Raina Kumra Puts the Fun Back in Functional Foods with Food Start-Up Spicewell
Sponsored by Joylux
Show Snapshot:
Could a healthier, more nutritious diet be as simple as upgrading your salt and pepper shakers? Startup founder and food activist Raina Kumra is on a mission to rethink how we spice up our everyday meals with her new company Spicewell—and plant-powered condiments. Raina dishes on the surprising nutritional deficiencies in the average U.S. diet, plant phytonutrients, and the link between her products and Ayurveda, a natural system of medicine that originated in India over 3,000 years.
In This Episode We Cover:
The health challenge behind Spicewell’s origin.
The surprising nutritional deficiencies in the average U.S. diet.
What’s Ayurveda? And how the ancient medicine informs Spicewell’s cornerstone products.
Plant power, eating the rainbow, and why phytonutrients belong in your pantry.
Your body on plants.
Plants versus big pharma and we should all be food activists.
Supertasters, food scientists, and what it takes to bring a product to market.
Career pivots, midlife confidence, and why 45 is the perfect age to figure out what you are really meant to do.
Quotable:
Spicewell is rooted in Ayurveda and is full of phytonutrients. Why are phytonutrients important? Because we are humans, we are animals and we were designed to eat plants. We were not designed to eat highly processed packaged goods, all day long.
Spicewell gives you 21 vitamins and minerals that you don’t always get in your salt and pepper, in fact, you never get it. And it’s about 10% of your daily vitamins in a half teaspoon.
More Resources:
Follow Spicewell:
Follow Raina:
Transcript:
Katie Fogarty (00:22):
Welcome to A Certain Age, a show for women who are unafraid to age out loud. What if I told you that eating a healthier, more nutritious diet might be as simple as upgrading a go-to kitchen staple. I’m talking about your salt and pepper shakers and why my guest today is on a mission to rethink how we spice up our everyday meals.
Meet start up founder and food activist Raina Kumra, here to dish on her plant-powered pantry essentials company Spicewell, which turns your pantry into a wellness medicine cabinet. Welcome, Raina.
Raina Kumra (0:53):
Thank you so much for having me, I’m so excited to be here.
Katie (0:56):
Yeah, I’m thrilled as well. We got connected by a former guest of mine, Susan McPherson, who came on to talk about networking. She shared both you and your company in her newsletter and I was like, "I need to know more about this incredible salt and pepper.” So, I would love it if you could share with our listeners, what Spicewell is, and why did you launch this company?
Raina (1:18):
Well, Susan is awesome and I’m so grateful that you found us through that. Spicewell is an infant company, we are just two and a half months out of the gates with a live product. And there’s actually a good story of how it came to be.
I have worked my entire career in tech and media, for decades. And grew up in an Indian household with Indian cooking and a lot of Ayurveda, which I always, sort of, put to the side as, “That’s just food, it could never be a career because that’s my food.” And then, in the middle of the pandemic, we had multiple overlapping health disasters in the family. First, my husband had planned knee surgery; he had ACL, LCL, and MCL all replaced. I brought him home from the hospital, so he’s recovering the next day, my kids were in a bike accident and my daughter broke her collarbone, she’s 5 years old.
Then I had a household of two people who were bedridden and down and I was doing all of the meals, all of the snacks, all the hydration, all the bathroom visit assists, all the sponge baths…
Katie (2:43):
Oh my gosh.
Raina (2:43):
…and I was dying. And of course, also, being a mom, my son had PTSD from the accident, he was fine otherwise. But I also had a day job, and I was running a fund in LA and I had another consulting client that I was working with and I was literally at my limit. I was dying and I was like, “Okay what can I do to heal them as fast as possible?”
Katie (3:10):
[laughs] You’re like, this needs to end, everybody needs to get out of bed.
Raina (3:14):
I was like, “How do we finish this? How do I get out of this caretaking scenario?” Because caretaking is so, so hard. For all the caretakers out there, thank you. That job is just… I could not sustain it. And because was the pandemic, and because of COVID, I couldn’t get anyone in either, so I was solo. So, I went into the kitchen and I was like, okay… I had a little bit of knowledge about eating right to heal bones, I had broken an elbow when I was in New York in my twenties so I had a lot of time then to read up on the fact that if you eat a lot of kale, your bones can heal faster, and your muscles and tendons, and all that. So, I was like, “I’m going to feed them exclusively kale…”
Katie (4:01):
[laughs] Exactly, kale for days.
