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The Neuro Experience
Former NFL Athlete Reveals: The Truth About Popular Supplements | Jeff Byers
00:54:03
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- [00:00]
Jeff
When you think about the manufacturing process of creatine, for example, it's a chemical process and it can be done very dirty or it can be done very clean. So it becomes a cost scale perspective. Third party testing or third party certified is what everybody in the space uses, right? Like you can go, every brand says, oh, we're third party tested. They even make their own little logo that says third party tested, Right? That just says third party testing is like they. And yes, that's great. What? A lot of what you see in third party testing is actually just certificate of analysis. And so post production you get certificate analysis and it's normally done by an external lab that says lead, arsenic, all these things and you can pull them up online. It's like third party tested. It's not actually verifying anything other than this won't kill you.
- [00:45]
Sponsor Voice
This episode is sponsored by Momentous supplements. You may assume that you're getting everything your body needs from your diet or a simple green juice, but I recently discovered that most people, including myself, are still short on essential nutrients. Our body needs to function at our best. So I have been taking momentous creatine, omega 3 and protein daily to ensure that all of my bases are covered. If you follow me on Instagram, you know that I am a huge proponent of 5 grams a day of creatine and 2 grams of EPA and 2 grams of DHA daily. And according to my body weight, I am doing 100 grams of protein per day. Now, supplements can feel like a dirty word and navigating the space can be daunting due to the lack of trust and transparency. But I've come to learn that I can trust Momentous. This is why I'm actually an advisor to the company. And Momentous makes the decision so much easier for me because my trust in the products are very, very high due to their dedication to working with the best, from their collaboration with experts to paralleled commitment to only using the highest quality ingredients possible. And also they have invested heavily in their third party testing. So there's a reason why the world's best athletes and experts use and help develop Momentous products. So if you're like me and you want to take supplements that are made by and used by the best in the world, go to livemomentous.com and use code NEURO to get 32% off your first subscription order. If you don't feel like subscribing, you can still use my code to get 20% off all of my favorite products. That is live Momentous.com with code Neuro.
- [02:39]
Louisa
Jeff, how are you doing?
- [02:40]
Jeff
Great.
- [02:41]
Louisa
I'm so excited to be here in the head office of Momentous. And a lot of people know Momentous on this podcast because I've personally been affiliated with the brand since I would say 2021. And I chose to partner with you guys mainly for three reasons. One is quality of your third party testing, which we'll go into. I love the fact that you do scientific research, you've got a board of advisors and you, you know, you're currently staying up to date with the latest in science and medical research. Thirdly is the fact that my audience is all over the world and you guys are shipping internationally.
- [03:21]
Jeff
Yeah.
- [03:22]
Louisa
So why don't we first start with what does human performance mean to you?
- [03:27]
Jeff
Yeah, human performance to me is like, I don't know, everybody associates performance kind of like with athletics. Right. And there's this big stigma around it. But I really believe human performance is, are you able to live the life that you want to live? Right. All of us have different goals, different outcomes. Like me as a CEO and a father, like, I want to perform a little differently, that I'm probably going to want to perform when I'm 60. And so performance is just like, are you able to do the things that you want today and tomorrow and the next day? It's like this. How do we, you know, have lifespan and health span be the same? Is performance. Right. It's not just, can I run a 40 yard dash really fast or can I bench press a ton of weight? That was performance in another life form. But no longer is how I classify performance.
- [04:13]
Louisa
Do you see a shift? So I've been doing this podcast for quite some time now. I've been in the industry going on, you know, 15 years almost. I've seen a rise in the amount of people now understanding longevity and human performance. I think it's only come about in the last maybe two or three years.
- [04:34]
Jeff
Yeah. I think definitely Covid helped like spur a whole generation around, like health and wellness. Maybe not even just health and well, like longevity. Thinking about what that means and their ability to dive in and like actually understand deeper, richer content, I think, than most people were used to.
- [04:53]
Louisa
Yeah. Which is a really good thing. And that's something I'm happy about.
- [04:56]
Jeff
No, it's, it's amazing. I like the. Giving humans access to the knowledge is so, so important because if people understand why they're doing certain behaviors, they are way more sticky, for sure.
- [05:09]
Louisa
But that brings us back to which is actually going to tie into my Question around. Do you know why you're doing what you're doing when it comes to supplementation? And the theory that I have is, you know, we've got this pyramid to human performance. That pyramid is, at the bottom sits exercise, sleep, nutrition. And I, I think of everything else as the icing on the cake. The accessories.
- [05:33]
Jeff
Yeah.
- [05:34]
Louisa
Ice bath, sauna supplements. They are not the things that are 100. If you didn't do anything else, if you just did these things on top, they're not going to push the needle forward.
- [05:45]
Jeff
Yeah.
- [05:45]
Louisa
So that brings in and of itself a realm of confusion, if you will, when it comes to the supplement space. So we're going to now move in just for the general audience into a very content, heavy episode around supplementation. So I've been taking supplements. I mentioned earlier that I was a triathlete, and I've been taking supplements since I was like, you know, I would say, let's say 18.
- [06:12]
Jeff
What do you define as a supplement?
- [06:14]
Louisa
Anything that is not coming in, like, the raw form. Like anything outside of food.
- [06:21]
Jeff
Like, do you consider, like hydration powder, supplement?
- [06:25]
Louisa
Yes.
- [06:25]
Jeff
Okay.
- [06:25]
Louisa
Yes. So, and is that what you do?
- [06:28]
Jeff
Yeah, I think there's a lot of misconception around, like, sports nutrition and supplement and dietary supplements. Like, some people think of, like, dietary supplements as vitamins, minerals, pre workouts, things like that. And then sports nutrition is more of like hydration, protein, et cetera. I mean, ultimately they're all kind of classified as the same. But I do think, like, like, if you say this protein powder, is that a supplement or is it sports nutrition? I think a lot of people would. Would classify it as not a supplement.
