48: How Coffee Can Increase Your Lifespan | Andrew Salisbury

After Andrew Salisbury’s wife Amber experienced debilitating health issues, the founder and CEO of Purity Coffee set out on a journey to help his wife heal. His journey resulted in the creation of the world’s healthiest coffee – and Amber getting her health back! In this episode, Andrew and I discuss the big disconnect between what science knows about the health benefits of coffee and the perception of the general public, the importance of organic ingredients, especially when it comes to choosing coffee, and how to choose the right coffee roast.

Suggested Resources:

• Purity Coffee (use the code wellnstrong for 20% off your first-time purchase)
• Coffee & Liver Health
• Coffee for Cardioprotection and Longevity
• Antioxidant & Antiradical Activity in Coffee
• Cool Farms Project

This episode is proudly sponsored by Spry Gum, my go-to gum for fresh breath and supporting a healthy smile. Spry is sugar-free and sweetened with xylitol, which makes it a simple, tooth-friendly addition to my daily oral-care routine.

This episode is proudly sponsored by: Sizzlefish

Let’s talk about fueling your body with the best nature has to offer. If you’re looking for premium, sustainable seafood delivered straight to your door, you need to check out Sizzlefish! Head to sizzlefish.com and use my code “wellnstrong” at checkout for an exclusive discount on your first order. Trust me, you’re going to taste the difference with Sizzlefish!

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Transcript

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*Unedited Transcript*
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Jacqueline: [00:00:00] Well, Andrew, first of all, it's so great to finally connect with you, but before we start, I just wanted to let you know that my mom and myself are among Purity's top fans and supporters, so I'm truly, I'm truly grateful for your time today. I've been looking forward to our conversation for quite some time now, so really

Andrew Salisbury: Oh, this would be fun. Yeah. Thank you. That's great.

Jacqueline: Absolutely. And I heard Purity, do you have an office in Greenville, South Carolina, by any chance?



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Andrew Salisbury: We do. Yeah. Um, it's, uh, it's a small office, but like five or six people go in there, but yeah, we, uh, we have an office in, uh, in South Carolina, Grindle. I'm going there next week. In fact.

Jacqueline: Really? So, Andrew, I happen to reside in Greenville, South Carolina. I moved here about, I moved here about two years ago from Boston. So, when I, when Melissa shared that with me right away, I was like, hmm, I wonder how far it is. I'm right in the downtown.

Andrew Salisbury: Yeah, I'm just, uh, I'll be there next week. So we'll have to meet up for a coffee or something. I'm

Jacqueline: absolutely. If I'm [00:01:00] not going home, I would love that. Well, Andrew, so from the little I know about you, my understanding is that you were not always the coffee expert that you are now. So how did you find yourself in this space? What's the story? Because we all have one, right?

Andrew Salisbury: So my background couldn't be sort of further from, from coffee and health. It was, uh, I had a software company in Latin America, started in Mexico and then expanded to five countries in Latin America. So. Really big sales that would take a year and a half to close compared to sort of like positioning on a, on a bag of coffee.

So it couldn't have been much more different, uh, in terms of sort of like skillset and experience.

Jacqueline: That resonates with me. I am I graduated from a business college in Massachusetts, concentrated in finance and economics, and now here I am in the health space. So it's, it's funny, and and I know your, your wife struggled with some health issues too, right? And that was also in part the reason why you started Purity?

Andrew Salisbury: That's exactly it. Sorry. Um, that's exactly it. So my wife was having some health issues [00:02:00] in terms of sort of low energy. So when I sold the previous company, we took a year off. I thought great timing. We traveled a lot. My wife was getting a lot of energy problems, I think. And so like a lot of us, she was sort of Yeah.

Self, uh, sort of medicating and drinking a lot of caffeine. And I was a tea drinker and I really just wasn't focused on coffee. And I thought that she wasn't doing herself any favors, that she was probably giving herself caffeine when her body wanted her to rest. So we sort of argued back and forth about the health benefits of coffee.

And she sort of forced me to get educated about it. Like if I was going to give her advice about giving up her coffee, she wanted to make sure that she, uh, You know that that I was educated. So that's sort of how I got down this path.

Jacqueline: Wow. And here you are now. And when did that, when did that first start? Was that, what, six years ago? Seven years ago?

Andrew Salisbury: So, yeah, that was, um, eight years, a little bit longer than eight years because it started in 20, beginning of 2015. Um, and when I met two [00:03:00] professors at the Institute of Coffee Studies in Vanderbilt, And then they would tell him you all the health benefits of coffee, but they, they really couldn't point me in any direction with any company who was making all those decisions based on health.

So we spent a couple of years researching development, understanding what, what was the difference that made the difference? What was the thing that we should actually focus on? And I worked with Adriana for our doctor, Adriana for our, who's the professor at the university of Brazil in Rio. She's probably one of the world health.

Experts on coffee and health are one of the world's experts.

