Basically Food Update (New Year)

Hi everyone,

Happy New Year! :D As we all ease back into our routines and schedules after the holidays, I want to offer my hope that 2024 brings more goodness and positive change for you than 2023. I mean, that could happen, right? I’m optimistic. :)

The news we have to share with you today is all (mostly) pretty good news:

• January sale: 20% off with coupon code BASICALLYEAR
• BOOST chocolate and BUILD chocolate: temporarily out of stock :(
• New manufacturer: BOOST, BUILD, and BURN chocolate on the way (no DHA)
• Basically Vitamins, Electrolytes, and Protein: now available!

First of all, here’s a little (belated) New Year’s sale to kick off 2024 – use the coupon code BASICALLYEAR for 20% off Basically Food during the month of January. :)

If you missed out on the SUPERBODYFAM coupon code in 2023, this is your chance to get the same discount this month. But if you still have an active subscription using SUPERBODYFAM, don’t cancel it – the discount will continue until you cancel! And you can reschedule, postpone, and edit the subscription in the meantime.

We don’t have any further discounts or sales planned out at the moment, so this is your best chance to get one if you’re looking for a deal! ;) Finances are very tight for us now, so we can definitely use all the non-discounted sales we can get. Personally, I’ve opted to take a pay cut to just below subsistence income, in order to maximize the chances that we won’t run out of money or inventory this year. :d But don’t worry about that. We’ll be fine. :]

Speaking of inventory, we are temporarily out of stock of BOOST chocolate and (very nearly) BUILD chocolate, as those are apparently our most popular items at the moment. But the reason we don’t have more is not for lack of funds, it’s because the new manufacturer we were going to work with turned out to be… not so great after all. :p

But the good news is, we have finally placed an order with a new new manufacturer, who so far seems to be quite promising, both in terms of pricing and quality (attention to detail). We’re very excited about it, honestly. If all continues to go well, we should have another 1000 units each of BOOST chocolate, BUILD chocolate, and also BURN chocolate (the next most popular) in… a few months, most likely? A couple months if we’re lucky.

Obviously, any number of months other than zero is less than ideal, and we’re really sorry to leave you chocolate-lovers hanging. :/ If you’re really craving your chocolate, might I suggest adding 100g of cocoa powder to a tub of vanilla-flavored Basically Food powder and shaking it up to make chocolate? :3 Or just make do with cinnamon. Your choice.

Oh, and for those of you who responded to the DHA survey a few months ago (or those who experienced the dreaded fishiness firsthand), we have analyzed the feedback and come to a tentative decision: no more DHA. Starting with the three chocolate batches we just ordered.

I was surprised to find that nearly half of all respondents had experienced fishiness at some point in the last few years of Super Body Fuel and Basically Food, and nearly half of those people were adamant that we remove the offending DHA from the formula or else they would not continue to buy our product. Many of them had already stopped! Even considering the self-selection bias in survey respondents, that’s a lot of people.

What made the decision for me, though, was this study on the shelf-life of DHA powder, which showed that it could last pretty long at room temperature, but at 122°F (50°C), literally 0% of the DHA powder remained after six months. It had all oxidized – transformed from a vital nutrient to a disgustingly fishy smell. How much DHA would remain after a few days at 122°F in a shipping truck in the summer? Probably more than 0%, but even if a small percentage oxidized during that time, it would make the whole thing unpalatably fishy.

If we can’t guarantee that the temperature will stay cool at all times, we can’t guarantee the amount of DHA in the final product, and we can’t guarantee that it won’t get fishy. :/ So no DHA.

But… there’s a bright side! Just last month I came across another study, showing that you can actually synthesize enough DHA from the plant-based omega-3 fat ALA, as long as you only get a tiny amount of ALA (alpha-linolenic acid) and a tiny amount of the plant-based omega-6 fat LA (linoleic acid, not Los Angeles). Too much omega-6 (as in seed oils), and even too much omega-3 (as in flax or chia), is actually counterproductive and blocks the conversion step. You can see relevant snippets from the full text quoted in the discussion thread here, showing that olive oil (which has a small amount of omega-6 LA, and an even smaller amount of omega-3 ALA) actually results in just as much DHA in the end as ALA-rich flaxseed oil, but without the significant oxidation risk. And similarly for milk fat – it’s even better than olive oil.