- [06:55]
Louisa
Like, so, so then how would you define supplementation as it differs from a steak? Let's look at, you know, probably your most famous product, which is a protein powder.
- [07:07]
Sponsor Voice 2
Very.
- [07:08]
Louisa
That's probably what I started on, actually. Protein powders.
- [07:12]
Sponsor Voice
And what if someone was to say.
- [07:13]
Louisa
But, okay, Jeff, why don't I just, you know, get my protein from meat? Or what is the difference between the protein powder and a steak?
- [07:23]
Jeff
Yeah, I mean, I think if. Right, right. Kind of. You said this first, like, taking a step back. Right. Supplements are not at the bottom of the pyramid. Right. They're not the foundation or the base that we build a healthy, active lifestyle on. And therefore, to your point of, like, you need to get the basics right, like, you need a major in the majors on that. And then. And then when you think about, like, what is a supplement? A supplement is basically. Right. Something supplementary to your diet. Right. Or to your lifestyle or whatever that may be that's added on. So yes, right. Protein comes from steak, it comes from chicken, it comes from tofu, it comes from all these things, but you also get a lot of other things. And so what does a protein supplement do? It gives you. Right, it basically we, we probably like a whey protein isolate is the, is removing all the fats, all the sugars, all the right lactose and all the other things from dairy to just get almost pure, a pure protein. So easier to digest. You don't have the rest of the other challenges that can come with whole food, proteins, et cetera. That's really important, but also just a easier way to consume right. Protein. If we're living as active adults and we need certain, certain amounts of protein to be active.
- [08:40]
Louisa
And whey W h e y comes from what word? What does whey mean?
- [08:45]
Jeff
Whey. That's a good question.
- [08:47]
Louisa
Like, does that mean it's coming from a milk milk?
- [08:49]
Jeff
Yeah, whey. Oh, whey is, is a, yeah, whey is a, a byproduct of, of milk. So whey is a portion of the milk.
- [08:57]
Louisa
Because there is a difference, and I know that this is very controversial, especially on the social media space between getting your protein powder from a plant source, such as pea protein for example, and, or a whey protein.
- [09:10]
Jeff
Yeah. So, so whey protein isolate is essentially the gold standard when we think about a powdered form of, of whey. So you have whey protein isolate, then you have whey protein concentrate and then you have milk protein concentrate. Right. And so there's like different levels that come from dairy in terms of. In whey protein isolate, it's is the, the highest refined form, right. And has the least amount of other fats, sugars, lactose in it as well. And then when you compare right away a whey protein to a plant protein. And so there are some really unique things between whey and plant. So no plant protein has a complete amino acid profile. Right. And, and that amino acid profile is actually critical for your body to be right. Building blocks of, of tissue and things like that. So it doesn't have, no plant contains a single amino acid profile. So you always have to combine more than one plant based source or you have to add an amino acid to that. So so like pea protein as alone is great but it's not a complete amino acid profile. So therefore it's not really right. Doing you all the benefits. So you always need to look for some combination of pea and rice or whatever. We use a pea rice combo to achieve the right amino acid profile within that. And so that's really one of the big differences. Also plant, plant protein is much harder to absorb. It comes with natural sugars and things like that that whey protein isolate typically doesn't. And then with anything also, what's, what's super interesting, most consumers don't think about this is plant proteins actually have higher amounts, trace amounts, but higher amounts of heavy metal. And when you think about that, the ground is absorbing those heavy metals. Right. And it doesn't take like 20 peas to make 20 grams of pea protein. It takes a lot of peas. And so when you think about the boiling down of that, it's actually quite impactful where it's like it's not health risk. But like when you think about the two different portfolios of like whey protein versus versus plant protein, it's all that we have plant protein on the market. I consume our plant protein often. But it's just there are very big differences in, in the two.
- [11:28]
Louisa
And by amino acid profile, are you generally speaking about leucine?
- [11:32]
Jeff
Yeah. So right. Leucine is, is really, really important when we think about it. And whey protein isolate has high amounts of leucine in terms of the amino acid profile. What, when, what, what you're looking for?
- [11:45]
Louisa
Yeah, I, since I've been on that, you know, since I've been taking that to begin with, that was the first supplement I ever took. I think I've been privy to so many different types. I remember even at night I was taking a casein.
- [12:00]
Jeff
Yeah.
- [12:00]
Louisa
Just to like, you know, replenish me throughout the night. And I mean, I don't know what the, what the research is on that.
- [12:06]
Jeff
Yeah. So, so casein is another. It comes from milk. Right. And it kind of splits out and casein is, is a much slower digesting then up whey protein isolate. So casein at night would make sense. Right. You have a much slower release over time. So as you, as you sleep, your body slowly digests it.
- [12:24]
Louisa
What I want to understand because ever since you said whey protein now and described where it comes from, I want to understand what the difference is in manufacturing. And this is going to take us down a rabbit hole because I know that the, one of the reasons, the first reasons why I partnered with you guys is because of the way that you do third party testing. But not a lot of people understand that the supplement industry is a highly unregulated industry. We know that. But if we're looking at the state of the FDA right now, I would probably say that that's also a highly unregulated industry. But that's my opinion.
- [13:10]
Sponsor Voice 2
But what we mean by highly unregulated.
- [13:12]
Louisa
Is it means that anyone can really buy a vegetable capsule, put whatever they want in it, slap a label on a bottle and sell it on the Internet. Which is scary because to the average person who doesn't have the, I guess the education around this, like you and I may be buying that and they may not know what's in it. And one thing that I'm often telling people is where are your capsules manufactured? And then do they have third party testing? So can we first understand where is Momentous actually getting their supplements from? Who's making it?
