, there's there's everything, there's spice, there's everything that you would have had in the field before. Um, and then when we talk about process, soaking and fermentation are the ones that people are most familiar with. So soaking as a process is the easiest, it's the quickest, it involves no work at all. Fermentation obviously involves a sourdough culture, it involves keeping that sourdough culture alive. Um, the biggest difference between soaking as a food production mechanism and fermentation is that fermentation increases the inherent B vitamins in the grain and the prebiotic fibre by 30%. Soaking doesn't. Soaking just makes it digestible. So in all grains, nuts and seeds, you've got phytates, the storage form of phosphorus. Phosphorus is absolutely essential for metabolism. Um, and if you are preparing like a brown soda bread or you're making a scone batter or a cake batter, like anything out of a cookbook that doesn't say make the batter and let it sit for 24 hours, essentially what you're making is a calorific food that's not going to deliver you any available nutrients such as these B vitamins that we are completely deficient in nowadays.
Dr Rupy: Okay, so regardless of what kind of grain, whether it's a whole grain or um, you know, a regeneratively farmed, like super grain. If you're not doing those basic steps of fermentation or at least soaking, you're not absorbing the nutrient value in the uh original product um such that you're you're just basically consuming the energy but without the added benefits of the product.
Karen: We have so many students that come to our class and you know, they're like, I'm having, you know, almonds every day, Brazil nuts, you know, and you're like, oh God, all you're doing there is consuming calorie and fat. And calorie and fat are amazing. They are crucial for life. But you've just, you've just consumed something that has the ability to give you so much more. Just soak it. So, like, okay, so cows have a have a pre-digestion stomach. So I always compare humans to cows because cows have the ability to pre-digest their food and then it goes through onto the next phase where they absorb the nutrients from it. Humans don't have two stomachs. We have one stomach. And so we have to pre-digest our food. We didn't know that we needed to do this back in the day. We just intuitively did it. So pre the 1900s, people knew that if they ate a grain without soaking it, they felt ill. They had a bloated stomach, their brain wasn't working properly. But as soon as they put it through a soak and they just let the dough sit overnight and they ate it the next day, they felt well. And cultures all over the world, you know, showcase this all the time. Ethiopia being the best example of a culture who has never stopped soaking and fermenting. So in Ethiopia, they will soak and ferment dough for anything up to 18 months. And so therein lies how we should eat. So I guess what we're trying to showcase to people is how well you can feel by changing just one food group. Um, so our message to people is eat the soaked thing. Make the scones, make the injera, soak the thing, be organized, eat it the next day, do that for seven days, check in with yourself, how's your health? How's your mindset? Have you made a better decision this week? Is your nervous system feeling a bit better? Can you walk for longer? Can you work out in the gym for longer? Of course you can, because the chemistry is working. Like, we have known, we've always known. We're talking about the same thing 100 years later. Like, are we well fed? That manuscript came out in 1934, I think. It's almost 100 years later. We're still talking about the same thing because it's more capitalist than ever before. You know, before this, we were talking about, you know, let's say you're driving from London to Cornwall on your holidays and you stop at a petrol station and because there's food all over the place and there's coffees everywhere, you feel compelled to buy those. You don't need those. You need water. You can fast for a while. So, it's very difficult to pull people out of a conditioned mindset. It's very difficult to pull someone out of this mindset which is like, you know, I worked hard today, I deserve that cake. That cake is going to make me feel better about myself. No, it's not. I worked hard today. I deserve that white sourdough bread from that beautiful bakery. That's going to make me feel better about myself. No, it's not, because there are no B vitamins in there for your brain. There's no zinc, there's no vitamin C. We were, like, we're not born to consume calorie, we're born to consume vitamins and minerals. And so the Happy Tummy Co's mission is to reinform people and re-establish new behaviour. And it's exceedingly hard to do that in a country that is spending 6% of their wages on food, down from 35, 45%. So what we're trying to do is show you the value in food. We're trying to re-establish support for farming systems that are regenerative, that respect the soil, and and take into consideration all aspects of the earth, uh, not just how much money is this going to make me and what are the margins.
