
I’m joined today by my good friend Todd White, a serial entrepreneur from the age of 17. He’s spent over 15 years in the wine business and now focuses on educating and helping people make better choices about their food.
As healthy as I try to be when it comes to my food and drink choices I was pretty surprised to find out that wine isn’t as natural as it’s touted to be. Only 4% of wine in the US is organic, but that’s not even the worst part. Ever notice how there isn’t an ingredient list or nutrition facts on the back of a wine bottle? Thanks to some legal regulations, wine isn’t required to have those things. Not only that, but they can have 76 different additives including toxic ones derived from toxic black mold, animal organs, and more.
Todd has set out to change all this by creating natural wines with simple, organic (and disclosed!) ingredients. Of course, not everyone drinks and Todd will be the first to tell you that alcohol in itself is toxic. But if someone already drinks and is looking for a healthier option, then there’s a better wine out there. Personally, wine is one of my 80/20 things and I enjoy it on occasion with friends and family.
If you’re a wine drinker, this episode is a must listen!
Episode Highlights With Todd
- The problems with most wines today
- Why most wines are not natural and the unsavory things added to most wines today
- What we don’t know about wine may be hurting us
- Alcohol is objectively toxic and why Todd, as the wine guy, explains this in depth and why it can be best not to drink it at all
- Todd’s own rules around drinking to minimize negative effects and why he chooses it for joy and not for health reasons
- Why they started adding toxins and additives to wine
- Wine has been made for 9,000 years and all wine was natural, but this changed in the 1920s
- Only 4% of US wines are organic but it’s worse than that
- Grapes are #6 on the dirty dozen so organic wine is important
- Beyond organic… the nasty stuff added to most wines (even some organic ones)
- The massive consolidation of the wine industry that led to 3 companies controlling over 50% of wine
- There are 76 additives approved for use in wine
- Why Todd believes wine labels should have a contents (ingredients) label and nutritional info
- The only two ingredients found in a natural wine: grapes and native natural yeast
- Other ingredients in conventional wines: sugars, dyes, animal products, 12 additives classified as health hazards, 8 derived from black mold, and two classified by NIH as acute toxins meaning too much in a 24 hour period can be fatal
- How big wine companies respond to claims about natural wines (and how they responded to a lawsuit showing arsenic in wine at 5x the amount allowed in water)
- The reason Prop 65 in California can actually let companies get away with additives in wine based on disclosure
- What is natural wine and the standards it adheres to
- Why wild native yeast is important and what makes it so different
- How conventional wines often contain GMO yeast
- Why they only accept 21% of the wines they test (and they only choose organic wines to start with)
Resources We Mention
- Dry Farm Wines
- Mastery by Robert Greene
- The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle
- The Master Key System by Charles F. Haanel
What about Italian and French wines? Do they have all these chemicals? I can’t drink most California reds without a headache and am fine with European wines. Thx!