- [13:48]
Jeff
Yeah, really good question. I think if we back up. I never wanted to be in a supplement game. My co founder and I, that this was not our vision.
- [13:57]
Louisa
Okay, Right.
- [13:58]
Jeff
We did not want to be a supplement company. Supplement founders, you kind of know the backstory. But we started as a spin out from a biotech doing something a little bit unique and we ended up acquiring the Momentous brand about three years ago. And, but, but we fought going into the supplement space for a long time. And it was partially because of what you just said. There's not a lot of trust and transparency. And I had my ego at play, was like, I don't want to be a supplement company CEO like this. Like coming from somebody who's probably consumed millions of dollars of supplements over my professional and athletic, my professional athletic career, it was just like a space that I didn't feel, wouldn't have felt proud to be in. And it took me some time to even be like, no, I'm the CEO of Momentous. What do you do? We make the highest quality supplements. Right. And it took me a while to be able to own that. And why? Because fundamentally I believe our category is pretty broken. Right? And it's broken because of lack of trust, a lack of transparency. And, and there's so much noise in this category. There's no curation. There's just like, here's 500 things, go fend for yourself, right? And oh, here's the next hottest thing. Here's the next thing. And there's not a lot of weeding through of the BS out there. And I'll say we as a business are working really hard to get better at all three of those things. Trust, transparency and the curation. Like, cut through the bs, cut through the noise of it. And so when you think about why, why Momentous, like what you're talking about is our Standard and our standard is really three core pillars. The first is what we call science and advocacy work. And Right. And is that, are we committed to doing research? Are we committed to innovating? Are we following the latest science? Do we actually hold true in our portfolio? Like the science is progressing or not progressing? What do we do with this product? Or is there another product we bring on? Right. Funding that research as well as advocacy work on Capitol Hill. It's something that I'm really proud of that the business does is like, how do we continue to gain access and do our mission of democratizing high performance? The second is all about ingredients. Where you source from, how you source. Right. All of these things. Right. That are so, so important. And then the third is certifications and certifications and testing. It's like, what are the things that our manufacturer has to go through? What are the things that we do post production versus pre production? So all of those things are incredibly important to us. And so I say, I say the second one is kind of what you hit on. Where, where do you. Where does our category source ingredients from? And this is a big unknown that people, most people don't know is like a lot of the raw ingredients in dietary and nutritional supplements come from China, right? Not all of them, but a lot of them. Right? There are great, but there's a lot like China has a big base, so there's a lot of raws that come from China. In our industry, you don't have to put of origin of ingredients on the products. Now we source some of our raw ingredients from China and we're working to transition supply chain in areas that we can. But ultimately, why is that though?
- [17:01]
Louisa
Cheaper.
- [17:01]
Jeff
Cheaper. And when you think about the manufacturing process of creatine, for example, it's a chemical process and it can be done very dirty or it can be done very clean.
- [17:11]
Louisa
Okay.
- [17:13]
Jeff
And right. So it becomes a cost scale perspective. And that's why, like creatine, there's a, there's the, like creapure is the gold standard. It's made out of Germany. Very few creatines are made outside of China. Right. And create Korea Pure has a very, very high manufacturing standard. And that's where consumers should choose. That's where we buy our creatine from and other reputable companies as well. But the creapure logo is incredibly. Anyways, so you go, you go down that list and so it'd be like I kind of compare it to if you ordered a rib eye steak and it came and you're like, oh, this was made in America, but the cow was raised in another country and it was slaughtered in another country. But they sent the prime rib, which is where the ribeye comes from, to America. Then they cut the prime rib in America. That's what we're doing in this supplement space. So I think this country of origin. Right, is really, really important and misunderstood in consumers minds.
- [18:10]
Sponsor Voice 2
Thank you to Apollo Neuro for sponsoring this episode. The Apollo is a therapeutic wearable designed to be worn discreetly on the wrist or ankle that works by sending gentle vibrations to the body that signal safety to the brain. It is a safe, non invasive way to relax, get the sleep you need, focus your attention and find your flow. I have been wearing this certain device for about one year. I originally got it because I really needed to down regulate my nervous system.
- [18:44]
Louisa
Yes, as you can tell, I'm very.
- [18:46]
Jeff
High energy, very high paced.
- [18:48]
Sponsor Voice 2
I really wanted a way to hack my system other than meditation, breath work or even sleep per se. I really wanted to be in the driver's seat. To be honest guys, I'm not the best meditator, which is why this device works so well. So with this soothing vibrations, Apollo directly engages with my body's nervous system. And these vibrations help to naturally regulate stress responses and promote a state of calm, enhancing my ability to manage daily stresses without reliance on pharmaceutical aids. So if you want to be in the driver's seat, if you meditate and do breath work to calm your nervous system down and you don't want to do that alone because you know that that alone is not as powerful as a device like a Polo, you can grab one of these, you can get $40 off any of the Apollo wearable devices by visiting the link in the description below or simply going to Apollo Neuro.com and use code NEURO40, that is Apollo Neuro.com with code NEURO40 to receive $40 off.
- [19:56]
Jeff
Because what we actually consume is very different than the hard goods that we buy. We don't buy our foodstuffs from. Like when you buy an apple, it says product of chile, product of usa, product of wherever. Right. When you buy canned peaches or canned corn, you know the country that, that was grown in. And I think that's really important for consumers. So that's incredibly important to us as we think about it. And all of the different ingredients that, that you can play like sucralose is like sucralose in small amounts. Doesn't, doesn't have a challenge. Yeah, right. But the fact is sucralose is In a lot of things that, that we consume and eat. And so we as a company have taken a stance at like hey, no artificial sweeteners. Like if we can't use, you know, natural sweetener system profiles, like then we aren't going to launch a product or we're going to have troubles with that. And then the. You're. So that's kind of our second, our second core pillar of the Momenta standard is all about ingredients. And the third is certifications, right? And testing, it's like, are you willing to put your money where your mouth is?
