Seeking Center: The Podcast

The Healing Power of Ayurveda: Food is Medicine with Raina Kumra Gardiner - Episode 131

• Robyn Miller Brecker, Karen Loenser, Raina Kumra Gardiner • Season 2 • Episode 131

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After facing multiple overlapping family health disasters in early 2021, Raina Kumra Gardiner set out to find a better way to integrate healthy, healing foods into the meals we eat. She grew up with Ayurveda and learned from her mother and grandmother that the first stop when illness strikes isn’t the drug store - it's the spice drawer. When she had her first child in 2013, she went back to deploying the power of the pantry and making plant-based medicine at home.

Raina had a great multi-decade career spanning tech, media, investing, and government. And throughout that time, functional medicine was something that called her. And, perhaps for the first time since childhood, she decided to listen.

She began formally studying plant medicine and the impact that food has on our ability to fend off chronic disease. The further she researched the more she realized that our entire food and health system was broken.

At her core, Raina is problem-solver and movement-builder, and she set out to fix this at scale. Raina believes that food is medicine and she founded and launched her company Spicewell to bring function to your pantry, and help you close the nutrient gaps in your and your family’s diet.

She’s started a movement and a business to move better eating forward – and to bring you the smartest, healthiest food. Whether you’re curious about Ayurveda, looking to improve your wellness, or want to understand the deeper issues within the food industry, this episode is packed with practical insights and powerful lessons.

MORE FROM RAINA KUMRA GARDINER + SPICEWELL

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Robyn: [00:00:00] I'm Robyn Miller Brecker and I'm Karen Loenser. Welcome to Seeking Center, the podcast. Join us each week as we have the conversations and we, through the spiritual and holistic clutter for you, we'll boil it down to what you need to know now, we're all about total wellness, which to us needs building a healthy life.

Karen: On a physical, mental, and spiritual level, we'll talk to the trailblazers who'll introduce you to the practices, products, and experiences that may be just what you need to hear about to transform your life. If you're listening to this, it's no accident. Think of this as your seeking center and your place to seek your center.

Robyn: And for the best wellness and spiritual practitioners, experts, products, experiences, and inspo, visit theseekingcenter. com. After facing multiple overlapping family health disasters in early 2021, Raina Kumra Gardner set out to find a better way to integrate healthy, healing foods into the meals we eat.

She grew up with Ayurveda and learned [00:01:00] from her mother and grandmother that the first stop when illness strikes isn't the drugstore. It's the spice drawer. When she had her first child in 2013, she went back to deploying the power of the pantry and making plant based medicine at home. 

Raina had a multi decade career spanning tech, media, investing, and government. And throughout that time, functional medicine was something that called her. And perhaps for the first time since childhood, she decided to listen. She began formally studying plant medicine and the impact that food has on our ability to fend off chronic disease.

The further she researched, the more she realized that our entire food and health system was broken. At her core, Raina is a problem solver and movement builder, and she set out to fix this at scale. Raina believes that food is medicine, and she founded and launched her company, SpiceWell, to bring function to your pantry and help you close the nutrient gaps in your and your family's diet.

SpiceWell. com She started a movement and a business to move better eating forward and to bring you [00:02:00] the smartest, healthiest food. There is so much to dig into. Let's get going. Hi, Raina. 

Raina: Hi guys. So good to be here. 

Robyn: We are so excited to start talking and let's start with what is Ayurveda?

Raina: Okay. So Ayurveda is Two Sanskrit words put together, Ayur and Veda. Veda is the science of, and Ayur is life. So we have the science of life. And I explain it as yoga for food and lifestyle or everything else that we do. Cause everyone pretty much understands that yoga is a practice that if you do every day, you will.

Maintain health. And that is exactly what Ayurveda is. If you do it every day, you'll maintain and improve your health. 

Karen: And you grew up in an Ayurvedic household with your mom leading the way in that sense. Yeah. Did you know that was different from the way other kids were growing up?

And. how did she do that with you all? 

Raina: I think growing up Indian, a South Asian, and [00:03:00] in my particular case, a Punjabi household there's a couple of things. There's a big culture around food, and there's a big culture around the spices specifically in that food, which Are always Ayurvedic.

Now the meals and the combinations may not be what a doctor would give you in India if you went to an Ayurvedic retreat or center, but it's still incorporating super powerful ingredients in almost every meal. So every meal would have a Tarka of which is like how you start the spices. You roast them and you put them in oil and then that's the flavor bomb that goes on top of all of the food and that's always got turmeric, almost always has cumin in it and almost always has ghee and those were all things that we Really we're like looking forward to. So growing up in a household like that, it's just integrated and everything that we did and everything that we ate, especially what we consumed and then in some of the lifestyle elements as well. In the mornings, my grandmother would always, Pour a glass of [00:04:00] water out and drink it and then look at the sunshine.

And she said, that was really good for your eyesight. And I should do that every day, or they would soak five almonds and take the skins off the almonds overnight. And then every morning have those five almonds is the first thing that you have in the morning to wake up your system and your digestive tract.