Jacqueline: Wow. That's incredible. So my mom, Andrew, has always purchased organic coffee prior to the start of purity, which again has changed our lives. But I mean, not all coffee is created equal, right? And I mean, many people understand the benefits of consuming organic when it comes to food. In fact, my mom was one of the pioneers who started shopping at Whole Foods back in the early 2000s, but I found that many folks don't necessarily carry over that approach when it comes to coffee.

Andrew Salisbury: Yeah.

Jacqueline: [00:04:00] With that, could you touch on why choosing organic is so important, especially when it comes to coffee?

Andrew Salisbury: Yeah. And I think organic is one of the sort of starting points. Uh, the reason for that is that, um, if you look at a coffee cherry, it looks a little bit like a grape. Um, and so when it's being sprayed with fertilizers and pesticides and that sort of thing, and it's a very very heavily treated crop. It's very porous.

I mean, it's like, you know, in, in the sort of dirty dozen, they talk about strawberries and grapes and that sort of thing is the thing that you should avoid it. Um, you know, eating anything apart from organic, same thing with coffee. I mean, you've got to see that effectively is being sort of fed.

Pesticides and fertilizers and that sort of thing and most people don't realize it because it's not included in that list of what people think is sort of consumable foods, you know, they don't sort of treat it in the same way, but but the point, I think the sort of interesting is it has to be organic.

But one of the things that pesticides and herbicides do is they make fruits [00:05:00] and vegetables look nice, even though they may not have the same sort of nutrient content. And one of the things that affects the health benefits of coffee is making sure you don't have any primary defects like health benefits, like, you know, if it's insect damage, if it's, uh, if it's got mold, mycotoxins, that sort of thing that will affect the health benefits of the coffee.

So it has to be organic and it also has to be specially grade.

Jacqueline: Yeah. And speaking of mycotoxins, so, again, something not many people think about, but mold can grow in coffee, right? And create something called mycotoxins, which are really not great. For our health. So can you maybe give an overview to listeners of what that process looks like? Like how does mold actually form and then I don't know maybe some tips to help them like Look out for what to look out for when buying coffee so as to hopefully avoid mold exposure.

Andrew Salisbury: Yeah. And as you said, it's sort of, it starts off as mold, but then it morphs into mycotoxins, which is basically, um, they [00:06:00] eat the mold. So it's the sort of the, you know, the, the, the mycotoxins eat the mold. And the problem is mold can develop in a lot of stages in the coffee because, coffee's grown in the equator.

It's very humid. Um, it's often left with the fruit on the way, um, at the side of the road for it to be picked up and that sort of thing in the picking process. Um, industrial farming. One of the problems is industrial farming is sort of like has a, a U shaped tractor that goes between the rows of coffee trees because they're planted that way and they shake all the trees.

And they're shaking the overripe, the underripe, um, cherries at the same time and the moldy cherries. And then they're trying to sort them out later. And as you know, if you just put a moldy strawberry in a vat of fresh strawberries, you come out the next day and it's, it's, it's all moldy. And so you can't ever let mold develop in the first place in any step of the process.

If you really want to make sure you're a hundred percent sure of avoiding mycotoxins.

But I would say, you know, the one thing you said about [00:07:00] consumers and advice and that sort of thing, um, my pet peeve is this, you know, conversation about mold and mycosoxins because it's so easy to fix. I mean, really, as consumers, we should be asking every coffee company in the world to have a test for mycotoxins to make sure that it's mycotoxin and mold free.

Um, I'll just give you an idea, a container of coffee. a full container of coffee. That test is probably the cheapest test that we run. That's about 150 for the whole container of coffee. So there's no reason why it's just not certified as mycotoxin and mold free for all of the coffee that we drink. So I just feel like it's just a low bar as consumers.

We have to say that's the starting point of coffee and health organic, and then tested for, for mold and mycotoxins.

Jacqueline: Yeah, can a coffee still be organic but also have mold is that

Andrew Salisbury: Oh, yes, absolutely. And see, that's a bit of the problem. I mean, a bit of the problem is that it doesn't have to use, um, pesticides and herbicides and that sort of thing on the [00:08:00] coffee. It can still be organic, but, but mold can develop completely independently of that, um, you know, in the processing of coffee.

Jacqueline: that's crazy. And I've heard too, so Purity's, roasting process is very unique. Can you explain I guess Like how your process differs from essentially other coffee makers on the market.

Andrew Salisbury: Yeah, I think the most important thing is that our first lens when we started looking at coffee was we wanted to make every decision based on health. So there's no compromises. We didn't, we didn't even consider taste as a factor when we first looked at all the decisions we were making and we didn't consider cost as a factor.

We wanted to see what would happen if we made every decision based on health and that's sort of, uh, that's sort of what we did. And, um, when it came to the roasting of the coffee, you could roast away the antioxidants. So the health benefits don't come from the, um, from the, the avoiding the bad stuff in coffee.

It doesn't come, the health benefits don't come from organic and mold free. That's a low bar. We should expect that with [00:09:00] every coffee. The health benefits come from the antioxidants, the chlorogenic acids, lene, um, some of the lipids on the coffee like ol and Carole. So the really interesting thing is when you design a roast curve or when you think about turning a green coffee brown and making it taste good, you have one set of criteria.

