Episode 25: JoAnn Pacinelli, CEO of New Day Enterprises, on Regenerative Agriculture and Microgreens

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SPEAKERS: Dr. Andrew Wong, JoAnn Pacinelli

“Organic has become a brand symbol and everybody wants to have that stamp on their product like many other things it can become corrupted. You used a more polite word but you know when you start putting things under that certification that aren’t truly as it would be in nature or regenerative you’re in trouble” – JoAnn

Food is medicine. But is a healthy medicinal food that’s actually good for you, that actually nourishes you, accessible for everyone? That’s the main question we’re going to tackle today with JoAnn Pacinelli who is CEO and president of New Dave Enterprises. This is a public benefit corporation committed to enhancing human health and distributing products at a price point that is affordable and accessible to all income levels. I am Dr. Andrew Wong, co-founder of Capital Integrative Health. This is a podcast dedicated to transforming the consciousness around what it means to be healthy and understanding the root causes of both disease and wellness.

We talked to JoAnn today about New Day Enterprises’ mission to be part of a new era of regenerative farming focused on peak nutrition and exceptional flavor with the belief that wealth should not buy health. And I can tell you from actually personally looking at and tasting these microgreens that they are delicious and they’re packed with flavor unlike anything else I’ve tasted. So please join us for an enlightening conversation about the state of our current food system, how soil impacts your health and what you can do to support your health using nutritious food.

Dr. Wong

Well, welcome JoAnn. Thank you so much for being on the podcast today.

JoAnn

Well, you’re welcome. Thank you for inviting me.

Dr. Wong

Sure and let’s talk first about what was the inspiration for the creation of new day farms?

JoAnn

Well, it’s important to know that. Actually, we are New Day Enterprises and we’re a public benefit corporation and the inspiration for new day farms came previously, were an extension of an earlier effort by a previous founder to improve nutritional health to the supply of high nutrient crops. And in our company, new day enterprises is basically a developing company of brands if you would, beginning with new day farms superfood. We are a portfolio of businesses with one common mission, again to improve health through nutrition regardless of income or circumstances. And do so, doing so, in a wholly regenerative way you know, we’re going to talk about that I think a bit more later but there is a difference between sustainable and regenerative. So our business model if you would is to produce high nutrient crops, initially micro greens, and do so always locally so that they’re always fresh always organic, and again available at all income levels. But in every case, our goal is to make a significant impact on the sustainable regeneration of human and for that matter pet health. That’s our at our core. It’s my personal passion and it’s the company passion.

Dr. Wong

Now, personally, JoAnn, how did you get involved in the new day enterprises, and kind of what’s your story behind that if you don’t mind?

JoAnn

Well, to be honest, I was part of another similar effort previously several and I would say quite some time ago I had come across new day farms when I was pretty young, and then years later back in early 2018 I was in Western PA on a project and I came across went with some friends to whole foods opening and there was a demo station there which we can’t do anymore obviously which is a wonderful thing and there was someone there sampling new day farms micro greens. I recognized the name and of course, it was wonderful. I got in touch with the company at the time and transitioned into working with this effort I had been involved with air pollution controls for stationary sources like power plants and cement plants and the like and prior to that was part of a startup that was in every case, this was earlier than it was trendy trying to replace particularly harmful products in the public domain with those that were not harmful naturally derived and or less harmful so doing it through health is probably our best opportunity to deal with some of the issues that we face that our immune systems have to face and that struggle to face so I think it’s as you opened with really all about food.

Dr. Wong

Yes, and we know that food is medicine it’s really the backbone of health. How does new day farms, in the farm part of the enterprise, what makes that, what makes it different from other farms? And are you offering other things besides microgreens now are you kind of planning on branching out later?

