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Welcome to The Dr. Kumar Discovery, a health and wellness podcast hosted by Dr. Ravi Kumar, a board-certified neurosurgeon. This is the medical podcast for anyone who wants honest, evidence-based answers to the health questions that matter most. No corporate influence. Just a physician who reads the research, questions the dogma, and breaks it down in plain language so you can make better decisions about your own health.
Dr. Kumar is a practicing neurosurgeon who brings a surgeon's precision to topics most doctor podcasts only scratch the surface of. Each episode dives deep into the science behind metabolic health, cardiovascular disease, heart disease, hormones, nutrition, brain health, mental health, pain, inflammation, weight loss, aging, blood pressure, sleep, and longevity. Whether it's the truth about seed oils, the real data on GLP-1 drugs and weight loss, the science of cold water therapy, how light can heal the body, or why your testosterone is declining, Dr. Kumar goes straight to the peer-reviewed literature and tells you what the evidence actually shows, not what the headlines say. This is evidence-based medicine in plain English.
The show features three formats. Solo deep dives explore a single health topic from the ground up, covering everything from the biology to the practical takeaways you can use today. Expert interviews bring on leading researchers, clinicians, and forward-thinking voices in health and medicine for in-depth conversations you won't hear anywhere else. The Tribulations series tells the true stories behind medicine's greatest breakthroughs, from the discovery of penicillin to the invention of vaccines to a father's fight to save his son's life. These are the stories of the doctors, scientists, and patients who changed the course of medicine.
Topics covered on the show include testosterone and hormone optimization, sleep science, photobiomodulation and red light therapy, exercise with oxygen therapy, creatine, uric acid and gout prevention, gut health and probiotics, cardiovascular risk and Lp(a), cholesterol, PANDAS in children, PTSD and trauma, acetaminophen safety, glyphosate, foot health, and much more.
If you're tired of generic health advice and want to hear from a neurosurgeon who actually reads the studies, The Dr. Kumar Discovery is your podcast. New episodes drop regularly. Subscribe and join the discovery.
For show notes, references, and more, visit drkumardiscovery.com/podcast
Welcome back to the Dr Kumar Discovery Podcast. My name's Doctor. Ravi Kumar, and today I'm joined by Travis Baumgardner. He's the co founder and chief impact officer of Sambazon. Now, if you've ever eaten an acai bowl, this episode will change how you see the whole thing.
Ravi Kumar MD:Travis walks us through where acai actually comes from, why the bowl, most of us know, actually looks nothing like what people eat in the Amazon, and how a virgin wild forest can be worth more than a cleared one full of monoculture crops. We also get into what regenerative farming actually is and why where our food comes from is actually part of our health and the health of future generations and the health of our planet. So one thing before we dive in is a quick disclaimer. This show is completely and totally for informational purposes only. Everything you hear in this conversation is meant to empower you, so take this knowledge, ask better questions, and work with your doctor to build a healthier life.
Ravi Kumar MD:And just to be clear, this show is separate from my role as assistant professor at UNC. And also, quick favor. This show reaches about 150,000 people every single month, and I want that number to grow. So if you're getting value from this show, please leave a comment, leave a review, and share this episode with someone that you think could benefit from hearing this kind of information. This simple act encourages the algorithms to distribute this show to more people.
Ravi Kumar MD:Okay, and the last thing is something I'm very excited about. I designed an app that exercises the different domains of your brain and your thinking. It's called Brain Gamer, and I use it every single morning. It's literally like going to the gym, but for your brain. You can check it out at braingamer.app.
Ravi Kumar MD:That's braingamer.app. So please check it out and let me know what you think. Alright. Let's get into it. My name is doctor Ravi Kumar.
Ravi Kumar MD:I'm a neurosurgeon in search of the causes of human illness and the solutions that help us heal and thrive. I want you to join me on a journey of discovery as I turn over every stone in search of the roots of disease and the mysteries of our resilience. The human body is a mysterious and miraculous machine with an amazing ability to self heal. Let us question everything and discover our true potentials. Welcome to the Dr Kumar Discovery.
Ravi Kumar MD:Travis, thanks for coming on the show. I'm super excited to have you here.
Travis Baumgardner:Yes. Stoked to be a guest and share with you and have a good conversation today.
Ravi Kumar MD:Yeah. Totally. So let's start off with this, like, basic question. What is acai, and where does it come from?
Travis Baumgardner:Acai is a palm tree native to the flood plains of the Eastern Amazon Estuary.
Ravi Kumar MD:Okay.
Travis Baumgardner:And the fruit is actually not a fruit. It's a droop. So a droop... Some examples of droops are olives, peaches, cherries, so just an interesting fact. Yeah.
Travis Baumgardner:And it looks like a blueberry on the outside, but it's 98... 90, 85% hit. So that's that's where you get the droop. Right? Okay.
Travis Baumgardner:So we only scrape out the outer skin to make the puree. And it's also why you're never gonna find a a frozen IQF acai berry. Okay. Because... Yeah.
Travis Baumgardner:But it comes from these biodiverse agroforestry systems. In this one specific, you know, the Amazon Estuary, the East... Where the Amazon River Deltas into the ocean, into the Atlantic, and it's harvested by these local riverside communities called the, and it's not done in plantations. It's not done in monocultures. Comes from these biodiverse agroforestry systems where they're being actively managed, and they've been there for, you know, who knows?
Travis Baumgardner:Or some estimates been there for thousands of years. Wow. But acai, the fruits, is a big part... Yeah. It's one of the staples of their diets in this specific region of the Amazon.
Ravi Kumar MD:That's really cool, and I I definitely wanna get into that because, you know, I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Panama, and I did a lot of agroforestry. And back then, you know, we were we were doing it. We're planting these, you know, food crops, but we'd always grow them in conjunction with all sorts of other plants because they didn't really understand monoculture. In fact, if you showed them a field of corn here in The US, they'd be like, What is that? They understand it.
