Avoid These Popular 'Health Foods' Packed With Junk | Ross Franklin DSH #752

A little research to uncover it.

And the crazy thing is some of these acai bowls, they have over 100 grams of sugar.

Jesus.

That's like three Coca-Cola.

And it's not a health food.

So there's a lot of deception going on in the industry.

And so the way we do it, we never cut corners.

Everything is done the right way.

It's handcrafted.

It's blended.

It takes longer, but it's a superior product.

I love that.

All right, guys, got Ross Franklin here, founder of Pure Green, which we got right right here.

Thanks for coming on, man.

Absolutely.

Thank you so much for having me.

Yeah, I've been slamming these things.

Awesome.

Good flavor and good packaging, man, and good ingredients.

Thank you so much.

I appreciate that.

Yeah, absolutely.

It's important.

I'm on a big health journey now, so I'm very conscious of what I'm putting in my body.

And you guys seem to have quality ingredients.

Thank you.

Yeah, it's all about nutrition.

That's what I found.

Yeah, was that the goal when starting this to have really good ingredients?

Yeah, that was it.

You know,

my background's in fitness.

And so I used to own my own gym, sold it, and then started a consulting company.

And so I was known in the fitness industry as the fixer.

So I would get the call when the gym owner was struggling and I would go in and get them profitable, launched many new gym chains, yoga studios, Pilates studios, finally juice bars.

And I came to this realization, which is when you look at optimal health, 80% of getting results is nutrition.

And so that became the foundation for starting Pure Green.

That's huge.

So you were the Hormozy before Hormozy existed.

Yep, we were doing the same things.

Nice.

Did you run into him when you were in that space?

Never ran into him.

I think timing was like a little off.

Okay, you were probably a little before him.

Yeah.

That's crazy.

Back in the day.

Yeah.

Look at the times now.

Both of you guys taking off.

Yeah.

Starting off in gyms.

That's right.

Are gyms still crushing it?

So they are.

You know, there's a big shift with you had the big box gyms, which were 40,000, 50,000 square feet.

And then you had the boom of the specialty boutique gyms, kind of like your orange theories and pure bars.

And so was a big shift.

Then you had CrossFit.

And so gyms are fitness is definitely still here to stay, but there was definitely a shift away from the big box.

And, you know, with COVID, everyone got Pelotons.

And so people are working out at home.

So it's definitely transformed.

CrossFit, you couldn't avoid a few years ago.

Everyone was talking about it.

It was actually annoying at a certain point.

It couldn't avoid injuries, too.

Oh, my gosh.

That's crazy.

Yeah, that stuff looks intense.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Peloton's really taking over, though.

Shout out to them.

Yeah, for sure.

That's some of the best marketing I've ever seen.

Yeah, COVID was like the best thing that happened to those guys.

And I think gamifying working out was brilliant.

Yeah.

Because it's so like, like, treadmills are, I can't do treadmills, dude.

But if you put me in a race with other people on a treadmill, I might do it.

That's right.

People, people love it.

They become obsessed.

Yeah.

It was a great concept.

And after gyms, you got into acaibols, right?

That's right.

Into the juice bars.

Yeah.

And you were basically saying how most of those acaibol places are actually unhealthy.

Yes.

So that's, that's, uh, that's a big thing.

It's, uh, you know, for me, it's like when I realized that optimal health really is nutrition, you know, I realized that when you look at how do you create something scalable, you know, we're talking about these gyms.

When I was doing these big box gyms, 40,000, 50,000 square feet, these gyms have massive infrastructure.

What I love about the juice bar model is it's scalable.

These are small models, right?

So 500 square feet to 1,000 square feet, small footprint, it's really scalable.

It's really duplicatable.

But when you look at like all the players in the marketplace right now, not everyone's doing it the right way.

There are some out there that are really cutting corners.

So when you look at kind of the industry as a whole, like it is, it is booming.

When you look at kind of the healthy food sector,

it's a market size is about 270 billion.