So there was all these sort of highly integrated things. And then if you got sick, there was a whole. bunch of protocols that we would follow as well. So I just never paid attention to it. I took it very much for granted because I was on the other side as a first generation kid going to school with, chicken curry sandwich and people are like, what is that smell?

So we were not very proud to be, Indian. It was more like, okay, we have to assimilate , our parents have accents. We have to assimilate. We have to be cool. And so that wasn't forgotten. I think it just came back later in life. Yeah. 

Robyn: going back to when you were just talking about some of the preparation, was your mother and grandmother making the spices [00:05:00] themselves?

Raina: yeah, they would sometimes go out and they would buy chilies and then they would dry them themselves and they would grind them down. There was a lot of homemade everything. Like we made our own fruit roll ups. We would, take peaches off of our trees, turn that into jams and purees, and then lay them out in the sun on wax paper on our deck.

And we would make, Fruit roll ups, like hundreds and hundreds of yards of them. 

Robyn: When you're talking about that and how it did come back to you, I personally can remember being with my grandmother and there are certain things, different culture, but certain foods that she would make. And I.

 Can bring myself back to being in the kitchen with her and doing it and that's so cool. It's the same thing, right? If it's so ingrained, even if you are taking it for granted as a kid, it's just in you. 

Raina: Exactly. Exactly. And then, there is something to the mitochondrial DNA giving you information and telling you what to do And I for sure did not learn anything.

It's just from osmosis and yes, I'm growing [00:06:00] that way, 

Karen: sticks with you too. I think because of the tradition of It's just like seeing your grandmother and mother interact thinking as you're talking how We don't really do that enough anymore. Like maybe when we make our dinner, we'll go to mom and ask how you made the turkey, but there's not always that same connection of tradition and the why of it, which is what's fascinating to me about this conversation.

 And what it does to not only the body, I always thought of spices as just a flavor, right? Start thinking about how much more there is to it. Yeah. , 

Robyn: and was that starting to be ingrained in you as a child? What the spices did, or is that when you were older? 

Raina: I think there's things you learn really fast.

So if you have really bad stomach aches and you get A boiled down tea of a specific seed you remember that combination of fennel and anise and you put them together and you now know. Next time I have a stomach ache, this immediately helps this immediately stop the problem, and I'm going to make it for myself [00:07:00] and then later, okay, my kids have a stomach ache.

I'm going to put these 2 things together and this is going to stop. Their belly aches. 

Robyn: And you know what else too, I am thinking about as we're talking about spices and smells. There's something also about the fact that you're using that other sense, right? 

These 

spices, a lot of them when they're cooked a certain way and all of that, they do have these certain smells.

And I feel like that also is another reason why it becomes even more part of you. 

Raina: Yeah. Yeah. You're 

Robyn: smelling it. You can remember the smell, 

Raina: Totally. Yeah. It's a full to, ancient knowledge through the smell.

Karen: Were there any kind of spiritual practices that were incorporated into either the spices or just in general into the ritual of the Ayurvedic Sure. 

Raina: I'd say that it wasn't that the Ayurvedic or spiritual elements were incorporated with one another.

It was just the way life was. So we grew up in a very Religious household, a Hindu household, and my dad was [00:08:00] not as religious as my mom, but my mom was very duty bound in a very traditional way she would do all of the rituals, she would follow all of the beliefs, she would, Basically, there wasn't a single thing on the Hindu calendar that she would miss.

And then we would also have kirtan in our house, , all my mom's friends who also were very devout would come and they would sing and they would sing devotional songs and then they would have a meditation hour or two. And then my grandfather, 4 a.

m. every day would wake up and he would meditate for three hours. So before we would get up probably around 645 or so, start getting ourselves ready for school. And my sister and I remember our favorite thing to do was try to get him out of his meditation because we would, go and distract and we'd jump all over him.

And he was undeterred. You could not wake him. when he was in his deep state meditation. He would just be sitting there in the middle of the family room because we lived, with our grandparents as well. And you could not move him at all. [00:09:00] And then at 7 a. m. he would open his eyes and, start talking to us.

Karen: Wow. 

Robyn: Wonderful to have in your home. Yeah, and to see that every day. 

Raina: Every single day. He had so much discipline. he had his workouts, which were hilarious because we didn't have weights and things like that. So he would just go outside. We would just see him like lifting bricks every day.

It was just like lifting two, three bricks, at a time. 

Robyn: And how did you see both that type of discipline and those types of practices along with. The practice integrated with your food. How did that play out in terms of keeping a healthy home, both mentally and physically?

Was it mostly? 

Raina: Yeah. I think it was a pretty normal middle class home. There was, aspects of religion and there are aspects of spirituality that were, I think very helpful, but it wasn't like a peaceful home. Like we were a loud family. Yeah. Lots of debating and arguing and all that, but the mornings were peaceful [00:10:00] dinner was delicious.

