Ring In The New Year With Health, Sustainability, And Innovation Through Chinese Medicine Formulations With Dr. Angela Zeng

Joining us today is Dr. Angela Zeng, the visionary founder of Karviva Beverages. Born in China and armed with a profound belief in the healing power of nature inspired by Traditional Chinese Medicine, Angela has seamlessly blended this ancient wisdom with cutting-edge science to revolutionize the wellness drink industry. In this episode, Dr. Angela emphasizes the importance of a balanced diet and the role of minerals in maintaining good health. She also shares how they made their beverages to be delicious while ensuring they are crafted with a variety of natural ingredients and minerals.

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Ring In The New Year With Health, Sustainability, And Innovation Through Chinese Medicine Formulations With Dr. Angela Zeng

Envisioning The Future Of Food With Karviva’s Pioneering Approach To Wellness

It’s a pleasure to be here again. What a joy to learn from great experts that come on this show. It’s very exciting. We have Angela Zeng here. Welcome to the show, Angela.

Thanks for having me here. It’s truly an honor, beyond your show, sharing my experience, my cultural heritage, and my entrepreneurial journey with your audience.

Introducing Dr. Angela Zeng

It’s very lovely. Maybe you can take us through your own journey, how you began, what were the roads that you took to lead you to what we’ll be talking about.

People always get very curious, why did you start Karviva? The brand is formerly known as Karuna. Karuna is an ancient word from Indian origin. Basically, it comes from Buddhism and means compassion. It’s one of the four foundations for happiness and longevity. I think it’s pretty easy for people to understand, without compassion. Compassion toward ourselves, our own health, our own heart. Compassion for your family, your friends, your community. Compassion for other living creatures, as well as for Mother Nature. Without those, obviously, one can have lots of wealth but may never have true happiness. That’s the ancient belief, and it still holds true.

I started this brand in 2017. I began building my little facility in St. Louis, Missouri, in 2016. People think it was totally an outlier because I’m not the typical entrepreneur you would meet in the food and beverage field. I come from the medical research field. I have my business training, and I also worked in pharmaceutical business development for years. However, it’s not like some young girl saying, “I have this celiac disease,” or “My kids have issues.” Obviously, I want my family to eat and drink clean food. However, while that’s my incentive, my main incentive was out of my passion to empower people to reconnect with their true root of good health, which is actually Mother Nature. I will explain more about it. I like to call myself a purposely displaced scientist.

Since I was little, I just loved traditional Chinese medicine. I have deep family roots in that field. I call it the ancient healing arts. It’s definitely not in the front of the lens of modern medical science. There is no so-called rigorous clinical study to support lots of traditional remedies’ uses, but through years, thousands of years, and many of them probably beyond thousands of years of use and practice, and the knowledge accumulated from generation to generation, they work.

The empirical knowledge is quite important as well. Even in regular physics, empirical experience and knowledge are important, very important.

Well said. I think science is a word that we humans invented because we are, by nature, very curious. We want to study the nature around us. We like to drill deeper, for example, in medical science, at the molecular level, at the atomic level. What’s going on? Which is great. Even in the current clinical study criteria, if you look at how they judge whether a pharmaceutical compound is effective or not, the simple thing is whether it works. There are many points you have to measure, but that is actually very in line with, and consistent with, traditional wisdom. The healing practice for a really good traditional Chinese doctor or Eastern medicine doctor involves observing the patient carefully and tweaking the remedies or treatment recommendations based on outcomes.

It’s never, “This is the remedy used for years, therefore, you should be using it.” It’s always tailored to an individual person’s needs. That actually comes to what I would say is the essence of Karviva’s philosophy. It’s mentioned in this compassion and self-awareness. It’s like a constant mindfulness practice. It’s about understanding your body, what your body is trying to tell you. Nowadays, there are so many digital tools we can rely on, but your body will never cheat you. If there’s a pain around your joints, there’s something going on there. The fundamental difference between a painkiller and a natural remedy or regimen is this, the painkiller is like when there’s a theft or something going on in your house.

The alarm is beeping. The painkiller is like, “Let’s just pull the alarm device out. Shut off that annoying beeping sound.” Versus the traditional Eastern healing wisdom, which is, “Let’s find out what is going on. What is the fundamental cause of this beeping sound? Let’s solve that, and then that beeping sound will go away.” Hopefully, this is clear enough. Basically, I came up with this idea, not like suddenly overnight I saw someone make lots of money because they started a beverage brand and got acquired, blah, blah, blah. That’s the typical path people like to follow. For me, it’s like, we have this amazing knowledge I inherited. I was fortunate enough to inherit it, and I love it.

