The advice and informational content does not necessarily represent the views of mother's market and kitchen mother's recommends consulting your health professional for your personal medical condition a.Hello, I'm Kimberly King, and welcome to the mother's market radio show, a show dedicated to the Truth, Beauty and Goodness of the human condition. On today's show, our world is a truly remarkable place, you can find natural remedies all over, including the seaweed from the East Coast, so listen close and find out how seen we can enhance your help. Plus later. We'll tell you what's going on around town. But first up, Adam Grossman is the co-founder of the seed Bath company. He first created seed-based personal care products to take control of his own troubled skin, seeking to improve the lives of others. Adam founded the cereal company with his wife, Allison in 2010 to harness the nourishing benefits of seaweed into effective body skin and hair care products designed for all skin and hair types. Today, the see Bath company continues to innovate and expand its product offering driven by science-backed research and a desire to offer accessible personal care products that offer visible results and a unique ocean-inspired sensory experience. And we welcome him to the mother's market radio show. How are you?

I'm doing great. Thanks for having me again.

Yeah, it's great to see you. Why don't you fill our audience in a little bit on your mission and your work before we get to today's show topic... Absolutely, so we started almost nine years ago now, and really saw an opportunity in the marketplace to bring effective cue-based personal care to the natural channel.

So my wife and I had kinda gotten into natural living, and I've found a lot of relief bathing in the CB baseballs in Ireland and grew a following of people and decided, Hey, this would be kind of a cool adventure, and that's how hard consumer products be. And we naively launch the crash company and Natural Products Expo East in Boston in 2010. I remember your story and I just thought it's great because you're living your passion and you're doing this to help others, so today we are talking about the benefits of sea weed, and so how are you first introduced to see we... So it was actually pretty random. I was told by some friends, mine about a philosopher API, which are ocean-based treatment spots, and I thought That sounds pretty interesting 'cause I found going on the ocean, it was always therapeutic for me in my skin, and when I looked into philosopher API, I saw that learned that a lot of their top treatments were using seaweed in water and having people bathing it, and when I kind of researched seaweed and where it was harvested, let me to Ireland where the casket all started in 1912, and so I called a bunch of these spas and one lady who had moved back from the UK to start a seaweed baseball, kind of a bed breakfast outside, Galway, became friendly with her on the phone, she educated me, she shoved me seaweed and a big trash bag. And the rest is kinda history. So I started bathing in sea weed and I saw results, and then my wife Helen said, helped her healthy skin, and that was the kind of spark that led to this long journey for us.

Do you know off-hand? When she started the Women in Galway, she started... No, when she started, she... Yeah, she started, I think in 2008, she opened her bed and breakfast kind of sewed baseball.

Well, I mean, was it something back... Was this an Irish tradition? Is an iron 1912 defers to it?

Commercialized weasel started, so there's a handful of them that are out there, boys kind of a brand, but also a cath spa, that was really the first one, and now it's kind of becoming more popular... Right. People are more open a sea weed. So it's kind of cool.

Wow, okay, so that's... That's so interesting. So are all the weeds the same?

So I used to think all seeds were the same as you start to educate yourself and learn about what they were using, the spas, they'd ship me this type of brown... See, we call bladder act, and that's what we're using our products, but there's actually 25000 types of sea that have been identified and they're broken into brown, green and red, and we're really just starting to scratch the surface, knowing what it can do for the human body, both topically and internally, how do people harvest see we... It's pretty cool. So this lady in Ireland that we started with, she would just go out our front door and grab it off the beach, but today we actually have a team in Maine and seaweeds live in different parts of the ocean, obviously, so you have some that are found just along the shore line, like rock weed, and so you'll have harvesters that I'll just walk along the shoreline and pick it up and take it bladder Act, which we use, it's not just off the shoreline, so when the tides out, it actually exposed almost the islands of it, and we can hand-cut it then, and then the tide comes back in and it goes back under water, and then you also have help, which is the most popular sea when most people think of these beautiful help forests, and they have these boats that actually act as big lawn mowers that can kinda trim these help beds and suck it up, so to fishermen with the right type of boat can really cut a lot of help pretty quickly and allowed to still regenerate. So a lot of different ways to harvest that we go every June to Maine, and we spend about a week and a half and cutting seaweed, and we put it out, bring it back to a farm, and we try it outside. And the unique thing about seaweed is that if you try it and store properly, it actually ages like wine, so in Japan, they'll put it in storage for 20 years and then they need it or use it in different products is a unique ingredient. And again, we're still just scratching the surface on our knowledge of what it does... How did you find this? Seaweed in Maine.