Ravi Kumar MD:And that was just the way they grew things and things grew so well. There's no pesticides, there's no fertilizers. Had everything just perfectly in symbiosis and that really sounds like what acai is. But tell me how you... You know, you're a California boy.
Ravi Kumar MD:You're living in San Clemente. How did you end up in Brazil? Because you're... Let's just start off this. You're the co founder...
Ravi Kumar MD:One of the co founders of Sambazon. Correct?
Travis Baumgardner:Yep, I'm co founder, and my current role is I'm the chief impact officer.
Ravi Kumar MD:Chief impact officer, okay.
Travis Baumgardner:And Sambazon is an acronym for the Sustainable Acai Management of the Brazilian Amazon.
Ravi Kumar MD:Oh, that's awesome. Okay. So, yeah, and most people have heard of Sambazon because they've gone into Costco and they've seen it in the freezer section, and people eat acai bowls and, you know, acai smoothies. But I don't think they really have this background of where it came from and how... What a cool crop it is and how sustainable it can be if it's harvested correctly.
Ravi Kumar MD:But how did a California boy end up in in Brazil starting a a worldwide company selling acai?
Travis Baumgardner:Fun story. I was living in Santa Barbara, going to school in Isla Vista there, and I had two Brazilian roommates. This was 1995. One of them invited me to go to a carnival in Olinda, which is the Northeastern part of Brazil, which I thought was gonna be a three week vacation, ended up being a three month vacation. I fell in love with Brazil, fell in love with a Brazilian, and ended up moving to Rio De Janeiro.
Travis Baumgardner:And there I enrolled in a Catholic university with zero Portuguese skills. And like many of the people there in Rio at the time, I I had my first acai bowl, and I fell in love with it. But it was hard to find in Rio at the time. There's only a, you know, a few dozen places in the city where you could, you know, it's a huge metropolitan city. I don't know if you've ever been to Rio.
Travis Baumgardner:And these acai joints were always adjacent to the jujitsu training academies. And, you know, and I would, you know, eat the... I remember the first time I ate my, you know, first acai bowl, I was like, what the heck is this? First of all, it's purple. You don't drink it.
Travis Baumgardner:You eat it with a spoon, and it just gave me this... You know, that the hair on the back of my neck stood up, right, and just gave me this energy. It didn't weigh me down, but I couldn't explain exactly why. I I... And it and it became super habitual.
Travis Baumgardner:So there was a a place that served them right next to my university, and it just kind of became part of my daily routine, and it was becoming super popular in Rio there at that time, especially with the action sports enthusiasts. You had the jujitsu crew, and I... I'll I'll dive into that here in a second. But, you know, everybody who does jujitsu, they also like to surf. They like beach volleyball.
Travis Baumgardner:They like, you know, Fuji Volley, which is volleyball on the beach but with a soccer ball. And it was growing and growing and growing. And then I had... You know, every time a family and friends would come visit me in Rio, the first thing I would do is take them... Have an acai bowl, and they all would have a similar experience.
Travis Baumgardner:I also learned that these jujitsu guys, they were... You know, this was a big part of their training diet. You know? So these guys were, you know, mowing down bowls before training, after training, and, you he just had this healthy lifestyle and healthy people associated with acai from the get go. I was living in Rio, had a great life, going to school, eating acai bowls, but for me, it was just one of the umpteen tropical fruits they had in Brazil that we don't have here in The United States, so I didn't really put too much thought into it, you know, beyond that.
Travis Baumgardner:It was really good, gave me energy, didn't weigh me down, and I noticed it was growing. Right? There was now... If you fast forwarded from 1995 to 1997, there's lost site joints all over Rio. It's gone into Sao Paulo.
Travis Baumgardner:It's gone into Brasilia, all these southern metropolitan cities.
Ravi Kumar MD:And was it anywhere else besides Brazil at that time, or was that the only place?
Travis Baumgardner:No. And and so here's the backstory on jiu jitsu, Brazilian jiu jitsu, and acai. So acai was consumed by these riverine communities up in the Amazon as a staple part of their diet for forever. Right? And and prior to them, by the indigenous cultures.
Travis Baumgardner:You know, they would eat it as a savory dish, almost like a porridge, with every meal that they had. You know, they would be warm. They'd eat it with fish, game, shrimp, rice, and beans, and and that's how it was forever. The Gracies... Carlos Gracy, the founding father of Brazilian jiu jitsu, he is an Amazon...
Travis Baumgardner:He's from the the state of Para in in the Amazon. So when they were developing the Brazilian jujitsu, they also had the Gracie diet. And it was like... It was specifically... You know, it was...
Travis Baumgardner:You know, had a foundation of high carbs, high fats, you know, for these guys to train with. And then they moved to Rio to open up their academies because Brazilian jujitsu was blowing up, And they had to, like... Acai is very similar to milk. Like, you you you have to process it and consume it the same day you pick the fruit or else it spoils. The only way you can stop the spoilage is to freeze it.
Travis Baumgardner:So they would have to freeze acai into frozen puree and then take it in coolers on airplanes to Rio De Janeiro.
Ravi Kumar MD:Wow.
Travis Baumgardner:And when it got to Rio, it was, like, different from what they were consuming up in the Amazon. You know? And I guess this... You could say the same for a frozen strawberry. Right?
Travis Baumgardner:A frozen strawberry is a whole different experience from a fresh strawberry. But, you know, the acai is a puree. You're not gonna have the acai fruit itself. So what they ended up doing was they would blend it with a syrup, a inverted sugar that was spiked with guarana. Guarana is a...
Travis Baumgardner:Another plant from the Amazon. It provides a natural source of caffeine so they would get this frozen pulp, put in some guarana syrup, maybe a banana, blend it really thick, and then they would top it with other fruits and granola. That became the acai bowl. So if you took an acai bowl that everybody loves to consume these days, whether it's in Rio or here in The United States, and showed that to somebody from the Amazon, the first thing they're going to say is, Yo, that ain't acai, you know, because it's completely different.