That is a game changer. That means that the small amounts of ALA and LA in the olive oil or avocado oil or cream you add to BURN or BALANCE, or the milk you add to BOOST or BUILD, should be enough to produce sufficient DHA in your own body! That is, as long as you stay away from high-omega-6 foods like seed oils (aka, “vegetable” oils, and to a degree, nuts and lard and poultry fat) – which you really really (really) should already be doing, anyway. My health (and skin) is so much better since I started strictly cutting out seed oils a few years ago. I still eat corn chips – I just bake my own from organic corn tortillas and they’re just as crunchy. :d

Of course, if your brain is still growing, as a kid or teenager (or even young adult?) or if you are pregnant or breastfeeding, you’ll need more DHA, and it would probably be a good idea to eat seafood once in a while or take a quality DHA supplement.* If you’re craving fatty fish, you’re probably needing a bit more DHA. If not, maybe not.

Lastly, we finally have our Basically supplements available to order, with fully fleshed-out product pages and nutrition info and such – thanks for your patience. :) There’s Basically Vitamins, which is like Super Micros but mixed with cellulose to prevent it from absorbing moisture and clumping. There’s my favorite, Basically Electrolytes (Super Electrolytes), which I mix with water and Stur flavor drops to make a refreshing drink that I enjoy daily. And based on the feedback from our supplements survey, there’s Basically Protein, which is like Super Protein without the added gums and fiber. Just brown rice protein and amino acids. Doesn’t taste great, but you can mix it with something that does! ;D

We don’t have a ton of these in stock, so no pressure to go out and order them, but they’re available for those of you who can’t go without. :3

Anyway, that’s it for now – enjoy the sale (BASICALLYEAR!) and best of luck getting your January off to a good start! :)

Thanks for sticking with us. Take care, all! :D

Alex Cho Snyder (axcho)

* It’s not just DHA – the same goes for protein, by the way. Adults need less, kids and teenagers (and athletes) need more. The key here is “adults need less” – there’s been some fascinating discussion and experimentation in the nutrition nerd hangouts I frequent about protein-restricted diets for weight-loss, energy and longevity. And I’ve been doing my own version of the experiment, eating a loosely vegan diet consisting of mostly starch with a bit of fruit and veggies, with no added protein or fat. I’m also consuming plenty of old expired Milk Fuel samples mixed with just water, though! ;p

Maybe it’s my rice farmer ancestors, or maybe it’s the degree to which I’ve been force-feeding myself protein at every meal since I was a teenager, but my energy and sleep have been great and I’m gradually losing the little bit of belly fat that tends to show up when I eat a balanced diet while severely stressed and sleep-deprived. No cravings for meat or protein whatsoever – not yet. It’s fascinating. The traditional “peasant diet” works! Who would have thought?

Keto is certainly faster for burning off belly fat, but my energy and sleep tends to suffer whenever I restrict carbs. Eating as much starch as I want while restricting protein and fat is just… easy, for me. I noticed the same thing when I ate lots of starch and a fair amount of protein while cutting out fat completely, when I was doing hard physical labor on a daily basis, manufacturing at Super Body Fuel last year. But apparently the protein part is pretty much optional for me too. At least for now. :p

Well, I’m definitely saving a lot of money on my food bill this way! And I finally have a use for all that extra oat flour that was left when we shut down SBF manufacturing. Homemade oat crackers are quite delicious. :] And oat cakes, and oat cookies, and oat pancakes… Maybe even oat dumplings, though I haven’t tried those yet. :d

Anyway. Feel free to reach out if you want my recipes. ;)