The Exchanges

Q Well, just tell me about the paleo diet for a moment. I know it. I've been on it myself. But how did you get into, like, I need to change my diet, and I want to try this?

A So after my 2005 experience with producing the TV show and being under an incredible amount of stress and having Horrible gastric issues, IBS, which had been with me since I was 14, but now I'm 47 and it's even getting worse, or whatever age I was. I was writing a lot about grains, and I started to think maybe grains are kind of not good for your health. They're, maybe humans are not evolved to handle the tightly wound proteins that are in grains, the gluten, the gliadins, the, the zines, all of these proteins that are in corn and wheat, so on. So, uh, my wife, just one day, she's like, Mark, you're writing about all this stuff about how bad grains are. Why don't you just do 30 days of not, not being on grains? And I did, and it transformed my life. My IBS went away, my gastroesophageal reflux went away, and it was like a light bulb went on.

AI assessment note: “my wife, just one day, she's like, Mark... Why don't you just do 30 days”

Q But you also were trying to figure out, because I think you wanted to make a bunch of different products, right, from the get-go. So who did you bring on to help you do this? Like, did you find a chef? Did you find, like, well, how did you even start?

A So in 2000, early 2014, I had a friend in San Diego who was a paleo chef, he was known as a paleo chef, and so I brought him on as an R&D consultant, and I hired his wife to manage the business for the year with the intent of arriving at a suite of products. I wanted a couple of salad dressings, I wanted a mayonnaise, I wanted a ketchup, I wanted a barbecue sauce, And I wanted to enter the marketplace with a suite of products. So I actually not only hired them, I gave them a tiny piece of equity. And at the same time, I went out and I found a person who had been in the marketing department of a sparkling probiotics company called Kavita. I hired her on an hourly basis, very part-time.

AI assessment note: “I had a friend in San Diego who was a paleo chef... brought him on”

Q By the way, what was the name of the company?

A Um, it was called The Winning Combination, TWC. It doesn't exist anymore, but my friend is a very good friend of mine who started it and ran it, became one of the Top vitamin guys in the world. But I left after five years. I, I didn't have any equity in the company, and, and there was none on the horizon, and so I decided at that point that I knew enough about supplementation, I knew enough about training, I knew enough about performance that I would start my own company, and so I left in 97 to start Primal Nutrition, a company that initially I looked at making preparations that athletes could take As opposed to resorting to banned substances.

AI assessment note: “it was called The Winning Combination, TWC.”

Q I mean, what, what happened? Like, how did that happen?

A What happened was people in the paleo community who wanted to eat a variety of foods had long since taken tuna salad, chicken salad, potato salad off their menu. They're like, we eat this egg salad. We can't have it because it requires mayonnaise, and mayonnaise is bad for you. And now here we are bringing on this product that's now going to open up their, their menu to include all of these plus, plus, plus everything else that you put mayonnaise on. So coincidentally, I had been an early investor in Thrive Market, which billed itself as Costco meets Whole Foods Online, a membership organization where you could go get all the things you could find at Whole Foods, but at Costco prices, But not at Costco Quantity. So you, you signed up to become a member, and we coordinated efforts to where I would assign them as the only place online that you can get Primal Kitchen mayonnaise. So in that first year, the two of us sold just an incredible amount of mayonnaise direct to consumer.

AI assessment note: “What happened was people in the paleo community who wanted to eat a variety”

Q studied biology, so you have, you have some background, but at the same time, like, You know, you're not a board certified physician, which you don't have to be. There's lots of people who know a lot about nutrition who aren't, but how did you come up with your theories or your ideas? Were you doing research or was it just based on your own experience with your own body?

A Oh, I did a lot of research, not just the studies, but also sort of the evaluations of the studies over the years. So I did have a background in, in biology. I had a sort of a secondary major in evolutionary biology. So I'm Certain that today we're walking around with a genetic recipe that was crafted over two and a half million years of human evolution, that our genes expect us to do certain things. They expect us to go to sleep when the sun goes down and wake up when the sun comes up. They expect us to lift heavy things once in a while. They expect us to move around all day long and not sit on the sofa. They expect us to not eat three meals a day, but in fact to eat sporadically, you know, and all of these things that we've sort of Created a society around, a civil society around, that is thwarting our genetic predisposition to be healthy and strong and lean and fit and all of the things that we say we want.

AI assessment note: “Oh, I did a lot of research, not just the studies”

Q How did you find the, um, you know, the co-packer to do this? And was it a local place in, in Southern California that could, I mean, cause it's not that complicated, right? You find a place that can make the man, manage your recipe and then put it in the jar and seal it up.

A Uh, yes, it's not that complicated. On the other hand, if you're a startup and your co-manufacturer is doing twenty million dollars a year with this, this company and fifty million dollars a year with that company, and you come in and say, I think we can do A 100,000 jars this year, if we're lucky. It's tough to get in the door with some of these operations, and especially the ones that are gonna be able to make your product consistently. I mean, that's a huge thing. There are lots of co-packers in food that have issues, and you, you want, you know, you're dealing with food. It's a very sensitive area. You want to be able to, uh, to rely on the safety and the, and the procedures and everything that you've put in place.

AI assessment note: “On the other hand, if you're a startup and your co-manufacturer is doing twenty million”