- [20:54]
Louisa
Is that what third party testing means?
- [20:55]
Jeff
That's what third party testing means. But here's a challenge. Third party testing or third party certified is what everybody in the space uses, right? Like you can go, every brand says oh, we're third party tested. They even make on their own little logo that says third party tested, right? That just says third party test. It's like they. And yes, that's great. What A lot of what you see in third party testing is actually just certificate of analysis. And so post production you get a certificate analysis and it's normally done by an external lab that says lead, arsenic, all these things and you can pull them up online. It's like third party tested. It's not actually verifying anything other than this won't kill you. It's not made in a lead line bathtub or whatever it may be, right. And, and, and that is really, really important. So there is a handful of certifications out there that really matter, right. For what we do we use two of the top certifications that are the only certifications that are recognized in prone collegiate sports. Those are NSF certified for sport and inform sport. NSF certified for sport is really, really the gold standard. And it comes with two things. So not only are the content certified in that product, so what is on the label is actually in it. And so for example, like we had a production run where we are out of spec on sodium because the product that came in had more, the wrong ingredient had more sodium than that was on the spec sheet. And that happens from time to time. And so what we had to do is we had to take corrective action to increase the sodium content. It was like 15 to 20 grams because it was out of range, right. And so we had to take corrective action to crew to, to reissue the label and notify what that is. So that is content certified. So when it says 20 grams is 20 grams, right? When it says 20 milligrams, it's 20 milligrams right. And like, those things are super important. Consumers don't understand that if it's not tested by a really, really high functioning third party and the contents are certified, you could be buying anything. Because we are unregulated. And that's why, you know, every month there's some article that comes out or some paper that, hey, we tested 550 supplements and 40% or 30% or 50% didn't have what they said they had them or had things that they didn't say. So the first component of testing is. Is like, do we have the ingredient that we say in it? Right. The second component of third party testing is does it contain anything bad? Right. So that's the banned substance testing. So content certified is one thing. Banned substances added on it. Does it contain any of the banned substance or bad. Right. That NFL and collegiate teams have banned. Right. That competitive sport have banned? Now, generally speaking, like, I don't want to buy, right. A Beyond Meat Burger. Beyond Meat Burger that might have bacon in it. Right. And consumers don't either. And if you want to go buy something that could be potentially banned in pro and college sports, go buy that. But you shouldn't buy, you shouldn't worry about your whey protein having something in it that shouldn't be in it. Right. That got cross contaminated. So that's all that, that is. So, so when we think about, that's what third party certification means to us. And what people don't understand is the brands that do this. And there's some very good brands out there right there. We're not the only one that uses nsf and thank God we aren't. But it's really important that when you fail these production runs, if you have banned substances, it goes into the dumpster. This isn't a like, oh, we just relabel and do it. No, it goes in the dumpster. If you fail Content Certified, Right. You have to either take corrective action. Right. Relabel it or do something or put it in the dumpster. Right. You have these choices. And so that's what's so important from a consumer standpoint. And also it's very expensive to do these things. And that's also what the consumer does understand is it's super easy to be our category. Like, Luisa, you and I could go start a supplement company tomorrow. And as long as we got labels and things designed, we could probably sell it in three weeks.
- [24:56]
Louisa
Oh, yeah, right.
- [24:57]
Jeff
Because you just go slap a label on it. There's all these white labels. So the Barriers to entry in our space are zero. And that's one of the challenges. It's highly fragmented. There's so many players and there's thus so many noise and so many like lifestyle niches and all these things that people play in brands. And it's like the bottom line is in our category, if you don't certify right and you don't care about what those things are, then it's a big problem. And that's what's created this lack of trust and transparency. To your point, like there's a like supplement industry is a multi billion dollar category. Tens, Hundreds, it's like 120 billion dollar or something ridiculous category. Right? It's not because like, and most people like God, do you trust supplements people? Like right. Almost everybody's like, yeah, but I still take them because I know where there's like, I think they could help me here I have this problem or that problem which I find just absolutely fascinating. So consumers want to do it, but the brand trust and the trust in the category is fundamentally broken.
- [25:59]
Louisa
So let me get this straight. The third party testing that you mentioned was sports, is that what so we use?
- [26:06]
Jeff
Yes, but it has components of content certified too. So okay, so NSF has NSF content certified and NSF certified for sport. NSF certified for sport is required to get content testing. NSF certified for sport sits on top of content certified.
- [26:23]
Louisa
NSF certified for sport is better. Now why is it that other companies choose to not go that route? Is it, is it hard? Is it like going into Harvard?
