#74 Ben and Brandon – Keto Farms

Meet Ben and Brandon:

Ben & Brandon are the founders of our promotional partner online food company, Keto Farms. They are revolutionizing the keto movement by using the cleanest, keto-friendly ingredients and a ‘from-the-Earth’ concept which excludes sweeteners, preservatives or additives of any kind. Keto Farms provides more than just keto-approved products — they promote a healthy, sustainable and well-rounded keto lifestyle.

Show Notes:

ABOUT BEN AND BRANDON

BEN:

• The way my health journey started was like a typical American kid
• Until I went to college, I did not particularly have any focus on health or clean eating or any understanding of anything like that
• But then, I had a fantastic experience in college where I was studying the Japanese language and as a result, I decided to study abroad in Japan in my Junior year of college
• I lived there for 6 months and had chosen to live with a host family
• I was living with a Japanese family, eating with them every single day and truly seeing how they live their lives
• What I noticed, there wasn’t a single processed food in the household. Everything that was cooked at home and was consumed on a daily basis was pretty much purchased that day on a local market – cooked, fresh and ready to eat
• What was fascinating for me was the way that I felt after I started eating like that after a couple of months
• I would say, that was my introduction to clean eating today
• There was a period in my 20’s when I read a book called, The China Study
• It is a study based on the different districts within China and because they are very isolated from one another, it is very easy to understand the foods they have access to versus foods they don’t have access to
• That book was all about that the elimination of animal products in those diets seem to have a coloration to extremely low incident of cancer
• So, I became a vegetarian for a year and I really did not feel very good, but it was a great experiment
• The most interesting point through my health journey is when I found the Ketogenic diet and that was in late 2016
• Particularly, in the afternoons, I was always having just the worst energy
• The energy, mental clarity and cognitive benefits that one could enjoy on the Keto diet and this really inspired me to try it
• 2 weeks in, I was feeling the best I have ever felt in my entire life
• I had the perfect energy from dawn till dusk, I was sleeping the best I have ever slept, I started to look really good – everything was perfect and I haven’t looked back

BRANDON

• My health journey has commonalities with Ben’s, but also differences
• I started out eating the worst imaginable diet in middle school and high school
• Something kind of happened early in high school when I was playing tennis and I started thinking about dating and wanting to look a little better
• So, I started thinking about diet and my approach to diet at that time was to really cut out a lot of the things that I thought were bad for me
• I have never had butter with anything
• I went many years without eating a dessert
• I had an internship where I moved down to Houston and was able to refocus on my health
• That was kind of the next level of eating very clean. I would eat plain oatmeal every morning, no sugar and so, I got into a really good shape
• I was able to really build on these practices once I got out from college and started working and really had my system down where I would meal prep every Sunday
• The interesting thing is I never really felt that I needed to change my diet
• I was happy with the way I looked and people would always say that I was really disciplined
• I was happy with my fitness plan and sort of went on autopilot for years and years
• At our previous company we had catered lunch everyday
• Me and Ben were the people pulling out these salads that were in the fridge and every single person in the lunch room was looking at us
• And that lead into discussions between us and what we were eating
• Ben told me about the Ketogenic diet in early 2018 last year, I tried Keto with Ben
• I never really thought that being on a Ketogenic diet was something that I needed
• And I really started to feel like I was having better energy
• The one thing that happened, and was really fascinating, was really freeing my dependence on a strict eating schedule
• I wasn’t able to live in the moment as much as I am now with the Ketogenic diet
• With Keto my hunger went away and I really learned how to get energy with my own body and I could kind of live more on my terms and eat when I was truly hungry
• It really allowed me to develop a much more positive healthy relationship with food
• The power of Keto goes far beyond weight loss
• There’s so many benefits and I am very glad that I was able to realize that part of it
• With the Ketogenic diet, I definitely haven’t been able to build muscle like I was able to on carbohydrate rich diets
• I think in parallel with getting on the Ketogenic diet, I found my interest declining in doing strength training every day. It didn’t feel great with my body
• I started to do a lot more yoga and surfing. Activities that are great for staying in physical shape and also great for your mental health and mental being
• I love to match the activities that I am doing with the Ketogenic diet all based around on how I feel
• I look leaner, but I am also okay with that