Dr Rupy: For sure. You just talked about um nuts and seeds and soaking those. I don't do that. So I want to know how what the process is because I, you know, you've seen our pantry, it's full of seeds and nuts and all the rest of it, beans. You know, when I make beans from scratch, obviously I'm soaking it and then cooking it and all the rest of it. But when I'm eating nuts and seeds, I'm just eating nuts and seeds. I'm just like grabbing it and we try and make sure that they're organic and stuff. And I guess you are going to be consuming um the the calories and the fats and there is going to be some vitamin E, but I imagine there's going to be a much more efficient way of getting those micronutrients by doing some of the processing methods that you've just been talking about. And then also we had um Dr Sarah uh on the podcast recently talking about how there are hyper absorbers and and low absorbers of of calories from any food and it's sort of like there is a normal distribution whereby some people will absorb uh a lot and and some not so much. But most of us like lie in that middle ground. So depending on how much we chew and our digestive enzymes and all the rest of it, it's going to affect the absorption of not just the fats and calories but also um the nutrients involved. But let's say we're trying to do the optimum thing. Um put time conditions out the uh or time constraints out the window. What is the best way that we should be consuming nuts and seeds? Because I eat a lot of those.
Karen: So you you buy your bag of almonds. You literally put them in a bowl of water. You let them sit until the next day. You get your your your strainer of some or a sieve. You strain them off. If you want them to taste nice, maybe you rub some olive oil and and salt in there. Get it on a roasting tray, roast them for 20 minutes.
Dr Rupy: Just roast them for 20 minutes. Uh how long do you soak them for?
Karen: Uh just overnight.
Dr Rupy: Overnight. Okay.
Karen: Yeah, just overnight. I kind of until you become comfortable with the art of soaking or fermentation, I kind of warn people against sprouting because sprouting can become a little bit dangerous for people. So for me, don't even look at fermentation, establish soaking in your life. So, so for example, in in in in lots of Asian countries, uh same thing as what was happening with bread, uh they started polishing their rice and they noticed anxiety go through the roof, they noticed brain disorders, everything go through the roof because they were just polishing off the outside. Um and and just because they thought it tasted nicer, but I mean, it doesn't. So I don't know why we're not taught this, but we are not designed to consume food straight from picking it. We are designed to put it through a process. We're designed to have something sit in water for 12 to 24 hours, the next day, strain it off, cook it. That's how we're designed. We are not designed. The only thing that we are designed to pick and eat fresh are fruits. So if you pick an apple from a tree, its enzyme activity is intact. It's on the skin. You chew on that apple, the enzymes on the apple skin help you digest that and and make you feel good. You consume an apple from a supermarket that's been sitting there off the tree for possibly anything up to a year, I will struggle to eat that apple. I will be bloated, I will feel really hungry 20 minutes later. And the same is true of so many people I work with. You put that through a process, you put that apple that's been lying there almost dormant for nine months through a cooking process, now you unleash a new set of enzymes that allow that to be digestible. But humans are designed to discover processes that make the food firstly digestible and then absorbable. But we've disregarded that science in favour of the world we live in today.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, convenience essentially.