- [26:33]
Jeff
Yeah, it is hard. Well, it's, it's, it's hard for a couple of reasons. First off, like last year in 2023 we spent 1.4% of top line revenue on just post production certifications. Which all that goes to the bottom line if you don't do it right and you don't have to do it and like clearly you don't. And so that is all profit that you reinvest into third party certifications. That doesn't account for all of the downstream costs that this affects. And so the manufacturing your facility you work at is held to way higher standard. So you pay more at that manufacturing facility. Like when you inbound ingredients and the certification of those ingredients when they come in, what ingredients you can use, what happens when you fail a production run? You have to dumpster it. Like all these costs escalate. The other thing is with, with, with these certifications is it is not lot dependent. And so for, for small companies. So like when momentous was starting. It's very expensive when you're, when you're like, oh, we're going to do 100 orders this month, the price is the same, right? For us, 1.4% of top line revenue used to be like 7, 8% or 10%. Right. Because NSF is certifying production runs and as you grow you get scale and that costs. So when for them to certify that production runs the same, whether it's 100,000 units or 1,000 units. And so it's really, really cost prohibitive for businesses to start by certificate, start certifying products when they're young and starting up. So it's first off, it's prohibitive and very hard because of the cost. And I think the other thing is that consumers don't really care or they don't know. Right. Because there's so much noise. Like we talked about. It's like third party certified. Like, oh, we're third party certified. By who? Like, right. Like a certificate analysis is not third party certified. Right. Like, let's be super clear on that. And that's what people leverage in our category. Like third party certification. Is the content certified. What's in it? In it, like better not like you put something with lead or arsenic or anything on the market, like you should go to jail.
- [28:40]
Louisa
Exactly.
- [28:41]
Jeff
Right. But like that's not what we're talking about. That's great. That is the lowest bar anybody should care about. So. So it's prohibited from a cost perspective for sure on that standpoint. And then it's from a scale perspective as well. But also, you can't take the usual shortcuts. That's that the supplement industry lives in. Right. It's like, oh, we do a little bit of that. We put a little bit of this, oh, proprietary ingredients, all these things of like, oh, we can mix and match, which is really, really fascinating.
- [29:09]
Louisa
So for the average consumer who may be going to your gnc, for example, or even Whole Foods, I feel like everywhere now just stores supplements and sells supplements. So let's just say the average consumer is walking in and they pick up a bottle of vitamin D, for example, or even creatine, what is the first thing they need to look for on the back?
- [29:29]
Jeff
You should make sure there's something, right. That has an independent third party certified. Doesn't say third party certified. That should have that logo. Like USP is a great one. Inform Sport, nsf, all of these things. Like there are a handful of very good quality certifications and a lot of brands use NSF Right. Make sure that's on there. Like, really, really important. And then it's like, go through the ingredient list. Like. Like, I don't. For me, like, we have this rule of no proprietary blends. Right.
- [30:00]
Louisa
Because yeah, I actually want to know what that is because there is a company, which I won't say, who sells a very famous, you know, greens powder. And you know that there is a. A proprietary blend on there, which I'm not too sure what that actually means.
- [30:14]
Jeff
Yeah. So proprietary blend basically means that. So you say, hey, this is, you know, Jeff and Luisa's blend, and it's 2.2 grams. And then you have the list of everything below.
- [30:26]
Sponsor Voice
Yes.
- [30:27]
Jeff
But you don't have to say, like, what is the ratios or what is amount of those things. And the problem with proprietary blends is like, oh, it has Ashwagandha, but does it have the right dosage of Ashwagandha that is shown to be clinically efficacious. Right. Or of those things? And it's like a way of our. Our category of creating IP intellectual property. You're like, it's defensible because it's our proprietary blend. Nobody can knock it off. That's BS because you can just send it to a lab and figure out exactly what's in it. And so it's just like this. It's. My story is it's like telling the consumer there's something special in here. Right. This is. This is our special blend that nobody else has. Which is fine. But, like, just say what it is. Like, that doesn't create more transparency. And that's what our category needs more of, is more transparency.
- [31:18]
Louisa
But it still states the ingredients within the proprietary.
- [31:21]
Jeff
Yes.
- [31:21]
Louisa
Okay. Yeah, I think. Okay.
- [31:23]
Jeff
So which also, if you're not certifying your label, doesn't mean anything.
- [31:27]
Louisa
Yeah, right.
- [31:28]
Jeff
That's why, like, these things, like, oh, melatonin is like the most widely, like, outrageous thing when it comes to. Is. Is there actually melatonin in your product is. Or not? It's like the. You know, there was this study that Now Foods, who is a supplement company, did on creatine gummies. And it was like they studied 20, 20 or 10 creatine gummies some. Some number like that. And half of them had no creatine in them.
- [31:52]
Louisa
What? Yeah, I've tasted some of those gummies.
- [31:54]
Jeff
Yeah.
- [31:54]
Louisa
Yeah. I may as well just be having candy. Really? Yeah, I. I really do believe in. I really do believe in supplementation, which somewhat people can be like, well, why would you believe in that? If you're going to get food. You know it. I remember you mentioning, you know, if you want to get EPA and DHA from fish, you have to have a lot of fish. Right? But not just. We're talking about that offline, I think, you know, the recommended daily intake for EPA, DHA as per Neuro Athletics guidelines, is 4 grams a day, right. To meet the standards of good cognitive health over the lifespan. If you think about 4 grams per day, right, and you think, well, I want to get that from fatty fish, salmon, mackerel, you may be having tons of it, right. But that's not, that's not the exact reason why I'm personally taking supplementation. Have you seen Seaspiracy?
- [32:47]
Jeff
Yeah.
- [32:48]
Louisa
A documentary, of course. And you think, you know, before then I thought, okay, well, I'm eating all this fish. But when you look at what the fish actually contains, you know, they were cutting open salmon, tuna, and they were opening up these, these fish and they were finding bottles in, in these fish. So you're not even having the mercury and lead, whatever it is that you're finding with these, with these fish. But you've also now got plastics that you need to deal with. I think to myself, well, I don't want that. I want the purity of a fish oil supplement. So my next question in terms of fish oil and, you know, manufacturing and the, and how clean it is is how do you actually get the, the fish oil from a fish that has not been farmed, for example?
- [33:40]
Jeff
Yeah. So it just all comes down to sourcing and what you prioritize when you.
- [33:44]
Louisa
Okay.