ABOUT KETO FARMS

BRANDON:

• If you are doing the diet with somebody you are naturally going to spend more time with them, sharing your experiences and another thing that Ben and I are both very passionate about is coffee
• I love coffee and now I am eating tons with fat, so next thing we know, we are creating our own with sticks of butter
• It would be great if you had all these ingredients in a single pouch that you could make on the go, and that was kind of in the back of my mind
• We were working late one night and kind of talking about what we were passionate about and it kind of end up with a handshake to work on a product together
• The Keto coffee was something that seemed to be achievable, something we’re passionate about and something that we felt like was missing on the market
• Keto coffee is what we launched with

BEN:

• We both have passion with food and bringing products to life online
• In the office every day, when we are working very closely on some big projects, but every single time when we are preparing for a meeting, we will stop by on each other’s desk beforehand and kind of spill out the new ideas that we can’t take our minds off of
• 5 weeks later we were on the street
• What we found ourselves doing was basically searching online, getting an understanding on what is out there today
• We were thinking about bringing something to the market on what would help people
• What we found particularly early last year, most activity in the Keto diets based with regards to a new company, there’s a lot of supplements and the contrary to that was the food type items
• To us, it really reflected that led to bad behaviors outside of the Ketogenic diet and just replicated to fit the Keto macros using a lot of ingredients that we don’t plan consuming on the regular
• As a result, we look to basically merge the way we like to eat – as fresh as possible
• Everybody is busy these days and we want to bring products to the market that are extremely convenient, but also follow the cleanest ingredient philosophy we could dream of
• Our perspective is as little processing as possible, no additives, no sweeteners, no fillers, literally nothing extra in any of our food products
• We have a lot of experiences on throwing products out as well
• And there are products that fit our macros too and we’ll have 5 more of whatever that thing was and all of a sudden, we’ll have stomach ache or our energy would be really bad
• So, those experiences are kind of what confirmed our hypothesis and philosophy around ingredient strategy and clean eating, clean foods in a convenient way

BRANDON:

• There’s a lot of people in the Ketogenic community and health minded community that would say that sucralose is bad
• We are not talking about just sucralose, we are also talking about stevia and monk fruit
• There’s certainly a case to be said that they are better than sucralose, but what we found is that even those compounds, that might not have direct impact on our gut health, can still create really nasty side effects
• When you give your body sweeteners, but you don’t necessarily give it the calories and energy, your body associates sweet things with that immediate energy from glucose
• When there’s a disconnect, your body will continue to make you crave that sweet food because it will fill that gap
• And that’s what can lead to over consuming
• As soon as you start eliminating the sweeteners, you’ll start tasting so much more
• Ben and I love dark chocolate and most people think about dark chocolate as a 72% or 80%
• We have sampled a lot of 100% cacao bars
• What we found that there are companies out there that within the cacao bean, you can create a version of chocolate that’s milder, have much more pleasant sweetness and you could design chocolate so it does not need sweetness
• By eating sweetened chocolate, you are really robbing a lot of the flavors
• Once you take away that requirement of putting sugar, it leads to a lot of creativity

BEN:

• There’s a particular brand out there that’s my gold standard
• They’re an exclusive chocolatier
• That bar is good enough that it can be eaten on its own
• The other thing that we’ll do is just get 99% baking chocolate from whole foods
• Break little pieces off and dunk it into the almond butter

BRANDON:

• We’ve found that coconut butter which is largely coconut oil, but also includes some of the flesh of the coconut meat
• It’s very similar nutritionally to coconut oil and it has a little bit more fiber
• It’s radically sweeter that coconut oil. It tastes like candy
• On the cacao bar, if you take almond butter, along with coconut butter, it’s like a snickers bar
• You just have to be a little bit creative
• We have the coffee, the tea and 3 delectable flavors of snacks
• Clean and convenient snacks
• Our products are exclusively available on our website, ketofarms.com
• We do have a goal to sell on amazon soon

WORDS OF WISDOM

• Eat clean and stay Keto

• ageist article

Comments

comments