Welcome to the My Buddy Green podcast. I'm Jason Walkab, founder and co-ceeo of My Buddy Green and your host.

If you're a regular listener, you know I am obsessed with coffee. My love affair with coffee started over 25 years ago. I drink it daily, I drink it early, and I drink it often.

On a typical day I'll have around five to six cups. Now if I'm going to drink so much of something I want to feel

confident that it's good for my health so you can imagine how freaked out I was

when I found out that many coffee beans actually contain mold and microscopic toxins.

Mold can form on coffee beans when they are grown, stored, or transferred in a moist,

warm environment, and the supply chain of coffee makes it particularly

susceptible to mold and the toxic chemicals called mycotoxins.

According to some analysis up to 50% of beans tested positive for mycotoxins which can cause serious liver and

kidney issues in high doses. Mycotoxins are almost impossible to see your taste, unlike the

mold you might see from water damage in your house.

And the effect that mycotoxin exposure has on humans isn't entirely clear,

and there's a level of uncertainty that I, as a coffee lover, am just not comfortable with. I believe in compromise but not

when it comes to what I'm putting into my body. When I drink something so often I want to know that

I'm giving myself all the best possible benefits and not ingesting anything that is going to potentially negate all the other good stuff I'm doing.

And once I learned about all the bad stuff like mold, mycotoxins, and other contaminants in coffee,

I knew it was time to work on a better product.

And I started asking myself the following questions.

Would it be possible to source a USDA certified organic coffee that was high in

polyphenols and had no mold, mycotoxins, pesticides, and heavy metals?

And would we be able to test for all of the above?

So we find a coffee that meets all of our aforementioned standards and actually taste great.

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