But if you're trying to maximize the antioxidants in the coffee, you roast in such a way with heat and time and temperature and the sort of roaster. That you don't create acrylamide in the early stage of roasting, or it's a very low level of acrylamide and you don't want to over roast the coffee. So you roast away the antioxidants and create a thing called PAH, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which you get from any burnt food.

So we try to find that sweet spot and we customize a roast for, for every harvest.

Jacqueline: that's so interesting and speaking of acrylamide so my mom had actually she's like ask Andrew this question because she's always told me that She read that dark roast coffee is better than light roast when it comes to acrylamide [00:10:00] But based on Purity's Roasting process. Would you say that? I mean, both are essentially low in acrylamide or is dark still slightly better than light from that standpoint?

Andrew Salisbury: So dark is better. So this is the sort of like the compromise you make. So dark is better in terms of acrylamide. So there's less acrylamide because acrylamide develops in the early stage of roasting, but the darker you roast the coffee, the more it's going to create PAHs and you're going to roast away the antioxidants.

So for health benefits, you want the antioxidants. So if you raced it dark, you avoid the acrylamide. So you really want to find that sweet spot in the middle, which is that medium roast, they call it sort of 55 Ag, Agtron, where you're keeping most of the antioxidants in the coffee. Um, you're, you're having very low acrylamide and no pHs.

Jacqueline: Interesting. Is that what you prefer? Health benefits aside, are you a light or dark person?

Andrew Salisbury: I like a lighter roast. So like the protect coffee, I drink a lot and, uh,

Jacqueline: Had that this

morning. 

Andrew Salisbury: yeah. Okay, [00:11:00] good.

Jacqueline: One of my favorites.

Andrew Salisbury: Yeah, it's great.

Jacqueline: What about acidity, Andrew? So I've also read that light roast coffee beans are more acidic and dark roast 

beans are less acidic. There's so much nuance, right?

So it's like, depending on what you're looking for, then, you know, you're going to choose a different roast. What about when it comes to acidity?

Andrew Salisbury: Acidity is a really funny question. So, um, this is, um, I feel it's a bit of a misnomer in the sense that our coffee is no more acidic than, uh, watermelon. And it's not, it's not watermelon that causes the problem. It's the fact that, um, in the case of coffee, it's typically Pesticide residue, um, coffee that is stale.

So the lip is like the capital and carry all of the coffee and turn rancid. Um, it can be just sort of like, um, a, a sensitivity to some of the imperfections that come in coffee and then people get sort of acid reflux and they say, Oh, it must be the acidity in coffee. Everybody is marketing it to me that I need a low acid coffee.

No, you need [00:12:00] a really good quality coffee that is, uh, you know, that is roasted in a way that's not going to cause you upset. And it's not, it's not about the acidity or the pH balance in the coffee.

Jacqueline: Interesting. Alright, good to know. And I've heard you also say that you want to make sure that you purchase your coffee when it's roasted only a few days before actually consuming it. What's the major benefit to that?

Andrew Salisbury: I think the, um, so there's a thing called the rule of 15, which is, which is, you know, I mean, you can argue whether it's accurate or completely accurate or not, but it's the idea that, um, that roasted coffee, um, is going to last about 15 days from when you open the bag. So you want to get the sort of the, the earliest you possibly can, because what you're going to start to see is the problem with coffee is it doesn't visibly stale.

You don't look at coffee and you go, oh, well that's three months old. It must be stale. You should, but you should treat coffee a little bit like, uh, an avocado or an apple, which is when you cut into it, it starts to oxidize. You start [00:13:00] to see it oxidize. And that's gonna sort of create some of the, uh, some of the health issues.

So treat in sort of the same way, which is like 15 days. Um, you know, since roasting is, is ideal.

Jacqueline: Interesting. So something I used to do and I've stopped doing this because if you think about flaxseed, right, they say to get the optimal nutrition value from flaxseed, wait until right before you eat it to grind it. And I also realized that that applies to coffee. So in the past, Andrew, I would just get coffee beans and grind them at like, you know, days ahead of time thinking I'll have it for the week.

It just makes the process easier. But not recognizing that that's not necessarily the greatest decision from that health standpoint. 

Andrew Salisbury: Yeah, it's again the sort of rule of 15 like green coffee last 15 months, roasted coffee 15, 15 days. But if you grind the coffee, it's fresh for about 15 minutes. So the surface area on the coffee is increasing dramatically. And so the oxidation of the coffee is going to start to increase. And so there is more risk that [00:14:00] you're creating sort of the, you know, the, the, the oxidative stress that you're trying to avoid in the first place with antioxidants.

Jacqueline: Interesting. So my mom's been right all these years and she would always buy whole bean coffee for other reasons, but the fact that obviously they're better from a nutritional antioxidant standpoint. So then what about people who just buy coffee? That's interesting. pre ground in these bags. I mean, you don't necessarily know how long they've been on the shelf.

So could you probably say that, I mean, there's really not much antioxidant to like, to pre ground coffee?