Karen: Convenience. And because we have options, we have vitamins, we have medicine. But those just mask ongoing problems. It's so important for people to understand that medicine is not there to extend your life. Medicine is there to like get rid of a pain, get rid of an inflammation. But that inflammation has a management system in the body, which is the short chain fatty acids. You know, you consume a complex carbohydrate such as we have been doing so today, that's been through a soaking process. All your vitamins and minerals are ready there. They're ready to go to the brain, they're ready to go to the lung, they're ready to go to the skin, they're ready to go to whatever system needs that vitamin right now. And so it's important that we respect that science. Like our bodies are so clever, but we don't talk to them anymore. We don't say what do you need. We don't have a relationship with our body. We have a relationship with, you know, our social class, with what we're being told, we want to spend money on cars, on holidays, but we don't want to spend money on this vehicle, you know? So our work, our work is kind of pulling people out of those non-serving, like pre-conditioned, industrial, capitalist, like weird behaviours that are just masking problem after problem after problem. You know, and our work is like, take this scone. It was soaking for 24 hours, then we baked it for 40, 40 minutes and we let it cool down. Have some butter on it, have some gooseberry jam on it, have some chocolate spread on it if you so wish. But you are going to get so much out of that. And do that again tomorrow, do that the day after, just do that, have a really nice coffee, have a nice tea, you know, go for a nice walk, like, you know, make it, have it with friends. This food is going to save your life and it is saving people's lives. Like by eating in this way, we've saved people from having colons removed, we've saved people from having, you know, their pancreas removed, like so many people that have caught on to this way of eating are off all medicine and they are making better decisions and they are out moving because they are eating food that is fueling endurance. So what can you do today to optimize everything that you are buying to put into your mouth? Soak it. So any any carbohydrate, soak it. And I would go so far as to say Rupy that you could even soak your vegetables. So, um, we have a little table on our website, uh, which gives you a very simple grid on how to optimize food and cook or process out the anti-nutrients in your food. So like potatoes, if you're going to roast a potato, you have to boil it first. So there's every food has a way of processing it before you cook it to extract those anti-nutrients. It's really simple. It's really simple. Like the table's there, we've put in the work, it's there. So Brazil nuts, walnuts, all of these nuts into water, 12 hours at least, 24 hours is ideal. Sieve off the water, mix it with some olive oil, some herb, onto a roasting tray, bake it off at 180 for maybe 20 minutes, half an hour depending on the personality of your oven. But basically,
Dr Rupy: And then can I put that in an airtight container?
Karen: And that's good for a couple of months.
Dr Rupy: A couple of months. Okay, fine. Great. Okay.
Karen: Yeah. Absolutely. And by doing this process, you are way more likely to invigorate your food with way more interesting things, right? Because let's say today I'm concerned about my iodine levels. When I sieve off the water from those soaked almonds, I'm going to massage in some lovely regenerative olive oil, some sea salt, some seaweed, maybe a little bit of nutmeg, and then I'm going to roast that off. And so I'm bringing way more into my diet than just the nut itself. By walking into a store and buying some macadamia nuts and just chewing on them, that's fine, but all that's doing and be conscious that all that is doing is giving you energy. It's not looking after your brain health. It's not looking after your respiratory system. But buy that macadamia nut and just be more organized and know that the food you buy can't be consumed for another 24 hours. So it's a mindset, it's a mindset change.
Dr Rupy: It's a it's a there's a processing step that everything needs to go through.
Karen: Totally.
Dr Rupy: But I guess like, you know, just in the in the spirit of healthy discussion, if you're going to be choosing anything in the store that you have to consume when you're out and about because we live in a very convenient uh um lifestyle, convenience driven way of life. Um and there are choices and trade-offs that we have to make. So by consuming maybe a macadamia nut, it's a bit too expensive. Most people, but let's say like sunflower seeds or pumpkin seeds, you're still going to be consuming some amount of micronutrients, perhaps not the optimum amount of nutrients if you soak it and then roast it and go through that process. But certainly some, better than like, you know, a refined carbohydrate croissant or whatever it might be.
Karen: Absolutely.
Dr Rupy: So I I don't want to give people the impression that you're not going to get anything from that. You're going to get some, but perhaps not as much as you would do if you just took the 24 hours extra to optimize your food.
Karen: Totally. Like regardless of the vitamins and minerals, you're going to get the prebiotic fibre, the resistant starch that is going to fertilize the growth of good gut bacteria in your microbiome. So that's really powerful. Like and that's really, really powerful because I think a lot of people come to us in particular saying, you know, I can't digest that food, that food and that food. And and and to your point, it's because they're just they're going for more convenient snacks that are not loaded with prebiotic fibre. So absolutely.
