040, Jennifer Maynard: Staying Healthier and Living Longer with Phytonutrient-Rich Foods

Soul Soil: Where Agriculture and Spirit Intersect with Brooke Kornegay

“Your food just feels good when I eat it”…this is the refrain Jennifer Maynard hears again and again from customers eating the meals she produces from her regenerative agriculture farm and assembles through her meal kit business—meals based on the Longevity Diet. Jennifer has done her homework when it comes to food that works with the human body. She has traveled to several of the blue zones—areas with a high concentration of people over 100 years old—and discovered not just what they eat, but how they live and grow their food as well. Jennifer worked in the Biotech and Pharmaceutical specialty medicine areas for over 20 years. After putting two decades of her passion into changing people's lives through modern medicine, she felt her knowledge and experience would be better served focusing on "Food as Medicine." Even though progress has been made with medicine, the battle with chronic illness is being lost. In order to address this, she founded Greater Greens, a regenerative organic farm, as the first step to bringing this movement front and center and to help focus on the root of our health challenges. Once the farm was fully operational, she co-founded Nutrition for Longevity, a farm-to-fork meal kitting company that focuses on bringing nutritionally tailored meals to the masses direct from her farm.

In this episode…

• Phytonutrients and the connection between soil and human health, including our response to stress
• The soil microbiome is the plant’s immune system, much as the human gut microbiome makes up a huge part of the human immune system
• Practices that have led to the reduction of organic matter in U.S. soils from 11% to 1%
• Techniques Jennifer uses on her farm, Greater Greens, to produce high quality, phytonutrient-rich foods
• The critical role of native insect populations in maintaining agroecological balance
• The power of the consumer in making the shift toward regenerative agriculture
• Ways to get more nutrient-dense foods into our local communities
• How farms with healthy soils are far more resilient with regard to climate change
• We can begin to support farmers interested in transitioning to regenerative agriculture using carbon credits
• Kids actually WILL eat vegetables…produce that is grown in living soil is far more appealing than conventional veggies!
• Centenarians in the Blue Zones tend to be regenerative agriculture farmers, utilizing ancient techniques practiced by the indigenous populations

Resources

• Nutrition for Longevity, Jennifer’s meal kit service

• Greater Greens on Facebook and Instagram

• Jennifer Maynard on Instagram

• Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming by Paul Hawken

• The Longevity Diet: Discover the New Science Behind Stem Cell Activation and Regeneration to Slow Aging, Fight Disease, and Optimize Weight by Valter Longo