Andrew Salisbury: it's funny. We're actually have this conversation going on right now and we're doing some lab testings to see the how solid the antioxidants are the CGA is over time. And so we're trying to do some of that testing. Initially, we were told that it starts to degrade. So the antioxidants started to degrade.

Now we've been told from the University of Brazil that the latest studies are coming out is that the they're relatively stable. The antioxidants are relatively stable. What's the The [00:15:00] problem is the lipids around the coffee, the oils that you can have health benefits from, particularly in the liver. Um, the Capistol and the cow oil seem to help a lot in terms of liver,

Jacqueline: Interesting. Wow. That's, that must be so fascinating being on the cutting edge of all these, these studies.

Andrew Salisbury: Oh, it's, it's so interesting. It's, it's so interesting that, that here's something that people do every single day. 164 million Americans wake up and drink a cup of coffee and there's no really healthy version and nobody seems to be as yet. Uh, apart from us looking at it with this sort of lens. And I just think it's such an interesting first rung of the ladder.

There's so many things that we can do when it comes to coffee and health.

Jacqueline: It's so true. I mean, and quite honestly, once you're introduced to like a quality, like purity, you don't want to go back because you actually feel Like, you feel differently, right? And even the other week, I, I met a friend for coffee, and it's funny, but not to be one of those people, but I asked, I was like, just curious, you know, do you know, like, where this is [00:16:00] sourced from?

And obviously they're not, you know, they have to ask the manager or whatnot, but when you have non organic coffee, you do feel different. Um, you, you feel differently and it's just, but I love with purity, those statutes. So that's my, my go around. Andrews, I'll bring the, the coffee statutes to a coffee shop.

I'll just ask them for hot water and then dunk it as if it's tea. And it is 10 out of 10. So that was ingenious on your part.

Andrew Salisbury: Thank you. It's, it's funny, actually. 

Yeah, you know, it's great. It's great. Now, I think one of the things I was going to say is that, you know, we didn't know that people would feel differently as a result of drinking purity. We thought initially, maybe this was a little bit like fish oil will make everything every decision based on health, but people won't necessarily know.

The one fish oil is better quality than another fish oil, but what we started to see and now I think in six years, we've got 38, 000 testimonials, people feel difference. And so that was like, that was a surprise. We didn't expect that. We didn't even anticipate it, but that's what actually we're starting to see is we're not [00:17:00] starting to see, we've seen since the beginning that people feel really good on.

on the

Jacqueline: Right. And aside from an observational standpoint. I've also heard you mention that there's been over 19, 000 studies on coffee and health. And I can attest to that because the other day I just typed in, you know, coffee and health benefits on PubMed and so many things came up and this could be an episode dedicated to itself.

But could you touch on maybe a few of the most interesting findings that you've come across when it comes to coffee for, for overall health or even specifically on, on certain organs? Thank you.

Andrew Salisbury: Yeah, I'd say the first one for me is liver health. So Dr. Sanjeev Chopra, who's on our advisory board. I reached out to him about six years ago, and as a liver surgeon, he's just been a big proponent of people drinking coffee for liver health. He says it's the number one thing you can do to protect your liver if you drink alcohol.

You know, so in, in, it's, it's, it's very impactful. But what's most impactful about it is that the studies show that for every cup of coffee you drink from the [00:18:00] baseline. So for example, let's say you drink one cup of coffee, um, you have a 20% lower chance of ever developing fatty liver, liver cirrhosis, or end stage liver disease.

But you add another cup of coffee, you have a 40 percent lower chance, three cups of coffee, 60 percent lower chance. So, I mean, what's shocking to me is, you know, just the number, you know, you think of the number of people who consume alcohol and then they don't understand the impact that coffee should be having, and instead they reach for a soda, that's not going to have the same health benefits.

Cause obviously it doesn't come from the caffeine. It comes from the, uh, the chlorogenic acids. So I'd say liver is something I'm really interested in, and also the prevention of type two diabetes. There's some very large studies that have been done. I think the nurses study is one, um, where the nurses, I think it's 1.

2 million people tracked over 25 years, show that if you drink between three to five cups of coffee a day, you have a 45 percent lower chance of ever developing type two diabetes.

Jacqueline: Wow.[00:19:00] 

Andrew Salisbury: And a third of our healthcare dollars, you know, 250 million plus, um, is, uh, is, uh, is spent on, uh, 250 billion, uh, plus is spent on prevention of, uh, type 2 diabetes and treatment of diabetes.

So, I mean, if people just understood that they, they should drop the soda and start drinking coffee and good quality coffee instead, it could be something that would have a real impact on healthcare costs. 

Jacqueline: That's incredibly fascinating. Um, and even too, I mean, I've heard a lot of research on the benefits of coffee consumption even for just like longevity.

I mean, there's a lot right now. Longevity research is a really hot area. Yeah.

Andrew Salisbury: Yeah. It's, it's, it's a 16%, um, that, that they track these people over a 10 year period. And if you were a coffee drinker, um, there was a 16 percent increase in probability you would live through that period of time. So, I mean, it's not like you, you know, obviously everyone's going to have die eventually, but it's like, but if you're a coffee drinker, You're going to survive longer, which is, I think, incredible.[00:20:00] 

Jacqueline: Yeah. Survive longer and feel better. That's the 

Andrew Salisbury: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Jacqueline: how many cups do you drink a day?