Dr Rupy: And I think we're living in a world now where um there's a lot of like functional food ingredients and stuff, you know, where there's a bit of ashwagandha sprinkled on something or there's a trendy new um pseudograin that has been like added to what is a refined cereal and just you know, the fact that you can just say added quinoa or whatever it might be, you know, suddenly it's slightly healthier. And where that is kind of true, it's disingenuous I think to say, you know, this is much healthier than actually cooking something like we just did this afternoon, like these amazing scones. Was it scones? Scones, I think. Scones. I don't know. I I I always get self-conscious whenever I say that word, but I'm let's go with scones. Um I think there's that that sort of move to, you know, functional foods and and these sort of added uh uh functional benefits. Whereas actually it's just simplifying your choices and just going the extra step with processing. And I think it was intuitive, you know, um perhaps 60, 70 years ago when there was a bit more time, um where the knowledge was passed down through generations. I mean, I certainly have been told that by my mom and I've kind of disregarded the whole thing about, okay, you can't just eat raw walnuts, you've got to soak your walnuts and then cook them and stuff. Yeah, but mom, I don't have time for that. But now like you're telling me and a whole bunch of other people are telling me and biochemists are telling me about like, you know, food scientists and like, you should actually do that because of XYZ. And we've known that for years.
Karen: We've known that for years. And like people walk into the chalk every day and the first thing they say is I don't have time.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah.
Karen: But it takes, and I'm like, I'll be one of those people. And it takes no time to put something into a pot of water and let it sit. Okay, you can't consume it straight away, but the only change you have to do that is one day do it and then you have food every day for the rest of your life. So you make that one change and I think you're alluding to ashwagandha and it's so great to bring that up because what really pisses me off about the health food industry is this pushing of like, oh, have this adaptogen, have this, you don't need that. What you need is process. And you don't even need time. You just need a behavioral shift. Like let your pivot moment be tonight, go home, put the nuts in water, tomorrow you will have food. It's and it's not it's it's not and I appreciate the point around people are really busy on the move and everything, but again, all you have to do is do it one time. And and and and make that a habitual part of your routine and it literally is. So I can't, I like, and I think I'm just so fed up of the arguments and I and and people are like, Karen, you're being condescending and you're and you're triggering people. And I'm like, I'm here to trigger people. I remember this guy at a talk one time was like, are you an activist for fiber? And I was so uncomfortable with it. And I was like, I'm not a political person. But the older I get, Rupy, I am getting political because food is political. And it is being used so politically that we have to recognize it's not good enough for the planet anymore to say I don't have time. It's just not. What's not good enough is you making a choice that's not good enough for your health. That's what's not good enough.
Dr Rupy: You know, to use a glib example or an analogy, you know, um as early as the 1900s, I think it was like 1910 or 1915, something like that, about 100 years plus ago. Um 80 or 90% of the US population didn't brush their teeth, right? Um and then there was a concerted marketing campaign by a very clever marketer, I forget his name now, to get Americans brushing their teeth. And I think the whole argument was, did you know, you know, uh I don't know if we were talking about bacteria, but something about the something that really lent into uh an emotional pull for the population. Like it could have been the color or the staining or the fact that you've got yesterday's food still in your mouth and like it's rotting away. So it gave this really sort of like visceral reaction of to people that they should be brushing their teeth. And by the way, here's some Colgate. I think they were selling Colgate toothpaste, something like that. Um and now it would be inconceivable for a person to not brush their teeth and invest the two to four minutes every single day brushing your teeth twice a day. And to to use that analogy with what you're saying is, you know, if you are going to have um oats or you're going to have some grains every day or you're going to have some nuts, take the extra step of putting it in water, taking it out of the water and letting it dry or roasting it for 10 minutes or so and that will be your food that's nutrient rich, it's been made more bioavailable, it's going to give you more access to the nutrients that you've already paid for. Um and it's just that habit change, that small habit change. So when you break it down like that, I think a lot more people can get behind it. But on face value, I'm like, oh God, I've got to soak these. I've got to like, I've got to roast it and I've got to do all this stuff. But when you break it down, it's very simple.