I have years of medical research knowledge. How could I combine them together to help people beyond just my family circle, my friends? They love the things I’ve made. Can I just use it as a spark or something to stimulate their thinking? I know I’m little, a small business. However, for the industry or for the shoppers I serve, I want them to think about the message behind Karviva. I think that’s very important. The food and beverage industry, things I will say dated back to the 50s and 60s, we started to see heavily processed food and drinks being launched to the market. We started to see people’s health deteriorate. That’s just undeniable.

When I was in pharmaceuticals doing my business development work, one thing I was shocked to see back then was there were so many amazing products in the pipeline, new treatment methods, diagnostic tools. However, the outcome, in terms of public health, was not like, “People are getting all cured and have really high life quality.” It’s not like that. For me, it was like, there’s something else causing people to get sick, and obviously, that’s the lifestyle. Believe it or not, that’s still a debate even now. I think a couple of days ago, I saw a paper review on a medical review site, basically taking us back to 2010. That’s quite a number of years ago, quite a while ago, that the first scientist raised the concern of ultra-processed food. He is Brazilian. He’s from Brazil. He was brave enough.

They did a study to show ultra-processed food causes lots of health issues. Even until now, I was reading this industry news, Food Navigator. It says the Dietary Guidelines for Americans Association, we have this government body, they just had a meeting in May, less than two months ago. They’re still saying, “There’s no clear evidence to show ultra-processed foods are the direct cause of those chronic diseases.” I don’t want to criticize how they view it, but if you even tell someone walking on the street these days, asking him or her if drinking lots of sugary soda is good for you or not, doesn’t matter if he or she enjoys doing that, they will say, “I know it’s not good.”

Just like back in years ago when the cigarette industry tried their best, suing tons of money with their lobbyists, trying to say smoking can do good things. Obviously, smoking was like a mainstream thing. I say, if you go to China, lots of Asian countries, you still see people smoke. It’s like a social thing, but we know it causes cancer. I would say there’s always this fight in terms of pure profit-driven business practice and the business practice that combines with legit, ethical business practice, and at the same time really with mindfulness practice too, that the shoppers, the consumers you serve, are you truly providing a product or service benefiting them, benefiting their children?

I think that’s something that the large corporations in the food and beverage industry should really listen to. They try their best to change their course, their product development, their product mix to tailor to these needs from a consumer side. Everyone these days demands healthy, better-for-you, affordable food. However, I think, as you know better than I do, it all depends on how the incentives are set for the management team at that time. Also, one hurdle that is really hard for them to overcome, as a large corporation, is you already have all these manufacturer standards, facility, and formulation there. How are you going to change them?

The change is not that easy, especially if you look at how food scientists are trained. Food science is a branch of chemistry. That tells you something, it’s mixing chemical compounds to make food. One thing they really emphasize on, which is really good, is food safety. We should always respect that because safety first, you should never do harm. The second thing, and which is also a core of what food scientists do, is how to make a food and a drink that’s so attractive for you. It’s almost like cocaine. Once you have it, you will keep coming back. I think that part really taps into the ethical territory.

Back then, people could argue there’s no direct evidence that those compounds, those chemicals, will kill you. We know they’re not going to kill you ten minutes after you eat them. However, we know, in the long run, they can cause plenty of harm, including fertility. I think I read research showing that ultra-processed food causes a decline in fertility of just human beings.

Addressing Everybody’s Needs

You have a line of beverages by the name of Karviva. I looked at those ingredients, which, for me, I’m an ingredient list reader. That’s the first thing I do. It’s amazing that even though I do it as a habit, I sometimes can miss things that only later I discover. I have a question for you to begin with. One of the biggest challenges when you create a healthy mix or a healthy beverage is you have a small group of hardcore wellness people who really would like to save time and not stand in front of their blender and make the juice fresh. We’ll talk about that in a second too. Those people will say, “Absolutely no sugar, and if it doesn’t taste good, I don’t care. It’s going to hydrate me. It’s going to make me healthy.”

