our story

Today, most of us are within 1 degree of separation from someone fighting cancer, diabetes, or heart disease. I was born at a time with 6 degrees of separation. Raised on good food. Real food, right? Lucky Charms or a Pop Tart for breakfast, $2 from mom for lunch in the school cafeteria, meat and pasta for dinner and the occasional dessert. Mom’s Italian, Dad was hungry. The Rules: (1) we sit down as a family, (2) clean your plate. So far this could be pretty much anyone. I wasn’t the athletic or studious type, I was the quiet, wide-eyed, internally thought-provoked, ‘yeah but how can we make that better?’ kind of girl.

1991: After graduating high school, my best friend and I said we would open a café together serving good-for-you food. We came up with the name ‘Dirt Food’ and committed to not serving crap. People thought we were funny. So, we laughed.

2012: Fast forward 16 years through corporate America’s, 14-hour workdays… when BOOM! Cancer. Two types. Prescribed with surgery, radiation and chemotherapy, queue the research. After multiple medical opinions, I decided to listen to the one doc that I trusted. I also googled, Amazon’d, and public library’d myself to exhaustion. I learned that the business of medicine is just that, a business. A Big. Effin. Business. Their advice btw, while undergoing treatment… “eat whatever you want, and rest as much as possible.” Interesting, I thought, but what about nutrition? The next day I did my first pushup and hired a nutritionist. With a fitness plan that had me working out hard every day up until chemo day, and a meal plan that eliminated sugar, gluten, dairy and animal protein from my diet. I was advised to eliminate coffee as well because it's so acidic... so I created Dirt Spice in order in order to alkalinize my coffee and provide a boost of other potent therapeutic awesomeness. Ninety days after making massive adjustments to my nutrition, a blood panel confirmed my white cell count had dropped ~900 points and I was right back in the healthy range. At that point, I did what any other 5-foot-5 Nordic-Italian she-warrior would do. I gave my doc a hi-five and peace’d out. My village was small, but effective.

2018: I started adding my Dirt Spice to some other homegrown staples, (enter Granola). Man, if I had a nickel for every time someone said, ‘hey you should sell this stuff’. I would have a ridiculous amount of nickels. So, I finally decided to spend my nickels and build a DirtFood village.

2020: DirtFood is a NUTRACEUTICAL and our Dirt Spice is PATENT PENDING in the US. VEGAN CERTIFIED, and WOMEN-OWNED BUSINESS CERTIFIED. In addition to our online storefront, DirtFood can be found throughout the western US in wellness centers, café’s and coffee shops, 5-star resorts and grocery stores.