Karen: I know. And I think it's harder for people who are in environments where you don't see food production.
Dr Rupy: Absolutely.
Karen: And that's it.
Dr Rupy: That's most of us.
Karen: That's most of us. That is most of us. They've never killed an animal.
Dr Rupy: No, definitely not.
Karen: Yeah. They've never pulled a carrot out of the ground.
Dr Rupy: 100%.
Karen: Yeah. And it's hard. It's hard. And and and that that's why the mountain is so high. And I think that's why for me at the very least, it only feels possible to prove that this is possible in a country like Ireland where we are really connected to farm. We are really connected. We are, we hear gunshots going off, you know what I mean, on farms. We are connected. And when I was running the company here, I just got so exasperated and I got so annoyed with just the BS that was coming out of people's mouths about what kombucha can do for you and what this can do and I was just like, oh my God, this place has gone nuts. It's gone nuts. People are mad. And then I moved back to Ireland and I thought it was going to be such an uphill battle. I thought convincing, you know, every walk of life in Mayo to buy this bread for 25 euro was just going to be the fight of my life. And it wasn't. It was so easy because they were like, fair play to you. Look at you, look at you there now. That's how much it costs. Because they have, they know how much it costs to farm land and they know how difficult it is and they know that two out of every five years of farming will give you a decent crop. And that's it. So, you know,
Dr Rupy: See that fact alone is going to be mind-blowing for people. And for you, it's just like, of course, that's a fact of life. Most people don't know that.
Karen: Yeah. And for me, I'm like, you what? You're into the doctor every month. You've had how many headaches have you had this week? Like I, but I, I hear what you're saying and I try to put myself back in Hackney 10 years ago when I had just come out of my serious IBS constipation journey and and I and and what was I doing then Rupy? The only change I made was I was eating better bread. I didn't understand food the way I do now. I didn't understand the economics behind it, the social class, the politics, the war crime. I didn't understand any of that and I could deep dive into that all of that with you right now. But what's the point? Because we don't have, we don't have the attention span necessary to comprehend that and make changes based on the comprehension of what's going on right now in our world. So all all I can try at the very most to do is convince you to just bake a bread that is soaked. And is that going to change your life? Absolutely. And is it going to change your relationships? Absolutely, because your mental health is going to be infiltrated by having B vitamins in your diet and and all this sort of stuff. So let's say you're living in Nottingham and you have never been on a farm and you buy your food in any host of supermarket. And you know, and you're chat with your friend is like, oh, did you see the deal? You know, that's the chat, right? That's the chat. You're buying the deal, like the thing, the two for one. And it's this social thing. You've got to, you've got to be the trailblazer. You've got to be the trailblazer in your friendship group who says, no, I didn't. Because did you see what's going on in Brussels? Did you see all the farmers in arms and they're lighting fires all around the city because they're not being paid enough. Because they they've been devalued. So what we're doing is we're interacting with one person in a food group or in a family who's copped on to life is soaked food. And that person is living in Watford and that person is the trailblazer in their community. And their community is finally listening to them even though, what's Anne doing spending 25 euro on a loaf of bread? She's mad. Like, so, so we're in Ireland doing what we're doing because it's way more possible to achieve this in a three and a half million population than it is here or than it is in America. So our bottom line is we want to be an example of a country that is spending way more money on food, is spending way less money on medicine, is living longer and has an ecosystem of regenerative farmers that are being paid well and we are a happier country because of it. And that's our fight until our dying day, you know, me and all the team. Um, and anyone who's listening that has the ability to change their behavior, you are going to contribute to this. And that is phenomenal. And and literally, all you have to do is soak your rice. And you're not the one soaking it. It's the water. Like you're not spending 24 hours soaking it. And so I can't, I have to resist, I have to resist excusable behavior now. And and and before I was so patient with people and I'm I've lost all patience. I'm just like, no. I'm going to be that strict teacher that no one liked. But that's where we're at. You know, time is now. Like, like I see it in, so our margins are down by 20%. It has become harder than ever to get ingredients. No one's being paid enough. There is this de-valuation of what keeps us alive and people are in arms over it. It is not serving anyone and it's going to come down the line really, really quickly and supermarkets aren't going to have anything on their shelves in two years. And if they do have anything on their shelves, you're going to be spending four times the amount you currently are. Because that's what's happening.
