It’s enough to pull our slumbering BoldRush bear out of hibernation! The U.S. government has disregarded the border and is appropriating northern cranberries as their own!

Now most people know that northern cranberries, officially referred to as vaccinium oxycoccus, are the magical ingredient in BoldRush power drinks, injecting strength and endurance into its loyal following. The BoldRush website tells the story of how the little northern cranberries’ powers couldn’t be mentioned in Canada because of Canadian labeling laws. So while we’ve been whispering about magical photonutrients and powerful anthocyanins, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has been cross-breeding the powerful little vaccinium oxycoccus with what it calls a typical American cranberry.

BoldRush was born in Canada’s Yukon, so it seems more than a little bit rash that the American government has renamed this little nordic berry, which is indigenous to all circumpolar countries — the Alaskan Cranberry.

American researchers discovered what James stumbled upon in the Yukon wilderness — the amazing ability of the berries to regenerate, preserve and enhance the body’s ability to withstand, bear (pardon the pun) and prevail when facing adversity and challenge. (And, to maintain an honest line of attribution, James also stumbled upon what indigenous northern peoples have always known.)

However, the United States government and their government scientists put the berry under a microscope and discovered that the little northern berry’s glucose-linked anthocyanins are found in the wild northern berries at a rate of 50% compared to just 5% in the southern berry. They suspect that this difference is one of the characteristics holding the key to the cherished benefits of cranberries in general — protection against aging, cancer, and heart disease.

My first hit was one of envy — American corporations incurring huge cost savings by having the government do their research and development for them. But then, pondering government involvement and the appropriation of a northern berry to an American state (another government), more questions arose. There may be a deeper and more insidious side to this. It is the stuff that United Nation committees work on year after year. It pertains to the Convention on Biodiversity and their deliberations on intellectual property, plant genetics, patents, traditional knowledge and indigenous peoples.

The intent of the Convention on Biodiversity is to achieve the fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising out of the utilization of genetic resources. That means that northern people should somehow benefit from the genetic code provided to the American government scientists which they may turn over to American multi-national corporations. It’s likely easier for scientists to manipulate genetic patents if the cranberry is American or Alaskan.

What a world! Genetically enhanced cranberries for more people through corporate distribution (Ocean Spray controls two-thirds of the cranberry market), or higher prices for the lovely First Nation women we bought our cranberries from. In the fall, when the berries were ripe, one of them couldn’t sleep if there were still berries out there waiting to be picked.

These food science newsletters I still subscribe to, make me lose sleep as well.

]]> http://blogrush.wordpress.com/2008/04/01/border-crossing-violation/feed/ 0 blogrush 00890002.jpg http://blogrush.wordpress.com/2007/06/19/hitting-the-wall/ http://blogrush.wordpress.com/2007/06/19/hitting-the-wall/#comments Wed, 20 Jun 2007 02:01:20 +0000 blogrush http://blogrush.wordpress.com/2007/06/19/hitting-the-wall/ ]]>

BoldRush protein juice was a remarkable discovery. It was shelf-stable and made from real fruit and vegetables. It contained 10 grams of protein and worked extremely well to support endurance and recovery before, during and after grueling athletic events. It substituted for food, tasted good, and was not-too-sweet. Kids weren’t crazy about it, but there are some definitely hooked adults in the Yukon.

It was tricky to make. It required a delicate balance of time, temperature and pH. We used a special “heat stable” whey protein isolate that was made in the United Kingdom. The food scientists at Vitalus in Abbotsford helped us understand the tolerable ranges for this specialty product that was in late stage R&D. The protein could only take a high temperature for a short time prior to bottling, otherwise it would “take off” and turn to jelly. The pH also had to be closely monitored in the product formulation stages.

The Food Development Agency in Manitoba was helping us scale up production from 50 to 1000 units per batch (see post “Powering Up”). There were challenges with foaming while mixing and a slight burning while heating, but most importantly, they couldn’t fill the bottles fast enough at the right temperature without exceeding the time limits imposed by the nature of the protein powder. Of course, money and better equipment could have alleviated this problem.

However, the problems of money, equipment and batch sizes paled beside the risk factor of only having one supplier of our key ingredient. For a while last year, it was only being shipped by container to North America every four months, and once we had to air freight bags from the UK for our continued production and scale-up requirements.

Unbeknownst to us, global forces were at play in the dairy and whey business (it’s not all honey and fun). Vitalus announced a “joint venture” with DNV, a division of the Dutch food giant, Campina last October.

Now I’m not sure of the nuanced differences between a takeover and a joint venture, but the small division of Campina that partnered with Vitalus boasted 583 employees to Vitalus’s 40, and turnover of $518 million compared to Vitalus’s $35 million. Campina, the mothership, counts in many billions. Not exactly partners on equal footing. Campina had obviously been making moves in the dairy and whey industries from Argentina to NewZealand, and then with Vitalus, North America (see acquisition history).