So no complaints. 

Robyn: And did do you feel like when you look back that You didn't get as sick as much as others that you may have known or that kind of 

Raina: Yeah, I think so. I think there was a real focus on feeding children what they need to be healthy and both for my mom, my grandma and a lot of overfeeding to let's be honest, as you take a bite off your plate, there's another bite to replace it, spooned on.

 And yeah, there was a big emphasis on, what is it that's going to give you beautiful hair and sparkling eyes and good skin and make you tall and that didn't work for me. I missed a growth spurt but, overall, just like, how do you give children enough energy so that they can, their brains will work, function the best for their studies, which was the

overriding goal of any child's life is just to get straight A's and get into med school. I 

Karen: was going to ask you about that. So when you did go away to college, was that something that you left in the dust behind? [00:11:00] Oh, 

Raina: yeah, I did. I totally did. For a good, 15, 20 years.

Karen: And so let's talk about your career a little bit because you have such an incredible career in the technology world. Can you talk about what you did and what that was all like before your spicewell company got started? 

Raina: Oh gosh. Yeah. So many things that I wanted to be. I started as a documentary filmmaker and a video editor I went to film school.

I studied, I minored in anthropology. I majored in film and I loved making stories that would move people and hopefully impact them and help them change their minds about things that they needed to know about. And that was short lived. I soon realized that it was very hard to sell a film and make a living as a documentarian.

And for all of those who are doing it, I applaud you and I admire you. It is a very hard path and I don't think I could have done what I needed to do in that field, but I so love a good documentary and I love how it changes, it can change wide [00:12:00] swaths of people's minds.

So I saw that power and then I took it to technology, which had more jobs and I wanted to do the same thing. I wanted to impact people's lives, make everyone's lives a little bit better. Through technology and I started as an interaction designer. I got my master's technology at NYU and then I had no idea it was going to happen.

It was one of those post 9 11 jobs. Seeking surprises, which, originally was going to maybe go into art and technology. There was a lot of jobs that disappeared overnight. And I ended up in advertising as a temp. at this ad agency across the street from my house and working for this fabulous woman named Cindy Gallop, who is a legend.

And initially was very anti advertising and then once I got in there and I met all the people, I was like, Oh, it's all, the artists that I was going to hang out with anyways, they're all here and we're all getting a salary. And then like after hours, we're also all working on our art.

 I really found my [00:13:00] people and it was fantastic. It was such a great time in life. 

Robyn: And then where did that lead? Cause then You ended up in government. So how did you get there? Yes. Okay. 

Raina: So 13 years after walking into BBH I was running Wieden and Kennedy's digital department in New York and had, amazing blue chip clients.

We had Nike, we had Cove, we had all these amazing. clients that you would die for. And I had a pro bono client, which was one. org. And that was the one that was the most intriguing because that connected back to my work as a documentary filmmaker of Oh, we're actually making change happen.

And I just thought to myself, I can't sell a lawnmower pair of sneakers. I can't work on this basketball campaign. I can't sell any more soda. I need to go and do this work. And so one. org was my gateway drug into working in social impact. And I met amazing people along that journey. This woman, Susan McHugh was on the board at the time and a couple of [00:14:00] years later.

I went and started a non profit in Africa called Light Up Malawi that was all about solar training and instead of shipping people from Europe and California to go install a solar panel, it's basically a circuit, anyone can learn how to do it. So we developed curriculum and then that got acquired by a larger non profit.

And became part of community education. But then I had a run in with another woman named Katie Stanton she had just joined, the State Department. She's State Department needs more people like you. And I was okay, what should I do? And she made a couple introductions and I had a job.

 At State Department. And so that's how that happened. And I was working in digital diplomacy. And then like a year and a half after that, Susan McHugh, who I worked with at One. org, was on the board of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which is the largest international media network.

It's Radio Free Europe, Voice of America, SAWA. All of US international media and she and a few other people, [00:15:00] Walter Isaacson and Alec Ross recruited me to co lead innovation at the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which was a huge job to take over with the federal agency. And I got to work with one of my favorite people that I've ever worked with, a guy named Rob Bull.

So they put us in together because they knew if they put just one of us in, we wouldn't survive. So we needed to be A team. And I loved it. We got so much done so quickly. 

Robyn: just listening to your journey so far, it helps to understand the passion that you bring to whatever you're working on.

And you've run the gamut, right? all different but all with such intention. 

Raina: Yeah, a lot of intention. I can't get excited about doing it. It takes an enormous amount of energy to change your career. And I can't do that if I'm not making that impact or connecting with that. Need to change.

Definitely. 

Robyn: And so you're in the midst of working in these different areas [00:16:00] when you had your first child in 2013, And there's something that started to click for you then in terms of bringing you back to where you are now. 

Raina: Yeah. So Obama administration sort of time was wrapping up.

I left the government and I went back to New York for a minute and started consulting again, thinking I'll figure it out and then ended up moving. Rapidly back to California to the Bay Area where I grew up because my dad had passed away suddenly. So I went out to help my mom. And at this point, I was engaged.

