I drink
Shakeology almost everyday and I didn't have to go half way around the world to get it. So when I found out Shakeology's creator was traveling with "O" magazine's editor and chief to Peru to find more superfoods I was ecstatic.
Below is a snippet of the actual article from the May 2011 issue which can be found in “O”.
Around 4 o’clock on any given morning, Darin Olien will walk into his Malibu, California, kitchen and make himself a smoothie. This will not be an ordinary drink. The other day, for example, he tossed the following into his blender: coconut water, fermented sprouted brown rice, maca, aloe vera juice, barley grass powder, kamut juice powder, almond butter, camu camu, avocado, goji, lucuma powder, noni juice, cacao nibs, MSM, maqui, bee pollen, sacha inchi oil, omega-3-DHA/EPA oil, Hawaiian deepwater salt, chia seeds, nopal, goat yogurt, luo han guo, and a powder called Shakeology.
If you’ve never heard of many of these ingredients, you’re not alone. But stay with me here, because they’re among the most powerful nutrients on Earth. Olien’s specialty is what’s known as “formulating,” taking wildly beneficial substances and combining them into something even more potent: a supplement, a snack, a tea, a medicine, a smoothie. Every food in nature contains a mix of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates, along with noncaloric vitamins, minerals, fibers-all of which fuel our cells-and each one has unique abilities that we really don’t understand, but it is now clear that some foods pack an extra biochemical punch. Camu camu fruit, for instance, provides the richest source of vitamin C known to exist. Maca, a hearty root that grows only in the high Andes, comes in yellow, red, and black varieties, boosts fertility, is said to balance hormones, and dispenses a day’s worth of kick-ass energy. Sacha inchi is another South American treasure, a protein-rich, metabolism-revving nut that delivers an omega-3 bonanza. Olien’s final ingredient, Shakeology, contains more than 70 components itself, a crazy cornucopia of good.
No one understands Shakeology better than Olien, who created it in 2008, after Carl Daikeler, CEO of the fitness company Beachbody, challenged him to come up with a supplement to match the tagline The Healthiest Meal of the Day. His customer was someone who wanted optimum wellness, wanted to lose weight, wanted cholesterol levels to drop-but had no intention of eating a platter of broccoli each day. Daikeler gave Olien no limits on quality, no cost/revenue restrictions; the goal was to shoot the moon, to seek out and combine the most extraordinary plants, fruits, nuts, herbs-nature’s secret weapons. And Olien found them: ashwagandha from China, cordyceps from Bhutan, yacon from Peru. An alphabet of vitamins and minerals from the purest sources. Prebiotics. Probiotics. Green tea and grapeseed extracts, chlorella and spirulina and hydrilla, a spectrum of enzymes. Since hitting the market in March 2009, more than 400,000 bags of Shakeology, at $119.95 each, have been sold.