We were informed that the supply of our ingredient would be halted for a while since the UK plant would be producing pig food instead of our whey protein product. Later we learned that sales of the heat stable product were not significant enough and they felt the product was too expensive for most players in the beverage industry. Of course, they were in business and just following the profits. We had enough protein on hand to see us through until spring.

We pursued alternatives and experimented with other protein products all winter, but to no avail. Still we kept our fingers crossed regarding DNV’s promise of new plant construction and that the heat stable product would be produced again in March 07. However, last month we learned that the ingredient BoldRush depended on would not be produced — not for the North American market, nor in Europe. We have been unable to find a clear, heat stable protein James can get to taste good. In short — we are hooped.

It’s been hard. This would have been our third Yukon River Quest with BoldRush paddlers (we are giving our remaining bottles to Pauline Frost-Hanberg as she goes out to break the mixed record this year). We have withdrawn our sponsorship on all other levels. So sad. Sponsoring people and events with such a great product has been the best of fun.

This is where it started two years ago — Jenny and Su finishing the River Quest in Dawson City — endurized by BoldRush!

It’s been quite a trip !

The Canada Winter Games have meant some of the finest hockey we’ve seen in Whitehorse for a long time.

After their hard fought win yesterday, an Ontario hockey team mother said I must be bringing their team luck. I don’t think it’s me — I think it’s the tip I gave them about our Yukon power foods — BoldRush protein drinks and bars.

On another tact…. do you think our unusual weather might be a manifestation of our visitors’ collective expectations?

Those of us who live here know that these temperatures are totally uncharacteristic.

So back to the question of Yukon icons…. I liked the oaths of Canada Games in gold pans at the opening ceremonies.  For those of you who missed it — the oath of the officials, the athletes and the coaches were presented in gold pans.  It was a nice touch, referencing the gold rush, but avoiding those temptress can can girls.

I was thrilled that Joe Loutchan was asked to play at the Sponsor’s reception.  Joe Loutchan plays every Thursday night at the 98 Hotel, a local hotel known as the “breakfast club”.  That’s because it opens at 9 am and catches an early round of drinkers.

I remember going round to the bars distributing up posters for National Drug Awareness Week on a cold blustery morning in November, and the minute I entered the 98, I was immediately warmed and welcomed by laughing and smiling people.   As a young addictions professional, that was the first time I fully connected and understood the lure and promise of future intoxication and the importance of social spaces for disenfranchised people.

So the 98 of course, reminds me of the first time I played with Joe Loutchan.  It was in the Carmacks Hotel in 1976 or 1977, following the teachers bonspeil and everyone had been danced off their feet in the curling club. I don’t think I had ever played a guitar before, but Joe called out the cords for me; he didn’t stop grinning as he wore out his musician companions and kept playing until the morning light appeared.  Joe is a Yukon icon.

I’m struggling with the icon thing, because for so long drinking was so Yukon.  Now I’m in business selling a healthy sports drink in a land formerly dominated by beer guzzlers.  Bars and drinking.  BoldRush bars and drinks.  Can Yukoners make the shift? Can BoldRush replace beer in hockey change rooms?  Some would say that’s a long shot.  But the changes in this territory have been so pronounced — I truly believe that anything is possible.

And besides, BoldRush protein juice really helps put the legs back on old guys — sustaining endurance and improving muscle regeneration post-exercise.

So how many times did you read – new website coming soon !!  I thought people might be poking around a bit more and with the new snap previews on the site, readers might bump into it.  Nope.  Just as I can tell where people were before they got to my blog, I can also tell what they click on once there.

So its time to provide a bit of directive — check out our new BoldRush.com website!!  It’s got pictures of our new packaging and product line, testimonials from BoldRush diehards, and a great little BoldRush legend on how BoldRush PowerFoods came to be.  There’s an encore of cranberry poetry, press and photos from around the Yukon.  And click on the flavour names in the product section for insight behind BoldRush’s  flavour concepts.

Good things are worth waiting for, and our new BoldRush.com website feels like one of those things.

Let us know what you think!

Found myself guilty of one of the worst of human qualities — contempt prior to investigation. They say if there’s ever a trait designed to keep a person in ignorance, that’s the one. This confession compels me to carry forward the conversation on nutrition facts tables. I went on and opined before we generated the tables from the Genesis computer program. It is a beauty of a program, where you input your specific food formulation, and it generates the ingredient list, the nutrition tables in a variety of formats and lists the claims the company can make about the product based on the formula. This last characteristic was a pleasant surprise since it smoothes out one of the bumpier regulatory hurdles.