There’s a much larger group, much larger group, that says, “Got to taste really good,” especially in the United States. Usually, really good means tastes like sugar. I know you’re using monk fruit. How did you balance out the need of the real wellness seekers, and I understand you don’t have any added sugars. You just have natural sugars that come. How do you balance it with the need of the very many who say, “I want it to taste really sweet?” How did you resolve that conflict?

That’s almost like a balance. Life is a balance. Based on the traditional wisdom. Health is a balance of yin and yang. You said it so well. I do have quite a few friends who are the typical health nuts you just mentioned. I have one friend, she would travel with her own packet food. She wouldn’t go out eating in any restaurant unless she’s absolutely sure about what they have there. That’s the extreme group of people. They can drink anything, like wheatgrass juice or whatever, the thing that most people, including myself, cannot drink. I think Whole Foods did a segmentation study that was at least a decade ago. I think Whole Foods did a segmentation study that was at least a decade ago.

There are five segments. You had the core people, just health nuts, and in between, you’ll have the other extreme, which is like, I just don’t care. I just want indulgence. Life is short. I’m going to enjoy my life right now, worry about things later. In the middle, you have a whole spectrum of people. People who can tolerate a little bit unpleasant things, but not like yucky green juice out of the ground. People can use more demanding, not to the extent sweet smoothies from Smoothie King, but in between. For me, it’s a fine balance tailored to this group. I can tell you the health nuts, I do see those people, they’re going to go out of, basically, it’s like most people, including myself, don’t have the time or patience to do your own home cooking or blending your own smoothie multiple times a day.

Most people just either cannot afford to do that or don’t have the time to do that. For me, it’s that convenience combined with health functionality and with reasonably good taste. I think our taste buds, not most of the American consumers, when I first started, it is true, especially in the region I am in, their taste buds are trained by sodas, by popcorns, by whatever, those Cheetos, those chips, those kinds of things. It is true. It is really hard to please them, I have to tell you. Throughout the year, I tried my best to adjust my formulation, the cooking methods, how I blend the ingredients, the ratio, all those things to tailor to their needs.

On the other hand, I do see there’s a growing group of consumers that actually don’t prefer super sweet drinks, super salty food. I even see that in this region, which is great because I think there are plenty of studies to show you can retrain your taste buds in actually about less than two weeks. It’s like if you want to train, for example, your client or kids to eat a little bit cleaner, healthier, their taste buds can be changed, but just need a little bit of patience. On the other side, monk fruit has been traditionally used as a natural sweetener. The other thing good about monk fruit is it also has tons of health benefits. From the traditional herbal signs, it is used for treating lots of respiratory issues.

Modern science shows it contains natural compounds, like even having anti-cancer activities. The real monk fruit. It’s really good. However, I have to say, and I’ll be happy to send you some of my drinks for you to try, my drink is never going to be as sweet as, for example, if you get super sweet drinks from Smoothie King or even Starbucks. They have plenty of sweet drinks. I’m okay with that because I know my target customers, they don’t want that sweetness.

Reconciling Ancient And Modern

I belong to that narrow band of health nut. I don’t care about the taste as much, just give me the health benefits. There is also the discussion you’ve already touched upon. Some purists would say, I’d rather buy the ingredients, use my own juicer, my own blender. I know exactly what’s in there. However, the matter of us being very busy, sometimes we travel, and there is the convenience of having it ready. How do you overcome the freshness issue? If somebody makes it in their kitchen, it’s recommended that you drink it on the same day. Obviously, something has to be put in, so it has a shelf life. How do you reconcile that something with the purity?

You hit actually a really important point. The shelf life is actually one of the drivers for the industry to come up with ultra-processed food because you imagine food made with lots of extras, compounds. They can be shelf-stable. I think someone made a joke that you can put McDonald’s hamburgers on the street for days, it won’t go bad. I didn’t do that experiment, so I don’t know. You can use Coke to clean your toilet. I’ve heard enough, saw enough video about that. On the other side, I think the thing is about the ancient wisdom. The wisdom we inherit from, people forget about that because we have so many tools we can use. We have a refrigerator, we have a microwave. What do they do?

Think about this. The refrigerator made us, the freezer made us into this mentality, like, I suppose just to put these veggies or whatever things I purchased into my fridge, therefore, it can be stored for a long time. The microwave is okay, I’ll just put this food in there for one minute, I have a meal cooked. Have you ever thought about for millions of years, we never ever had those tools, but humans are smart enough to invent methods to preserve food naturally without using chemical compounds? I can give you one example that I do every day, for example, herbal remedies. Food as medicine is actually a big core part of traditional Chinese medicine.