Dr Rupy: Okay, so let's let's start this revolution for people. What is that one thing? Because we were talking in the kitchen, you know, what is that one thing you could do? I know what it is for me. I'm going to be soaking my nuts and seeds so I can get most value out of them. But in terms of making the bread, like we've got these beautiful scones in front of us. Talk to us about the process that you use for these and that particular grain that you're obsessed with and I'm now obsessed with as well.
Karen: Okay, awesome. So, uh, teff is a central ingredient to our product range. Uh, teff was the first grass ever domesticated for human consumption on the Ethiopian Highlands in around 8,000 BC. Uh, so amaranth, buckwheat, uh, corn, corn being all all wheat varieties as we know it, they come from kind of the motherland. Uh, and so it's the only grain that contains vitamin C. It has the highest amount of prebiotic fiber per gram over anything in the world. Um, it's got a complete set of amino acids. So for me, teff is the hack that can hack everyone's health. Like male and female of any age group, it will hack your health because it is incredibly high in iron, um, and it increases endurance levels a huge amount. Then we've got oats, we've got flax, we've got chia, we've got cinnamon, we've got olive oil, it's really high in omega, we've got sea salt, we've got apple cider vinegar and we've got water. So we've got a huge diversity.
Dr Rupy: What's the apple cider vinegar doing to that mixture? Is that a necessary part of it? Can you do it without just water or is it adding?
Karen: You could do it without the apple cider vinegar for sure. Um, but a prerogative of mine is to bring a lot of phenolics to our foods. And so the apple cider vinegar that we use, it's grown in Kilkenny on an organic regenerative farm. The phenolics in that are just through the roof. And so for me, I want to make every bite count. Like I want to give you a product that is going to change your life. And so I want phenolics, I want prebiotic fiber, I want all the vitamins and minerals. I want you to be able to eat something stressed out of your mind, sleep deprived and give you a good bowel movement. I want to increase your attention span. I want you to feel better about yourself. This food does that because every morsel of it is just alive.
Dr Rupy: It like the I I take the uh the analogy I'm thinking of is uh a Michelin star chef is there to extract the most amount of flavor from every single ingredient that they use, right? In a in like a high-end restaurant, everything is particular, the way they process it, the way they dehydrate something or cook something slightly lighter to make sure that they preserve the flavor and all that kind of stuff. You're thinking about it from a flavor point of view, but more so from a nutrient view. Like what can I do to this ingredient in terms of combination and processing to maximize the amount of nutrition I give our consumer.
Karen: That's it.
Dr Rupy: And that's beautiful. I don't I don't hear enough people talking about it from that perspective.
Karen: Yeah.
Dr Rupy: Because you can still have very, I've tried these earlier with the prebiotic honey, uh rich honey that we had and the olive oil from two fields. And it is wonderful. It is wonderful. And when you hear that that story, that love that you put into it, it's like it it I think it adds to the nutritional value, you know.