Ravi Kumar MD:Right. So that's really interesting. I didn't know that the Gracies were actually the ones who kind of popularized, brought acai out of the indigenous communities, which is really neat. I think they recognize these natural health promoting characteristics of it, polyphenols and anthocyanins. And that was an an immediate success in Brazil.
Ravi Kumar MD:You liked it. Everyone who ate it liked it. So like when did you... At what point were you seeing a business opportunity here? Because I would think you would see this and be like, oh, it has to be frozen within twenty four hours of harvest.
Ravi Kumar MD:This is nothing you can take to the world. But somehow you saw a business opportunity, and next thing you know, everyone in the world's eating acai.
Travis Baumgardner:Yeah. I I would say it wasn't necessarily a business opportunity. Saw... I was studying environmental geography at a Catholic university in Rio, and I became very passionate about agroforestry and the potential of nontimber forest products to add so much value to the land that it would be worth more standing than clear cut. That's the opportunity I saw.
Travis Baumgardner:I was... I did not realize that until my senior year in college. Like I said, it was... Acai was just one of the umpteen other tropical fruits that they had in Brazil that we don't have here in The United States. You know?
Travis Baumgardner:And I was living the life, going through the motions, didn't have a worry in the world, and I would show up in my senior year. I would... I was rolling in late party to my ecology class, and my professor looked at me one day and he goes, do you know where that came from? And I had an acai bowl in my hand, and I looked at it, and I said, I have no idea. He was the one who explained that...
Travis Baumgardner:You know, he took advantage of my bad habit and said, hey. Let's, you know, let's turn this into a teaching moment and explain that acai is this naturally occurring palm tree from the flood plains of the Amazon harvested by these small local riverine communities and comes from these biodiverse agroforestryers. That was the light bulb that went off in my head, and I was like, okay, I'm a senior in college, I really want to stay in Brazil, I need to find something that I'm passionate about that's going to allow me to do that. That was my first venture into like, hey, this could potentially become a business. So I flew up to the Amazon.
Travis Baumgardner:At the time, I'm pretty tall, I'm like six'three. I had hair down to my butt, blonde hair, green eyed gringo going up to the Amazon in the city of Balame, standing at the chamber of commerce in a line, right, and the tallest dude in this building, no air conditioning, just sweating, and waiting in line till I was gonna ask them, hey. You know, how can I find some acai producers? And I'm like the the freak show, right, inside of the chamber of commerce, and everybody's very personable asking me, hey. What are you doing here?
Travis Baumgardner:One gentleman came up to me and he said... Know, just started talking, and I said, hey. I'm here to find acai. He's like, I've got a boat, and I have an acai plantation or, you know, an acai area. You wanna come see it?
Travis Baumgardner:And I said, yeah. I'd rather do that instead of waiting another hour in line so I can finally ask my question here at the chamber of commerce. You know? And I'm in my early twenties, and it was like, boom. You know?
Travis Baumgardner:That same evening, we're on a riverboat that takes... You know, it takes all night long to get to Madageaux Island. Madageaux Island is this island the size of Switzerland in the Amazon Estuary, and this is the heart of Assai country. So, you know, we we took this three story riverboat. That's a whole crazy story in itself.
Travis Baumgardner:We arrived at the island the following morning, jumped on a small little skiff, and, you know, we went out into the estuary, and it was the first time I'd ever seen the Amazon in my life. And hidden along the river banks in this dense canopy were these homes on stilts. And, you know, they were integrated. They were part of the river connected to the river, and these were the homes of the river... The riverine people that are known as the Hiberinos.
Travis Baumgardner:And all around these homes, there were these palm trees, you know, this gentleman said, hey. That's the acai. This is how acai is cultivated. So it's along the riverbanks, and I was like, oh, you know, I thought I was going to see this plantation, a monoculture, where what I found was, you know, this biodiverse agroforestry system that wasn't based on extraction. It was based on enrichment.
Travis Baumgardner:It was based on biodiversity, and it was a fundamentally different model of agriculture and food systems that, you know, sparked the whole... Yeah. That was the spark in my entire career, my entire life. And I and I thought to myself, wow. This isn't just a tradition.
Travis Baumgardner:This is the future. You know? We we we... This is the the answer to the big big food and big agro business that is poisoning us. I didn't really have the words for it at the time, but I just knew.
Travis Baumgardner:Right? You could just see it. The proof is in the pudding, as they say.
Ravi Kumar MD:Yeah. That's a real... That's really cool. So explain to the audience what this environment looks like. Because when you say the Amazon, most people are probably thinking this, these large jungle trees, but this is a different environment, different part of the Amazon.
Ravi Kumar MD:Correct?
Travis Baumgardner:Yeah. This is the estuary, and the Amazon is giant. Right? I think the Amazon itself, the Brazilian Amazon's about the third the... Just the Brazilian portion's about the third this...
Travis Baumgardner:Of the size of Continental United States.
Ravi Kumar MD:Wow.
Travis Baumgardner:And this is where all the the other... The the main Amazon River and its tributaries are emptying out into the ocean. It's an archipelago region. Okay. And everything is...
Travis Baumgardner:You know, there's no... There aren't any roads. Everything is done by boat. So kids go to school by canoe. The the the school hours are set by the tides, so you've got the tides coming in and out there.
Travis Baumgardner:It's called the Tidal Flooded Forest. So it's it's it's still freshwater, but you're so close to the ocean that you've got the influence of the tides. The homes are built on stilts, and everything functions around the tides that... Going up and down all day long. So these families really are...
Travis Baumgardner:You know, they live on the land. They they probably got these plots. You know, imagine the the main Amazon River, and you've got all, you know, hundreds and thousands of these little tributaries and sub tributaries. But let's imagine we're on one of these little tributaries, and, I don't know, two hundred years ago, a man with his family comes there and says, I'm gonna live here, and I'm gonna live off the land. I'm going to harvest fish and shrimp and game.