- [33:45]
Jeff
And so, right. I mean, for us, we source our, our fish and a combination of small fish right, from off the coast of, of Norway, of the Norwegian and then also off the coast of North Africa. And all of it is actually distilled and processed in Norway. And then it's caps encapsulated here in the United States. And so Norway is, is they're like the granddaddy of omega 3 fish oil. And they have really, really sustainable fishing habits as well. And so like sardines, mackerel, et cetera. Like, small, small fish are really, really important when we think about it on that. So that's, that's how you think. But like, you can source fish oil from China, you can source fish oil from the buried sea in Alaska. Like we're working on this project to make, you know, a fish, a liquid fish oil rather than gel caps. And we're going to source it most likely out of Alaska because cod liver oil, right. Is A really is a pretty mild easy use and you can like single sourcing, single source it. So anyway, so that I would say like when we think about everything, it all comes from sourcing and one of the things that we haven't done great as a business is we haven't told all of our sourcing stories.
- [34:58]
Louisa
Well, I actually didn't know where it was because I do get a lot of questions as well from the viewers. You know where it. What type of fish oil is it? The EPA and dha.
- [35:07]
Jeff
Like what type of fish?
- [35:08]
Louisa
What type of fish?
- [35:09]
Jeff
Yeah, super interesting.
- [35:10]
Louisa
Yeah. And you just mentioned it's.
- [35:12]
Jeff
Yeah, I mean we don't and like this again like we have these, I would say part of our problem, not part of at momentous. Like we were really built in pro and college sports. Right. We were built in some unique places and marketing was never what we built our business on. Like we built our business on like having one on one conversations with some of the best dietitians in the world and like building really great products and understanding of the sourcing story. But we never built it based upon brand and marketing. It's just recently that we got good at brand and marketing and it was.
- [35:43]
Louisa
Like because you had to.
- [35:44]
Jeff
Because we had to and because like next thing you know like we have people like you and and other people who have loud voice are like I keep this momentous brand is real. Yeah, right. Like, oh, I resonate with them. And it's like oh man, we have, we have something here that's super special. Rather than just building a business in pro and college sports, we can build a business that was built in pro and college sports that's built on the foundational. Right. Principles and the standards required there. Because fundamentally I believe the consumer market like cares. Right. Like they know like the Dietitian for the 49ers is not going to go buy fish oil from a big box store and be like oh here it is. No, he's going to say I need this much DHA and this much EPA and I like, like and I need it to be nowhere it's sourced from and understand the quality purity, make sure that you know, heavy metal testing is performed on and all these things which doesn't like that's, that's not what happens in the consumer mind. And as you know like the difference in between. Right. Omega 3s from what you can buy on shelf even like in the grocery store is vastly different. And the consumer doesn't understand. Right. Most consumers don't understand. Like there is a huge Difference not just on how much EPA and DHA is in a product but where is it sourced from. Right. What's the sustainability? All of these things are very, two very different things. And that's where it's like to me, Omegas are. The variation in the market is massive.
- [37:14]
Louisa
Yeah.
- [37:14]
Jeff
And it's really, excuse me, really quite scary. Right. When you think about, you know, I, my, my dad's a great example. He's been, you know, he, I've been taking fish oil, you know, as my old man talk. I've been taking fish oil since 98 before it was cool. Right. And he's like, why should I buy your crap? Right. I'm like hold on. But he's been, he'd been buying, you know, 25.95 for 180 caps. And I was like, well, because you have to take 12 of those.
- [37:41]
Louisa
Correct. Yeah.
- [37:42]
Jeff
To actually equal the same dosage of ours. I was like, that doesn't like, that's way more expensive. Right. And, and you're just taking on a bunch of fish oil. Right. Because that's another thing. Not all fish oil is omega threes. And like people label their products fish oil. That doesn't mean it's omega 3. Omega 3s almost always typically come from fish.
- [38:05]
Sponsor Voice 2
Right.
- [38:05]
Louisa
But that's the EPA and dha. Then you've also got the third component, ala, which is your flaxseed.
- [38:11]
Jeff
Exactly. And we don't have an ALA problem in our society. We have an epa DHA problem.
- [38:15]
Louisa
Correct.
- [38:15]
Jeff
Right. So that's normally what's out of whack when you. Anyways, we go down the rabbit hole of Omega 3s.
- [38:20]
Louisa
But I do want to understand two things about it. The first one is what does it mean when an omega 3 can be rancid?
- [38:28]
Jeff
Ooh, that basically. Right. So omega 3 can be rancid meaning it's gotten too hot in storage or post production etc, or has been exposed to too much air on there. So a couple important things like when you think about it is you always want your, you always want to keep your fish oil or your omega 3s right. In a cool dark place, preferably the fridge. Right. If it's you're going to store there for long periods of time, like to enhance it. Right. You don't want to expose it to excessive heat and you always want to make sure that's in a dark colored bottle. Right. Amber, we choose. We also choose glass as there's some suggestions that glass can help protect it from oxidation as well.
- [39:11]
Sponsor Voice 2
Thank you. Insidetracker. For sponsoring this episode of the show. We talk all the time about optimization and you can do a whole bunch of things through diet, exercise and proper slee. But if you aren't measuring the impact that it has on your body, then you are missing out. InsideTracker provides you with personalized plans to improve your metabolism, improve your sleep, optimize your health for the long haul, and most importantly, it analyzes your blood and your DNA. So you have to understand where your biomarkers are. For example, apob, this is an extremely important biomarker. It's linked to cardiovascular disease. You must know these numbers if you care about living, if you care about living well and living long. So Inside Tracker is an easy way to get these things done. And they also offer tools for professionals. I know that I have a lot of professionals listening to this. I know I've got a lot of coaches listening to this. InsideTracker Pro is a no cost platform that allows your clients to share their InsideTracker analysis with you so that you can tailor their health protocols and training based on their results. Just go to insidetracker.com Louisa you can get 20 off the entire Inside Tracker store. Just use code LOUISA20 at checkout.