We were supposed to move to New York. And then my husband at the same time, got transferred, with Apple, to Cupertino, which he was supposed to also end up in New York, but then ended up in the Bay Area independently of California. 

Karen: You 

nothing: are being guided 

Raina: Crazy. And so we're like, okay, that takes care of this whole fiance visa issue. Cause he grew up in Australia and didn't have the visa and we had, I think like a 3000 page application, never heard anything. We're like, okay I don't know how we're [00:17:00] going to be together, but we're going to be together.

And so that happened. And then. I joined a startup because I was in Silicon Valley and I followed in one of my investments that I was pretty passionate about and joined as the CMO, and that was Maven and Maven was a platform for users to use their apps and download apps and install apps and receive in exchange for their time and their eyeballs, mobile data credits.

So instead of paying for. Your prepaid phone, you would do this. So we launched in India. It was very successful. We had 5 million users and then we were on our way to the U S and then one of our investors blew up the deal and basically forced us to shut down, even though Google was wanting to acquire us.

So it was like one of those, such a near miss, we toiled for four years and we would have had a really great story. And then. I learned this. Not everyone in Silicon Valley is ethical, and that leapfrogged me to the investor side of the table at a mid year network where I was leading the [00:18:00] portfolio on technology ethics and trying to instill a movement and build a movement in Silicon Valley to think about the unintended consequences of our products.

And so that became my next new mission. And I worked really hard on that and we made a lot of headway. And I think today I even see the impacts of that in terms of service agreements. I've seen it on chat, GPT. I'm like. I know our work has impacted this next generation of technologists enough that this stuff's just happening independently.

Wow. 

Karen: I love too how you're leading with your heart in everything that you're doing. They seem so unrelated and totally unrelated. Yeah. I think a lot of people would have a hard time following that type of career and yet it was all geared from a heart centered space.

Yeah, 

Robyn: when you actually really hear it, there's this thread 

Karen: Yeah, it's really beautiful. So how did all of that. Lead you from the technology world and the government, all of the things that you did Okay. 

Raina: So we're [00:19:00] just 

Karen: like rolling. 

Robyn: Yeah. to studying plant medicine and our food and 

Raina: that was a complete COVID thing.

So I had moved down to LA. I joined an early stage fund and I was, putting on my investor hat for the first time as a full time job and I really enjoyed it. And then it got to the point where we had deployed the portfolio and I was like, okay, I can take care of these companies, but I don't think I'm going to raise another fund.

I don't think I want to be a lifelong investor. I really missed the build. It'd been about eight years since I had built something and I was getting that itch and I didn't like any of the ideas in tech, everything was AI, this and this, and that I was like, so boring. I don't want to do that. I've thought about that.

Field far too deeply for so long, and I'm just over it in a way. So I was looking for something else. so one, I created some space to look outside of what I had labeled myself as a technologist. It was hard. That 

Robyn: is not easy. 

Raina: No, it's not because you just get in your own way. And then if you take off [00:20:00] all of your labels and take off all of your hats, and then you feel like naked, you feel like you don't know who you are.

There's all this sort of identity wrapped up into every decision that I wasn't accustomed to because usually I'm keep moving careers that I have no crust. And I had crust at this point. I was like, okay, I've been doing this stuff for a while. And I've been in tech, in different aspects of it, but for a very long time and I wanted something else, but I didn't know what, and then the pandemic hit. And then my husband had this knee surgery. He'd been putting off he had to get ACL, LCL, MCL, all of it replaced. And We finally did it. It was that point in covid where it was like, actually okay to do that.

it was easy to get a surgery slot because not that many people were, scheduling surgeries. And so I brought him home from his surgery and then just maybe an hour later. My daughter and my son were in a bike accident. They were actually thrown out of a cargo bike. My daughter broke her [00:21:00] collarbone and she was five years old.

And then my son, all banged up and he was seven and, then I was like, Oh my God, what are we going to do? Because she could not get out of bed. She wasn't so much. She couldn't even breathe without being in pain and it's so hard. And then my husband had his leg all pinned up and couldn't move.

So we had 14 EMTs in the house. Like it was just chaos. So I brought him home from the hospital. I took her to the hospital and then I was treating two people who could not get out of bed. My husband downstairs, my daughter upstairs. And that's when. Spice well started. That's basically me being highly motivated to get them back on their feet as soon as possible because caretaking is absolutely crushing Exhausting especially when you're running up and down, you know every meal every snack all the hydration All the medication, all of that we had to do.

And we took my husband completely off of prescription painkillers. he didn't want to take them. So I treated him with tons and tons of turmeric and ginger. And I made sure that [00:22:00] all of his systems were working together to heal him and get his swelling down. And then same for my daughter.

And it was just, I don't know where this information came from. I don't know how I knew how to do these things again, we talked about this earlier. I just. followed some ancient knowledge it wasn't even me. I feel like most of the time that was doing this, it was just going through me and my hands were being used to put this stuff together.