Andrew Salisbury: Um, I tried to work that out the other day. Probably more like six.

Jacqueline: Yeah.

You must be a fast metabolizer of caffeine then.

Andrew Salisbury: That is the trick. It's like, I'm a very fast metabolizer of caffeine. I can have a double espresso just before I go to sleep, and I sleep like a baby. Um, a lot of people, you know, they have a coffee at 12 o'clock, and, you know, they're up all night sort of thing.

So,

Jacqueline: That's incredible. Part of me too wonders like how much is that like, like what you're born with, like how your body actually works versus how much of it is a cultural thing. Because even like I studied abroad in Florence and I'll never forget my, my grandma's brother would always drink espresso at 10 o'clock at night.

And here I am, if I just had a spoon of that, I would be up until four or five o'clock in the morning. So I always wondered that. I was like, is it just a way of life? Maybe his body's used to it, or is he just a fast [00:21:00] metabolizer of caffeine? But I can't do more than two cups before, like, Yeah, two cups is my limit and then if I have any type of caffeine after 11 in the morning It will disrupt my sleep and I've been actually tracking that because I recently got an oura ring which has been fun to experiment

with But uh, oh see there you go.

Andrew Salisbury: I have the aura and the whoop. 

Jacqueline: Really? What's I've never I haven't heard of the whoop. What is that?

Andrew Salisbury: Same sort of thing, same sort of tracking, um, device, um, it measures a few different things, but I wanted to see if there was any sort of source of truth between the aura and the whoop. Like, in other words, I would, I would have a bad night's sleep and see what, what the impact was. So I'm, I'm very much into measurements, 

Jacqueline: What have your findings been so far?

Andrew Salisbury: Um, I don't have much deep sleep.

I don't sleep very well. I think that's probably my findings. But, but, but, um, if, if I exercise, I think that's the one thing that seems to have the biggest impact on my, uh, you know, sort of [00:22:00] my, my rhythm, my, my ability to sleep well. So, I mean, just avoiding if I miss an exercise, um, session that I think that has a big impact,

Jacqueline: Interesting. Well, it could also be because your mind is just constantly working on this new cool farms initiative, which I recently heard about and I am beyond excited about. I was telling Melissa the other day, I saw this incredible video you put together. I'm going to link it in the show notes, but could you share a bit more on what that is and everything about it?

I mean, you spoke so much about how like, Industrial farms harm the environment and how this new initiative is going to benefit coffee farmers and it's just, it's incredible. So I'd love for you to just share a bit more about that project.

Andrew Salisbury: yeah. And I'm really excited about it as well. I mean, it's a bit of a journey from, so when we started, we wanted to make every decision based on health. We knew it was the antioxidants that made a difference. So we lab tested coffee really from around the world for the highest in antioxidants. And part of this journey is we started to recognize maybe about three years ago [00:23:00] that the coffee that we were typically buying that was the highest in antioxidants happened to be grown in biodynamic regenerative farms, regenerative organic farms.

So, We lab tested our coffee. This isn't sort of guesswork. I mean, we've got six years, seven years worth of data about which coffee is the highest level of antioxidants and nutrients that we care about for health. And then we've started to recognize that the coffee that's really good for health is grown in soils that are just vibrant, rich soils, and it's non industrial farming.

So industrial farming, Causes imperfection with coffee, but it also causes problems with the soil and the soil feeds the plant. And so what we started to do, and we started off about two and a half years ago, we invested in our first farm in Columbia called Monte Benito. Um, we wanted to do that because we wanted to make every decision based on health on a farm level, on a cultivar level, on a soil level.

And we knew that the farmers weren't necessarily motivated to do this because nobody was paying a [00:24:00] premium for coffee for health. So we made that investment. We started doing lots of experimentation in terms of cultivar, but also things like biochar, um, uh, bio sequesters, like basically the way to sequester, um, uh, methane, you know, from the, from the fruit.

How do we farm in a way that's environmentally friendly and also farm in a way that maximizes the antioxidants in the coffee? And so the core farm initiative is basically a, Uh, an alliance that we've put together with farmers. So what we do is we, we find a farm that reaches our criteria, which has the very high sort of standards that we're looking for.

And then we commit to buying all of their crop for the next two to three years. So that gives the farmer certainty and allows us through micro lending to invest in those farms to get them up to a higher level. So we're trying to get these six farms that we work with right now, all to even a higher level than they already are at.

Yeah. Um, by lending the money to make this sort of like investments that they need to make on the farm.

Jacqueline: That's incredible. [00:25:00] I'm, I'm in awe of you. I mean, just the, the diligence that it must have taken to learn about the process for all of that when it comes to testing, like, how did you even go about doing that?