Travis Baumgardner:I'm gonna plant acai and cassava and other fruits around my house. And it's basically subsistence farming permaculture, like you were describing. And and really the only things that they depended on from, you know, the outside world was kinda like diesel, medicine, maybe rice or coffee and sugar. So they're very isolated. Maybe they they could be anywhere from, you know, a few hours to a whole day away boat ride from a, you know, a smaller city inside the Amazon that they can get access to health care or shopping or or or education.
Travis Baumgardner:So they're really... Again, it's their archipelago. They live in these remote areas, and everything's based on the river.
Ravi Kumar MD:It sounds like a beautiful life, honestly. It sounds... It reminds me of that movie Mosquito Coast. That's what I'm picturing in my mind right now. This, you know, this Ups River and, you know, area with very little connection to the outside world.
Ravi Kumar MD:So you're traveling through this area and you're seeing these acai growing in these naturally cultivated plots. And what was going through your mind? Were you thinking, yeah, I can get this to The United States, I can get this to Europe, I can get this to Japan. Mean, knowing that these acai were, as soon as you harvest them, they're gone in twenty four hours unless you froze them, correct? So what were you thinking here?
Travis Baumgardner:Yeah. So as I dug in deeper, I figured this acai has gotta get to a city. Right? And this was thirty years in 1995, right, or 1997. Yeah.
Travis Baumgardner:Almost thirty years ago. These at the time, I noticed most of them, for the most part, they did not have the means to get their fruit or any other merchandise that they would sell direct to the market. And a market's like going to a city maybe of 15, 20,000 people because it'd be a, you know, five hour boat ride or whatever. It could be an uphill whole day of a boat ride. So they were dependent on these middlemen who had the boats, bigger boats that would come in from these cities, and they would pass through these communities and go, you know, tributary by tributary, home by home, and stop by and say, hey.
Travis Baumgardner:What do you got for me today? Do you got acai? Do you got heart of palm? Do you have cassava? Do you have shrimp?
Travis Baumgardner:But I noticed right away it's pretty kind of a, you know, exploitive relationship that the... These middlemen had the upper hand. You know? They could barter for whatever they wanted. Maybe, you know, I I kinda felt like it was obvious that the middlemen were getting the better side of the deal than the hibettingos themselves.
Travis Baumgardner:And and as you dig deeper, I... You know, we met some NGOs there who are working with the hibettingos, and they explained this whole system to me that, yeah, they were being taken advantage of, the little guys, and most of the time, they weren't even getting paid their cost of production of the acai. So... And then that acai was being taken to, the middle end would then take that to the market, and a fruit processor would go buy it, an open market. And that fruit process...
Travis Baumgardner:In the same day. And that fruit processor just cared what the... You know, they didn't care who picked it. They didn't care how it was grown. They just wanted to get the fruit, right, process it, freeze it, and sell it down to Rio and Sao Paulo because that was the market at the time.
Travis Baumgardner:So, yeah, normal. Right? But I I had this kinda... I was doing environmental geography. I had this altruistic or purposeful idea in my head that we can we can do more with this.
Travis Baumgardner:Not only can we create value for the rainforest and keep it, you know, keep it standing. It's worth more standing. But I also figured out there's another component to that, which is man, the stewards of the rainforest. So if they're not having a good source of income, the tendency is that the... And this was another dynamic that that still continues today.
Travis Baumgardner:It's called rural exodus, where newer generations of these families are... You know, they don't wanna tend the land, so they'll sell it really cheap to, you know, a logger or a mining company or whatever it may be. They'll get a quick little hit of cash, then they'll move into this... A slum in in another Amazonian city, and that's not good. Right?
Travis Baumgardner:They'll burn through their cash, and they're gonna be working in some type of city job, and that piece of land that used to be biodiverse gets logged, then it gets turned into corn or soy production. The the the soil in most tropical places is very... It's not very good long term for traditional agriculture, and so that only lasts, what, I don't know, ten years, and then cattle comes in. Cattle after the cattle. You know, that's the process that's going on in tropical forests across the whole world.
Travis Baumgardner:So this, for me, was an opportunity to change all of that. And yet, the first few years, we... That was the paradigm shift. Right? That when we...
Travis Baumgardner:When I met my partner, Ryan Black, who's the CEO of Sambazon, You know, he was based in United States. He actually created the brand Sambazon, and he had the market. I had a supply, but he didn't have a supply chain. I was in Brazil, I had a supply chain, but I didn't have a market. So we teamed up, and I was like, hey.
Travis Baumgardner:We can do this, but we have one condition. We're gonna do it the right way, and we're gonna set it... You know, set up some pillars of how we our supply chain is gonna be in terms of sourcing, you know, environmentally and social. First thing we did is we started having a direct trade relationships with these Hiben Ingos, and we cut out the middlemen. And everybody thought we were crazy.
Ravi Kumar MD:They're like,
Travis Baumgardner:what are you doing? You don't have to do that. You don't even have to set up shop in Brazil. You can just stay in The United States, focus on marketing and selling acai, and you don't need to be investing in a supply chain that's gonna have all this ESG and sustainability behind it. Right?
Travis Baumgardner:Nobody cares about that. But, you know, we were young and naive, we went for it.
Ravi Kumar MD:Yeah, so you guys saw a dream.
Travis Baumgardner:It was the best thing we ever did, best decision we... Was a choice.
Ravi Kumar MD:Yeah, it was definitely a choice, and I think a lot of people probably wouldn't have taken that route because it's much... Many more challenges. But you guys had a vision, and here we are. Sambazons being delivered to the rest of the world. So are you guys...
Ravi Kumar MD:I assume you've accomplished your goal and you are working straight with the Heberinos. It's a sustainable harvest, there's no clear cut forests. Is that what you've achieved?
Travis Baumgardner:Absolutely. And what we wanna do is, you know, we use third party certification, right, to prove what we say. Today, we work with over 350 supplier communities. It's an area of more than a 117,000 acres. It's not continuous.