We actually have this so-called food therapy thing, using natural foods to prevent disease or to help you heal, to feel better. For those herbal remedies, some of them, the cooking process takes weeks, it’s amazing. This natural process actually not only helps to solve this potential pathogen-caused foodborne disease issue because obviously, there’s always arguments about, you have people always say, you can never cook any food because you’re going to destroy all the nutrients, the enzymes. However, this is the culture I’m raised in, and you can always spend days arguing about that. Especially for ladies, for our body type, the best way is always to eat cooked food, including veggies.

The reason is, we want to do everything to preserve our digestive qi. Qi means energy. Think about that, for thousands of years, our healing practice has put digestive health at the center of all the health practices. It’s being recognized and confirmed by modern medicine. It actually doesn’t take much for even little kids to understand. Without a strong, good digestive system, you can spend thousands of dollars each month to buy the best organic food from the best place you can find. Your body cannot utilize them. It’s just that simple. We believe when we age and when we don’t treat ourselves with good compassion, including too much stress, our digestive system will decline, eventually deteriorate. That’s part of the natural aging process.

Eastern healing medicine is obsessed with longevity. It’s probably because we were ruled by so many kings and empires. They didn’t want to die, they wanted to live forever. There’s always this drive to find something to make them live forever. Basically, it’s like if your digestive system is strong, even when you’re getting old, you still have the energy to move around, and you can still be healthy, and you can live longer. And that’s true. If you go to Japan, if you go to obviously the Mediterranean region like Italy, Greece, you find plenty of good examples of that. It’s not about following extreme diets. It’s about balanced diets, good nutrition, and diversified food sources. It’s never about eating just cabbage, potatoes, apples, or whatever every day. It’s about eating different things.

You cook with different spices, different veggies, seasonal veggies, fruits, all those things. Nobody actually ever excluded whole grains. If you really go into it, because I’m also into the food heritage history, there’s always tribes. For example, even these days in Africa, in Iceland, they have very little access to green vegetables or fruits. Their main diet source is animal meats, milk, or those kinds of things. They have a different system because it’s like our genes, any of our genes can be turned on and turned off anytime. It depends on your environment, what factors you’re exposed to, whether you’re totally stressed out, whether you live in the city, in a village, different climates, your body will adapt.

The other thing is those, like people understand probiotics, is those good bacteria. There are millions of strains living in our body. The thing is, if you feed them different types of natural food, you’re actually cultivating a very healthy, balanced, all kinds of different strains unique for your own needs. I think that’s the thing. Going back, is there a way that you can make food, make drinks, that can have a pretty long shelf life? It is true, my drinks are not cold-pressed. I think cold-pressed juice has its advantages and also has its shortcomings. Advantages, it is true, it preserves vitamin C much better, it is true. I don’t know about the enzyme because here’s the thing, if you really worry about the natural enzyme from the fruits, from the veggies, then you should just eat the fresh thing.

Maybe you can steam-cook them briefly, or there are different cooking methods you can use, or you can just eat it as a healthy salad. That’s totally fine if your body is okay with that. The enzyme usually cannot be stored in that condition for that long. When I was in biochemistry, most of the enzymes we used in the laboratory setting required being put in a freezer, there are certain requirements to handle them. I’m just saying most of the vitamins, they are stable. Most of the nutrients, they are stable. Certain nutrients, for example, vitamin A, vitamin E, like beta-carotene, and lycopene in tomatoes, you actually need to cook them so your body can absorb them well.

I think it’s actually not so good to mislead consumers about, you have to cook, you don’t have to cook. I think we have to treat each individual as a unique body. Also, your body can change from day to day, like I mentioned. Someday, you might be craving fresh salad. Someday, you might be craving warm soup. In winter, you might just want some nice slow-cooking food. It all depends on if we really tune into ourselves, listen to what our body tries to tell us. I think that’s the same. Instead of going on social media or just following influencers or celebrities saying, I’m going to do this, low-carb or no-carb diet, keto, not really good for everyone. Again, I don’t know whether I answered your question.

Shelf Life

I just want to go back to the notion of shelf life. From what I understand, you’re saying that the process of cooking is already a shelf-life creator for a certain amount of time. What is the typical shelf life of one of your drinks?