And then kind of dialing it in subcategories, take Acai, which you mentioned.

So Acai is about 6 billion and it's growing at a CAGR compounded annual growth rate of 11%.

So it's really taken off.

But here's the thing: there's a lot of deception going on that people don't even realize.

If you go into a juice bar and you watch them make an acai bowl, you're going to see one of two things.

You're going to see one, they're going to scoop it out of a bucket.

It's a sorbet.

It's a compromised product.

Or you'll see them do it on a frozen yogurt machine.

And the problem with that is this full of additives, emulsifiers, gums, guars, and high amounts of sugar.

A lot of these juice bars, they have their nutrition facts buried on their website.

So you have to to do a little research to uncover it.

And the crazy thing is some of these acai bowls, they have over 100 grams of sugar.

Jesus.

That's like three Coca-Cola.

I mean, it's not a health food.

So there's a lot of deception going on in the industry.

And so the way we do it, we never cut corners.

Everything is done the right way.

It's handcrafted.

It's blended.

It takes longer, but it's a superior product.

I love that.

Dude, I went to a Froio place the other day.

They didn't even have the nutrition facts on any of the flavors because I wanted to see how much sugar I was was eating.

It was a little cheat meal, you know, and I couldn't even find it online.

It was crazy.

I can't believe they could do that.

It's crazy.

I mean, a lot of when you reach a certain scale, they make you put the calories on the menu boards and you have to have it somewhere, but you have to dig on these sites to find where they have nutrition, where they have the ingredients.

And then, what's happening right now, though, is you have like these influencers, like the food babe.

Have you heard of the food babe?

Yeah, I've seen her.

She's calling out like these big brands.

And big brands used to be able to get away with it because they spend so many dollars on marketing and they're really educating the public on kind of their products.

And now you have just this boom of all of these influencers like the food babe who are calling out these massive brands like Subway, like Chipotle, and they're making them change their practices, which is, it's really remarkable.

There's been no time in our nation's history where it's like this.

Yeah.

You have single individuals just calling out these massive brands and making them change their practices.

I love it.

A lot of people were calling out whole food hot bar for the seed oils and now they're starting to remove them.

That's right.

Which is incredible.

The people are really causing a change, which is remarkable.

Never happened before in the big food space.

That's right.

And now Brian Johnson's calling out athletic greens.

Oh, I saw that.

Yeah.

He was, he was kind of like, he kind of was up until recently, he didn't really talk about it.

But now that he came out with his, his own products, I just ordered it, by the way.

I already been taking it.

How is it?

So I like it other than the fact that there's natural flavors in it.

I wish he would just have the pure powder.

Which one did you order?

I ordered like the whole kit because I want to try

to one of them.

So, in both powders, there's natural flavors, which I'm not a fan of.

I'd love to hear your opinion on natural flavors.

Yeah, no, I agree.

It's like there's a lot of hidden junk in there.

It could be, it could be anything.

So, I was surprised someone like him would put that in his stuff, but maybe there's a reasoning.

You know, when he

had his, he listed all the ingredients, all the supplements he was taking.

Yeah, I went through them all really carefully.

And I found that just a lot of the supplements he was taking, it wasn't the best.

There was a lot of fillers in there.

There were seed oils as fillers in a lot of those supplements.

So even the ones he was taking wasn't the best.

I think his focus is he's prioritizing the science.

You know, he has this whole team of dietitians and that are supporting his blueprint program.

And so I think his focus is just more on the clinical studies, but less away from just the quality of the ingredients.

And for me, like the quality of the ingredients is one of the most important things.

Same.

I think he was just moving so fast.

I don't know if he was third-party testing the supplements, but I don't buy any supplements unless they're third-party tested.

That's right.

Because of heavy metals, because of contaminants, who knows what else is in them?

Oh, yeah.

You'd be so surprised.

It's not regulated.

It's not regulated at all.

And when a lot of these independents have called out, especially when you look at like plant protein, a lot of these brands are contaminated with high amounts of heavy metals.