And that is really how I feel because I did dehydrate kale. I did dehydrate broccoli. I put them together. It tasted terrible. And then I tried again and again, I got it to a point where my daughter loved it. And I got it to a point where my husband loved it. And then I was like, okay, we're going to just put it in salt and pepper for now, because it's easy to conceal.

And then that's how it was born and it was like right under my nose the whole time. It was sitting there in my kitchen. I just had never that's why I made my hands do that. 

Karen: Is there something specific about those two ingredients that help with conditions? Yeah. 

Raina: It's vitamins. It's all of the [00:23:00] things that exist in plants, our bodies need in one way or another, or it can really benefit from.

And with vegetables in particular, like kale. Actually, I had broken. My elbow in a bike accident in New York when sometime in my twenties. basically, I read somewhere that if you eat a lot of kale, your bones will heal faster because of the calcium. And I just ate kale like every day I ate so much kale.

And I also did some Chinese medicine and my cast came off like two and a half weeks earlier than it was supposed to. And my doctor was really surprised. and I did the same thing For my daughter and for my husband, and they were both back on their feet in like less than 10 days and both of their doctors were surprised too.

And it was the nutrition. It was 100%. It's vitamin A, vitamin C, all of calcium, iron. All of the things that there are little cells needed and you think about it on a cellular level and you're like, okay, what am I going to give to this cell? Not what am I going to give to this [00:24:00] person? 

Robyn: and you talk too, about using the real ingredients in a way with real food, rather than Taking a pill.

Raina: Yeah, absolutely. And there are plenty of studies that show if you take a synthesized, lab created vitamin, you only absorb about 20 percent of it. Your body can't really utilize all of it. It's not organic material. it's missing phytonutrients. It's missing all of the sort of magic of what a broccoli itself can do.

 But if you take something from a vegetable based source, you take something that's real food during the digestion process, if you eat it you actually absorb 70 percent of it. So it's just a no brainer that you should be eating your vitamins from real foods. 

Karen: Is there a difference between eating a whole vegetable and then a spice version of that?

Raina: Oh yeah, definitely. I still think everything that we've done with Spicewell is just to add that little extra to an already healthy diet. But yes, [00:25:00] eating a fully fresh vegetable. Now would still be better than taking, a dehydrated vegetable in high concentration later. But what's happening with our soil, which is so sad is that 25 years ago, the broccoli that we grew had maybe 50 to 60 percent more magnesium than it does.

And which then our bodies we're more bioavailable to our bodies than taking a magnesium pill. And now even if you buy it, the freshest. Farmer's market, organic, straight from the soil, broccoli, it's not going to be as nutritive and it's just got less vitamins and minerals in it that our bodies can use.

So we will need to supplement and as the soil continues to weaken, we'll have to figure out something on a global scale, but Spicewell is just one tiny way to start addressing that. 

Robyn: What have you found has been the reason that the soil is no longer as nutrient. 

Raina: There's this great book that my husband read and loves, [00:26:00] and I've read bits of it as well.

It's called The Soil Will Save Us, and I've only, gotten like one or two chapters in. It's so interesting because there's a microbiome in soil and that gets eradicated if you keep using the soil and you don't replenish it. Also, we don't have elk and deer crossing over and leaving their droppings and doing what they do, really enriching our soil the way we used to, which is why American soil was so great because we had those kinds of animals.

 All that kind of leaving everything in our soil. And I think farming is just too far too commercialized, even if it's not like it's so hard to find really good soil. you go to Italy, it's way better and the fruits and vegetables are better. And it's not because it's just Italy. it's that volcanic ash in the soil that's giving it so much.

And we don't have that. 

Robyn: I don't think people think 

Karen: of it that way. I 

Raina: never 

Karen: would have thought of that. Let's talk about Spicewell products then. What are those core products that you've created and why are they so [00:27:00] special? 

Raina: Yeah. Okay. So we started with just a salt and pepper and it was really designed to be a replacement for salt and pepper and the vitamin profile on both the salt and pepper is made out of 12 organic vegetables.

And that's mytaki mushroom, shiitake mushroom, kale, broccoli cranberry, sunflower seed, just anything that we could find that would have really great nutrition and it's iodized with kelp which is a better absorption. And I think. We started with salt and pepper because it's very easy to conceal the flavor of the vegetables in those two things are very strong flavors. 

The salt, I also pulled down the sodium 30 percent because there's a lot of people in my life that couldn't have a ton of sodium and this allowed them to use it a little bit more liberally. And then, The pepper is blended with turmeric, so that's the Ayurvedic magical recipe that really helps with both absorption and allows the curcumin from the turmeric to actually [00:28:00] perform its anti inflammatory actions, which you can't do if you just take a curcumin supplement or you just eat turmeric on its own.

