MARTIN PYTELA: Hi, everyone. Martin Pytela for Life Enthusiast Podcast. And with me today, Juliano Bonanni.

JULIANO: How are you?

MARTIN: Hi. Great. Nature's Wild Berry. This is my first encounter with Nature's Wild Berry, and it's a totally different thing altogether than what I've ever tried to do, because this is not sold because of nutritional value, but because of its effect. Juliano, welcome to the show.

JULIANO: Thank you so much for having me. I'm ready to go and take off whenever you are. There's just so much to be said about this berry.

MARTIN: Welcome to the show. Now what?

JULIANO: Oh, I'll tell you what. You said that you got this berry from us and it's something different that you've never tried before. Not many people have. This berry is not an additive. A lot of people like to have sugar with their drinks, sugar with their food, and they put it on there. Then they have erythritol and all these other different sugar substitutes.

MARTIN: Right. Monk fruit, stevia, you name it.

JULIANO: Right, exactly. There's so many. But how do you use all these things? You put them in your food. With Nature's Wild Berry, this is something completely different. You don't put this in your food.

MARTIN: No.

JULIANO: You eat it, and then it works on everything. You got a lemon right there. Have you had the berry yet or?

MARTIN: No, I took a slice.

JULIANO: Is it before the berry? And how does it taste?

MARTIN: Sour as hell.

JULIANO: Exactly. Like a normal lemon.

MARTIN: All right, so the experiment begins. While you're explaining the story, I'm going to. Well, I'm going to wash my mouth out.

JULIANO: There you go. So we'd like to just tell everybody, cleanse your palate. Just wash your mouth out a little bit with some water.

MARTIN: Sophisticated. So, okay, so here we have. So I should take. What, wow, two halves. Two.

JULIANO: For the first time users, we like to say two halves.

MARTIN: Okay, so two halves, exactly.

JULIANO: Start chewing, and you chew it with the front of your mouth. And as you're chewing it with the front of your mouth for about just 30 seconds, can you tell me what that flavor tastes like? What would you describe the flavor as if you had to compare it to something else that you had before?

MARTIN: Reminds me of cranberries.

JULIANO: Cranberries. Some people say sourish cranberry, some people say raspberry. Okay, a little bit of raspberry. Basically, it kind of tastes like. Do you kind of get a popcorn texture from it? Yeah, yeah.

MARTIN: Really dry, fluffy popcorn.

JULIANO: Exactly. So what we do is we take the berry, we freeze dry it, but before we freeze dry, we pick it and slice it in half directly on the farm. So everything is manufactured directly on the farm, and then we package it directly on the farm to ensure peak potency. So that's the goal.

MARTIN: Yeah. Where do you grow this?

JULIANO: So it can only be grown in very few places, so right along the equator area. So it has to have a very tropical, humid climate. And our biggest farm is in Miami. Okay, so Miami is a perfect climate because everything grows in Miami. So we grow it in Miami. The berry, as you're chewing it right now, is attaching to your taste buds, and it's linking into your sweet and sour receptors. So it has a glycoprotein that's a sugar protein, and it's sinking into your sour receptors and sweet receptors. And what it's doing is basically increasing your sweet receptors while simultaneously decreasing the size of your sour receptors.

JULIANO: So now when you have a lemon, you don't have the ability to process it through the sour as you normally would. It is the only berry in the world that allows you. It's the only thing in the world that changes your taste buds. And you could say it's magic. A lot of people call it magic berry because it is kind of crazy.

MARTIN: You think I'm ready?

JULIANO: Absolutely. So listen, jump in. What does it taste like?

MARTIN: Orange. Absolutely. Totally nothing like lemon. Tastes like a sweet navel orange, right?

JULIANO: It tastes like a sweet navel orange. So I've been working with this berry since about probably 2012, 2011, right?

MARTIN: Yeah.

JULIANO: And till this day, 2024.

MARTIN: Orange juice. No joke.