Karen: It does. You've got a relationship with it. The other thing that you and I were speaking about before was in terms of like a behavioral hack someone can introduce to their diet today is um obviously we all know omega is really important for brain health, everything, preventing arthritis. Uh buying eggs on the side of the road. So regeneratively farmed eggs have six times the amount of omega that a supermarket egg does. We use a lot of eggs in our baking. Again, we're trying to get proteins, omegas in. So we have eggs in these though you can make them with flax. So six times the amount of omega. Why would you not stop on the side of the road and buy those farm fresh eggs for two pounds over buy them from a supermarket in the UK and not get omega into your diet. And and so Rupy, what what is very limiting about our food system nowadays is the nutritional label. The nutritional label is all wrong because it doesn't it doesn't take into consideration what the chicken is eating, what the hens are are feeding on. You know, if anyone is using any nutritional data, it is polar opposites. If if you are buying from a farmer's market across the UK or Ireland versus buying in the supermarket, you're on you're on a whole different planet. Like the phenolics in regeneratively farmed food is miles above something sitting in containers, spraying with pesticide, no crop rotation. You know, there are farms and all they do is grow cabbage, hundreds of acres of cabbages, no crop rotation, one type, one seed. We're not built that way. Our we are built to consume diversity. We live in this amazing diverse place. We're built to feed off diversity. Like if you were I in the morning were told, you're just going to be fed this one thing for the rest of our life, you well, you probably die from misery. You know, like we need, like you've spoken about this on your podcast, you've talked about like the implication of smell and and how that gets the digestive system going. And and and this food does that. Food with so much flavor does that. But to emphasize the point, you can eat really pleasurable, indulgent food that in every morsel is absolutely buzzing, buzzing with everything you need to stay alive. I'll take myself as an example. So my father has rheumatoid arthritis, uh, and every cold winter in Ireland, since moving home, my fingers have started to bloat during the cold months because I live in a very damp place. And so this year, I changed my diet. I incorporated spice into all my dinners. I upped my fiber, I reduced alcohol, I don't have bloated fingers anymore. Any pain I had in my fingers completely gone. And that is no medicine, just diet. I don't have the heating on. I haven't changed what I wear. It is literally, I I am consuming food differently because I don't want to get rheumatoid arthritis. My mom died of cancer when I was really young. That's why I built this company. I don't want to die of colon cancer. Everyone that has like unmanaged IBD, unmanaged IBS, all these people, like colon cancer in men in their 40s has increased hugely. Their high protein diets, low fiber diets, no short chain fatty acids going around the body to keep inflammation down. It's so simple, but I appreciate your point and I appreciate everyone's point which is like, I don't have time. You know, I live in a fast-paced world. Okay.
Dr Rupy: Yeah. You you got to choose the trade-off.
Karen: You got to choose the trade-off. That's it.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, you got to choose. And I think when if you were to like extrapolate your choices over time, it's easier to make that decision when things go wrong. But up to that point where nothing seemingly is going wrong or you're tolerating indolent symptoms for a long period of time, um then the trade-off isn't as stark. So you've got to kind of remind yourself about the downstream consequences of of um of the food that you're eating.
Karen: Totally Rupy.
Dr Rupy: So if there's one thing that people can do,
Karen: Incorporate teff into your life today.
Dr Rupy: Incorporating teff.
Karen: Yeah, go on Lovegrass website. Incorporate teff. Get on our website.
Dr Rupy: I'm going to definitely do the teff porridge.
Karen: The teff porridge. I'll give you the teff porridge. You're going to put that recipe up. The teff porridge, have the teff porridge for breakfast every morning and do that like just do that for seven days in a row and see how you feel.
Dr Rupy: Yeah.
Karen: Behaviors change in two weeks.
Dr Rupy: Yeah.
