I’m addicted to Weeds. Oh stop it, you. If you’re from British Columbia you’ve read that as “Weed” and that’s not what I said. What I said and mean is Weeds. Weeds & Seeds, actually.

I discovered Weeds & Seeds at the Vancouver Wellness Show, a showcase of products meant to promote health and wellness. I do mean products that promote health/wellness, though not necessarily actually produce it.

After cruising aisle upon aisle of nicely packaged, well-marketed products, many from healthy-sounding companies, it became very clear that if you want to be healthy you’d better take your health education into your own hands and not rely on branding, marketing and sales brochures to ensure your wellness. But I digress.

Amidst the glitzy packaging and flashy rack cards it was delightfully refreshing to encounter Andy from Back to Earth, the company that produces Weeds & Seeds from right here in beautiful BC. There’s no better advocate than a proud dad for promoting your product and as enthusiastic as he was, Andy was also down-to-earth and void of sales hype. And the product he promotes hits the mark.

I’m a long-time label reader and while not an expert, I have more than a passing knowledge of what the human body needs to function. One thing we critically need are vitamins and minerals, ideally from an actual food source. What we don’t need is added sugar in any of its myriad forms, chemicals whether pronounceable or not, and the wide variety of filler many commercial products contain.

Weeds & Seeds is the real deal, real food, and a surprising source of some of those truly important nutrients. With not a fraction of added sugar; only whole foods…yes, seeds and quite literally weeds…that are chuck full of good things our bodies need to function.

I’ve been taking my 2 tablespoons each morning with my breakfast smoothie, albeit in an off-label way. Let me explain.

When we eat, the very first part of our digestion process is triggered by chewing. Both chewing and the saliva it creates send messages to the stations down the line to get in gear to process the food that’s coming. When we drink our food instead of eating it, we miss this critical part of the digestion process and can lose out on absorbing the nutrients we paid good money for, as well as creating havoc further down the line when food hasn’t been properly prepared for the subsequent digestion processes. Who knew, right?

So, when I take a tablespoon of Weeds & Seeds and chew it before I have a smoothie, (a) it gets the saliva going, (b) it reminds me to chew my drink to optimize that first stage of digestion, and (c ) I’m getting a good shot of iron, fibre, calcium, magnesium, copper, phosphorus, manganese and more. Plus, I drink more slowly, enjoy my food more, and feel more satisfied.

I’m gratified to see that Weeds & Seeds has popped up on shelves in my local health food store making it easy to find when I’m ready for my next bag.