Jeez.

And so that's why when, like, with my company, Pure Green, like we make them provide like the third-party testing, we scrutinize that

to make sure it doesn't contain any heavy metals.

metals that's huge but it's like i read something where it's like nine out of ten plant-based proteins have high amounts of heavy metals in it dude i'm not surprised i just saw a pasta i used to eat bonza it's made out of chickpeas yeah it has like pfas in it yeah they just got called out that's crazy yeah and it's supposed to be healthy and i really feel just these these influencers calling out these brands like it's really uh good for the benefit of everyone because they're causing them to change and do the right thing right i think margin gets gets in the way and they they don't want a third-party test because it's expensive, right?

That's right.

I think

when you run a company, everyone's trying to just monetize.

I mean, it's a business.

And so they're using inferior ingredients because it's a lot less expensive.

And it's a tough game because these have a shelf life, right?

So these companies want to extend that so they make more money.

But the problem with that is the ingredients, right?

Exactly.

Like I'll give you like the cold-pressed juice that you're drinking.

So if you look at previously, like let's say a Tropicana, it's pasteurized.

So that juice is heated to the point where it's completely devoid of all nutrition.

Wow.

And so they have to infuse it with inferior nutrients to show the nutrition levels.

And so what we do is when you cold press it, we use these hydraulic presses that retain all the vitamins, minerals, and live enzymes from the fresh fruits and vegetables.

Then we do this process called HPP, which is water pressure.

And so we use equalized pressure, 87,000 pounds of pressure per square inch.

And what it does is it kills the harmful microorganisms, locks into nutrition, and safely gives it an extended shelf life.

So there is a right way to do it.

That's incredible.

And I'm really upset about Tropicana.

I drank that growing up.

Yeah, that's so.

Me too.

Holy crap.

I thought it was pure orange juice.

Right.

What?

So why are they heating it up?

So the pasteurization, same thing with milk.

It's they heat it up.

So like we were talking about before, just so the companies can make more money.

It lasts longer.

Yeah, if it's in its raw form, it's not going to last more than a couple of weeks.

If with juice, it's not good for more than three days.

So this only lasts three days?

So when it's not HPP'd.

So when I first started Pure Green,

we started cold pressing it and we'd had all the equipment, machines in the back.

And when we were selling it, there was a couple, two problems.

One problem is that when we sold it, we couldn't predict how much was going to sell.

So wastage was 25, 30%, which is crazy for a business.

But my bigger issue was that when we clocked the nutrition, so right when it's made, we clock nutrition.

Nutrition is amazing.

But then on day three, when we clock nutrition, it's a fraction of the level.

Oh, wow.

Because of oxidation, the nutrition degrades.

And so I couldn't ethically sell that.

I don't want to sell it on its third day.

That's crazy.

So then I discovered this HPP process, which locks in that nutrition, slows down the oxidation process.

And so the juice is good for 60 plus days

from the point it's manufactured.

60 days?

That's right.

That's incredible.

Yeah.

So it was a real game changer for for us and started, that's how we were able to start our wholesale business.

Yeah.

And so now we work with over 80 professional sports teams, 30 college teams, even SpaceX is a client.

Incredible.

So this is in Elon's office right now?

I can't confirm or deny.

I love that.

Are you in retail, like Whole Foods and stuff yet?

So we're in some of the bigger markets.

A thought process with the wholesale side of the business was to start with the most sought-after and hard-to-get accounts.

We didn't have some U.S.

military divisions drinking it.

Nice.

We developed a nutritional advisory board with four top-tier dietitians, three from professional sports teams and one for the U.S.

military.

And they back up everything that we do with peer-reviewed scientific research.

And so we're one of the only brands that do this.

And so the professional sports teams, they will not like travel without it.

Really?

Yeah.

It's that good.

Yeah.

So the dietitians, the coaching staff, they notice a huge difference in the recovery of the players, huge difference in their performance.

And so they have it with them at all the the time.