Karen: After that two weeks, you are going to have the time of your life. The world is just going to become so much more expansive, you know. And also, it feels good to have the clarity of mind to have a better conversation with your friends and your family. The biggest difference eating in this way has made to my life, better relationships. Better relationships. I'm a better person. I'm kinder, I'm more patient. I'm not like all over the place and chaotic and making bad decisions. And have I made trade-offs for that? Absolutely. And those trade-offs have been have been better. And and and I have walked closer and closer and closer to the life that's actually for me, you know. Um, the biggest change that customers are coming back to us having experienced is clarity of mind. So big things are, I'm now making better decisions. I have no pain. I have no period pain, back pain. So pain, inflammation has gone way down. Of course it has because you've now got short chain fatty acids. Um, and then I think the other the other big one is people are sleeping better. Um, and the only change they're making is soaking. They're just soaking their food or they're buying soaked food from us. And Rupy, it does, it does vex me. It vexes me so much that we're the only people doing this in the industry. I can't believe that I'm looking at you like, I don't know, eight, 10 years later. And there's still no one that's like, you know what, we might do what she's doing. Because it blows my mind. But but why, okay, so why are we the only people doing what we're doing? Because it's not scalable. So we teach people, we'll send, you know, we we we can bake for thousands of people, of course we can. But we want people to make their own food. We want people to support the grain farmers in their area. I don't want to be baking for people all over the world. I get asked all the time, set up in California, set up in New York. No, thanks very much. I want you guys to support your grain industry. I want you guys to support the people that are farming your eggs because ultimately, we need to support local food systems. And there are plenty of local food systems all across the UK that we can all support. There's markets, I miss the UK for that. I miss the UK for all the Saturday markets, Sunday markets, like places all around Suffolk where there's like raw milk vending machines. Like the UK is abreast with just nourishment, but it's just stop your car, buy the eggs. Before you go to bed, you're doing your deep breathing meditation or meditation, whatever you're doing, pour the rice into water and cook it the next day. It's so easy. It's so easy. But I so what we're doing now is when people buy bread from us, they get a huge email and loads of advice and blah, blah, blah. But we're we're sending them like, here are the 10 commitments according to the Happy Tummy company. Pick which one you want to commit to today and just do one. Do one for a year, do it for two years. Eventually do all 10. So I'm eating in this way for let's say 10 years now. And every year I've tackled a new thing and I'm the happiest I've ever been.
Dr Rupy: That's so good to hear.
Karen: And all because of this, all because of just soaking food.
Dr Rupy: I have a um social media idea for you.
Karen: Okay, great.
Dr Rupy: So, uh, on your brand accounts on TikTok or Instagram, I would um every day do an ASMR, you know ASMR?
Karen: I don't.
Dr Rupy: Uh it's uh basically um like like getting a microphone or just using your phone mic and just uh recording the sound very close to what you're doing. So you just hear the, you know, um you might have uh seen some things online of people like cutting into crusty bread or scraping crispy salmon with the back of a knife. That's ASMR, right? So you should do a series every single day. You just do a bowl of almonds or whatever nuts or seeds that it is and just pouring water into it, into a big bowl. And then uh do that every single day for a different nut or seed. And then in the captions be like, I'm soaking this, it takes me 30 seconds and these are the benefits. And the next day, I'm soaking this, it takes me 10 seconds. I do it for these benefits. And literally do that. And I reckon if you do that for like 90 days straight, which will take you, you know, two minutes every single day. People will cotton onto it. I'll tell you why, because um Mitch who's our um videographer and does everything video related. Um he was telling me about like car washing videos. There's literally videos of people washing cars with no sound, no voiceover, nothing, just washing cars. People are listening to it, people are watching it, they're engrossed. This way, I think you can, you can combine the educational aspect with the habit change that you are trying to instill in people because I think the simple act of soaking is something that I've been inspired to do by you and I think you can reach a lot more people doing it that way. So anyway, that's my
Karen: That's a massive idea for me.
Dr Rupy: That's my one idea. So you don't have to do it, but I think it would work.
Karen: I'm promoting behavioral change. I'm going to do it.
Dr Rupy: I'm telling you, I think it would work. You can be the soaking queen. Hashtag soaking with Karen. Karen, you're wonderful. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you. I appreciate your time, appreciate your energy, appreciate your activism, your love for farmers, you know, your uh your your political stance as well. I think it's great. We need more people like you shouting about it. So appreciate it very much.
Karen: Thank you. Appreciate you very much. Thanks.