Andrew Salisbury: Just, I actually think it's sort of one of the advantages that we had is that, um, I came at this with a clean sheet of paper. I had no vested interest. I didn't come from the coffee industry. So it was really just curiosity. It was just really sort of trying to learn as much as I could. And I had some amazing people who were helping me starting with Adriana Farrar, who sort of educated me for 18 months on every part of the production process and coffee.

And what those things, how those things relate to coffee and health. So really good guides.

Jacqueline: Yeah, it's incredible. also too, so I understand that, you know, you just essentially said you're not driven by region when it comes to selecting coffee, but rather like the soil quality.

Have you found that Colombian soil tends to be the most rich in terms of, I don't know, other areas that you've explored?[00:26:00] 

Andrew Salisbury: I like Columbia coffee. We we've, we've, uh, three of our six farms are from Columbia. Um, I, I, I like it because of the taste profile, but I also like it in terms of it's where we've consistently found the highest chlorogenic acids and the thing, the compounds that we care about. So, I mean, I don't know how much of that is just coincidence, but I think it's, uh, you know, I think it's It's a very good region for us to look at and so is Honduras and Nicaragua and, you know, there's a number of volcanic soil seems to make a big difference as well.

Jacqueline: Interesting. My, um, my freshman year roommate in college, so 28 percent of my undergraduate population was international, and my freshman year roommate was from Honduras, and her father actually owned a coffee plantation, so I was privy to kind of some of the inner workings of that. Nowhere near as in depth of what purity does, but it was, it was interesting to learn about.

going back to, to coffee taste, so I feel like many people, at least most of my friends [00:27:00] from what I've observed, are used to this like, burnt taste when it comes to drinking coffee. What should a good cup of coffee actually taste like?

Andrew Salisbury: I mean You know, for me, it's, it's the burnt taste is a little bit of a disguise. So, you know, the, the big sort of coffee chains around the world, they have a problem, which is that the coffee, they want the coffee in Singapore to taste like the coffee in Seattle. And so it's an organic product. And so how do they do that?

The very best way to do that is to dark roast it, it roasts away most of the impurities, meaning like you don't notice the impurities, obviously they're still there. And you have this sort of accurate, like. You know, the, the face scrunch sort of, you know, first sip of coffee, um, look, uh, and that's really just because they want to create consistency with the coffee.

Uh, it's an organic product. You should be able to taste all the subtle differences in the different fruits and the, you know, in that coffee, there's just so much variety, but it, it has to be a good quality coffee for, [00:28:00] for it to stand up to it. Uh, you having to taste the quality of that coffee or, you know, the, the, the detail of the coffee

Jacqueline: Yeah. The taste, the taste profile, um, profiles and purities are very distinct. Like you can clearly taste what it is, which I absolutely love. Um, I'm, I'm wondering, is there such a thing as a coffee tester, like similar to a wine testing 

with hints of certain notes? Like are there coffee testers? Is that a thing?

Andrew Salisbury: Absolutely. Ildi Revy, who's our head of coffee and has been with us since the beginning. She's actually an instructor for Q graders and Q graders are almost like the sommeliers of coffee. And so she's one of the instructors that, uh, that calibrates those Q graders, you know, so.

Jacqueline: Interesting. That's incredible. Well, if you're looking for anyone to have on that board, 

I'm happy to volunteer and learn about that process because I think that's awesome.

Andrew Salisbury: Yeah. Well, since you're in

Greenville, you have to come for a 

tasting. 

Jacqueline: Yeah. I would love that. Let me, let me know. I think, I think you're off as I actually just looked it up.

It's about 15 minutes from downtown. [00:29:00] So you'll be seeing me pretty frequently.

Andrew Salisbury: Great. Good. Excellent.

Jacqueline: and also to Andrew. So while I do enjoy the occasional iced coffee, I did also hear that hot coffee was found to have higher antioxidant levels. Is that true?

Andrew Salisbury: No.

Jacqueline: Good. I'm glad. I'm so glad to hear that.

Andrew Salisbury: No, it's the extraction method. Um, so if you cold brew coffee, so if you're extracting it through, let's say a 24 hour cold brew, um, you're actually going to get more antioxidants from the coffee. So the extraction process is better. Um, hot coffee. It's all about the extraction. It's that heat extracts, pressure extracts, cold water extracts, which is going to extract the best, the best way.

And, um, you know, the, the big thing that makes a difference is the quality of coffee. Less to do with the, uh, the way you prepare it. In fact, we try and encourage people just to drink more coffee. It's just, you know, drink more better quality coffee. However you like it. If you like cold brew, [00:30:00] if you like, you know, hot frappuccinos, I mean, anything that minimizes the amount of sugar and cream, obviously, but if you can drink it black, fabulous.

Jacqueline: I am curious to Andrew. So I feel like this is also a whole other area of not contention, but a lot of people have different different views on how to actually like, like, what is the healthiest way to brew coffee? And I think sadly, too, I mean, a lot of coffee makers now are made with plastic.

And it's very challenging to find stainless steel, like pure stainless steel coffee makers. So I'm just curious, like, what, how do you make your coffee? Do you use a pour over? Do you use a French press? 