Here’s the thing, the shelf life for our juices is one year. You need the proper cooking process. You don’t want to overcook them. The other thing is, you need to remove the air, remove the oxygen to preserve the natural antioxidants in the juice. Those things you’ve got to do. You need to have the naturally lower pH. pH, for example, like lemon. There’s also what I find through my practice and experience, there are lots of natural compounds in lots of spices, natural foods. They are actually natural preservatives. For example, turmeric, some compounds from black sesame seeds. I think there are research studies, there are two science studies to show this compound in sesame seeds is a natural preservative and extends shelf life as well.

For me, watching those three things can extend the shelf life. Without, I have to say, I do like to cook everything, again, it’s my culture. Training is what we believe. We like to cook everything. I think it’s coming from, in the old days, that’s a way to ensure food safety. Another way, like I mentioned, some remedies require a week or more than a week of processing time. We have this very complex process, like you have to cook, steam it, put it under the sunlight, dry it, steam it again. That process actually releases the natural active compounds from those plant cells.

I can strengthen what you say with a very simple example, soups. Soups are considered, in most cultures, very helpful, you combine a lot of very good elements. People love to talk about broth, including bone broth. This actually supports what you say about cooking.

It’s so easy on our digestive tract. Your digestive system doesn’t have to do that cooking process, you do that for your body.

There is more and more science showing that a lot of foods are better off cooked, especially for many people who have certain gut issues. That’s good. When you open a bottle and you take a sip, should you refrigerate the rest? Should you finish it on the same day?

I finish a bottle, that’s my lifeline. That’s a common question we get asked. If you don’t want to finish the whole bottle, we say, you need to put it back in the fridge. During the pandemic, we had some issues with one of our sealers in our cap supplies because it was just a disaster. The package can be handled well if they pack them well on a pallet, ship them to the distributor, then to the store. If you just ship them to Amazon and then they ship them to individual shoppers, then they close the bags or the package around. Once that seal gets damaged, things can go bad really quickly. That’s something I always tell people. We don’t add any preservatives there. It will turn bad really quickly. It will. I’m like, if you cannot drink it within a day, put it in the fridge. Don’t ever leave them under the sun or on a hot day. In your room, just leave it out.

I personally did experiments. There are laboratory shelf-test experiments as well. Myself, because I personally don’t like to drink anything cold, just a habit, I just always leave the drink. If I need it this morning, I put the bottle out on my counter, let it warm up during the night, and I drink the whole bottle the second day, and they are fine. Our whole-plant smoothie, the shelf life is six months. They are also cooked, but they are more dense. Their natural pH is higher because they don’t have that many fruits inside, many whole grains and seeds. That doesn’t have that long shelf life. It’s not shelf stable. That requires refrigeration of the pipes.

Vitamins And Minerals

It sounds to me that the size of the bottles is very manageable for most people to finish right there, either on the spot or within maybe twenty minutes or something like this. I also have to mention that the issue of potassium is overlooked by a lot of people. People talk about protein. People talk about the macronutrients. Potassium is not that easy to obtain. Many things you can take in a pill, even vitamin C, there are many grades of what you can take. I’m not going to go into that.

Potassium, by and large, is obtainable from fruits and veggies mostly, and it’s present in chicken and whatever, all of those things. I noticed that one of your drinks, I don’t remember which, I think the green one, has, in one little bottle, 450 milligrams of potassium. We are supposed to, in an ideal world, all consume, some people say as much as 7,000 a day, depending on your size. I don’t think that you and I are the same size, but, or at least 4,000. To get 450 from a little bottle, that is not a bad thing.

I do believe we need to go with nutrient-dense whole foods. The other thing is, I like to use sprouts. Because think about sprouts, seeds, most people don’t think deeply about seeds, why seeds are so good, like whole grains and seeds are so good for us. It’s because the seeds contain so much nutrients and life power because it’s supposed to give a new life. It has that much power, with the right conditions, temperature, water, it will germinate into a whole baby plant and then start to grow. Sprouts are extremely nutrient-dense, very rich in water. That’s why it’s really hard to handle sprouts. You can’t find cheap sprouts on the market and create a food safety code. The sprout farms have to use preservatives, so basically bleach, to treat them before they release them to the supply chain. Also, it’s about really being mindful in terms of what ingredients you use.