Travis Baumgardner:They're different farms or areas. You know, it's like 88,000 football fields, and we processed in our twenty twenty five last year's harvest over 70,000,000 pounds of certified organic, certified fair trade acai fruits. We've been certified organic since 2002, certified fair trade since 2008, and now starting with our 2026 harvest, we're in the middle of it. Every... All the acai we process will also have the certified...
Travis Baumgardner:The regenerative organic certified badge on it, ROCK. Wow. And that's super cool because the organic never gave us... The organic... USD organic badge never gave us the ability to tell the full story of Samazon.
Travis Baumgardner:Organic really just says, hey. I'm not putting poison in my food, but it doesn't tell you who picked it, where it was picked. Did it come from a monoculture? Did it come from an area that was... Had a standing forest five years ago but was, you know, clear cut to plant organic acai?
Travis Baumgardner:And that's the big paradigm shift we're going through right now and that I'm bullish about in The United States. If you look back in 1999, you had the organic movement starting, right? That that came out of the natural foods movement that started in the '60s and '70s, let's say. The natural foods movement started as an answer, right, to big food, and big agro business people were saying, We don't want to be part of that food system. We wanna know who picks our food, and and and it's coming from natural sources.
Travis Baumgardner:And then you had organic. Right? So organic in 1999, you had several different certifiers. There still wasn't a standard. Yeah.
Travis Baumgardner:I don't know if you recall that, but you go into a grocery store, and there'd be all these products. The USDA organic badge did not exist, And there would be, you know, badges, logos of different certifiers. Oregon Tilth is one that comes to mind. Then the USDA stepped in in 2002 and created the national organic program. So all the certifiers had...
Travis Baumgardner:Their standards had to meet that thresholds established by the national organic program, and then you could put the USD organic logo on your package. Right? And that chain... That gave... That was a big deal because, you know, that increased the consumer adoption exponentially.
Travis Baumgardner:It gave them the trust to say, hey. I'm not putting poison into my food. Okay. Fast forward. It's 2026.
Travis Baumgardner:I do believe a lot of consumers now kind of are, you know, are second... I know. Is is organic really good for me? Is organic actually good for the planet? Is it coming from a monoculture?
Travis Baumgardner:Like, is it base... You know, there... There's got... Does it taste as good as it used to thirty years ago? Is it just coming from some big food corporation?
Travis Baumgardner:And now you see regenerative. I I I don't know if you've been paying attention, but if you go into a grocery store, you're seeing this regenerative products that can be... There's a bunch of different certifiers just like in 1999. In my opinion, ROC regenerative organic certified is the best because it not only takes into account the regenerative part of the soil, but it takes into part the human fairness and animal welfare. But it's that again.
Travis Baumgardner:What we don't have is a national standard yet, which I'm hopeful we will get, that will propel regenerative beyond what organic is today. And just to throw out some numbers, in 2002, the organic foods market, the size of the market here in The United States was around 7,000,000,000, and today it's north of 80,000,000,000. So it Wow. It grew significantly once it became a national standard. And I'm hopeful the same process is gonna unfold with regenerative.
Ravi Kumar MD:Okay. So let's talk about that word regenerative so people understand a little bit more. And let's talk about it in the setting of acai because I think that's a good way to explain it. I read a study that said that some farmers are actually going in clear cutting forests and planting acai plantations, versus these hiberinos who are actually letting the seed naturally sow, and then they're cultivating these wild plants. And the planted plantations had much lower yields than these these palms that were just growing on the sides of the rivers, because the natural pollinators were there pollinating the flowers more efficiently.
Ravi Kumar MD:And at the same time, there was significantly more biodiversity in the area, which led to a more healthy ecosystem overall. Is that what you're calling regenerative in this sense? And tell us, like, what people would get if they bought Sambazon versus a, you know, more conventionally farmed acai berry.
Travis Baumgardner:You know, originally, a regenerative was established to take a degraded piece of land, farmland, and reestablish the the the soil biodiversity that will then reestablish the biodiversity of the plants and the the the flora and the fauna. And you asked a great question. With acai, we're actually applying the regenerative certification to standing forest. So you... And I I I love that study.
Travis Baumgardner:There's been several of those studies, but they've tried for many, many years the Brazilian Ministry of Agriculture to... You know, that's what they all do. Right? All men... They...
Travis Baumgardner:They're trying to standardize and being able to, you know, create a crop that can be grown all over Brazil and maybe all over the world. So they've created acai clones and different systems, right, to plant acai, whether it's in, an area that had soy in the past. And, yeah, like you said, there are people who are clear cutting forest to plant acai and monoculture because they think it's gonna get higher yields. But the... What I've seen over the thirty...
Travis Baumgardner:Past thirty years, what some studies have shown is that, ultimately, the yield of acai production per hectare is much lower in a monoculture system than in a in a managed agroforestry system. And, yeah, in the agroforestry system, you have exactly this natural geomorphological conditions that provide a better ecosystem for acai to thrive. It also allows for more abundance in terms of biodiversity, and then that biodiversity is supporting the stewards of this land, these Hiberinos who live on it with multiple sources of income too, not only acai. Right? There's other other fruit trees, other nut trees, even, you know, selective hardwoods that sometimes they'll harvest.
Travis Baumgardner:You know, there... There's good ways to have lumber, right, done right. So absolutely... And then the same thing is happening in The United... You know, or in United States or Europe with just in traditional farming where the yields and the long term resilience of a regenerative operation are yield...
Travis Baumgardner:You know, it's paying out over the long term much, much more than your conventional systems, right, whether they're organic or conventional. And it comes down to circularity. Right? So that's the idea behind regenerative is you don't want to be bringing in... You wanna limit the amount of external inputs, right, whether it's fertilizers or that's coming into the system so that the system can regenerate itself.
Travis Baumgardner:You don't till the soil, use animals to provide natural fertilizer, cover crops. So, yeah, you know, that... That's the solution, whether it's a standing forest, whether you're trying to regenerate a a piece of degraded land. And, you know, another term that's interesting is called DCF. It's, deforestation and conversion free.