Holy crap, you might have to email Mark Huban.

That's nuts, man.

Absolutely.

That's incredible.

15% juice, filtered water, gave ginger.

Yeah, everything's all natural, right?

That's right.

So we have some juices.

Most of it is just 100% juice.

We have a few flavors that we developed just for the professional sports teams.

We added probiotics in there for gut health, over 4 billion flora probiotics.

We added a little lemon in there for electrolytes.

And so we have some that are not 100%

juice,

but they're amazing for sports performance.

Love it.

How do you feel about all this microplastic craze right now?

Are you keeping an eye on that?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

It's a big issue.

For us, when we HPP the juice, you can't do it in glass bottles.

It won't survive the HPP process.

But our juice, you know, it's in 100% recyclable PET bottles.

Because the juice is in there for such a short time, just a couple of months, and it's kept cold all the way through.

So it's constantly refrigerated.

We've tested it for microplastics and it does not have any.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

So it must be when it gets too hot then.

It's more like when you deal with like bottled water, for example.

Yeah.

You know, that

transportation process that gets heated, it's going through states where it's a very hot climate.

Right.

And so that heat is melting the plastic into the water.

That's where it really becomes a big issue.

I stopped drinking bottled water, dude.

Yeah.

I only drink glass.

I'm same.

I do Mountain Valley glass bottles.

Good old Mountain Valley.

You got the five-gallon outhole?

I did.

Yeah, same here.

I love it.

That's good.

It's good out here.

so i live in uh in boca raton florida oh nice yeah no state tax there either so no

i love it uh how many locations you guys hopping on so right now we have 50 locations open 50 in construction 20 in site selection wow so we'll have 100 locations open by q2 of 2025.

holy crap so you're growing quick we're growing very quickly and is that because of franchising it's all because of franchising nice and so our franchisees they're all so passionate for health and wellness and they're all so great at embracing their local communities.

So they're really our driving force behind our growth.

Yeah.

And you caught some great timing because there's a huge health craze right now.

That's right.

It's, it is really, it is really booming right now.

And, you know, in the in the space right now, I don't know if you heard, but Tropical Smoothie Cafe was just bought out by Blackstone for $2 billion.

Holy crap.

And so they're watching all the trends as well.

You know, in the venture world, a lot of people follow Blackstone.

So they're getting into the space for a reason.

Yeah.

And those smoothie places, I'm not trying to call anyone out, but like I would go to them and feel like shit after drinking them.

That's right.

Because I think they add sugar or something to their smoothies.

Yeah.

There's a lot of low-cost competitors out there and they don't place the same premium on ingredients that we do.

So like, for example, we don't just use whey protein.

Our whey protein is sourced from pasture-raised grass-fed cows.

Wow.

That's the level of curation that's reflective for all our ingredients.

I love that.

Yeah, because if you're using regular whey protein, those cows are injected with who knows what.

Who knows what?

Yep.

Yeah, I'm the same way with chickens.

Like, I only eat pasteurized eggs.

That's awesome.

With beef, only grass-fed, even grass-finished if I can.

I'm the same.

I mean, we get our produce from a local farm.

Nice.

That's how it should be.

Yeah.

Right.

You said you visited Ty Lopez's farm recently?

That's right.

Where was that at?

So it's in, he's got a farm out in Virginia.

So he took me all around there.

And

he had some animals on there.

And so, yeah, good experience.

That's a life goal of mine to have a little farm, a little animal sanctuary.

That's awesome.

Yeah.

When you know know exactly where your food comes from and by growing it yourself, I mean, that's the next level.

Can't beat that.

That's unbelievable.

Yeah.

I mean, I look at what I ate growing up and it's disgusting looking back at it.

Same thing for me.

It's like, wow.

I ate bacon and like eggs that weren't pasteurized and chicken that wasn't organic.

Same thing for me, even worse, like all the processed foods.

I grew up on fruity pebbles,

cocoa puffs, all that stuff.

Right?

What a three center.