Raina (4:04):
and exclusively turmeric.” And then the turmeric will keep the inflammation down, that way they won’t be in pain, and that way they can walk faster. I mean, this was all to get me out of caretaking.
Katie (4:13):
You had a good plan. [laughs]
Raina (4:15):
I was highly motivated.
Katie (4:17):
Yes. [both laugh]
Raina (4:19):
And it worked. So, they both… I went nuts. I went into the garden, I was picking vegetables right out of our boxes, I was dehydrating kale and powdering it and putting, you know because it’s a 5-year-old, you have to hide it in everything.
Katie (4:36):
Sure, in brownies.
Raina (4:37):
Smoothies, macaroni, and cheese, whatever I could put it in and get it into their bodies, I was doing. And it worked. Both of their doctors were surprised, they both healed three weeks faster than they would have normally healed.
Katie (4:52):
Wow, that’s amazing.
Raina (4:52):
I gave the broth, leftover broth to a neighbor who has chronic neck pain and he had had his second or third neck surgery and he came back the next day and he was like, “Can I have some more? Because that is the first time I have not been in pain. This is way better than Tylenol, this is way better than any of the pain killers that I have been given.” I was like, “Woah okay, maybe there’s something here, maybe I should do something with this.”
So, that’s sort of the origin story for Spicewell. And then I went down a rabbit hole of looking up market research of how we’re all walking around with a nutrient deficiency. And how those nutrient deficiencies open us up to experiencing chronic disease and how chronic disease leads us to take pharmaceuticals and supplements which cost a lot of money but don’t actually do that much for you and do not heal you, they just sort of mitigate symptoms. That was where the activism component came out. Because once you see how the food industry is and how big food treats us and you really look at those ingredients, once you see that, you cannot unsee it and it makes you really angry.
Katie (6:06):
I can totally imagine. And when you say also that there’s a nutrient gap in the American diet, you’re not kidding. Because the number that I saw on your website is that 92% of Americans experience some kind of nutrition deficiency which is pretty astonishing. So, what exactly does Spicewell do? Tell us about your products and how they can help close that nutrient gap.
Raina (6:32):
Yeah sure. So, I worked really hard to create something that would be a bit of a gap-filler. So, what Spicewell does is it gives you 21 vitamins and minerals that you don’t always get in your salt and pepper, in fact, you never get it. And it’s about 10% of your daily vitamins in a half teaspoon. And that half teaspoon of salt and pepper can be spread across two meals, it just sort of depends on how people like to salt and pepper their food.
And what I also added was an Ayurvedic component. I worked with an Ayurvedic Institute and an expert in India to really dig into studies that have been happening for many, many years about the use of turmeric. And with turmeric, you don’t just want to have a golden latte once, right, that might help for a moment but really, the trick is layering it on every day and then it builds up in your system and it starts to really help mitigate inflammation that’s caused by all these other unhealthy ingredients we’re eating.
So, Spicewell has a number of really great things, but the best part is that these are not lab-created vitamins, these are all sourced from plants. So, it’s kale, it’s broccoli, it’s cranberry, it’s chlorella, it’s sunflower seeds, it’s sweet potato, and it’s reishi mushrooms. So, we have put everything in there, in a flavor profile that is just a little bit better pepper and a little bit better salt. And you should be able to cook with it, it’s heat resistant vitamins because they come from plants, they’re meant to be cooked with. And the salt also is low sodium because one of my board members who used to run the USDA and is now on the board of Nestle told me, it has to be low sodium or she’s not joining the board [laughs] so I made sure that we had a low sodium product. And then, you know, it is a real challenge to find a salt that is tasty and also low sodium.
Katie (8:44):
And so, what kind of salt is that then?