Travis Baumgardner:It's actually a term that Walmart uses a lot, but, you know, you don't wanna be sourcing whatever it may be. It's used a lot with coffee, cattle, cacao that they're now mapping areas and with satellite imagery and making sure that these commodities are not coming from, right, areas that were standing forest five five years ago. I think there's a cutoff they established. Maybe it's 04/02/2020, but it's moving in the in the right direction, I would say, and you're seeing some big players like like Walmart just like doing really good things. And, I mean, that's something that I think it's...
Travis Baumgardner:Kudos to them for thinking about
Ravi Kumar MD:it, right,
Travis Baumgardner:for bringing in really high level NGOs and scientists and creating thresholds for their suppliers moving the ball forward.
Ravi Kumar MD:Yeah, we for
Travis Baumgardner:have a choice, right? As consumers, do we really want to peel back the layers of the food that we're consuming in our pantry and find out where it comes from. I know it feels a little overwhelming. My wife goes to the store and tries to buy eggs, and she'll call me and it's like, Which one's the best? Best for me, best for the environment, best for the land.
Travis Baumgardner:So it's going to take a group effort here to really... You know, ultimately, we need consumer adoption. If we don't get the consumer consumer adoption together with government regulations, this is... You know, it's gonna be a tough battle. But I look at the success that we did, what happened with organic, and that's a good road map to follow.
Travis Baumgardner:Makes me hopeful.
Ravi Kumar MD:Yeah. Definitely. Okay. So you decided you guys were gonna buy straight from the Hiberinos and pay them a a premium price for their acai so that they made a sustainable living. What did you guys do with the berries once you got them?
Ravi Kumar MD:I mean, were you trucking them out the Rio De Janeiro, or were you doing something different?
Travis Baumgardner:We would... At the first five years, we were using other fruit processors there in the Amazon that traditionally they were set up to process other tropical fruits like pineapple, right, or passion fruit. And then they were able to tweak some of their equipment so that they could process acai. I think it was, like, 2004. We were probably working with four or five different processors that we would buy the fruit.
Travis Baumgardner:We would send it to these processors. They would package it into our Sanbazan products, give it back to us, and then Sanbazan Brazil would export it to Sanbazan United States. But that started becoming tough as we were... With growth, and we recognized that we needed to take the manufacturing process in house instead of third party, especially in Brazil. And because of our mission, again, we were able to make a develop...
Travis Baumgardner:I mean, a partnership with USAID office in Brasilia that then put us in contact with OPIC, which is a division of the state departments. OPIC stands for the overseas private investment corporation. They invest in US businesses overseas. And we got a a nice, loan, long term loan to build the first, you know, state of the art facility of Assai in in the Amazon, and and we built that. We commissioned that in 2006.
Travis Baumgardner:So... You know? And that was a big deal because then we were able to... Yeah. That...
Travis Baumgardner:That's when I could say we were fully vertical, and we were able to close out that chain of custody, and it and it allowed us, you know, and two years later, we had the fair trade certification. So we could really control everything from the from the growers to the consumers, right, to the people who consumed it. So everything that was upstream and downstream was Sam Bazahn. That was a big, big, big achievement. Today, we've got 200% owned processing facilities.
Ravi Kumar MD:Okay.
Travis Baumgardner:And just so you know, I mentioned earlier, we we processed over 70,000,000 pounds of acai last harvest, but we process up to, like, five to 600 metric tons of acai every day during the harvest. It's amazing, and it's all brought in by boats. So you see miles of boats, you know, lined up at our docks on the river, and they're coming in and bringing fresh picked acai berries in, weighing them on our docks. We have a really cool app that we develop that the growers... That we already know ahead of time how much fruit they picked, when it's coming in.
Travis Baumgardner:To be able to supply Sambazon, you have to be audited and certified. And, you know, we can... You can... When you consume a Sambazon product, you could get that barcode on the back, send it to us by email, and we can tell you the day and the family who picked it, right, and where it came from. So super cool.
Travis Baumgardner:We communicate with the growers through this app. And, you know, thirty years later, these guys now have got solar powered lighting at their homes. They've got Starlink at their homes. Everybody's communicating. They have access to information, right, that they didn't have.
Travis Baumgardner:They were isolated. They're no longer isolated from the world. Conditions of living has improved. They could... They have the ability to to take their fruit to the market.
Travis Baumgardner:Their kids... You know, part of the fair trade program is that we take a percentage of the fruit that we buy from these communities every year, and we have a fund. And that money goes... We we we have discussions with them, the stakeholders, and their communities and say, hey. Well, what are we gonna do with this money every year?
Travis Baumgardner:Their two biggest need states due to being isolated on these archipelago are education and health care. So we'll come in with CapEx. We'll build out a school or a health care post, and then we turn it over to the community or the local municipality to to run. And we're transparent. You could...
Travis Baumgardner:If you guys wanna go dig into the... Any of your listeners would like to dig into these details, we publish an impact report that's available to anybody to download for free on our website. It's probably 40 pages of all the good stuff we do, and and we love it. Right? That's what we're all about is transparency.
Travis Baumgardner:We're not saying we're perfect. It's the long game, but that's the difference. You ask, you know, what's what's the difference between Sambazon acai and other brands? That's it. And and I look for that in everything that's in my pantry.
Travis Baumgardner:I I try to find at least the the high volume items. I start with that and make sure, hey. I I wanna be conscious of where that's coming from. You know, tomato sauce or eggs, that for me is a really... That's a component of health.
Travis Baumgardner:Yeah. You see how everybody's in the health and biohacking and this and that, but if you're not taking into consideration the origin of what you're consuming, right, and if that's not resonating with who you wanna be, whether it's food, whether it's media, then you've got a problem with your health. Right? There's there's something missing there.