JoAnn

We’re offering right now primarily micro greens and I should explain what they are. That’s part and parcel to what makes our farm different. First of all, we are exclusively soil grown and there’s a lot of talk about soil lately, do you need it? do you not need it? There’s massive hydroponics farms you know we’re going to put nutrients in the water it’s going to be just as good with microgreens. There’s two distinctions it’s the highest nutrient stage of any edible plant herb for that matter even a botanical you might put on your skin it’s the highest nutrient stage of a plant you have the seed then you have the sprout and I noticed you have taught you had talked about sprouts and one of the difficult things we often face is making the distinction between sprouts and microgreens. Very important distinction sprouts may have the beginning little buds of those first two leaves cotyledons but they don’t have the leaves sprouts tend to be more prone to different kinds of bacterial contamination that sort of a thing microgreens have two full first leaves the third leaf is a truly very different kind of a leaf but the first two leaves have the highest concentration of nutrients that the plant will ever have and what the plant needs to grow from so if you eat them at that stage you’re eating a highly dense nutrient loading and every plant is different broccoli is different from beet is different from amaranth and so each of those plants and for that matter herbs cilantro or basil they all have a unique profile of nutrients so that’s the first thing. The second thing is each of those unique profiles are highest at the microgrid stage. So again, what makes us different? Soil and high volume, always local, always fresh and truly organically done. We don’t add nutrients to the soil have them be sucked up by the plant and say here you know you’ve got your zinc and you’ve got your magnesium we focus on the fact that there are bioactive compounds that our immune systems need that are based on carbon, vitamins, need carbon they’re all compounds bioactive compounds that contain molecules that are based on carbon, carbon chains of various sorts. So if you don’t have the carbon I like to call it life from life that’s what makes us different now the way in which we go about doing that in high volume that is another distinction of our farms it’s a never developing, constantly being improved and optimized objective it’s not as easy as it sounds but I always tell people that the color, the taste or flavor, and the nutrient level work together they do but if you really want to optimize those nutrients you have to get as close to optimum growing conditions and harvesting conditions as possible and that’s our work that’s our particular work.

Dr. Wong

Thank you. Are the microgreens grown and always outdoors or indoors or how does that work we grow indoors?

JoAnn

We do our soil work outside very organically. We recycle and compost all of our surplus greens and soil once it’s through. We do vertical grow as well, under lights but we’re still using soil believe me that’s a challenge there are people working on that we’ve been doing it for a very long time and another thing I might say about that and this is the challenge in doing it indoors especially, in a vertical grow environment. We hear about these things all the time now so it’s no news to anybody but a single teaspoon of soil could contain up to a billion different microbes of different sorts and you know bacteria viruses everything but many of those beneficial organisms again I like to use the phrase “life from life”. So when you pull that indoor you need to have to maintain a balance amongst those, we’re all learning that even in our bodies which are more microbial cells than human cells it’s the balance amongst that makes it healthy and in an indoor environment, you have to keep that balance if you want to pretend and prevent contamination when by the time it gets on the shelf.

Dr. Wong

Got it. So let’s take a dive first into some general questions and then I do want to get into the differences between different types of agriculture but what is the current state of our conventional food system? I think that people may know some of the scope of the problem but probably not the full scope of what’s happening now with agriculture. So if you could just outline that for listeners that would be really helpful.

JoAnn

Well there, there’s also a lot of talk about this I’m sure. I don’t bring any new news and the good news is that we’re all realizing it including the companies that have been doing this for literally decades certainly since the 40s and 50s but you know we have been particularly in these nation food systems of massive proportion you know very highly centralized with no crop rotation to grow the same crop in the same place in large quantities upsets the balance I was talking about and there is the same balance in nature. So, we, you know, end up we ended up in an unfortunate cycle of doing what we could with chemical fertilizers to improve the circumstance and pesticides and all kinds of other “cides” if it has a “c-i-d-e” at the end of it it’s poison, poison to everybody. And we made the soil barren so then we had to use chemical fertilizers and all kinds of other things and it was really a no-win situation and at the end result of that much less if any nutrition in the food we were eating then we put it on the back of trucks and send it here and there we had to pretend it protected from spoiling on the truck and I think that in many cases we were consuming more of these synthetic chemicals than we were the nutrients in the food the answer to that now is we really need to change our food systems they have to we’re no longer at the stage where we can make them sustainable which means we’re still keeping up with the same form they have to be regenerative and regenerative is a very very big word you know. It takes into account how we treat the biology, how we treat the nutritional aspects, how we treat the communities in which we work how we locate them the first. I would have to say would be to make it more local. I travel less distance to put into place or to organic practices. soil beginning with the soil and how you work with the soil and whether you do it under roof or you do it outside in the environment that say those same organic practices have to be adhered to essentially you have to feed the microbes in the soil to create a healthy plant and we’re very we’ve been very far away from that but I’m very encouraged you’re seeing a lot more local you’re watching the public become much more informed about this the trick now is to find a way to get it on the shelves through the grocery retail channels at a price point that everyone can afford.