Raina (8:46):
It is pink Himalayan salt, sourced from Pakistan because we wanted to start with an Ayurvedic base. And in the world of Ayurveda, there are actually so many types of salts and they all have different medicinal properties pink Himalayan salt is one of the coolest salts. If you look at our packaging, our pepper is red, kind of has a red theme and our salt kind of has a cooler blue theme. So, we’re working off of the Ayurvedic principles of heating and cooling foods.
Katie (9:15):
Raina, can you tell us a little bit more about those Ayurvedic principles? I know Ayurveda is a natural system of medicine rooted in India and has existed for thousands of years. What are the principles and how it applies to cooking? Maybe give a little bit more background to our listeners who might not be familiar with this.
Raina (9:32):
Yeah, sure. So, Ayurveda is a Sanskrit word that means “life and knowledge.” So, this is really the baseline of all Indian health and wellness. And it’s broken up into what we call five doshas which, every single one of us fits into these different, sort of, body types. There are also five elements that are earth, water, fire, air, and ether. And so, that’s where this sort of theory of foods that heat you up and warm you up like turmeric and pepper, they kind of, boost your metabolism, they boost your digestive fire, these are the heating foods. There also needs to be a balance of cooling foods. That would be where pink Himalayan salt is actually a cooling salt. There are also warming salts, but this is a specifically cooling salt that helps your body calm itself down and it also helps your cells absorb some of the nutrients that we have infused into the salt and pepper.
Katie (10:43):
The power of plants is obviously something that’s becoming so well known. We see plant power in our beauty products, there’s obviously… We all know now to shop the rainbow, we’ve heard food activist and author Michael Pollan famously say, “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.” When we come back, I want to hear a little bit more from you about why are plants superfoods and how we can incorporate them into your diet using Spicewell.
[Ad break]
Katie (12:32):
Okay, Raina, we’re back from the break. When we headed into it, we were talking about plants as super foods. I’m curious to know more about some of the ingredients that are in Spicewell and why you picked these particular plants to power your spices.
Raina (12:47):
Sure. So, Spicewell, as I said, is rooted in Ayurveda and is really full of phytonutrients. And why are phytonutrients important? Because we are humans, we are animals and we were designed to eat plants, we were not designed to eat highly processed packaged goods, all day long. And from those plants, not only do you get some of your main essential vitamins, but you also get all of these other properties that help your body adapt to stress, for example, that’s what the ashwagandha in the salt does, it’s classified as an adaptogen, and it helps your body regulate its cortisol response. So, when you get stressed out, if you’ve got ashwagandha in your system, it will help you from spiking your cortisol and getting more stressed out.
Turmeric is another example of an adaptogen, this is what’s known as Indian ginseng. A lot of people are familiar with turmeric, but the combination of the pepper and the turmeric together creates a much more effective recipe, a much more effective formulation where they activate each other. And then with just a little bit of fat, especially if you’re cooking with some oil or ghee, it really helps your cells absorb all of the vitamins and it helps absorb all of the anti-inflammatory properties that are happening within that formulation. So, it’s really about plants working together with your cells because there’s what, like 250 million varieties of plants? And we eat 1 or 2% of them, but they’re all a form of medicine.
Katie (14:34):
That’s absolutely astonishing. That is such a teeny, tiny number.
Raina (14:39):
Yeah, it’s so interesting, when I started Spicewell I went down a full rabbit hole of plant medicine, I enrolled in a course and I learned so much. It’s amazing how much we do not know about our bodies and how much we do not know about plants that are grown on Earth, where most of our pharmaceuticals and chemical composition actually come from is from these plants that they find.
The most interesting thing I’ve learned from my plant medicine course was that the reason why plants are medicine is that they don’t have legs. I love this. [Katie laughs] They don’t have legs, they can't run away, so they, therefore, have to have a means, chemicals of attracting and protecting themselves. Attracting pollinators and protecting themselves.
Katie (15:32):
That is absolutely hilarious.
Raina (15:35):
And that’s why we have medicine.
Katie (15:37):
So, they just have to root themselves down, figure it out for themselves, and become their best selves wherever they are blooming and planted. That’s hilarious. You do say on your website that our food and health systems are broken. We’re eating too much processed food; it sounds like we’re eating a fraction of the healthy plants and spices that are available to us and we are reliant on pills and supplements and things to keep our bodies healthy. Why have you made food activism a part of your messaging and a part of the way that you’re running your business?