This goes back to traditional Chinese medicine. It’s about the food synergy, it’s about the ratio, the formulation, it’s about what ingredients you’ll combine. It’s never about compiling a laundry list of the superfoods you can Google search, what are trendy, and throwing a bunch of stuff all together, it’s never about that. The other thing, you hit an important point, is the mineral. We are so nutrient-deficient, we are never calorie-deficient. People in this country are like, “It doesn’t matter. You can get enough calorie intake even by eating lots of junk food.” Pizza itself, or drinking a milk smoothie, that’s probably enough for a whole day’s calorie needs just to survive. However, most people here are nutrient-deficient, because even fresh produce grown from the ground is very different than what we had 100 years ago.

The other thing is, lots of people focus on protein, focus on low sugar, and fats. They don’t know, because there are so many minerals. Minerals are especially important because many of them are the co-factors of the natural biological reactions in our cells. Iron is a thing. Lots of people think, “I don’t have anemia.” You could have a low iron level, and that’s enough to give you energy trouble because iron is needed for energy generation inside mitochondria. Lots of people may not know that copper is needed too. Potassium is so important to regulate everyday, every minute, cell function. It balances out sodium, it prevents our body from retaining water. People can feel like, “How come my leg is always swollen in the afternoon?”

There are many things you probably want to check out, whether you have a heart problem, whether you have kidney issues, or it could be you’re just low in potassium. Many ladies don’t even know this mineral. We call it, in the tradition of Chinese medicine, and even in India, very Yin in nature. It’s very nourishing to females. It’s very important for our reproductive hormones, all those hormone balances, those things. Unfortunately, not many people know about it. That’s something very lacking in processed food sources. You can never get that stuff from just eating pizza, hamburgers, or potato chips.

Definitely, for the vast majority of people, if you take a swig or finish a bottle like this, or two a day, it’ll be a major upgrade from what you normally do. Even for the pure eating people, it’s a time-saving mechanism. By the way, do you guys make the other drinks, the juices, the bottles, or do you have some other products as well?

I personally make my own healthy snacks, but I cannot do that in my facility because that needs to be certified and approved by the FDA. It’s a totally different requirement. I just don’t have the bandwidth to handle that. It might take a little bit of time. Again, like we’re trained by the microwave, we have the microwave culture, we have no patience. We are further trained by the devices, the short videos, people only have three seconds.

Main Drinks And Ingredients

By the way, the notion of microwaving is a real mystery to me because I think there are enough studies showing that you should absolutely boot the microwave out of your home and spend a minute heating it on a pan or something like this. Anyway, very recent research, really from a few months ago, is showing that this supports everything you’re saying too, that our magnesium requirements are actually much higher than was believed to be. Once again, minerals. All of this works together. I know it sounds almost a little bit silly, but just for information, maybe you can run through the main drinks and what they do.

I grouped them. My core ones are the detox. I call them detox because of mung bean sprouts. I love mung beans. Mung beans are one of the core foods, we love so many whole grains, but mung beans have a special place in traditional Chinese medicine. It’s actually a natural food, it’s safe. We have lots of ingredients that are safe enough for daily consumption without side effects. There are herbal herbs, medicinal herbs, that you need to be very cautious in terms of how you use them. Mung beans, scientifically speaking, contain two natural compounds. They actually chelate the toxic chemicals, and they have this property. Imagine this as a biophysic interaction, they help your body eliminate those chemicals because we are just exposed to so many toxins.

In the old days, we were, but now it’s probably quadrupled or ten times or a hundred times more, I can’t count, because there are so many man-made chemicals everywhere, which are foreign objects to ourselves. We were never exposed to those chemicals, we just suddenly have them. The immune cells and all those cells, including the good bacteria living in our guts, in our body, are like, “Shocked! What do we do with them? We never recognize them.” That’s why we have this chronic inflammation. Detox is important, but I never like those juice cleanses where they say, “Just drink six bottles, seven bottles of juice,” because that’s not good.

For me, it’s like you need to do this daily gentle detox. It’s basically removing the toxins from your body. At the same time, you should not starve yourself of the good nutrients. You should still take enough protein, veggies or fruits, whole grains, eat a regular meal, but at the same time, you want to detox. I love mung beans. You’ll see the green bottles. I use lots of sprouts, and then I have the immunity drink. This is really for marketing reasons. I have to find one core word I can use on a bottle. I say immunity, but, for example, my Rejuvenate, that’s the goji berry mixed with mango. That’s actually an ancient remedy. It’s like a beauty tonic. It’s really good for eye health.