Dr. Wong

Yeah and I think that sounds like new day enterprise has been a pioneer in really providing high quality, like you said, but also high, higher volume you know, crops, microgreens you know to start out with like you said to really provide access because I think that’s one of big, one of the big you know concerns and I think challenges with regenerative agriculture at least you know since it’s kind of starting out more here we’re all kind of realizing that conventional agriculture is not sustainable, it’s not the way to go, it’s destroying the soil and therefore the planet you know in a way but it sounds like that’s going to be the next challenge is how to get regenerative agriculture out to the masses, correct?

JoAnn

Yeah. It is you know I think the truth is, it’s one of the motivators for these large indoor vertical farms you know everybody knows scale means economies and it brings your price point down but at the end of the day at what sacrifice you know it’s not about getting something pretty in a plastic shell at a price point somebody can afford it’s about making sure what’s in that package, which also needs to be improved is a substrate for nutrients that I like to say too you know, when somebody opens that and eats it, are they getting what they should get to improve their health? to sustain their health? to fight off everything else about the environment that is assaulting their health?

Dr. Wong

First of all, I love your microgreens just full disclosure that big fan of new day products so that’s why we ended up connecting here so thank you so much for that but let’s really talk about it and get a deep dive into that just because I don’t know if we totally understand that regenerative versus sustainable. Could you just go more into that and sort of what’s the difference between regenerative and sustainable and then if you could also talk about organic? Because we know that organic has been around for a while but I think in a way it’s being co-opted now as well. So if you could just kind of go into those distinctions for all of our listeners?

JoAnn

Yeah. I think it, it’s practically you know webster dictionary kind of stuff you know sustainable means you, you’re able to keep doing the same thing over and over the way you have been doing it, and for a while I think it was a right mindset, maybe a first step in change because we weren’t even doing that you know but now we recognize that what we’ve been doing over and over again isn’t working so now it’s a matter of being regenerative. So if you think about every living biological system, it’s regenerative, nature is regenerative humans are about the least regenerative we’ve proven that but, life from life, you know and if you break the cycle you break it we’re part of an ecosystem our bodies are part of the ecosystem. As I mentioned there’s more microbial cells in our bodies than human cells and the same ones are in nature so at the end of the day it’s about regenerating, it’s about bringing anew, it’s about with the change of seasons the tree comes back the tree dies, the tree comes back. We have to develop that kind of thinking and even as I said modern, in agriculture in the way in which we treat food in our own individual lives and even and especially in our business models it’s all the same, it means that it’s constantly renewing we’re not just doing the same thing over and over again. With regard to organic that’s become a little problematic. So I’ll come out jump out here and give a bit of an opinion but organic has become a brand symbol and everybody wants to have that stamp on their product like many other things it can become corrupted you used a more polite word but you know when you start putting things under that certification, that aren’t truly as it would be in nature or regenerative you’re in trouble so you know there’s lots of movements out there now like real organic trying to change that teach people the distinction if the word organic now doesn’t include carbon or soil and then we need another distinction because you’re never as I said previously going to get the nutrient profile out of an edible if you don’t start with carbon and you don’t start with life.

Dr. Wong

That makes a lot of sense and just to get into that a bit, what is the nutritional profile of some of the sprouts? What are the specific nutrients that you would get from eating say kale or sunflower microgreen?

JoAnn

Well as I said they’re all different but they tend to well they do have nutrient profiles that are common to their genus if you would, cruciferous vegetables like broccoli or kale or cabbage or red cabbage they tend to be not only high in certain inorganic nutrients like magnesium and calcium and those and iron and those sorts of things but they have other bioactive compounds such as in broccoli we all have been talking about sulforaphane glucosinolate that is very very important to fighting cancer you know that comes it’s very highly concentrated especially in broccoli you know and you’ve got vitamin A in all and keratinoids and all of you know some of those root vegetables some of those so it’s probably worth and I don’t know that there is anything currently out there that makes all that very simple for people but it’s you know it’s been well known for thousands of years really and I think animals know it the animals will graze around and find what they need, what they’re missing, and they’ll eat it, they’ll push something else aside but they’re all different and we need them all.