So random story, I was getting seaweed from Ireland and my wife and I quit our jobs and we were moving to bruise Columbia just to take a time out and kind of get ready to launch the cub Bath company, and we were in New York at... My wife's friend's engagement party, and this girl, so next to us said, Hey, what do you guys do? And I said, Well, I was, you know, doing something else. And I quit my job, my wife was an attorney, she quit her job and we're launching a seed-based Personal Care line, and she said, Oh really? My uncle is the sea weed harvester in Maine, and we said, Oh, they harvest seeded Maine, that's how... Not even a remedial. We were this in the beginning, and so we got in touch with him and we went out and we got the same... See, and now we can do it. We weren't creating the carbon footprint that we were concerned about, the importing it from Ireland, and we helped him get certified organic, and the rest is kind of history for us, so that was a attachment... You need the little kind of crumbs along the way as an entrepreneur because you're kind of feeling through the dark most of the time, is there... Seether, in Southern California, there absolutely is. So why we focus on Maine in addition to having the connection there is that it's really clean, it's one of the really last working shorelines in the US, unfortunately, a lot of our oceans are polluted, the beaches, and you have to be very careful about where you harvest seaweed, so they have the main cube council up there that's always checking the ocean for heavy metals and stuff like that, and so that gives us confidence in the product that we bring to market, but yeah, they're... People see it everywhere, it... But you look at the northern climates, Northern states, so Oregon, Washington, even Northern California, and you see a richer Serie harvesting culture on the West Coast. We worry about Pacific seaweeds, given what happened in Japan, vekoma back in 2011. so that also was a reason we looked at the Lani and I made a lot of sense. And then you look at the economic impact. 'cause in Maine, in Portland specifically, the EPA put a lot of quotas on fisheries there, so you have a lot of out-of-work fishermen with boats who are looking for something to do, and so the seed industry there has grown by leaps and bounds, and fortunately in US government has given a lot of these guys grants to go out and sustainably harvest seed out in the ocean even, and that's really growing the supply chain and help the economy in Portland, so we feel a small part of that... Wow, putting people back to work as well.

So we talked a little bit about the types of seaweed, so how many types of seaweed are there, you talked about brown green red, but let's get it more into this eye over 25000 type. So brown Seaweed is, and the most well-known, most study have high mineral content for coin is the active ingredient found throughout Brown seaweeds, which is... There's been a lot of research on it as a potential anti-inflammatory, different studies mostly done in Southeast Asia have focused on it reducing cancer cells in certain situations, so the brown seaweeds are the focus today, but reds are coming up as well, and then in greens are kind of the emerging side of seaweed, but... Again, I think we're just scratching the surface, and I think in five, 10 years, we'll look back and say, Wow, she's pretty amazing.

Lateran... Where does that fall under what... It's a type of brown seaweed futsal is what is the most popular type of... Sees a lot of people today are eating seaweed writes this new trend super food, people are eating it, so dull, A LOT OF PEOPLE sprinkle that on salads that that has the heaviest the pressure on the population of those getting really clean. Good. Dull, self, the coast, a Maine has become an expensive proposition also help... People will eat kelp and soup and that type of thing. So really, when you look at the uses, they've expanded tremendously, but the US consumers waking up to eating seaweed on a more consistent basis, whereas Southeast Asian cultures and Northern European cultures have really had it a part of their diet for a long time.

Long time. Yeah, I think the Caledon, Southern California.

So when you think about Help... Where does that fall under? brown, green red. What is that?

It is a large brown seed, I believe.

Okay, I could look at it and say, what I think it is that we can use in Lorient if I was under Brown.

Okay, thank you.

I guess, thank you for... So what are the various forms of seaweed then, I guess that... Is that... So their sweetest considered macro algae, so it's a larger algae, and so you find it everywhere from these helped that are literally 20 feet tall to little ones that grow and coral that are red seaweeds and fight, so they vary tremendously in size and the way they look, bladder act that we use as these kind of like balls that have gelled, so we harvest it... That kind of what makes it unique. We harvest when those bulbs are at the largest and allow us to get the mineral cells as much as possible, and is it in the bulb that's where the Etheridge help put in the bath, and you can get some of that kind of gel, but it's a little bit different. So we've tried, I've tried a lot of different seaweeds, and at the CIBA company, we've expanded, so we focus on bladder Act, but our facial care line that we launched has three different types of seaweed into a proprietary complex that we went and clinically proved works well on your skin and added that to bladder Act, so we're kind of on the leading edge and trying to push the envelope on what can be done, and you have companies out there like LA Mar and some of the other marine active that are also looking at it and it's kind of cool to all work together and bring the signs to the forefront... That's great, that's amazing.