- [40:34]
Jeff
It's the only product we have in glass in our entire product folder now. And it's a huge pain because glass breaks and shipping. But for us, making sure that oxidation doesn't happen and making sure it doesn't go rancid is super important. But it's also really hard to write like gel caps, right? Sometimes they get hard and they get hard, they get brittle and they crack. And when anything cracks, it can go rancid. Like all of these things or just like you have a bad manufacturing process and we don't have like the manual. The manufacturers that the high quality brands work with don't have a challenge in manufacturing. It's all in shipping, fulfillment and storage.
- [41:13]
Louisa
I saw this great reel on Instagram where this guy was actually testing about four or five different supplements, four or five different EPA DHAs. And he was like, you know the one that's the most high quality is if you can chew into it and it just tastes normal. And I was like, I could not think of anything worse than going through and chewing a bunch of fish oil capsules.
- [41:35]
Jeff
Yeah, that sounds, that sounds terrible. Yeah.
- [41:37]
Louisa
One question, my last question on EPA DHA is I do get asked as well if these fish oils are in phospholipid form.
- [41:46]
Jeff
Yes, ours are.
- [41:48]
Louisa
What is that?
- [41:49]
Jeff
That's a really good question.
- [41:50]
Louisa
We should actually, actually you know, talk about that because it's really, really important.
- [41:56]
Jeff
Yeah, you, I mean you honestly like, you probably know better than me.
- [42:01]
Louisa
I'll probably cut this out. But no, I don't know. Yeah, but I do get asked often I get asked. But we'll cut it at the. Yes, it does.
- [42:08]
Jeff
Yeah.
- [42:08]
Louisa
Phospholipidol.
- [42:09]
Jeff
Okay, cool. I was gonna say I can look it up.
- [42:10]
Louisa
My editors will be like, sure. Okay, great. Okay. No, that's great. The last question on supplements, and this is a great one. The number one supplement right now that I think people are going crazy for, the one that every time I post about it I get 3 or 4 million views is creatine. And we know that creatine is a naturally occurring compound in the body. We get it from meat as well, preferably red meat, beef liver. But we can take it in supplement form. And I have I guess made a name on, on the Internet with telling people and advocating for 5 grams a day because it helps with cell energy metab. It helps with concussions, it helps repower the brain, I would say. But it also now we're seeing pre clinical studies on mouse models and in humans for creatine use in Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease. So I think creatine is going to be bigger than what it is right now.
- [43:11]
Jeff
Yeah, I mean creatine is fascinating because it's one of the most well studied substances on planet. Like more clinical trials have been done on creatine than probably any drug. Right. The only things, the only thing that probably has more clinical research behind it is probably caffeine. Right. I mean that, I mean I don't like there's tens of thousands of published papers on it. Creatine is definitely the most misunderstood supplement or dietary, nutritional, whatever you want to call it on the market. Right. It's, it's under respected, it's underappreciated on the benefit that it does. But just like to your point, it helps with the cellular energy production. Like it's just so important to, in everything that we do and all that we do is energy. Right? So it's helping with energy efficiency, etc. I mean it's so interesting in our work with pro and chrono sports, like creatine is considered a prophylactic for brain health. Right? Like, right. Because there's been studies that show hey, if you have, if you're supplementing with creatine, right. When you enter a TBI or a sub concussive event, you have less severe symptoms and a less severe TBI Right. Which is insane. Oh, and you recover faster when you supplement creatine. Post. But that all goes to like, how our brain functions. And it's just so, so fascinating to me that I mean, I had no idea about creatine and brain health or like, as an ex NFL or. Right. Like, I think I thought of creatine as strength training. Right. Like, oh, I want to get big. And that is the biggest fallacy that I've learned and uncovered and probably one of the most interesting things that I've learned about right. From being in the space. And no, creatine is. Right. A foundational thing. I would have like 10 years ago or five years ago, I would have never said creatine should be one of the three things that the majority of humans should be supplementing. And the other great thing about creatine is it's relatively inexpensive. When you think about what, what it all means now, right. Where you source it from matters, I believe you still need to be certified like, like at what's in it's in it. Right. But creatine monohydrate, right. Is like 99% absorbed in the body. It's like really, really effective. What doesn't get absorbed, you pee it out. Right. And I think that's like a really, really important thing for consumers is like there's all this, like, is it, you know, this special delivery or whatever. It's like creatine monohydrate is creatine monohydrate. I do think country of origin matters on there. And I just think fundamentally how things are produced and made is important. But other than that. Yeah, it's the one that it's just like it's exploding right now and there's no cross reactivity. There's been so much research behind it, but it's also just. It's. Everybody's demystifying it right now. That's what good doing.
- [45:52]
Louisa
Yeah.
- [45:53]
Jeff
It's great because it doesn't.
- [45:54]
Louisa
I want it in nursing homes.
- [45:56]
Jeff
Yeah.
- [45:56]
Louisa
Yeah.
- [45:57]
Jeff
But it's like, it's also one of those things, like whatever, 30 cents a day or 50 cents a day. Right. Costs nothing. And the potential impacts that that. Right. Clinical research says just from. Right. The, like the energy metabolism in our body is so powerful and if it can help, you know, any type of brain disease or cognitive decay, it's work like for like 30 cents a day is nothing. Again, that's like whatever. Yeah. Like, you know, if you think about, you know, R90 serving, it's like $130 a year for Creatine, which is very, very little, very affordable, right? Tastes like nothing, all those things. I think the other thing with creatine that's super important that people don't realize though is like creatine should be in its powdered form. When creatine, once creatine, if it's mixed in solution has a very, very short half life. So it starts converting into creatinine.