Dr. Wong

Yeah, is there anything out there where it’s like how much nutrient content and a cup of broccoli versus a certain quantity of the broccoli sprouts for instance, or microgreens you know?

JoAnn

There are studies now, I’m trying to think of when the first one was published but there’s more all the time and we’re doing our own research in that but yeah micro greens are definitely they could be up to a hundred times the concentration of certain nutrients than the mature leaves you know sometimes it’s just maybe four times but in every case, it’s higher for the reasoning that I gave earlier.

Dr. Wong

That’s great! I do feel the difference when I eat the micro greens versus say like you know the big piece of broccoli versus like a sprout you know, it’s very different. Is there a difference between raw versus cooked you know how would you say on that?

JoAnn

Yeah. There is in fact one of the individuals on my scientific advisory board is very focused on that but you know, so let me put it this way. I think we, most of us know that there are certain root vegetables that we say are more nutritious if you cook them. What it really means is you unlock the mechanical or the fibrous content of them to make the bioactive compounds more what we call bioavailable to a human body. But there’s other ways to achieve that you know and the simplest way is by chewing. We know by chopping something up maybe it’s an increase in a surface area not completely sure but we make it more bioavailable certainly, for the most part, it’s better raw, so it’s better as a microgreen, it’s better raw. I have experiences all the time because I’ll take our microgreens to gatherings of people and then people who eat them regularly we even have people right into the website if they can’t find them somewhere because they run out and it’s almost like I won’t say an addiction but they notice a difference in their health and they’re concerned if they can’t get more you know and so it makes a difference. I don’t know if you’d have a similar experience, I don’t know of anybody that’s had a similar experience with other kinds of stages of a plant but I would say eating microgreens and eating them raw is one of the best and eating a multitude of them the diversity of them is one of the best things you can do to make sure your body gets nutrients more so than even with supplements and vitamins.

Dr. Wong

Yeah. A lot of phytonutrients that are in those plants you know thousands of phytonutrients that when you try to take a synthetic vitamin it’s really isolating certain compounds but it doesn’t really get the full benefit of eating real food you know so.

JoAnn

That’s the other important thing that I should mention and you just really said it. When you pull when you extract out a singular nutrient it doesn’t work the same as when it exists in a whole what we call a whole food form.

Dr. Wong

I think it probably helps but that’s why we call them supplements, they’re supplemental to a whole foods diet.

JoAnn

That’s right but they’re always better in the context of everything else because they work together.

Dr. Wong

Correct, yeah that makes a lot of sense. How do we incorporate sprouts into a healthy diet? What are some of your practical suggestions for people?

JoAnn

Well, first I have to jump in and say they’re not sprouts.

Dr. Wong

Microgreens! yes, yes.

JoAnn

I deal with that. We have in fact on our website in the recipe section and I think probably some other places more ways than you think I like to take them in the morning and just put a bunch of them and make a smoothie out of them with some lemon juice and some coconut water and whatever else banana. So again it’s raw, it’s macerated in the smoothie, in the blender and now you’ve got the best of all possible worlds. But people, I think they, well, they did, they were the trend of microgreens was led by chefs like a lot of other things again only for certain segments of the population but it was a garnish you know never, nobody thought much about the pretty but the best you can do is to start to eat them in larger quantities. We sell them in larger quantities for that reason you can make a wonderful salad out of that and you can add what you want to the salad you can make a smoothie out of them. You can add them to anything else, I like to make tacos like fish tacos, and instead of any other kind of greens or lettuce I use those, you can put them in a sandwich any place you use lettuce or lettuces or any other kind of greens you can use the microgreens.

Dr. Wong

Yeah. I like replacing those microgreens you know instead of having like the iceberg lettuce which is not going to really have that much nutrients there. That’s a great idea with the fish tacos and yeah I think the other thing about microgreens at least to me, it seems like the word micro and you just alluded to that just to eat them in large quantities to me the word micro seems like “oh you just eat a little bit of it” you know and that’s, how many how much would you recommend you would that would people would eat per week would you say?