Raina (16:18):
I’m really doing this for my kids because they will have been exposed to five to ten times more chemicals than we have as we grew up and they will have to face a lot more issues, health issues, because of the food… There is this 80 harvests left issue, there’s a food shortage issue, there’s a water shortage issue; they will have so much to deal with and I just want them to have a baseline of healthy foods in everything and every opportunity. And what is one opportunity that every American uses every day? It’s salt and pepper. So, that’s sort of why I wanted this to be my contribution to fighting big food and fighting big pharma because these two are very linked.
Katie (17:09):
And you have testers living at home. How old are your kids? What do they like to use Spicewell on? Do they eat French fries? And if they do, are they sprinkling your salt on it? Tell us a little bit about what we can expect in terms of taste.
Raina (17:22):
Yeah, so a 5 and 8-year-old, very picky eaters, taste-test approved, [Katie laughs] they put it on avocado toast, they put it on scrambled eggs, they put it on mac n’ cheese, they put it on French fries, they put it on everything. I’ve been just been slicing up cucumber and they have been seasoning it themselves and they’re big fans. They’re also I think part of my sales team apparently [Katie laughs] because they keep talking about it at school. [laughs]
But yeah, the taste, I mean, we have gotten so much feedback, we’ve now probably moved about 600 to 700 units and people are coming back and they love it and I’m so happy because I worked so hard on the flavor profile. Because you know if the flavor isn’t good, it doesn’t matter how wonderful all the other attributes are; you have to have it taste right or other people will not use it.
Katie (18:20):
And how did you go about doing that? Are you doing this at home? Are you working with a commercial kitchen at this point? We love to hear sort of the backstory about how something goes from an idea to a product on a shelf. Is it e-commerce? Do you have it in stores? Fill us in a little bit on your journey so far.
Raina (18:38):
Yeah, oh my gosh, it’s been such a journey and it’s been so fun because I’ve always just worked in digital. I’ve only done media, I’ve done a ton in tech, and I’ve done investing, but none of that involves really moving around atoms and that has been a big way for me to understand and relearn the world in which I live and have ignored for years. I used to just open up a package and eat it and never gave two seconds of thought about how it got there. So, I’ve loved this process.
So, I started in my kitchen, started with my Kitchen Aid. I got a lot of salt, a lot of pepper; our entire house really smelled of pepper, [Katie laughs] It still does. It is like perfume. And I just like, went kind of crazy. I just kept trying and trying and trying. I made at least 16 different versions of the salt, I got it down to five after a lot of taste testing, and a lot of focus groups. I gave it to the pickiest testers I know and I also gave it to someone who is a supertaster who has extra tastebuds and will tell you immediately if they hate it. [laughs]
Katie (19:53):
Where does one find a supertaster by the way? [laughs]
Raina (19:56):
I just got lucky finding one. [laughs] I was like, “You’re a what?” [both laugh] I had never heard of that.
Katie (20:03):
That’s so cool.
Raina (20:06):
Yeah, and then I’ve worked with a food scientist who formerly worked for Kellogg’s, that one of my advisors introduced me to. And then I moved it into a co-packer and a factory, I sourced everything from the best possible sources I could find, the cleanest ingredients. I tested it, I double lab-tested everything as well, and then we started… I got packaging which took a really long time but I finally got there and then we had everything ready to go. The whole thing probably took 8 or 9 months after I kind of landed on the final formulation.
Katie (20:43):
And what do you see as the opportunity for this? Is it unlimited? Are you marketing this to people who are health foods or for home cooks? Is it for anyone who enjoys food?
Raina (20:55):
I like to joke that my market potential is 8 billion people because everybody loves salt and pepper, almost everybody uses it. So yeah, I have an ambitious way of thinking about this where I would love to see this in everyone’s pantry because now a lot of people are using fancy salts, they’re using their Maldon, they’re using Himalayan salt, and those aren’t even iodized for the most part. So, now we’re even getting fewer nutrients in our salt and pepper. So, I really feel like it’s important that people start to pay attention to every opportunity to get more nutrient-dense foods into their diets?