So you really need to have the presence of pepper, which slows down the hydrochloric acid in your body . which allows the curcumin to stay in your body longer. Otherwise you've digested so fast. And so that's an ancient Ayurvedic recipe. And, I always think about it. I'm like, how did they know they didn't have microscopes?

They didn't have blood tests. Like, how did they know to do that? the only explanation is magic . 

Robyn: Yeah. I agree. I agree. Like somehow, somebody was downloaded with that. 

Raina: Yeah. And they 

Robyn: did, and they, then they tried it and it worked. 

Raina: that's exactly how I felt. I felt like something was being downloaded into me.

I had no idea. I was like, I don't know where I'm coming up with this shit. I'm just doing some, I know that this and this work together in this specific proportion, like how, I don't know. 

nothing: That is crazy. 

Raina: Yeah. And then , basically [00:29:00] six months later, I had a product in market.

I had Mark Hyman on our advisory board Ann Veneman who used to run the USDA and UNICEF world food program and sat on the board of Nestle and all these amazing medical advisors rheumatologists. And nutritionists and we just have this wonderful, healthy alternative to what is actually really necessary.

Because if you look at salt, everyone thinks it's a very innocuous ingredient, table salt, iodized salt, Morton's. There are four extra ingredients in there like sodium, aluminum, there's dextrose usually in there as well. It's a mess. And this is the most commonly used ingredient in the American food supply. 

millions and millions of pounds are used in food service, are used in grocery items, are used in packaged goods. And it's terrible for us. We could do so much better if we just replaced that one ingredient. 

Karen: So would your dream be that Spicewell be that replacement? 

Raina: Yeah, absolutely.

[00:30:00] Yeah. we're going for it. 

Robyn: Yeah, you are. 

Raina: And does it taste any different? No. So the salt and the pepper really taste function act feel just like salt and pepper. It looks a little different. And so we call it a golden salt and a golden pepper, but It does everything salt needs to do for a meal, and it's great for cooking and it's great for seasoning.

And then we introduced a sea salt that is hand harvested in Mexico with our B Corp certified partners, which is their amazing women led co op. I love them and they do everything by hand and they don't use any plastic in their supply chain, which was a requirement because so many sea salts are just plagued with microplastics.

And ours are tested lower than the three leading brands in microplastics and higher in minerals because they dry them on limestone beds, which just soak up all the calcium and the magnesium and the potassium. 

Robyn: Let's just reflect for a moment. You went from [00:31:00] being a documentarian to working in advertising in tech and the government.

And then here you are now, having some of that obviously experience overseeing, large teams and investing and understanding that process, but now packaged goods. And food. I know. Could 

Raina: you, I don't, it's unbelievable. I never thought in a million years I would have a CPG company or do anything really in food other than eat it.

So as much of a surprise to me. And you're following that 

Robyn: flow, and you're continuing to make an impact. And one of the things when you talked about how salt is the most commonly used product in our American diet, what have you also seen from that salt that has had a ripple effect in terms of, Americans and their health?

Raina: Oh so much. The real problem in America isn't the salts, it's the sugar. And the sugar is also in everything. And now the sugar is in the salt. [00:32:00] seriously, pick up your Morton's and see, or, pick up whatever iodized salt you have and check the ingredients. It's not just salts. And a lot of those things Cause inflammation.

A lot of those ingredients cause respiratory issues. So much. That's problematic. Wow. 

Robyn: I actually think just even that for people listening or watching is super eyeopening. I am sure most people have no idea that there is sugar in their salt 

Karen: or plastic in their sea salt. Oh yeah. 

Raina: Totally. And the the spice trade is very dirty as well. A lot of pepper and turmeric have toxic heavy metals like lead in them, especially turmeric because it sweeps it up from the ground. And ours is double lab tested to be free of toxic heavy metals.

And that's really important to me because I had very high mercury. I still am, dealing with that I don't know how that happened. Like it doesn't make any sense. I wasn't eating tuna every single day. And I just think there's so much that Americans don't know [00:33:00] about in our food and the FDA requirements and the USDA requirements allow for far too much to enter our food supply that we shouldn't be eating and I think salt really needs a big examination.

Now, a lot of people say they can't have salts because XYZ, their doctor told them they have to go on a low sodium diet, but that's actually because of the sugar. So the sugar, and I learned this from this wonderful Dr. Robert Lustig. He's like the sugar slows down the body's ability to process the salt.

So because you are dealing with all of the issues of, insulin resistance. everything else starts to fail. And then basically the entire big food economy that has been built is really just about causing organ failure, one organ at a time. So I think once you see it, you can't unsee it. You have to just, put you and your family first and not just listen to what's on the [00:34:00] package or what is on the commercial or, what they're telling you and what they want you to believe.

You actually have to read the ingredients because that's the only thing that I think by law is still accurate. But even in the ingredients, they don't have to list everything. 

Robyn: No, they don't. That's right. 

Karen: Raina, can I just ask, I want to just clarify with the Spicewell product. So is that a lower level of sodium in it?