JoAnn

To be honest, I don’t know that I would have a recommendation except well the best example is what you said and what I said. If you’re eating lettuce industry but lettuce doesn’t have a lot of nutrients to it, lots of water and a couple of minerals but you know any as often as you can Andrew really you know put them on your burger, top your soup off, eat them in the morning in a smoothie put them on top of anything eat them in a fish taco you know however you want to use them. Eat them raw, eat them fresh, eat them as often as you can. They really do impact your health and really it’s a test to people and because I’ve seen it over and over again even with friends here in my community if people start you know hey can you bring me some more you know if they put it on everything all day long and then they don’t have them they notice a difference in their health so that’s the answer the inverse is the answer in a way.

Dr. Wong

there’s a lot of talk in the functional medicine community about inflammation being the driver of chronic illness or

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chronic disease how would microgreens help with both reducing inflammation

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and also just improving our health overall

JoAnn

Well, there are and you may know better than you can say better than I can. Bioactive compounds that are truly anti-inflammatory so you’re going to get them at their highest concentration and you’re going to get them in a whole food context and you’re going to get them so that they’re more bioavailable if you’re picking them up from nature and if you’re getting them from microgreens they’re going to be at the highest concentration that you can get them. They’re not only supportive of health they’re regenerative of health that’s what they are so I guess that I don’t know maybe it’s not quite the right form but, and again you probably as a health professional know better than I but for any of those anti-inflammatory compounds, you’re going to get them more efficiently from microgreens.

Dr. Wong

Great, thank you. And there is, I just want to mention there’s a study I remember reading this a long time ago back in the 1970s in Germany, I believe. And what they found was that if people eat raw foods before the cooked foods that kind of quiets down the immune system and lets the immune system know that there’s safety in what you’re eating essentially and then that inflammation of those white blood cells don’t ramp up the way you would to just eat pure cooked foods so often you know people eat raw before cooked it kind of lets that immune system have a signal of safety that’s kind of an interesting thought about eating you know microgreens let’s say before you’re eating your burger or your piece of fish or whatever you’re eating cooked you know.

JoAnn

It’s interesting. I am not familiar with that study but I’ll certainly go running from this podcast to look for it, it seems a little counter-intuitive to me because I grew up in a very Italian family and in Italy, you eat the salad afterward. Oh, okay I didn’t know so you know it aids digestion, and whatever reason you know we know a lot of things innately from many years early humans as I said indigenous cultures know this without words but it’s kind of the it’s the opposite of what I would have expected having the particular cultural background that I have.

Dr. Wong

Love Italian food let’s go into topsoil for a second. So you know there’s actually some experts and studies I think that show that you probably know this better than I do but that the topsoil in our, on the earth you know is getting destroyed or you know reduced so that by 2050 there’s going to be a lot less topsoil. How do we reverse that? Is regenerative agriculture part of the answer? Can you actually rebuild the topsoil with regenerative agriculture? and then another question is can we do anything at home to make our soil healthier for the listeners?

JoAnn

Well, the topsoil can be regenerated you know if you look at the earth as an organism just like our bodies as I said before I love the phrase “life from life”, I use it all the time. If you feed what’s in the soil you can grow soil. There are companies now like my land totally focused on this and they’re getting very quick results out in field agriculture because that’s what you’re talking about in this case we are not our agriculture is not field based although our soil work is field based but you have to put back into the environment what you use that word regenerative implies that. So again we take our surplus greens we take our used soil and all of the roots and cut stems of our greens we compost them, we mix them back into the environment people who are focused on regenerative agriculture are doing that on very large scale in field farming they’re using cover crops instead of plowing you know they’re not putting chemicals into the soil that leech all of the important nutrients and compounds out of the soil they’re feeding the soil, the soil knows how to feed itself what grows on it goes back into the soil. It’s probably one of the most important things that we have to do on this earth if the earth will survive and continue to support the light from the earth.

Dr. Wong

What can we do in our own homes to increase access to healthy foods? I know that’s kind of a broad question but you know for the listener out there kind of looking at “okay we’re going to get some microgreens here”. How do we increase access to healthy foods for everyone?