- [46:50]
Louisa
Hang on, hang on. Because I have been putting my creatine with a pre workout.
- [46:54]
Jeff
But for how long, but how long does it sit in it?
- [46:56]
Louisa
Oh like a second.
- [46:58]
Jeff
Yeah, but no, I'm like, so if you're buying RTD drink, okay, that has creatine in it or a gel shot that has creatine in it, likely it's converting into creatinine. Right, right. Like, which is what it converts to. That's really interesting in the body. So it's really, really fascinating because we've been trying to figure out like, how do you make it more accessible, right. To consumers because okay, a five gram scoop is nothing. But, but still, if you could figure out how do you make creatine more accessible and effective, then you can have a bigger impact, right? Because our mission is all about like, how are we driving impact, democratizing high performance. And for, for us, like I fundamentally believe we talked about the three products like there, there's, I call them the big three. Marketing is going to get a better name than that than me, than, than I pick. But like all the smart people I talk to and, and the power of momentous is not me. It's not our head of science, it's, it's not our head of product, it's our ecosystem. It's this collection of human beings from pro and college sports to people like you to academia. And it's like what is everybody kind of saying? And we get to curate and bring that to life, which is really, really powerful for us as a business. And what we found is kind of collectively across all of pro and call sports academia, right? Everybody's kind of saying, hey, they're like, you know, like what are your top three? And some people give me five. But really what are the top three? It really centers around creatine protein and omega 3s, right? Very low cross reactivity. Very, very, let me say no cross reactivity. Very, very high amount of research supporting all of them. Right? And the benefit to you as a human, right? They support brain health, they support exercise, they support muscle mass. All of these things that are part of your foundation, right. Is so important. So I just, I don't know. I love that we went into the item of the big three and I think if people looked at, at dietary and supplements and took a step back and say, what is the 80, 20 rule? Right. What are the 20 of things that drive 80 of the value? Correct. That's omega 3 is creatine and whey protein. If you just get enough of those, you're covering a lot of bases. And then I call kind of the next tier down, like, kind of like precision. It's like, oh, I want some help sleeping. Oh, here's a couple curated sleep. Right. Products at work. Right. Oh, I want. Right. Athletic performance. Here's a couple more things in athletic performance or fitness, however we want to call it. Oh, you want some things in cognitive. Oh great. Here's ashwagandha and rhodiola. Right. That think about stress and cortisol management. Right. Which are awesome things. Oh. So anyway, so like that's kind of like precision type type things. But you start with the fundamentals, right. And the fundamentals are really, really important. Get those right. Just like, hey great, you can take 30 supplements, but if you don't sleep and you don't exercise, it doesn't matter. Yeah, right. At the end of the day it really doesn't. So start with right. The right sleep, right. Proper nutrition and exercise. Like those behaviors are critical. And then you build, build, build bases based upon those.
- [50:05]
Louisa
So let's wrap up now because one thing that I am endeavoring to is to democratize education, brain health education specifically. I know that you are, you know, I'm one of the advisors here. You've got Dr. Andy Galvin, you've got so many different, Dr. Andrew Huberman, so many different incredible leaders who are helping you with the science of driving products forward. So my last question is, what is an, what is a future supplement that you are excited about to not just possibly produce but to really research and understand?
- [50:41]
Jeff
Yeah. So I would say me versus the business are luckily kind of aligned. So like you, like I'm really passionate about brain health. So my, my background and as a professional football player and offensive line, like I am, I like unlike most 30, like late 30s, like I think about brain health almost every day.
- [51:04]
Louisa
Yeah.
- [51:04]
Jeff
Because what I did for my past life is going to have implications long term. So I think like very proactively and the things that I do in my life are geared towards long term brain health. And so what I think is super interesting is we're really working on putting together a study within collegiate football and the US Military looking at right. Omegas, creatine, vit D turmeric. Right. And what are the implications those have around long term brain health? Right, right. Both pre concussive, sub pre concussive and post concussive events which is really, really fascinating to me. So looking at that. So I wouldn't say any one of those things are, are revolutionary by any means on that. The I do think how to like some of these adaptogens impact, impact sleep. Oh really, really interesting. So Ashwagandha rhodiola would be really interesting. Like we're working on some clinical round like what does that look like? But I think there's like not any heroes. I was like there's nothing revolutionary in our category really. Right. I mean there's going to be a couple new like Ashwagandhas and things like that. I think really for where our category is going is how do you do better job creation of curation and get people into the right things at the right time for them. That's how you drive impact. Right.
- [52:28]
Louisa
It's.
- [52:28]
Jeff
There's no magic supplement out there. If there's a magic supplement out there, it's probably a drug. Right. That like solves X. Right. Like that's not what supplement like right. Supplements are come from food, like it's in moderation and things like that. So I don't know if there's anything new out there. I think like it's going to be form factor. So like how do you combine certain things? Can you create, you know, a big three product that has omegas, creatine and, and protein and can you do that? You're like I don't know. I don't. So I, I don't think there's any revolutionary products in our, in our, in our category that will drive big impact. I do think there is some. Right. A lot more data coming out on a lot of these things that have been used. Some of them. Right. Some of these herbs and stuff have been used for thousands of years. Right. But we're now just collecting data and that's gonna be super interesting on those. But I really think our category, what I'm excited about is not a widening, it's a shrinking.
- [53:23]
Louisa
Oh, I love that. So that's what makes this brand separate from every other brand. Jeff, thank you so much for being part of the Euro Experience podcast.
- [53:32]
Jeff
Thank you.