Ravi Kumar MD:And I actually didn't know that the fair fair trade designation meant that you were that you were actually investing back in those communities. That's awesome. Mean, that's completely awesome that you're building hospitals and schools, and it's coming from the production that these folks are making. Do you guys have any idea how much economic stimulus you've given to that area through this type
Travis Baumgardner:of practice? Invested over... There's been over $1,200,000 invested in in the fund Wow. Over... And you can go to our...
Travis Baumgardner:I mean, the impact report, I'll be happy to send that to you and put it into the notes, a link. Yeah. But, yeah, it's not philanthropy too. I like this. We're not about...
Travis Baumgardner:You know, it's market driven conservation. We're not... You know, you've gotta... These growers have to follow our standards. Right?
Travis Baumgardner:They've got to supply us with good fruit, and and it's... You know? And we have to be a good customer to them. We gotta pay them on time. We gotta give them technical support.
Travis Baumgardner:So, you know, and they're not... You know, I don't like to say that they're like little small family farm. These guys are strong. They're the stewards of the forest. They love they love where they live.
Travis Baumgardner:They love what they're about, and we want to keep them there and honor them. That's the business model that Sambazon's about, I see a lot of other cool natural foods companies these days that have the same model with different commodities. That makes me hopeful. And I like to support those brands, anybody, or how I can get a connection direct and know where the food's coming from, whether it's my local farmer's market, but that's important to me.
Ravi Kumar MD:No. That's very cool. I think that's if we all looked at where our food was coming from, how the people who produced it were treated, how the the land and the resources were treated where it was produced, it would make the whole world a better place, because we essentially vote with our dollars. I mean, every dollar you spend is a vote for something. And if you spend your money in a practice supporting a business that that hurts people or hurts the environment, then that's what we're voting for.
Ravi Kumar MD:And so doing the opposite is is the way to go. You know? It can... Economically, it might not always be feasible for everybody, but still, I mean, you know, going to Costco and getting a bag of Sambazon acai and and making up a smoothie, you've... You just supported a little bit of the Amazon Rainforest essentially.
Travis Baumgardner:100%. 100%. Yeah. It's not... Yeah.
Travis Baumgardner:I I get the affordability issue. Right? Yeah. That... That's a challenge.
Travis Baumgardner:Just try. You don't have to do everything perfect. Don't try to beat yourself up. Right? That that...
Travis Baumgardner:Don't give yourself anxiety about your choices, but there are options and be aware of what's out there.
Ravi Kumar MD:And Yeah.
Travis Baumgardner:And it... That takes a little bit of... I also think that's the new luxury. Mhmm. Know?
Travis Baumgardner:I think the the cool thing is gonna be, again, getting back to what's beyond just organic, what's beyond just not putting poison into my body. It's, I'm supporting the greater good. I I... I'm I'm the point of the spear. I'm voting with my dollar.
Travis Baumgardner:Right? As you said. And that's the most powerful tool in a capitalistic society, us as a consumer, and our choices that we make. So never forget that.
Ravi Kumar MD:Yeah, absolutely. Hey, know, Travis, there's one other thing I wanted to ask you about. You had mentioned that these acai berries or these droops are mostly seed inside. So I I imagine you're processing all this pulp off the fruit. What happens to those seeds?
Travis Baumgardner:Yeah. Let me just... There's a seed right there.
Ravi Kumar MD:Oh, yeah. Okay. So... Yeah. So you make jewelry with them?
Ravi Kumar MD:70,000,000
Travis Baumgardner:pounds of seed was... Last year was roughly 59 or 49,000,000 pounds. No. Sorry. 70,000,000 pounds of fruit was roughly 49,000,000 pounds of of seed.
Travis Baumgardner:This is a great story. It's your waste. Another part of our environmental social goals, right, as our company is the waste management. So, you know, these seeds are a form of biomass. It's a biomass that has a very low carbon footprint.
Travis Baumgardner:And a lot of companies when we... You know, ourselves included, in the Amazon factories industry, their source of energy was either... Was fossil fuels or, you know, or Amazon rainforest, wood. And and and the wood would come from these bi... You know, they cut down biodiverse areas to, you know, run the factories.
Travis Baumgardner:Now acai is becoming so big, and they've learned to be able to use the acai seeds as a source of biomass and energy to fuel the factories. And and so, you know, we'd have mountains of seeds outside of our factory. We're like, oh, what are we gonna do with all this stuff? It's like, we can't use all these... We can't make billions of bracelets.
Travis Baumgardner:And and it was a... I think it was a brick factory that was down the street, and they're like, hey. Can you try something? Can you use these seeds instead of the hardwoods and propane that you've been using? They tried it.
Travis Baumgardner:It's like, oh, wow. This works. Give give us more. Give us more. And we were, like, given...
Travis Baumgardner:We would just say take as much as you want just so we get it off of our land. Right? And then the next... And, you know, the word spreads, and and then another industry found out about it. It's like, oh, wow.
Travis Baumgardner:I can lower my cost of energy, and I can reduce my footprint, right, both on environment and emissions. So now all of the... You know, a 100%, we actually sell the seeds to industries, and they use them as a source of biomass to fuel their their facilities. We do too. We're gonna see...
Travis Baumgardner:You know, I don't know how much you are into biomass, but it's a subject that I I love the nerd out on. But, you know, biomass is being used as a source of fertilizer, activated carbon, biochar, you usually... You know, systems of pyrolysis or hydrolysis to turn this biomass into, you know, different value added products that can, yeah, be used in all kinds of things, fertilizer, feed, asphalt, energy, selling energy back to the grid. So we've got some cool projects coming on, you know, that that requires technology and investment, but, yeah, of of further optimizing this this... Yeah.
Travis Baumgardner:It's a waste. Right? It's a byproduct of our acai fruit business. So it's exciting, and I love it. And it's got a potential, right, to to continue adding to our mission, you know, enhancing our sustainability footprint, and inspiring other companies and the acai as an...
Travis Baumgardner:As a acai industry as a whole to raise the bar. Right?
Ravi Kumar MD:Yeah. No. That's totally awesome. I mean, you're
Travis Baumgardner:Yeah.