Prior to being able to use the computer program, we had to manually calculate the protein content by source and volume in relation to product weight. Since we use three different protein sources in our BoldRush bars — soy protein crisps, whey protein concentrate and whey protein islolate — the calculation was a little cumbersome. The percentage of protein is what allows producers to make claims such as “good source”, “high in protein”, or “excellent source” of protein. By regulation, these levels determine other phrases or claims that can be made about food products.

With 12 grams of protein in a 55 gram bar, BoldRush powerfood bars are “high in protein”. This means that we can say that our product “helps build and restore muscle tissue” and “helps build antibodies”.

The Genesis program also generated the fact that BoldRush protein bars are a “good source of iron”. However, only Apricot Lightening (apricot and cranberries) can make the claim that it is “low in cholesterol” and “low in saturated fat”. The chocolate chips in our Chocolate Determinator bar took that one over the “low” claim limit for fat. The chocolate chips add 10 calories per bar and just over 1 gram of fat to the slightly healthier apricot-cranberry protein bar. Here’s how the facts table turned out for Apricot Lightening.

So what do I know without fully checking things out! The Genesis program is a great compromise between regulation and expensive product testing. We are very fortunate that our local processors were trained and that the Yukon Food Processors Association (YFPA) was able to purchase the program (with the generous support of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada). YFPA is an amazing group of determined and productive people with some truly great Yukon food products. Look for more from this group in the future.

So I’ve eaten a bit of humble pie… but I still think I’m right on the functional food and drink debate of two blogs ago. Controversy is heating up in America . It’s unfortunate that regulations are always touted as a solution. What ever happened to integrity, honesty and manners? Raising the regulatory bar makes compliance (or standards) so expensive that only the mega- companies can afford to be in business. We have created a world where Red Bull was one of the first products certified as a natural health product and the first product certified for sport.

Unfortunately warding off the crooks often means weeding out the little guys.

As if facts are some carved-in-stone truths capable of withstanding all sorts of challenge and change. Ya, right! Getting to an agreed upon truth or fact is tough. Solid, liquid or gas. Easy enough. Temperature nomenclature is fairly sound. We know there’s no difference between 32 degrees Fahrenheit and 0 degrees Celsius. People trust that both scale systems are comparable and accurate. So temperature has fact.

But if there is a wind, some people want a measure to account for how cold it really feels. They expect a measure to reflect context. That’s when accuracy and truth begin to wobble. And what if the scales used for measuring temperature varied and changed according to different circumstances? What would happen to the perceived veracity of temperature as a fact?

What many consumers likely don’t realize is that “Nutrition Facts” are fairly unreliable, and may not really constitute “facts” at all. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency expects foods to test within a certain range, give or take 20% of the reported values on a nutrition facts table. But how do companies arrive at these measures in the first place? This is a huge area of controversy in the food processing industry.

First off is that “facts” can be generated in two ways– 1) by computer on the basis of what goes in to a product, and 2) by actual product testing after the product is made. Advocates of computer modeling assert that the computer data in the Genesis computer program accounts for baking or boiling and other processing points that can affect nutritional content. But this assertion makes the companies that test actual product samples hot under the collar. They just can’t believe the numbers that the computers generate. One testing company official told me that in comparisons between actual tests and computer results the computer numbers are “all over the map!”

Actual product testing though is considerably more expensive, usually running about $600 to $700 more per product than computer generated product analysis. This adds up quickly. They can only cite the risks of prosecution, conviction and product recall for under or over-reporting nutritional content claims as incentive to pay the extra money. But 20% leaves a fair bit of room for error. Not quite within my definition of “fact”.

I hear all these arguments as BoldRush prepares for the compulsory nutrition facts tables that have to be in place by December 2007. We also need them to sell in the American market. But then again, there’s a problem. The U.S. tables are not the same as the Canadian tables. The daily requirements on which the percentage of daily requirements figure is based, differs between the two countries, even though, as people, Americans and Canadians are basically the same.

Nutritive content also varies by serving size, so that comparing a bottle of Bolthouse to BoldRush for nutritive content doesn’t work without a calculator. Comparisons require common denominators. It may work well for McDonalds products, using the same testing and the same standards. See how you can make an informed decision between a Filet O’Fish or a McChicken burger. It works. But for those of us with fewer resources to produce figures that standardize and create data for useful comparisons, the data on those little white tables fails to completely inform our dietary choices.

Daily requirements of different vitamins, minerals and protein also vary by level of physical activity, gender, age and importantly weight. With protein requirements at .8 grams per kilogram of body weight, the variation in daily requirement can be considerable. And don’t get me started on the different types of protein!

It’s a box alright (feels like a regulatory straight jacket at times). A compulsory box called nutrition facts–don’t think so–they are really only good guesses.

A new complement of healthy, refreshing beverages are rising midway between the jazzy sugars, caffeine, carbonation, taurine, and salts of different soft drinks and the boring blandness of plain water. These include the standard fruit juices, and new iced teas, nectars, and functional drinks. These new “functional drinks” are one of the fastest growing segments of the beverage market.