Goji berry is well known for boosting immunity, but it’s also great for our eyesight because of the natural compounds. At the same time, you need to know where you source that goji berry because, again, the climate, especially the soil condition, matters. If the soil is particularly rich in certain types of minerals, that’s so important. I have the Viva. Viva is the ashitaba with pomegranate and cherry. Ashitaba, I highly recommend that. Unfortunately, we cannot grow it in this country. The seeds somehow just can never germinate here. It doesn’t like our climate. It’s only from Japan. Even in Indonesia, they have places where you can grow it, but it combines the best you can imagine from both the sea, the ocean, and the land. It’s very rich in minerals, fiber, and antioxidants. It’s beyond immunity.

My Joy-D has natural vitamin D. It’s a high-vitamin D mushroom. That mushroom is from California. It’s really simple. They just expose the button mushrooms to sunlight. I’m sure you know, the mushroom has this ability to basically make vitamin D, not D3, D2, but there’s research to show our body can still utilize it. Again, vitamin D is important for immunity, but it’s also important for many other cell processes and physical functions in our body. I have the smoothie. Smoothie is actually the core foundation of food therapy. It’s about balancing nutrition. We love whole grains, not processed grains, because the outer shell of the whole grain is so important for our health. It’s very rich in certain types of prebiotics.

People are finally starting to understand prebiotics. When I first started, when I went to Expo West, my little booth was surrounded by people because I put the prebiotic sign there. People asked, “What is prebiotic?” I’m so glad people understand now. Prebiotics are basically the feeding food for probiotics, so essential. You cannot just eat one particular prebiotic. You want a whole spectrum of prebiotics. These are different types of fiber. That’s how you have these diverse little good bacteria in your body. It’s not about just having ten. You want a whole group of them. The whole grain’s outer shell is also very rich in minerals. That’s why we like to use whole grains and mix them with seeds and maybe a little bit of fruit. Very nourishing. It’s very balanced. We call it the sweet nature.

There are five flavors in traditional Chinese medicine. The sweet flavor is not about sugar. It’s like, if you chew a piece of rice, it gives you this natural sweetness. That’s very toning. It’s really nourishing for our body. It’s really good for our digestive system. I have the sports recovery drinks because most of us are not football players. We’re not training 6 to 7 hours a day in the field, sweating like crazy. We don’t need that high sodium level. For pro athletes, I understand if they do need to increase their salt intake, but most of us get enough salt from our food sources.

For me, it’s about coming up with a very clean, balanced recovery drink that has collagen, antioxidants, and natural electrolytes, actually just minerals from sesame seeds. Seeds, again, are very rich in minerals. For me, it’s basically a bottle formulation, a food synergy. It’s basically a lifestyle.

I’m going to get these products, and I’m going to test them because, again, a cursory read through the ingredient list and what it contains left me with a very positive impression. It was a good start for me.

Food therapy is amazing. We use so many different things, like lotus seeds. They’re fox nuts. You’re just like, “What are those?” We use them for different reasons, depending on the color. The white color goes into our lung. The white color is also very nourishing for our spleen meridian. The spleen meridian is basically our digestive system, and the liver channel is so important. Many people have this emotional blockage. For example, for ladies of reproductive age, many females in this country suffer from PMS. You’re just like, “That’s actually a very simple fix.” You don’t need hormone therapy. You can simply fix that with eating the right food and doing the right movements. That’s it.

In severe cases, you might need acupuncture therapy, those kinds of things. That’s, again, the purpose of me starting Karviva. I hope to let people think a little bit deeper about their relationship with nature. It’s like, with natural food, are you even taking advantage of the gifts we receive from Mother Nature? How do we use them? Everyone is busy. I also hope the food and beverage industry will really find ways to use natural whole-food ingredients to make convenient food. It’s not about using chemicals to make convenient food. There’s a fundamental difference there.

Healing Through Ancient Wisdom

I don’t watch the commercials on TV because, when I do watch something, you can either watch a streaming service or just run through. Sometimes, if somebody at my house leaves the TV running in the background, and I pass by, the commercials I see are of two kinds. One is fast food, and they never talk about quality or health, they only talk about price. “Can you believe that for $4.95, you can get these fries with a big soda? Amazing.” That’s one.