Now there's heavy metals in those.

You saw that new study?

Yep.

Crazy.

It's insane.

Yeah.

And that was normal.

You know, I was taught growing up, breakfast, most important meal of the day, eat cereal with dairy milk.

Now I only drink raw dairy milk if I can.

That's crazy.

Yeah.

But that's banned.

In a lot of states, it is.

Yeah.

Crazy, right?

Yeah.

And even like, in the way they get around it in places like Sprouts, they have like

raw kefir,

but they market it for pets, not for human consumption.

So that's kind of a workaround, but it's really kind of like

for you to know.

Yeah.

It's for you.

It's good to know, though, because because i try to find it at whole foods and sprouts because i shop there and i can never find it yeah most states like they won't let you do it other than cali though when when i go to airwan they have raw milk there yep so that's the one good thing about cali that yes it is can't name many other good things but

maybe the weather yes um dude what's next for this uh i know you're scaling any other plans um so for us like we believe that when you look at the united states that for pure green, we believe the U.S.

can support 1,000 units.

So we're just on a path to build healthier communities around the globe.

Wow, a thousand units.

That's like 40 in every state.

That's incredible, man.

Yep.

Going international after that?

And so eventually, that's the goal.

We'd love to be a global company.

Is it just you running this?

You got partners?

So just me on the franchise side of it.

And I have a partner on the wholesale side of it.

Wow.

You're running the whole franchising by yourself, dude?

Yep.

That's impressive.

We have a great team.

I really believe that

any successful company, like it's a team sport.

And so our goal is just to hire A-plus players for every single position.

I love it.

And so we have a lean team right now, but it's growing fast.

Any other health things, biohacking things you're into?

I mean, I've been, you know, back in the day, you know, I have to be careful now because we have this nutritional, nutritional advisory board and they're not fond of the word biohacking.

Okay.

But,

you know, in the past,

I know on a personal level a lot of the OG biohackers and we've done some business together.

And I've done a lot of, you know, experimenting with it myself.

And

it's fun.

It works, right?

For sure.

I feel amazing.

Infrared.

I'm doing PMF mats right now.

I'm doing oxygen chambers.

What do you find the most successful out of all the modalities?

What's the most successful one?

I've done some of the stuff.

I'd say

sauna.

Really?

Yeah, that to me is just, I feel amazing.

What about you?

For me, I would say I was really big into testing my blood.

So at one point, I would get my blood tested every six months.

Holy crap.

To the point where my doctor, he was like, Ross, you have the cleanest blood I've ever seen.

He's like, you do not need to do this.

But I want to make sure, not quite the level that Brian Johnson is doing it, but I want to try to get in the optimal zone for every single nutrient, every single vitamin, every single mineral.

But it becomes obsessive.

I feel that I do it once a year, and it's definitely important.

I used to like be scared of it.

I didn't do one for maybe seven years, but it's so important because I had some massive deficiencies when I got mine from Gary Brecho last year.

And now I do it every year since.

Have you noticed a difference in your performance just through correcting those deficiencies?

Oh, so massive, night and day.

I used to wake up groggy and I thought that was normal.

Now I wake up pumped.

I jump out of bed now.

That's awesome.

And what do you attribute that to?

Like which nutritional deficiencies did you correct?

I fixed magnesium, vitamin D, vitamin C, testosterone was a bit low.

So I'd say those four were the big ones.

And then I had some other minuscule ones.

Though it's so interesting, those are like the basics.

Yeah, so it's so interesting by just correcting the basics, you notice such a substantial boost in your performance.

Yeah, but a lot of people are deficient in those, especially vitamin D.

That's what I've heard.

I've heard some percentages, like 70% of people are deficient in vitamin D.

That's insane.

I just saw a stat 91% of people have digestive issues or something, which is insane.

Wow.

Because of all the processed food, 70% of the diet's not processed in America.

It's so crazy.

It's disturbing.

And the obesity epidemic in this country is nuts.

It's nuts.

You ever done a juice fast or water fast?