JULIANO: It freaks me out. And now listen, a lemon is the best thing because it's so sour. It has such a strong acidity. If you have citric acid, okay. Which obviously is like one of the sourest things. That's what they make warheads from. It will taste like sugar. You can take a little teaspoon of citric acid put in your mouth.

JULIANO: You're like, oh my God, this is sugar.

MARTIN: I just squeezed some lemon juice in my face. And it. Yeah, it's syrupy tasting.

JULIANO: So imagine a lemonade. Okay.

MARTIN: Yeah.

JULIANO: How do you make lemonade?

MARTIN: You take sugar. This would be straight lemon juice, nothing added.

JULIANO: Exactly. So to have a lemonade, one of the best lemonades you can have is just take the berry, squeeze some lemon in there, and the more lemon you squeeze, the sweeter it'll be. So isn't it crazy? So it's not an additive. We call it is an anti-additive because you don't add anything to the food or drinks or anything, right? You just eat it and then for the next 20 to 40 minutes, anything you have will taste delicious. We've had people who said, I hate cranberry, I hate raspberry, I hate tomatoes, grapefruit.

MARTIN: I'm eating this lemon straight up.

JULIANO: And listen, the value of lemon is so incredible. And then if you take it and blend it, just a whole lemon, throw it in the. Just wash it and throw the whole lemon in a blender with some water. Now you're getting all the flavonoids of the peel and all the benefits, because lemon peel is also super successful. I mean, it's super beneficial.

MARTIN: Yeah, yeah.

JULIANO: And the pith is also has a ton of benefits.

MARTIN: Yes. And people don’t get enough of those bioflavonoids.

JULIANO: Exactly.

MARTIN: That’s my wheelhouse.

JULIANO: Exactly. There you go. So the bioflavonoids are usually just thrown away. You're throwing away most of the valuable part of the lemon. I mean, obviously, lemon's great, but you throw it away. But if you take the berry, you blend it up, you make one of the most delicious lemonades with the bioflavonoids, and it tastes like the sweetest, most delicious lemonade you've ever had. No sugar, all benefit, all health.

MARTIN: You're not joking. I'm just cutting it up now as I'm inhaling the lemon juice, it tastes sweet on my palate. Total freak show to me.

JULIANO: Isn't it crazy? So we've had people who have had this, and they freak out, and they're like, oh my gosh, this is a drug. This is crazy. And it's not a drug. It's not anything. It's just science. And also, a lot of things like this you can develop a tolerance for. And you sit there and you're like, oh, well, if I take one berry or two berries now, I develop a tolerance. This is not able to develop a tolerance.

All you need is one to two berry halves. Really just one. It's quite the opposite. When you first do it, you take two halves, and then from there, you just need one. And when you take one half, it’ll give you the exact same effect. A little bit shorter, more like 15 to 25 minutes, as opposed to 20 to 40.

MARTIN: Okay.

JULIANO: And it's incredible. And there's no tolerance developed with this.

MARTIN: Wow.

JULIANO: There's a science behind it because do you see how sweet that tastes? So when we originally made the business, we've had people come to us from departments that deal with diabetes, right? And they like to ask us the question, which when we first made the business, we had no answer to. Since then, we have done the research with. And they ask now, does this since it tastes sweet, deliver the same effects of sugar? Because it does taste sweet. So does this make your body kind of also mimic the effects of sugar while giving you the negative effects that sugar gives you? The answer is, no, it does not.

JULIANO: It does not give you any negative effects of sugar.

MARTIN: There's no glucose rise, right?

JULIANO: There's zero glucose rise. So we work strong with the diabetes community.

MARTIN: That's awesome. Because, of course, most people on the diabetic spectrum will be sugar addicts or starch addicts more than anything, right? They're like donuts, and they like bread and sandwich and pasta, all of that.

JULIANO: So just to jump into how this business even got started, I was just looking on my phone and I saw, working in the restaurant industry my whole life, that's my background. There is a berry that has the ability to change your taste buds. And I didn't believe it. I said, that sounds fake, because if that existed, then there would be a whole movement in showing that.