The next one is some medication. You see people frolicking in the field with their grandchildren, and a voice is reading all the side effects. It’s an unbelievably long list. “You could die, you could get this, you could be,” you got in there. It’s really funny. Half of it is fast foods, based on price only. Half of it.

You said it so well, they are twins. They all come from the chemists. Chemistry is important. Personally, I love chemistry as a science. It’s fascinating. They say it’s human beings always being curious about learning nature, learning about ourselves, learning the universe. On the other hand, I do think pharmaceutical compounds can be life-saving. I’m never against that. The goal is not to get to that stage where you have to pop a pill every day or a dozen pills every day.

It’s also part of the culture. You talked many times during this interview about people not having the patience. We don’t have the patience also because we live with this brick in our hand. People want a quick solution. To pop a pill is a very appealing solution. The fact that they read many side effects in the background, many people don’t even know.

They just look at the people in the field running and having fun. It’s also part of the culture of needing a quick fix, the low attention span, which we all suffer from. I suffer from it more now than I did before. The more I spend time on this, the less my attention span gets. You mentioned before about your family. Can you tell us a little bit about your family, just so that we know you a little better?

Yeah, sure. My family is actually a very interesting story. My dad was born and raised in Indonesia. My grandpa, his father, was from Fujian. That’s the southern part of a town, a little town by the ocean. What happened is, when he was playing on the beach as a little boy, he was kidnapped. Back then, years ago, there were human traffickers, seriously, he was sold to the Philippines first, and then again to Indonesia. He was a hard-working, smart boy, and then he gained the preference of his master and married one of the daughters. That’s my grandma from Indonesia. My dad had this feeling, his connection with China.

After the Second World War, he went back to China. It was hard to feel like he had to build his motherland. It’s like the calling from far away. My mom, she is from the northern part of China. It was a very interesting story. My other grandpa was one of the first accountants who had an accounting education. That was in the 1920s, which is really weird to find such talent. The Japanese, when they first occupied the northern part of China, hired him. He didn’t know, he just worked for them, a good job. At the beginning, everything went pretty well until things started to go downhill, and he was labeled as a traitor. There were lots of interesting stories.

Anyway, my influence, my passion for traditional healing wisdom, comes from two of my close relatives. One is my uncle, the other is my aunt. My uncle is a pan-Indonesian who studied acupuncture using modern neuroscience. I’m a firm believer in how acupuncture can cure impossible diseases that cannot be cured with many modern methods or treatments. My aunt studied herbal medicine focused on women’s health. Women’s health is a big area in traditional Chinese medicine, using more modern tools. When I was little, I visited their labs, and I just loved that kind of stuff. I self-studied many of the herbal remedies, and I ventured into different cultural heritages across the world. It’s not just about the Far East. Every culture has its way, that’s how human beings survived.

We always say the disease is always there, but now we have just lots of modern diseases that our ancestors probably either didn’t live long enough to deal with or didn’t eat the bad food. They had stress, just a different type of stress. People think they were less stressed. I don’t think that’s true. Even in the caveman age, if they were chased by a tiger, that’s big stress. Even a few hundred years ago, people were still stressed about whether they could feed their family or themselves. When there was disease or infection, they could die any minute. It’s different stress, but now we’re just dealing with different things because technology has been evolving so fast, it’s really hard for our human body to catch up.

Episode Wrap-up

Angela, I want to thank you very much for taking your time. I know you are extremely busy. We learned a lot from you. I’m certainly going to get some of these drinks and try them. Once again, thank you so much, and we hope to see you soon.

I really appreciate this opportunity to share my words with you and your followers.

Thank you. Bye-bye.

Bye.

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About Angela Zeng

As the visionary founder of Karviva Beverages, Angela Zeng has revolutionized the wellness beverage industry by marrying the ancient wisdom of Traditional Chinese Medicine with cutting-edge nutritional science.

With an impressive academic foundation in biochemistry, pathology, and an MBA, Angela’s deep-rooted heritage in Traditional Chinese Medicine propelled her to innovate Karviva’s celebrated line of whole plant-based prebiotic smoothies, antioxidant juices, and more.

Each beverage is crafted to support digestive health, immune system strength, clean protein intake, and sustained energy levels.