Ravi Kumar MD:You're preserving the ecosystem in a way of life by your sustainable harvest techniques and your sustainable business practices. And then you're taking the... What would normally be a waste product, and you're replacing hardwoods that would be cut down out of the Amazon rainforest as fuel. It's just such a beautiful, like, full circle almost.
Travis Baumgardner:Love it. Full circularity. You said it all. Bam.
Ravi Kumar MD:Yeah. That's that's awesome, Travis.
Travis Baumgardner:It's fun. I I am so grateful for this journey and all the opportunities that lay ahead. It... It's
Ravi Kumar MD:Yeah. Very exciting.
Travis Baumgardner:Tell you how fun it is to do this.
Ravi Kumar MD:Yeah. Well, if someone wants to find out more about SambaZum, what do they do? Go to the website?
Travis Baumgardner:Website, you know, we're we're very active on TikTok and Instagram, obviously. You can follow myself on LinkedIn. Okay. I I do a little bit of writing there. And if you really wanna dig in deep to stories about acai, sustainable businesses, regenerative agriculture, voting with your dollar, or you can hit me up anytime directly there too.
Travis Baumgardner:So I'm I'm... I love to talk about it, spread this message, and inspire others ultimately.
Ravi Kumar MD:Yeah. That's So very I'll put a link to all those those social media accounts in the the website in the show notes, and I'll put a link to that environmental impact report that you had mentioned.
Travis Baumgardner:Awesome. Yeah.
Ravi Kumar MD:Yeah. I think people love to read that kind of stuff. Yeah. So folks, if you're gonna eat acai, which we didn't get to talk about, we need to wrap up here, but we didn't get to talk about. Acai is an amazing source of polyphenols, which have shown an inverse relationship to mortality.
Ravi Kumar MD:So the more polyphenols you have in your diet, the lower your all cause mortality. They've shown it over and over again in observational studies. Acai is loaded with them, loaded with them.
Travis Baumgardner:Yeah. And and one other important detail is its fats. So it has this omega three, six, and nine profile of... It's very similar of oleic acid, right, to an olive oil. So it's almost like the Mediterranean diet where you've got the healthy fats from olive oil and then the polyphenols from the red grapes combined into one fruit held together by fiber.
Travis Baumgardner:And that, what I've learned, is the sustenance part behind acai. Right? The this... The the fats, right, give it the flavor. It gives your body this craving to, right, to have it again.
Travis Baumgardner:That's why the guys... That's why it's been a staple in the Amazon for hundreds of years. That's why the Gracie's and the jujitsu community community love acai. They don't know why, but it's the fats.
Ravi Kumar MD:Yeah.
Travis Baumgardner:And that's a very unique property of any fruit to have fats in it. And acai too. I personally like acai. You know, acai has no sugar in it itself. I consume unsweetened acai puree.
Travis Baumgardner:You know, my kids, they like the sweetened stuff. I'm I'm 52. I I prefer to, you know, get the frozen acai puree. I'm gonna put an avocado in there. I'm gonna put some blueberries, some nut milk.
Travis Baumgardner:I'll probably put some adaptogens and some maca powder, and then I blend it thick. And that's... You know, the the acai is my foundational base of polyphenols and healthy fats, and then I'm gonna be stacking other, stock... Stacking on top my my protein, my adaptogens, my fiber, whatever. But that's how I, you know, incorporate acai into my daily health routine, which is my smoothie delivery system, which is very important for me.
Travis Baumgardner:I I need to have my my smoothie or a bowl to get my macros, right, that I need. I need to have one a day. I'm sorry. You know? But that...
Travis Baumgardner:That's how I I see acai in terms of, you know, functioning for me health wise.
Ravi Kumar MD:Yeah, and that is very interesting because they have done studies that show that... I think it was a study in women who ate acai daily had elevated HDL levels, which HDL is the lipoprotein that transports cholesterol away from your arterial walls to back to the liver. So you you want higher HDL numbers, and I say it tends to raise it. So are there are there recipes on your website if people wanna learn
Travis Baumgardner:how to tons. Yep. Okay. Tons of recipes. And, you know, it's highly customizable.
Travis Baumgardner:You go to the frozen fruit section in any grocery store in The United States, you know, Whole Foods, Walmart, Kroger, Albertsons, Wegmans. You're gonna find Sambazon, and you're gonna find different... Whether it's the bulk fruit, the the puree, the frozen puree. We've got ready to eat acai bowls if you if you don't wanna blend something up. So different ways to...
Travis Baumgardner:For different con... You know, consumption occasions. Sometimes you like to have it on the go. Sometimes you wanna blend something up at home.
Ravi Kumar MD:Yeah. Yeah. Definitely check it out. I... Because I I love it.
Ravi Kumar MD:It's delicious. My wife blends it up in smoothies for us. We don't eat it with the traditional spoon style thickness. It's usually a drinkable form, but it's so good. Man, you can't eat it like a dessert either because it fills you up.
Ravi Kumar MD:Like, if you eat a dinner and then you eat acai smoothie Yeah. You're so full, you know? It's almost like It's a meal the place,
Travis Baumgardner:like eating nuts too. Just get those fats and it satiates you.
Ravi Kumar MD:Yeah. Well, very cool. Travis, thanks so much for coming on the show. This has been an awesome conversation.
Travis Baumgardner:Yeah. Thanks, Ravi. I've enjoyed meeting you, and I hope to do it again. Thank you. Yeah.
Travis Baumgardner:Cheers. Cheers.
Ravi Kumar MD:Okay, so I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Travis Baumgardner. Here's what I want you to walk away with. Where your food comes from is part of your health, and every single dollar you spend is a vote for how the world we live in will be passed on to the next generation. Nobody has to get this perfect, I certainly don't, but awareness is the best place to start. I'll put Travis' social accounts and the Samazon website and impact report in the show notes.
Ravi Kumar MD:Okay, folks. Until next time. Stay curious, stay skeptical, and stay healthy. Cheers.