Katie (21:39):
And how does having iodized salt help that?
Raina (21:41):
So, in 1924, almost 100 years ago, we added iodine to our salt. And that was to prevent goiter. And now, more and more people do not have iodized salt, yes, there are some health problems that are coming from that. This is what we have in our salt; we have 10% of vitamin D, vitamin A, E, C, K, B6, B12, thiamine, niacin, folate, biotin, iron, iodine, selenium, manganese, molybdenum, and riboflavin and copper, chromium, and zinc.
Katie (22:23):
Wow, you’re like a box of Cheerios. [both laugh]
Raina (22:27):
I hope better than Cheerios.
Katie (22:29):
But better than Cheerios, not processed.
Raina (22:32):
Not processed, yeah. Blended, but not processed.
Katie (22:35):
Blended but not processed. I love this. When I looked you up and reached out to you, I did it through LinkedIn because I’m always on that platform. You have a phenomenal LinkedIn headline that says, “Don’t put me in a box” and I was like, “That is a great headline.” I want to hear a little bit… You already said on the show, you worked in media, you worked in tech, how did you decide to put on this entrepreneurial hat? I know the story, the genesis, when your family went through this health crisis and you said, let me come up with a solution. But if it wasn’t going to be this, did you always know you were going to be an entrepreneur? Could you have launched this earlier in your career? Is this something that had to happen after you’ve spent years building your other core skills?
Raina (23:25):
It’s so interesting. I think I wasn’t out of my own way about launching something in food. So, that took a really long time for me to convince myself that it was okay to not do something in tech… Which, I was really wrapped up in that identity of, “I’m a technology investor, and I’m a technologist, and I only do tech startups. So, I couldn’t possibly do a startup in any other field.” No one told me that, that was just me telling myself that. [laughs]
Katie (23:59):
We tell ourselves a lot of stories that we believe to be true.
Raina (24:04):
Yeah, we do. We definitely hold ourselves back. So, I think I wouldn’t have been able to take off that identity as easily maybe ten years before because I was really wrapped up in it then and I was still building my career around that identity.
But after a certain point, and after a certain age, I was also like, “I don’t care, actually. I can do whatever I want and I have demonstrated that I can be successful at doing a lot of different things.” And that was tied to my LinkedIn headline [Katie laughs] in a way where I’m just like, people really want to put you in a box and as a generalist who has done a lot of things —I’ve had a career in government, I’ve had a career in tech, I’ve had a career in advertising — I was so tired of being pigeon-holed or rather, people getting very confused and not liking that I did a lot of things. So, I’m like, you know what, I don’t care anymore. I am able to do more things than maybe most people so I’m just going to keep doing them.
Katie (25:14):
Yeah, keep trying, taking new things on for size. It sounds like this sort of, midlife confidence, you know, allowed you to just have a different conversation with yourself about what you could be doing and where you could be doing it. Are there other benefits of doing this type of entrepreneurial project in midlife? Do you bring other skills? Is it a network? What are some bonuses? A lot of people want to start businesses in midlife and sometimes think, “I’m too old.” I think it’s an advantage and I’d love to hear what you have to say on this.
Raina (25:44):
It is. Okay, so you’re going to love this story. Because I was in a career midlife crisis before the health crisis came that kind of launched Spicewell and I was about to take a job at some consulting firm as a partner which would have been a lot of money and prestige and all those things that you think that you want. And then I just was walking one day… My father has passed away, almost ten years ago now, but I remembered one thing that he said. He was 44 when he quit Intel and launched his new business which was in wireless which was in the very early days of the cellular, wireless industry. He always said to me, “Look I didn’t figure out what I really wanted to do until I was 45 and when you’re 45, you might know.” [both laugh] And I’m 44 right now and was like, “Oh my gosh, this is totally that moment.”
Katie (26:47):
You beat him, you beat him by a year. [laughs]
Raina (26:51):
I mean I won’t say that… We’ll see, we’ll see. And then he went on and had a very successful career in the wireless industry and he was California’s first and only independent wireless network for many, many years. He was the last holdout that didn’t sell to AT&T and Verizon.