So I ordered it, I tried it, and it worked. I couldn't believe it. And from there, I introduced it to my business partner and I called him. He didn't answer. He was out of town. He was then my friend, not my business partner, then my friend. And I called him and I said: “Hey, I got these berries. They change your taste buds.”

It's the coolest thing I've ever experienced. When you come back from Florida, I'll show it to you and you can try it. During this time, he didn't even get my message. He called me up about two hours from my call, and he goes, hey, I just saw this thing online, and they made it legal a few years ago. The reason why it was illegal to even sell the berry until about 2012, 2011, is because Pepsi put a stop on it. So Pepsi basically looked at it and goes, this is a huge. It was kind of a conspiracy. And they shut it down.

Since then, they become huge. This was back in the 60s, 70s, and since then, they just stopped putting the muscle on it. So the FDA made it legal. And when that happened, my business partner looked at it and goes: “Hey, this is super cool, maybe we can work with this.” And I said: “ Dude, I already got them. I already called you and I told you about it.” And he said: “I never got your message.” And I go: “Get out of here. Did we find this at the exact same time?” So we found it at the same time he came back from Florida.

MARTIN: Yeah. This is not just some mere coincidence, right? This is the finger of God pointing at the two of you.

JULIANO: I've heard. They say there is no such thing as coincidence. Right. So that's good. And my business partner was about 280 pounds, 270 pounds, right. So he was more overweight, about six foot. So he was more overweight than he would like to be. And when he came back into town, and I'm working the health food industry, mind you, okay.

So when he came back into town, I showed him the berry he. Before he even tried, he goes: “Hey, maybe this berry can help me eat healthy. Because he's doing everything he can to eat healthy, and it's just nothing's working.” Like you said, he was addicted to the sugar and the carbs. He loved Twinkies and donuts and all that stuff. So it was the carb and sugar, and he was very much so on its way to diabetes, right?

MARTIN: Oh, yeah.

JULIANO: So pre-diabetic. And he was like: “Maybe this can help me. So I made him the healthiest smoothie. And I love the way that really gross healthy things taste. I just love it. I kind of was raised on that, so I have an ability to endure it and enjoy it. I made him a smoothie. It was super healthy. It had aloe vera, chlorella, a ton of ginger, kale, just a smorgasbord of some of the healthiest things put in.

MARTIN: The more grass harder it is to take for people who are not used to the taste of grass.

JULIANO: Of grass and dandelion especially. Right?

MARTIN: That's the bitter note, right?

JULIANO: Super bitter is all terrible. I took a sip myself and being a guy who loves healthy things. It tasted disgusting. And I'm like, oh my God. I just, I spent like $80 on this smoothie and it's terrible. Oh my gosh. I'm have to throw this away. It's awful.

JULIANO: So I gave him the berry. I asked him, do you want to try it before the berry? He goes, no, I just want to take the berry and then try it. So he took the berry, he took a sip, and mind you, this is a guy who loves Twinkies and donuts and everything, so he's a very overweight type of guy. He took one sip and he goes, this is delicious. I am, I was 100% confident that he was lying. And I go: “Aah, you're lying. There's no way you're telling the truth.”

He drank the entire Vitamix big, he drank the whole thing. Like 37 ounces! Since then, that was 2011, 2012, he ordered the berry every single day for about a year. During that time, he was able to reduce his weight about 80 pounds because he changed the way that he ate food. And he used the berry every single day from that moment on. He came to me in 2013, 2014, and he goes: “Hey, we need to make this a business. We need to help other people the way that I was helped because I completely changed my life and I want to do something about this.” And my answer to him was: “No, because I was working on four or five other companies and I said, no, you can't Hank. You can't do it. There's just no way.” He kept coming to me, every couple months, he came to me. And by the fourth time he came to me, he goes: “Hey, we need to do something.” And I'm like: “Okay, if you want to do something, you got to Hank.”