Yes, 

Raina: it's 30 percent lower in sodium than regular table salt. So just as a reference, but , it's still salt. It's still has sodium. It's not a no sodium product. And need sodium. I was going to say, we do 

Robyn: need sodium. We just don't need sugar with our sodium. 

Raina: That's right.

Yeah, you 

Karen: do need sodium. You put the mother hat on, and you're thinking, okay, I am going to add some salt to this food, but then the idea of all these hidden vitamins that you're also adding into the food, and yet it still tastes good. 

Raina: Yeah it's really for moms.

It's really for moms because the back of our heads were like, are my kids getting enough nutrients? Are they [00:35:00] getting enough vitamins? Did they eat enough vegetables? And I know that so many moms have told me that their children specifically asked for the special salt.

they want to season their own food with it, which is it's like exactly my dream. 

Robyn: And I love that it's for moms, but obviously it's for everyone. I know I have friends who from a medical perspective actually need sodium.

And they're going to hear this and be like, Oh my, I want that salt, and that pepper, because , I don't think people have examined the to that extent. 

Raina: Yeah. And then as I was formulating, I really fell down this whole rabbit hole of Americans. And our nutrition and, yes, because the soil, but also because big food and also because, these package highly ultra processed foods that we have come to accept and we're feeding to our kids.

And I'm like, what are goldfish? They're disgusting. they're no good for anybody. And yet they're like a classic preschool snack, and that all kids have. And then you look at school foods. And [00:36:00] that's 30 to 50 percent of some children's calories. And I sit on the board of eat real, which is working to change district by district and make school food, organic, regenerative, and local, which is going to change the nutrition profile automatically.

 But that is one of the biggest fast food chains in the world. And we just don't even, we're like, okay, yeah, go to school. And here's your lunch money. The worst food in the world and it's 

Robyn: been going on for so long, and I can remember early in my Oprah days we were trying to highlight.

People who were at that time, and we're talking 20 years ago, trying to change the system and here we are. We're still. Yeah. 

Karen: just read an article yesterday about how mercury and metals in food are impacting children's cognitive abilities. 

Raina: Absolutely. 

Karen: Behaviors. All of those things. So it seems like such a no brainer that we need to start there.

We need 

Raina: more. And especially after COVID, these [00:37:00] kids who've had COVID, who've had brain inflammation, they are having a really hard time, not just because they're behind, but because COVID has really impacted their ability to learn and focus. And the only counter to that is excellent nutrition and a lot of.

Organic vegetable based vitamins. 

nothing: And you're doing it. You're actually doing, you're doing what you do. yes. Which 

Raina: I have to make it easy. That is my consumer behavior playbook, because I knew like Americans don't read. you can't do a big education campaign.

It's very expensive. So just make it easy. We'll just swap it out. We're used to swapping out. 

Robyn: In addition to your salt and your pepper, what other foods would you suggest that everybody should be incorporating into their everyday or into their diet in general? 

Raina: so there are so many.

Interesting studies on ginger. Ginger a new studies in terms of everything that it can do. So I'm not going to go into like great detail, but there is [00:38:00] literally not a bodily function that ginger does not help you with from cognition to your gut to joints. And Both ginger and turmeric are amazing and how in their rhizomes and how they grow and like all of their properties, but they keep finding more and more that ginger does.

It's like they, it's still like undiscovered. So I just think I have ginger every morning in my tea. I put a powdered ginger in my tea and I have a mix of galangal in three, four different gingers. And it's Just like a great way to wake up and I think it's something everyone should have more of in their lives every day It's just ginger.

And turmeric for sure. 

Karen: I'm just thinking about our audience and . You say it's almost like a download the idea for Spicewell . Could you just talk a little bit more about that? What did that feel like?

 What inspired you to actually on that download? 

Raina: so I just remember being in my kitchen. Thinking, okay, I just want my family to be better. I just want my daughter's pain to [00:39:00] stop. , what do I need to do to make her pain stop?

And I just closed my eyes and. All of this just came to me and I started taking out all my ingredients and, I went to the garden. I chopped down all of the vegetables that I thought would be helpful. And I was like, I know she's not going to eat the vegetables. She's definitely going to throw them at me.

So I need to find a way like what format. So I tried smoothies. It was a lot of really rapid experimentation, but I had all the pieces. I just knew that's what she needed. And then when I got it dehydrated and powdered and tasteless enough to put into everything, hide it, you're just like a mom hiding vegetables for everybody.

I think that's when it all the combinations started to get downloaded a little bit more. And then it became very specific proportions. And it was like, I don't know I don't even know how I know to do this, but I'm just following. The flow. I'm just thought there was an absolute flow through me while this was getting put together.

 and it was like, I wasn't just thinking about my [00:40:00] daughter or my husband, I was literally thinking about very specifically her collarbone. And then I was thinking about her pain and I was thinking about the inflammation and what that was. that look like? And I was thinking like, you just go deeper and deeper.