Katie (27:11):
I love this story. I love this story and that he shared it with you, and he let you know that you don’t have to figure it out when you’re young. Because I think that a lot of times we get those messages, you need to get in your lane and stay there, you need to climb, climb, climb, and that we feel, sometimes, trapped. He shared with you that you could get to midlife and start something entirely new; what a wonderful message.
Raina (27:36):
Yeah, exactly. I think if I didn’t have that sentence rattling around somewhere in my head, I might have taken that job and been miserable.
Katie (27:46):
I love it. And Spicewell would never have existed, we’d all be eating boring salt and pepper. [Raina laughs] All right Raina, we’re moving into the end of the show, I want to do a quick speed round because I always love getting these sort of bing-bing-bing-ba-da-bang, quick, one-word answers, two-word answers from my guests because I learn so much at the end. So, do you want to do this with me?
Raina (28:07):
I do.
Katie (28:08):
Let’s go, let’s go. Launching Spicewell into the world was _____.
Raina (28:13):
Hard.
Katie (28:14):
[laughs] I always appreciate the honesty. Favorite dish to use Spicewell on _____.
Raina (28:22):
Avocado toast.
Katie (28:24):
Your website says to eat the rainbow. What’s one rainbow food that’s always in your grocery cart?
Raina (28:30):
Purple cabbage.
Katie (28:31):
Ooo, I love that too. Surprise! This buzzy health food is never in my grocery cart _____.
Raina (28:40):
Oh… that is a— Sorry, totally have no answer for you on that.
Katie (28:45):
[laughs] That’s good, sounds like they’re all in there, that works.
Raina (28:50):
Honestly, everything is market research right now, so I am buying all of it.
Katie (28:55):
You have an overstuffed cart; we do not want to be behind you at the checkout counter.
Raina (28:59):
No, you don’t.
Katie (29:00):
Okay, go-to healthy snack _____.
Raina (29:04):
Cucumber with Spicewell.
Katie (29:06):
My favorite self-care practice is _____.
Raina (29:08):
Meditation for 5 minutes.
Katie (29:11):
All right, you have two young kids, 5 minutes is all we can get.
Raina (29:13):
That’s all I get. [laughs]
Katie (29:15):
And you’re building an empire, so you’re busy. All right, a book or podcast for budding entrepreneurs _____.
Raina (29:22):
Well, I just read Kara Goldin’s wonderful book and that really helped me when I was starting my business, so I highly recommend that. That was super helpful, made me feel really not alone in the journey.
Katie (29:37):
Okay fabulous, I will put that in the show notes, I’m a big, big Hint fan, my favorite flavor is watermelon. Finally, your one-word answer to complete this sentence: As I age, I feel _____.
Raina (29:50):
I feel strong.
Katie (29:51):
Nice. This has been such a pleasure Raina, thank you for coming on and sharing Spicewell with us, I can’t until we see it on supermarket shelves. Before we say goodbye, how can our listeners find you and Spicewell?
Raina (30:04):
Thank you so much, Katie. We are online, we’re at thespicewell.com. You can find us on Instagram @thespicewell and TikTok as well. And we’re also on Amazon, but there’s an SEO issue, so I would love any help in searching for Spicewell with the quote marks, because that is apparently what you need to do, in the beginning.
Katie (30:28):
We can do that, we can do hard things, so we’re into that. Okay, thank you Raina.
This wraps A Certain Age, a show for women who are aging without apology. Join me next Monday when addiction recovery advocate and lawyer, Lisa Smith, joins me to talk about sobriety in a world obsessed with alcohol and being buzzed.
Thank you to everyone who took the time to rate and review A Certain Age over on Apple Podcasts last month, I see and appreciate you. If this is still on your to-do list, make today the day. Simply find A Certain Age on your podcast app, scroll down to the bottom, and tap on the stars to rate, or leave a written review because both matter. Reviews and ratings help other women find the show.
Special thanks to Michael Mancini who composed and produced our theme music. See you next time and until then: age boldly, beauties.