The most popular uses. You've talked a little bit about that. So you're edible.

Yeah, so sets popular in food, personal care, and even an ingredients now, so where you've seen some really cool products here at the show as well, so how do the harvesters ensure that sisu stain-able and clean?

So our harvesting team, the way we focus on sustainability was number one, getting certified organic, and I can take you through how you do that, but we go hand-cut or see we... So we cut in a way, allows it to regenerate within 36 months, the same size or larger than we found it. We also chose the seaweed and bladder act that doesn't have a lot of pressure on the population... People aren't needing bladder act. I had a great idea to make a bladder act one morning. I take a...

So topically, it's amazing for your skin, but it's not something you wanna eat, so again, there's about 800000 metric tons of it, and Casco Bay in Maine, and we take 600 to 1000 pounds a year, and again, that regenerates, so that's how we know it is getting a certified organic, the way we cut it, the way we put in the boat to separate it from any contamination potentially from the engine helps help us along the organic certification route, and then we dry it outside so we don't add to put it through dryers or anything like that it's organically drives on the sun, woo, interesting information and literally going behind the scenes with you, so... Thank you. We have to take a quick break. But more in just a moment. Don't go away, we'll be right back.

And welcome back to the mother's market radio show. And we wanna remind you that if you've missed any portion of today's show, you can find us on iTunes by searching mother's market or download the show from our website, mother's market dot com, click the link for radio and listen to the past shows. Plus download our Healthy Recipes and money saves coupons, all available at mother's market dot com.

And now back to our interview with sweat company, founder and Adam Grossman, and we're talking about the benefits of sea weed and... Yeah, let's talk a little bit... We'll expand that out. What kinds of things that people are enjoying seaweed... Obviously, we have your company, and do you wanna talk about it, 'cause you have an amazing back story about how you co-founded or how you found it in... So we're personal care companies, so when you see we topically across our product line, a head-to-toe solution with clinically proven formula, so see we topically... Your skin is the largest organ in your body. So people don't really always understand that, but bathing and see what is a great way to passively absorb the mineral, a new trans found in it. What we're saying today is that the evolution of seaweed into really the diet of mainstream consumers across the US, there's help Turkey, which people smoke, and as they say, it says like bacon, there's cue chips out there that are using different types of seaweed into tea chips, so it's a really exciting time in cool new companies like I think it's called Blue evolution launched a seaweed-based pasta and they're growing their own seaweed in Mexico with the grant, and just really interesting things that five, six years ago when I launched. People look at me like I was nuts with seaweed. Never would have thought it would kind of evolve to this, so... It's pretty cool.

Wow, that's interesting. It is great, and to know that you're around the leading edge there and here in the forefront, have you seen any cool new products focused on marine sweet ingredients? I know you just mentioned the pasta, what does that debate... They were nice enough to send some to our team and it tastes good, right.Itinerant, people think it's gonna take fish, but if you get the flavor profile right, you can balance out some of the salting and actually make it pretty tasty, so I say it's a great way to get some in... Into your diet, which most Americans named, including myself and my sisters. So yeah, let me ask you about that. I was gonna ask you, so tell me a little bit about your skin and how that's helped, and does it run in your family, so it does run in my family, nobody had the skin issues to the extent that I had to talk about it.