And then I was looking at her little bone cells, that were all cracked. And I'm just asked the universe and what is it that she needs? to heal fast. And that's how we came up with it. 

Robyn: Had you ever had another experience like that before where you would, ask, 

Raina: Yeah maybe, but it was all in tech.

It wasn't with anything physical or organic. So it wasn't really the same experience as a little kid. I was always taking herbs and like plants and crushing flowers and trying to make perfume. my mom said that as a kid, I was always doing, little witchy stuff. so there was, There's some history of that, but I don't know.

Robyn: But even just that being able to receive and hear from the universe in [00:41:00] general, has that been something that you've been able to do at certain key moments in your life? 

Raina: Yeah, definitely. I think that I can do and it's very similar to being in a flow state. I think with Spicewell, what made it different and so special is that It's using real things, like it's very tactile you eat it, whereas opposed to a film or, an idea for a new tech product, it feels a little bit more in your head. 

 yeah, there was definitely a download. There was definitely a flow state. I think it was also, Being 40 something and seeing I had all these ideas at one point that I didn't execute on and then seeing that idea come again and realizing, okay, if I don't grab literally by both horns, if I don't grab this idea and hold on to it, it's also going to pass and I've seen so many ideas pass and then, come into fruition another way.

And so it was also that at the same time where I was like, okay, I have [00:42:00] to do this. Thanks. 

Karen: It's like in your prior jobs and your career had brought you to that moment where you could take all of that experience that you. Yeah. That's what I'm feeling from you too is it was the love of wanting to help and care for your family that really allowed that flow to come through.

So it was all generating from a love and wanting to care and heal. Yes. 

Raina: Totally. It's all from love. 

Robyn: And then, just talking about flow, it seems to me, within the flow, then you attracted some unbelievable people to really help. So it's like the whole thing. And I think the three of us know that when things work that way, that's exactly where you're meant to be.

And that's what you're supposed to be doing. And really for others in this case to receive whatever level Start to raise the vibration for all of us. 

Raina: Yeah, that's exactly what happened. It was it just dropped and it was [00:43:00] mystical and spiritual and it was very energetic.

People could definitely feel that. But yeah we made so much happen in such a short time. 

Karen: Is there any advice that you would give right now, like for people who are listening, who are thinking, oh my gosh I'm just not in the right job for me. I'm not doing what I really want to be doing in my career right now.

And who might be listening with admiration at your ability to flow from one job to the next. Is there anything that you would say to someone who's looking for that sort of purpose driven work? 

Raina: Yeah. Save up. About six to eight months of salary and put yourself on a sabbatical for two months while you figure it out, because , there will always be something that comes.

And I just, I hate to see people trapped in jobs. I hate to see people living their lives in a way that are as far less than what they dreamed of as children. And if you have the ability to save up and save up. Take the leap, but don't do it without saving up. Then you can't be [00:44:00] creative.

Robyn: Yeah. allows you that cushion of absolutely knowing you're okay. And you can take that time, and just be, yeah, but 

Raina: if you decide you want to transform your life. It starts, it just starts, you just have to decide. It's so true. 

Robyn: speaking of transformation, in terms of stories that you know, and obviously you saw the healing that happened in your own family by utilizing different spices and food.

have you heard of other transformational types of stories from people using Spicewell and just, Ayurvedic practices. 

Raina: Yeah. I like that Spiceball has been a bit of a gateway, like an entry point level, level one of an Ayurvedic journey. It's the pepper and turmeric for a lot of people.

I have had people call and tell me and email me all the time. Customers that. Their gut health has improved after using this every day [00:45:00] for eight weeks and their digestion, like they have it in the morning on their eggs. It's really good on eggs. 

And they had it in the morning and they're like, I now have regular bowel movements. I was like, that is TMI. 

nothing: Yes. 

Raina: Yes. it's so effective. It's so impactful and I just feel so much better, and it's little stuff like that. And then especially hearing about the kids.

requesting it. It was like, yes, we've tricked them again.

Robyn: And it's such an easy swap, it really is. So What's the best place to find Spicewell? Is it Spicewell. com? 

Raina: Yeah, Spicewell. com. We're on Amazon. We are in Erewhon. We're in the Fresh Market and several other places.

Specialty stores across the U. S. 

Robyn: And what I love on Spicewell. com you also have a few recipes 

Raina: so many. 

Robyn: They're so good. to everybody listening and watching, please visit Spicewell.com com, and or [00:46:00] Amazon and any of the other stores yeah, 

Raina: and sign up for the newsletter and I'll give you guys a code for your listeners as well.

Robyn: I'm great. 

Karen: Wonderful. I'm convinced. I know, same, it's the making it easy. That is the magic. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's so 

nothing: healthy. It's like, why not? 

Raina: a 

nothing: why not? . 

Robyn: Thank you for following your flow. Thank you for sharing your journey and all that you've learned and continue to learn with us today.

We're so grateful. 

Raina: I am so grateful to be here. Thank you for letting me tell my story. Loved it. Thank 

Robyn: you.