Andrew Salisbury: Typically, I like the sort of process in the morning of using a Chemex, and just, you know, it's a paper filter, and, uh, um, I also like, uh, French press, it just, um, you know, it really depends, but that's my standard, it's sort of a pour over that I like. I typically have lots of coffees to try, so I think that's a

Jacqueline: I'm sure you're not lacking. Do you have any additions that you include in your [00:31:00] coffee? So we hear a lot, too, about the benefits of MCT oil. I mean, to be honest, I will add that occasionally, but it does change the texture and taste of the coffee, and I know it's not for everyone, but I don't know, do you have any other additions like collagen or, or do you just drink it black?

Andrew Salisbury: I just drink it black. I mean, honestly, it's and I think it's important that if people can will drink more coffee as a result of putting MCT oil or other things in there, they should make their own sort of formula that works for them with good quality coffee. What we decided to do was stop where any other thing began.

So in other words, we're stopping just a coffee. So we're making every decision based on health for the coffee. But that's our lane. We want to stop there. We're not going to ever add anything to coffee. We're not going to do anything different or funky with it. We're just going to provide the highest quality coffee for health that we can, we can 

Jacqueline: Yeah. That's incredible. Well, truly, I mean, your mission shines through in every single aspect of the coffee. I've read that you even nitrogen flush the, the bags. 

Andrew Salisbury: Yeah, absolutely. Because you want an inert [00:32:00] gas so that it doesn't start to stale until you open the bag. So one of the problems with store bought coffee is that it's staling as it's sitting on the shelf. And so that has its health problems. And that was one of the first considerations. There's a lot of things that we did in the early days because health directed us that way in terms of like, what's the healthiest version that closed certain doors to us, like retail, for example.

Um. But it was more important that we were consistent with what, what our mission was and what we were trying to do. So nitrogen flushing was one of those examples where we really needed to make sure that, uh, that the coffee was fresh.

Jacqueline: Yeah, no, that makes sense. That explains whenever I bring I'll bring a bag of purity home to my mom sometimes and I fly Home and by the time I land the bag is just like 

Andrew Salisbury: Yeah. 

Jacqueline: explode 

But it's fresh. 

Andrew Salisbury: Yeah. That's part of the problem. I mean, the, you know, the coffee will off gas and provide CO2. And so that, that release valve [00:33:00] is meant to let that, uh, that, that, uh, sort of air pressure around. But you don't find that in stale coffees. You don't find the bag expanding to that point because, you know, there is no off gassing, but if a coffee has just been roasted, there's certain things to look for.

I mean, one is the sort of like that bag swelling. And the second one is when you grind the coffee and you put it in a paper filter, look for almost like a, um, it's, it's almost like soap bubbles where you can see that it's like a rainbow color. Um, you can see the oils and the lipids on the coffee giving off that sort of look when the coffee starts to bloom.

Jacqueline: Wow. So fascinating. Aside from, um, the Cool Farms initiative, are there any other upcoming developments with Purity?

Andrew Salisbury: I think the biggest one is the core farms. I mean, for us, it's just that, I mean, there's lots of directions we can go in. There's lots of directions that I would encourage people to go into, but for us, it's about farming in a way that's good for the environment, good for the farmers that ends up with a [00:34:00] product that is good for the consumers.

And so we want to sort of like shine a light on the fact that, you know, Great coffee for health is grown in a way that's good for the environment. And what we're focusing on now is the idea of carbon sequestration. So the pharmacy farm coffee in a way that is good for the environment, they take carbon from the atmosphere and put it down into the soil where it belongs.

And so they think that's a very important initiative that we just want to dig deep into.

Jacqueline: No. I couldn't agree more. Do you, do you travel often, Andrew, to those actual farm locations?

Andrew Salisbury: Oh, all the time. 

All 

the 

time. In fact, I just 

got back from. Oh, it's amazing. And what we're doing now is we're bringing all of our farmers. Um, so the six farmers are going with us to all of the farm locations. So we did Nicaragua and Columbia. We're going to Brazil in a few months. And the idea is what we're trying to do is share best practices.

So, uh, it's a mousy and Nicaragua can look at a farm in Columbia would like Oscar. And say, okay, I love what you're doing with Biochar here, or [00:35:00] Biodigester or, or what you're doing just in terms of different sort of culture bars of the coffee and we're sharing best practices so we can all move up to a higher standard.

Jacqueline: Wow. That's incredible. Um, I'm sure you're familiar with Kona Coffee. 

So, back in, I don't know, 2018 or so, I went to Hawaii because I had this idea of, like, basically creating some type of product with coffee fruit. Because we know it's discarded and, you know, not many people really use it. And I read up on the health benefits of coffee fruit.

I mean, it's incredibly rich in antioxidants. There's people that make like skin cream from it. There's drinks with it. There's obviously like coffee, you know, coffee, cherries, like drinks and whatnot. So I had went, um, and basically was just able to go visit coffee farms in Kona. And see the whole process.

So I'm just imagining you going to these farms and like that. Yeah. Wow. That must be truly incredible.