JoAnn

Well, first of all, educate ourselves, learn and learn because we’ve been going in the wrong direction. I’m not going to say anything more than that so we have to learn some things all of us everyone and it’s, I think the responsibility of the people in food and agriculture to teach and to learn too. The second thing is wherever you can grow it, grow it you know. And grow it from healthy living soil, feed the soil, feed your plant, feed yourself. The other thing is and because most people don’t have an option for growing it. I mean you can, you know I have relatives that grow incredible things on balconies you know in the middle of Rome but shop smart and you can if you’re educated I’m a label reader you know I read. I don’t like if I’m buying something I like to know what’s in it I like to know that the only thing I’m buying is what I’m buying, not a dozen other things on the label. The next thing is to cook smart, eat raw when you can you know there’s ways of cooking and they’re fine, the, you know they feed our, they’re fun. You know, everybody knows a fried food is not a healthy food I’m not saying, never do it, I do it myself it’s fun. Don’t make it your diet though, you know eat smart, eat a lot of vegetables. The Mediterranean diet is by far and above throughout thousands of years once again the most healthful diet follow that pyramid but again its vegetables and fruits are at the bottom and eating them raw is the best and then just as we in the food and agricultural industry have to do you know teach each other you know when you have somebody over serve something helpful talk about it and spread the word you know so I there’s everything starts with each of us individually. You know grassroots I love that word because when you think about agriculture and regenerative agriculture grassroots you know we say we’re regenerating the roots of health. We grow them in soil and I think that that’s what we each can do and you know all of those individual contributions add up to a collective result.

Dr. Wong

Thank you. Just a follow-up question to that in terms of kind of grassroots bring increasing access to microgreens and other healthy foods, what do you think about the challenge of food deserts and you know people that might not have access to whole foods or a mom’s organic market or something like that are you planning on trying to get these microgreens out to populations that sort of historically have never had a lot of access to that?

JoAnn

Definitely, you know there are vertical farms in many and proliferating in many of those food deserts now you know. I think that even if it’s grown hydroponically it’s better than not having it but we’re working very very hard on two different models and channels for getting to those food deserts you know that’s the highest concentration of our populations are in urban areas and food deserts and you can well imagine that in that kind of an environment in that you know where people are in close proximity to each other. You just look at what happened with COVID in the dense cities those populations need nutrition more than anyone does so we are working on that. We do have distribution in cities so that’s helpful and we do plan to roll that out region by region but we’re looking at other channels through which we can put these nutrients in the everyday foods they eat so they’re getting people living in food deserts are getting better nutrition in every aspect and every form of what they’re eating.

Dr. Wong

That’s amazing. What an incredible mission that you and your company have and I just wanted to say thank you for all the work you and you know, New Day is doing. We’re going to have a few fun closing questions but I just want to thank you for the work that you’re doing well.

JoAnn

Thank you very much for that. Thank you, appreciate it.

Dr. Wong

Yeah, so let’s go to some fun closing questions that we ask all of our guests so first of all JoAnn do you have a morning routine and if so would you mind sharing that with us.

JoAnn

I do and it’s a challenge for me because it was easier you know when everybody was secluded in their homes you know, I have most of my career not had the luxury because I travel quite a bit. So it’s much harder to put a routine together on the road but I do. I wake up and I try to be diligent about this but the first thing I do is, I pray. I like to pray before I ever get out of my bed because if I don’t I’ll make an excuse not to and I think it’s important to wake up and be thankful for your blessings and to convene yourself you know day to day and we have spiritual health just like everything that we have to be mindful of. I usually then go reaching for a cup of coffee, I drink coffee, I like to drink coffee it gets my day started you know as my grandmother used to say there’s nothing like that for sip but I only allow myself two cups I never drink it past usually 10 o’clock in the morning because you know my mind is going enough when I go to sleep. I don’t need caffeine. I guess that if I’m home there may be some other tasks I get up fairly early and then I set about my work. I have tried as I’ve gotten older to not work so constantly or to mix it up with other things. I was in an interview once with someone who was very bold and asked me what I would do differently in life you know and I had just come off a conversation with my daughter and you know and I think she’s already struggling with how to do this but we have two sides of our brain we have two different parts of ourselves one is we’re all artistic we’re all creative you know we all have that if we nurture it by the time we’re nine we’ll have it all of our lives and music is connected to math so to balance out all of that work I like to put some creative work so at home I always make sure that I have my artwork and easel my sculpture materials my musician’s tools nearby instruments guitars whatever and I now have tried to get into the practice of certain couple times a day get up from the desk get off the phone and incorporate some of that and at first, I thought it was you know I got to save that until later and I mean later in life. Who knows a little bit there but I found that if you balance both of those in the course of your day one actually feeds into the other so those are practices that I do and they’re harder obviously to do when you’re traveling.