Non-carbonated drinks that are not juices are referred to as “still drinks”. Still, I would assume, because there are no bubbles clamoring to rise to the top. Still drinks include beverages that contain less than 25% juice and functional drinks. Functional drink manufacturers advocate that they are useful for specific purposes like alleviating premenstrual tension, providing a source of viscous fibre, or reducing stress. Futurists predict that these chemically adjusted functional beverages will soon promote themselves as catalysts to attitudinal change!

In the meantime, functional also often means fortified, like vitamin water or the fortified soft drinks, like Fuze or Hansen’s Functionals. If you take a look a the nutrition facts on one of these drinks, you’d be expecting to eat a feast with so much of your daily requirements met in a 16 ounce bottle! It’s unbelievable what they can sprinkle into a drink and get the numbers up on the nutritional fact table. This new targeting of products to enhance a drink’s nutritional facts table is making real the old saying of “what get measured gets done”.

But is it really getting done? Does fortification improve nutritional content? What’s wrong with just drinking your vitamin pill? The Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) recently came out with the following caution – “Excessive use of highly fortified foods to meet nutrient targets may result in shortages of some essential nutrients.”

It’s the argument over the whole food versus the single ingredient. Just as pharmaceutical companies have been scratching their heads wondering why their multi-million dollar cloned active ingredient distilled from the leaf of a rare plant in the Brazilian jungle doesn’t work as well as it does in full leaf tea, researchers in the food industry are realizing that B6 or B12 alone doesn’t relieve stress or nourish the body. And how would a vitamin found in whole grains find itself into a drink anyway? It’s just not natural.

That’s why the USDA is reminding consumers that it is important to eat (or drink) “a variety of foods that provide naturally occurring nutrients, rather than formulated foods which have been artificially fortified.” It is important to eat the whole food- not just an ingredient, or a vitamin, or a mineral. They go on, “Whole foods are necessary to obtain adequate levels of the full range of essential nutrients. This includes flavenoids, carotenoids, and other phytonutrients that occur in whole foods.” (These little “-oid” words don’t exist in the Gatesian microsoft-speak dictionary– so maybe they’ve already been relegated for extinction. We hope not.)

At BoldRush, we are committed to using whole foods in our bars, and whole fruits and vegetables in our drinks. And we know our wild Yukon cranberries are just packed with anti-oxidants, even though we can’t say it. We believe there is a market for people who prefer naturally nourishing to artificially fortified.

Less is more. Fortified and functional can be an oxymoron.

And the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Aside from the blood and glory of the sporting field, BoldRush has another role and function, less glitzy.

Just as Gatorade is made for people who sweat, BoldRush is made for people who get hungry.

I call them hunger spaces. Everybody gets them. That’s what the snack food business is built on. Problem is, it’s tough to find a healthy snack.

That’s where BoldRush comes in. BoldRush is made for people who work hard and don’t always have time to eat.

This means that BoldRush drinks and bars are a powerful ally to combat workplace fatigue–they help you do whatever needs to be done.

This is important. It means that you don’t have to be training for a special event, or working out to use BoldRush. It is a good healthy snack–plain and simple.

Construction workers, office workers, moms driving between schools and events, students — can all use BoldRush’s Yukon PowerFoods as a ready source of nutrition, sustenance and energy.

BoldRush takes the edge off hunger and eliminates those pesky hunger spaces.

That’s why we call our BoldRush bear “the Hunger Eater™”.

BoldRush hasn’t a hockey team yet, but it’s coming. We have to dress a few more parts of the business first. The bottles have been in line for a new outfit for a very long time. Though they still don’t have the requistite Dior french on the label, they’re out in time for Christmas with a new run of full colour. Inspired by the fall season’s run of wild cranberries, the colours are bright with solid undertones–powerful, pure and enduring.

BoldRush has emerged from the Yukon wilderness with a fresh look, and new names for the flavours within.

First off, the powerfully kinetic, Blueberry Envigorator — with magnetic vibratones, positively resonating with wild cranberries and flavor busting raspberries.

Next out, the extremely hardy, Cranberry Lemon Quester — capable of withstanding extremes of hot and cold. Wild Yukon cranberries and organic lemon juice energize your quest, no matter what the conditions.

Then, never one to go down lightly with its endurizing taste, Engine El Dorado — perfectly designed for motoring on. Equipped with a full performance satiation generator. Fueled by sweet potatoes, wild cranberries and real orange juice.

And last, but in no way least, is the BoldRush powerfuel that leaves soul impressions, not footprints — Strawberry Illuminator. Big strawberries and tiny wild cranberries out on the snow-spun trail. Under northern lights, radiant raspberries really light things up!

All four flavours, in full colour, will be at your favourite retailer soon! See them, buy them, then drink them up!