Andrew Salisbury: So we have done a part, so part of what you're talking about [00:36:00] is what we call the, is the Cool Farms Layer Cake. And so the layer cake is the idea that in order for farmers to have the money to move to organic regenerative agriculture and to do all the changes that we would like them to do. So one is micro lending, but two is we want to give them access to different lines of income.

So what we're doing is actually working with providing a tea, which is from the leaves. The flour and the cascara, which is the pulp of the coffee. So it's all these different layers of income. So, and I think that's a really interesting area, but it's sort of like, and it's, it's very early stage because food safety is very important.

I mean, in terms of picking and then drying and making sure that the, uh, the tea that's created is food safe.

Jacqueline: Absolutely. And I've also heard that, I mean, just getting the organic certification is incredibly expensive, such that many farmers, even if they do grow quote unquote organic coffee, like they just can't afford to get that certification.

Andrew Salisbury: Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a bit of the problem that we've got in the industry. So it's [00:37:00] purity. We decided, um, that we wanted to make sure that we're working with farms who had those levels of certification. But my wife is starting a coffee company called Sacred Cups, which is the idea of how she can get indigenous tribes, um, who really are selling their coffee to a middleman.

So this broker is basically taking a lot of the profits and is not adding any value. But what they're doing is just adding. If one farm is doing a great job and then their neighbor is doing a poor job, it's all put in one vat of coffee and then it's sold at commodity pricing. So what she's doing is trying to create awareness for these indigenous tribes in the Amazon who are doing a great job producing the coffee and then selling it directly to the consumer.

Um, but it is a problem in the industry, yeah. 

Jacqueline: That's incredible. And see, that's another thing I love about Purity is there's just so much social good done through this process, right? And like, that's why it's grown so much and that's why it's been blessed so much. But truly incredible, Andrew. I'm just so grateful for everything that you're doing.

I told Melissa, I was like, let me know how else I could ever help support. Um, [00:38:00] I'd really love to stay in touch with you regarding this Cool Farms initiative as well. But yeah, I'm just your number one fan and can't wait to see what 

Andrew Salisbury: Love that. Yeah, that's, that's great. I really appreciate that.

Jacqueline: Where can listeners learn more about purity?

I certainly will include the links, um, to the site in the show notes as well as that video, but any other, things you'd like to mention?

Andrew Salisbury: The video is a great start. In fact, you're probably one of the first people that have seen the video. It came out just like two or three days ago. We're talking about how we circulate that. That will give you an idea or the listeners an idea about what we're trying to do and why we think it's important.

Um, there's going to be a lot more information on our site and then we're doing a YouTube channel as well so that we can start telling this story. What we're trying to do is create a community of coffee and health. So we're having some really good conversations with people. Or experts, agronomists, who are farmers, who are scientists, I mean, the more we can sort of collaborate with a wider audience, the less we do this by ourselves, or try to do this by [00:39:00] ourselves, the more successful we'll be.

Jacqueline: Wonderful. Sounds great. Well, I'm looking forward to the book coming out in 10 years or so, so 

Andrew Salisbury: That's right. 

Jacqueline: you back on before then though, but my last question for you, Andrew, is what does being well and strong mean to you?

Andrew Salisbury: I think it's a balance for me. Honestly, I think, you know, they, um, it's, it's about, um, You know, for me, it's meditation. It's, it's, it's sort of really focused on, um, uh, I, my wife and I often do this thing called the gap and the game. And so the idea is we, you know, we set goals, but we look backwards and we measure the game that we've come.

And that's, is a big psychological sort of hack for us in terms of, we start to recognize just how far we've moved rather than the gap of where we're, we're, we're trying to get to sort of thing. So I think everything from, um, Okay. Yeah, meditation, eating right, exercise. It just seems to be this holistic, you know, approach.

Jacqueline: Yeah, we have very, very similar approaches, it [00:40:00] sounds like. Just curious, what are you reading right now? 

Andrew Salisbury: I'm just thinking, the book I'm reading right now, and I'm not sure if it would apply, it's not health related. It's called Crossing the Chasm. And it 

comes 

from cross. Yeah. And because I come from a technology background and I haven't read it for a long time and I started realizing, well, you know, maybe coffee is going through the same evolution.

We've got these really early adapters that people who are just the sort of evangelist and later on, we need to know how we're going to get that sort of middle of the bell curve, uh, where this becomes more mainstream.

Jacqueline: Yeah, no, I love that. I actually had to, um, read that freshman year of college. As I said, my, my college was in for entrepreneurship, and they really instilled in us, like, you need to have a strong marketing, finance background if you want to start, obviously, a business, but I certainly have learned a lot just from doing it on my own in the past few years, and I think experience is the best teacher.

Um, well, anyway, Andrew, thank you so much for your time. I'm so, so excited to share this with listeners and yeah, just continue to share more about purity on your mission and I look forward to [00:41:00] meeting you. I mean, you're going to hopefully be in Greenville a few more times, so we'll, we'll connect.

Andrew Salisbury: Likewise. Yeah, absolutely. Just reach out to Melissa and if there's any, if it works with your plans, let's meet up for a coffee and if not, uh, next time, that would be great.

Wonderful. All right. 

All right. Thank you.