Dr. Wong

I love that connecting the left and right brain you know there’s no time like the present right that’s the only time we really have so it’s so inspiring to hear you’re an executive, you’re a CEO, you’re running this company, amazing company with a great mission and then you’re also an artist and musician. I think that’s really very inspiring for a lot of listeners here.

JoAnn

Well, I want the listeners to know that we all are you just have to find that.

Dr. Wong

Yeah, kind of cultivated. So even after age nine do you feel like it’s too late or not too late to kind of cultivate that a bit the artistic side there you said after the artistic side you can cultivate it afterwards?

JoAnn

Definitely, you know I like, Julia Cameron has written a bunch of books on that you know beginning with the artist way you know it’s actually methodology when you read the book you should, you know, live it over and over again but you get up and there’s a different study or you know focus for that day you know and the whole process and she’s worked with you know physicians and lawyers and everybody else who are now here they are later in life and they’re discovering these creative talents we all have them.

Dr. Wong

Yeah, yeah that’s so great since you’re Italian and we weren’t going to ask this but I would share with you that growing up as a young child my babysitter was from Sicily so she would bake a bunch of calzones and you know homemade pizza and everything. What’s your favorite Italian food if you have one or is you know food or foods?

JoAnn

Oh geez. It’,s that’s a hard one. First of all when I grew up, especially on the one side of my family. I don’t think we had, I don’t think, I don’t, I remember the first time I bought a boxed pizza we made it you know we made the pasta we made everything. But I’m, I love the pasta and I love the pizza but you got to watch the carbs so what do I love that how can you, how can you change that a little bit you know put microgreens on

Dr. Wong

Put microgreens to get it, get it healthier yeah.

JoAnn

But you know, it’s things like that yeah I’m a pasta eater.

Dr. Wong

It’s very delicious. What do you do every day to cultivate joy? I think you already answered that with the art and the music and things. So what kind of brings you joy? What’s your anchor there?

JoAnn

I would say there’s so many reasons to forget to be joyful and you might be gone through something it could be a health crisis or a heartbreak or you know stress from your work whatever it is but you can always stop and remind yourself of your blessings and I would have to say I’ve had it took a long time for me to learn that but I think it’s the best thing you can do you know the extreme side of that when people say well people have it much worse than I do many people do everybody faces whatever they face it could always be worse so if you focus on your blessings you know you’ll bring yourself joy.

Dr. Wong

Love that advice thank you so much JoAnn for that. And how can listeners learn more about you and New Day Enterprises and also find the products the microgreens as well?

JoAnn

Well, we do have a website newdayfarms.com. We will be having some additional sites for some new directions. My email is jo@newdayfarms.com, I’m always happy to hear from people and I think those two things our products are in most health food stores and certainly whole foods. We’re expanding from the mid-Atlantic out but I’m hoping also by the end of this year to get the nutritional aspects of our products in other foods as well. That’s all I can say about that at this point but we’re expanding nationally we’re pretty concentrated in the mid-Atlantic I don’t think people would have any trouble finding us in the mid-Atlantic if you do write to me and you know we will make sure that we speak to those who have those retail establishments and get our products there too.

Dr. Wong

Great! Well thank you so much, Jo, for being with us today, JoAnn and we look forward to speaking with you more about regenerative agriculture and kind of keeping in touch here definitely check out the products the microgreens. I particularly like these sunflower and kale ones that’s my favorite so far but I haven’t tried all of them so I need to kind of run through all of them they’re probably seasonal as well but I really appreciate your company your mission and certainly the food because it does go back to you know getting back to healthy food so thank you so much for being on today.

JoAnn

Oh! thank you for having me it’s been a pleasure.

Dr. Wong

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