Oh, yeah.

We sell juice cleanses.

Oh, yeah.

So, yeah, big advocate of that.

How many days, what's the most you've done?

Most, I've done a five-day class.

Okay.

That's pretty insane.

Yeah.

For us, we usually recommend one to three days.

I've done one.

Okay.

No, two, maybe.

Two days is my max.

Two days is the max.

I want to hit three because that's when I heard you start killing off bad stuff.

Have you done water or juice?

Just water.

Okay.

You should try a juice cleanse because you're getting more calories with it just from the juice.

but what you're also doing is you're flooding your body with vitamins minerals and live enzymes and so kind of the difference there you know we're talking about just correcting deficiencies when you have a cold pressed juice you know it's so rich in so many nutrients a lot of times it just corrects nutritional deficiencies and that's where that burst of energy comes from so when you do a juice cleanse it's a little different than a water cleanse so maybe something to check out yeah i'm sure if it was juice i could probably do three days because water was tough and i had a basketball game and i felt terrible during it oh yeah

you got to be careful with sports when you're cleansing do you see that video of gary breca talking about juices orange juice i don't know if i saw that particular one i've seen a lot of his videos what he said drinking orange juice was worse for you than eating an orange

you know i've i heard something like that where he's he's hating on also like when you blend up the fruits of the skin when you blend it yeah yeah i've i did i did hear that what was your opinion on that a lot of the the guys who are really respected in the scientific community are kind of debunking that okay it's what's interesting is he really doesn't provide any science for saying that.

He just kind of like spit it out and didn't back it up with anything.

It doesn't make any sense.

Yeah, that to me scared me, honestly.

But then I saw people debunking it.

I actually gave up smoothies because of that video, but then I think Lane debunked it and a couple other guys.

Yeah.

So I'm going to start drinking them again.

Yeah, that makes zero sense.

Yeah.

Well, when you see someone like that say it, you know, for the common person, that holds a lot of weight.

Yeah, for sure.

I mean, I have a lot of respect for what he's doing i mean he's really and what he did with dana white is remarkable dana white so many other people too stephen a smith yeah um steve harvey changed changed people's lives so that i have a lot of respect for for what he's doing and how he's getting the word out but there are certain things that he says that a lot of people are pushing back on yeah yeah the health space is a tricky one to make bold claims in because there's always a study for and against everything that's right and you're gonna if you say the wrong thing like everyone's gonna call you yeah yeah i'm happy i'm not in your space man is that why you're kind of quiet on your Instagram?

Yeah.

I know this is,

I have to be very careful.

Just because also when you're in the franchise world, it's like I can't say anything controversial because we have people that put their life savings into Pure Green.

Wow.

And so if I go on a public platform and I say the wrong thing, it could affect, it could affect the brands and it could hurt our franchise partners.

That makes sense.

And they're the lifeblood of our company.

Is it public how much you charge for a franchise?

It is.

So we have in the franchise world, what's called an FDD franchise disclosure document.

So we're only able to say certain things, but for us, we can give a range.

We can give ranges and averages.

Depends on the state and the cost of the building and everything.

So that makes sense.

Exactly.

A lot of variable factors.

Okay.

What's like the range, though, if someone wants to start one watching this?

Yeah.

So all-in capital to open a Peer Green franchise can range from $177,000 all the way to $443,000.

Okay.

Given how big the store is, where it is, a lot of times the landlord is contributing to part of the build.

So a lot of different factors there.

Got it.

That makes sense, man.

Where could people find out more about this and find out more about you?

Yeah, so the website for PureGreen, PureGreenFranchise.com.

And I'm most active on Instagram, but as you mentioned, not too active.

I need to do a better job of that.

But on Instagram, I'm Ross F.

Franklin.

Awesome.

We'll link below.

Thanks for coming on, man.

Thank you so much for having me.

Yeah, thanks for watching, guys.

Check out Pure Green if there's one near you.

Definitely try them.

See you guys tomorrow.