Yep, so I would say it... She read inflamed skin, and unfortunately for me, the drugs that the dermatologist put me on over time really thin my skin and made me susceptible to cutting leading, but really suppress my immune system to a point that it was difficult for me to fight other infections and ended up with meningitis when I was about 25, 5, 26, and I lost 30 pounds, mostly muscle mass within a few week period. And I decided that if I ever got better, I make some changes. And I grew up really believe in Western medicine, my dad was a physician, and that was kind of the end for me in believing in Western medicine and kind of looking and researching for myself and using myself as a gene pig through nutrition and topical... Eventually made a big difference for me, so... And the same route as my sister, I'll suffer from... I have three older sisters, so of course, I was destined to sell personal care products, but they have... Hypothyroidism runs in my family. I don't have it, but Aidan, being added to their diet is always beneficial to have a system, a thyroid system that's working effectively, and it affects a lot of women, especially so... And thank you for sharing that because... So this obviously, as we talked about, this is living your passion now because... And it's interesting that you say, of Dad is a physician, so how does he believe in all of this, what does the end... There's two sides, there's a scientific side, then there's the business rational side, so he was always thinking holistically differently when you send me things, different things to track, check out, but he's also worried about my health and he believes, you know, pharmaceutical companies have the best interest for me in mind. So I followed his advice for those years, and for me, it didn't work out, and then once he saw the changes in my body and I was able get off all the topical steroids and systemic and manage it through diet... Topical and nutritional supplements. He's a believer, when it comes to the entrepreneurial side, a little bit different, the entrepreneurial journey of especially educating marketplace is very difficult, and I... At my lowest moment, he said, You know, you should quit and go back into real estate, and I was like, You know what? No, I was on a dead in the fly type and he is my mentor, but I use that as motivation or kind of stopped honor for yourself. Keep providing this battle. And fortunately, if an amazing wife who step by me and is also a co-founder of the business, and she's an amazing job updating our branding, marketing, and then we've had amazing people join the company over the last few years that have taken it to a whole another level, including our scientific team, which is really solidified what was in my gut and what I believed, but I didn't really have proof, and now we have proof of what it does, and... That's very gratifying.

Yeah, for you.

Congratulations, and again, you're the guinea pig, you're the one that's been dealing with this as an life, we're getting back to the seed, I wanna know where most sets are harvested from, that was such an amazing story that you just happen to be sitting next to at this wedding, right.

Yeah, so you found out about Maine, but we're across the country, so there's the three main countries for seed harvesting or industry, it would be Ireland, Canada in South Korea, South Korea does a lot of edibles and really set up for that from the manufacturing where they'll harvest and they have a machinery, so you see, all those seaweed snacks have become very popular in the US, the last five years. A lot of them were being made in South Korea and Canada is really good at agricultural feed, so a lot of that sweet is used in cattle before slaughter to prevent disease, and they were kind of... That business has grown so much. They were starting to hire people in Maine to harvest and send it to Canada, and so that's what kind of started the main seaweed harvesting industry.

So we came on a little bit later than that, and then Ireland has really been at the forefront of seaweed for skin care through these bats and then topical personal care companies that started there, and how does climate change potentially impact the supply of CLE... Well, the warming in the ocean will just literally change the chemical, you know, and the microbiome of the seaweed. So it is of concern that some of these species will die off and others over time will change and we don't know what those changes will look like and what impact they'll have on us as humans, so... Wow, see, super food. You mentioned that... What does that mean?

Well, she has... Again, she means a lot of things, there are so many different types of seaweed, we use it as really detoxifying, so I can really pull heavy metals out of the air on your skin, it acts as a large model, if you will prevent heavy metals from entering your blood stream, but also pulling IDI and helps your thyroid, helps your system of just regulate itself. So from that standpoint, it's extremely beneficial, and then you add on facing as this active ingredient that's been in the nutritional supplement space for a while, and that works as an anti-inflammatory, so you can kinda look at all those things together and you can see why see is really of the leading super foods throughout the natural products community, and is there a difference between LG and seaweed and micro... And macro has... Seaweed is a type of macro algae, so LG, there's micro algae, which you'd think of almost kind of growing in a lab, and there's a really cool stuff being done with it for fuel and stuff like that, macrolide usually found out in the wild while the harvest said what you see in the ocean, what you see on the beach in San Diego where you guys are, so that's really the difference of credits, a macro algae, if someone was trying to weed for the first time, what would be the best way to introduce them to it?

Well, most people, the first time with we would probably be in me, so... So prior, a little bit in there, a little salty, but there's great products out there now that you get the benefits of seaweed with maybe not that taste you associated with growing up, so whether it's like this company, Blue evolution with their posts that are coming out or topically with the Cuban companies products or thrive culinary, LG oil, these are all really cool ways to try, see when and incorporate in your diet, which I think is gonna become a bigger part of our diet going forward, so... Well, great, congratulations and thank you so much for all your time, we have some great advice for you today, we really appreciate your knowledge, and we look forward to having you on again, but in the meantime, you can get more information on Adam, the website is seaweed bath Co dot com, we look forward to your next visit.

Thank you guys, thank you.

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