When not camped out at his Malibu outpost, Olien might be found backpacking through the most remote regions of the Himalayas or combing the Amazonian forests for exotic palm fruits that most of us have never tasted.<\/p>\n
His goal: To uncover the most nutritious and underutilised plants in nature.<\/p>\n
Just a Small-Town Kid<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
You might think that the world\u2019s first \u2014 and possibly only \u2014 superfood hunter grew up the child of bohemian artists where a gypsy-style life of yurts and village-hopping might have been\u00a0de rigueur.<\/p>\n
But Olien grew up in a small farm town in Minnesota, the son of an agriculture professor at the University of Minnesota\u2019s extension school.<\/p>\n
\u201cPicking beans, throwing hay bales \u2014 that was my childhood,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
As a kid, Olien wanted to be a veterinarian, and then a cowboy, because his cousins were ranchers.<\/p>\n
It was a football injury in college, and subsequent depression, that steered Olien to a career in health and wellness.<\/p>\n
With an undergraduate degree in physiology and nutrition and a master\u2019s in psychology, Olien delved into functional foods and supplements after college, but felt frustrated by what he saw out there \u2014 poor-quality products that weren\u2019t being sourced properly, and often misunderstood and used improperly, he says.<\/p>\n
It was then that he decided to return to his farming roots.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe lightbulb went off: I needed to go meet the farmers. Superfood-hunting didn\u2019t come out of a sexy idea. It came innocently from this blue-collar kid who needed to go meet the farmers and understand \u2026 how are they growing this ancient plant, how are they preparing it, how are they using it, and what\u2019s the quality of it?\u201d<\/p>\n
If It\u2019s Not Sustainable, It\u2019s Not Worth It<\/h2>\n
For Olien, nutrition is only part of the story.\u00a0\u201cMy life is the environment, health, planet, and people,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Though it\u2019s the lure of a nutrient-dense superfood that brings him to a remote village halfway across the globe, it\u2019s the farmers and planet he truly wants to invest in.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow do you help these farmers create a sustainable business and better life, and protect their land from industrialisation at the same time?\u201d he asks rhetorically.<\/p>\n
Without showing up and understanding where you\u2019re sourcing your ingredients from, you have no idea what the challenges are \u2014 economically, environmentally, and socially.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s seen farmers without clean water, soil contaminated from mining, and middlemen leaving farmers without enough profits to care for their land.<\/p>\n
Only by first-hand knowledge, he says, can you really understand the real impact you\u2019re having on people and the planet.<\/p>\n
This, he says, is the story he likes to tell of Shakeology.<\/p>\n
During those early years of global foraging, Olien decided he would formulate his own supplement, one that would help people get more of the nutrients their diets are often missing.<\/p>\n
But, says Olien, no one was willing to pay for the formula he wanted to make until his friend put him in touch with Isabelle and Carl Daikeler at Beachbody.<\/p>\n
\u201cCarl said, \u2018Don\u2019t worry about cost. We\u2019re not going to compromise on this formula,’\u201d remembers Olien.<\/p>\n
When\u00a0Isabelle, co-creator of Shakeology,<\/strong>\u00a0and Olien put their heads together on what was to become Shakeology, they were shocked by how alike their vision was.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a formulation marriage, where we were totally in sync,\u201d recalls Olien. \u201cWe\u2019ve never, ever once to this day argued or had a different idea than the other on what we needed to do.\u201d<\/p>\n It probably comes as no shock that Olien, a self-described environmental activist, follows a strictly vegan diet; but you might be surprised that when doling out nutrition advice, Olien won\u2019t tell you to give up meat (though he\u2019s certainly not against it).<\/p>\n Instead, he advocates for diversifying your diet with as many plants as possible.<\/p>\n Superfoods, he says, are a way to deliver an extra-potent amount of nutrients that help keep us healthy and resilient.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re under a chronic state of stress all the time that\u2019s not letting go,\u201d Olien says.<\/p>\n Today\u2019s fast-paced lifestyle, combined with a love for modern-day conveniences like fast food, can leave us more and more nutrient-deprived, he explains.<\/p>\n Shakeology, he says, provides a safety net to help counterbalance these nutrient gaps. According to Olien, even he is susceptible to the always-on nature of modern life.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re always in this \u2018get this done\u2019 mode, riding this adrenaline-fatiguing road, caffeine-stimulated need to produce all the time \u2014 and I\u2019m very good at it. So, for me, I have to always practice stepping back,\u201d he explains, which involves meditating or visualising three to four times a day.<\/p>\n Olien is just as intentional with his diet as he is with his mindfulness practice.\u00a0\u201cI\u2019m kind of ridiculously controlling about my food,\u201d he confesses. \u201cIt\u2019s pretty simple: smoothies, elixir-type drinks, salads with nuts and tempeh kind of thing.\u201d<\/p>\n He starts his day with Shakeology, which lately he likes to blend with frozen blueberries and a little bit of water to make a nice cream, with more fruit and nuts on top.<\/p>\n Though his diet may sound austere, Olien swears it is anything but.<\/p>\n \u201cThat little Shakeology ice cream I make? I\u2019m in ecstasy. Maybe put some coconut yogurt on top of that stuff. Like, come on, does it get any better?\u201d he says emphatically.<\/p>\n As he describes his air-popped popcorn with coconut oil and algae flakes, paired with kombucha \u2014 \u201cthe perfect finisher to the day\u201d \u2014 you see just how passionate this man is about his food, and the people and places he sources it from.<\/p>\n \u201cIf I could take what I\u2019ve experienced in my being and in my body, and somehow share that, you would never look at the Shakeology ingredient list the same,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Note: This article is intended for our U.K. audience. Click here for the U.S. version. \u201cI\u2019m not in Mongolia. I\u2019m on the outskirts of Malibu in my private yurt. And that\u2019s me in a nutshell,\u201d says Darin Olien, superfood hunter and co-creator of Beachbody\u2019s superfood nutrition shake,\u00a0Shakeology. When not camped out at his Malibu outpost, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3605,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fitness"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movewithnicole.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movewithnicole.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movewithnicole.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movewithnicole.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movewithnicole.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3604"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/movewithnicole.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3604\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3606,"href":"https:\/\/movewithnicole.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3604\/revisions\/3606"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movewithnicole.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movewithnicole.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movewithnicole.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movewithnicole.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Shakeology](\"https:\/\/bod-blog-assets.prod.cd.beachbodyondemand.com\/bod-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/What-High-Quality-Ingredients-Mean-to-Shakeology.600.jpg\" "\\"\\"")
<\/p>\nWhy Shakeology?<\/h2>\n
\u201cI\u2019m Ridiculously Controlling\u201d<\/h2>\n
![\"Darin](\"https:\/\/bod-blog-assets.prod.cd.beachbodyondemand.com\/bod-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Darren.Bhutan.600.jpg\" "\\"\\"")
<\/p>\n