You got to keep working every single day. It's hard to make a business. It is. As an entrepreneur yourself, you understand it takes a lot out of you. And I didn't feel like he could do it. He said, test me, and I did. That was in 2014 he said that. Now we're in, this is 10 years ago.

MARTIN: Yeah.

JULIANO: Every single day he's been working his ass off, and that's how we were able to make the business what it is today.

MARTIN: Well, your packaging is pretty neat, by the way. This is probably what this is probably the small intro level size, right?

JULIANO: Exactly. That's a small jar. And we have a jar below that, it’s called the travel jar because you can take it and put it in your pocket and travel with it. And so what we're doing is we're evolving off of that. So now we're having a new package from there that's actually able to be a lot more shelf stable. Because once you freeze dry these berries the way that we do, if you package them correctly, they can keep for about 20 years. I mean, this is like doomsday prepper type of food.

JULIANO: So they're good for about 10 to 20 years.

MARTIN: So you're going to package them like a single serve kind of way or.

JULIANO: So we have this single serving packaging, which is how we've been able to figure out that if you package them correctly, that they can withstand the test of time for so long. And so we patented it too. So as soon as Mandatory figured out how to make it because my biggest issue was why isn't this berry in every single grocery store? You have strawberries, blueberries. If you have something like asparagus and all these random fruits and veggies in the store, why don't you have this berry in the store? This is an incredible thing that can make, that can change the world and change the flavor. It creates an entirely new level of culinary experiences. You can have Chinese, Mexican,

MARTIN: That’s the thing you see. You have this challenge, it's not food. So it's not a berry, it’s not food.

JULIANO: Exactly, exactly. But it allows you to unlock a flavor palette of completely new flavors that you never were able to experience before. And it's like, oh my gosh. So originally we made the product to help people looking to eat better and change their diet. Right. You can call a diet as something temporary, right?

MARTIN: Yes.

JULIANO: So no, we don't want to make a diet. We want to sit there and help you change the way you eat food forever. Long term. That's the goal. So we moved forward with that intention. As we move forward, we realized that this berry, because we did the demo, we did about a thousand, two thousand demos before we even launched the business. In 2017 is when we officially launched. But before then, we did just a ton of demos. Right. We both, me and my business partner and I both quit our jobs. And before we did that, we just demoed it everywhere to make our full-time business. What we found was people would take the berry, do the test, they'd freak out, they'd love it. And then they would do something like smoke a cigarette or they would do something like go to the bar and they go, oh my gosh. Or they would take their medication and they go, oh my gosh. This makes the tobacco taste great or it makes alcohol taste great or it makes their medication taste great. And ultimately what we found was our first big company that ordered from us a huge inventory as soon as we launched was a marijuana company. And not because it makes marijuana taste good, but because their cancer patients. One of the men who owned this marijuana company tried it and he goes, I'm the owner, we sell practically exclusively to cancer patients for our product.

MARTIN: Yeah.

JULIANO: And the cancer patients suffer from something called a metallic taste.

MARTIN: Yeah. People who take the chemo, they're toxic on the inside. They're tasting the toxins on their tongue.

JULIANO: Yeah, exactly. And I wasn't aware of that at all. And apparently for someone like you and I, you have normal taste buds and we're not going through anything like that, it makes sour taste sweet. But for them, when they're going through that metallic flavor, once you chew the berry, it makes the metal not taste metallic, and now you can taste normal.

MARTIN: So you can have something good without some gagging.

JULIANO: Exactly. And when you pair that with marijuana, because marijuana apparently gives them the taste buds back, they get the munchies. So they smoke weed and they're craving to eat, but when they eat, it tastes like sht. So if you have marijuana and then the berry, now you have a craving to eat with the fact that the berry makes the food not taste like sht. Pardon my language. I'm not sure I'm able to cuss. 

MARTIN: I’m just thinking,

JULIANO: So now you have the ability to make the berry, have the food taste normal, and it makes it taste, well, so awesome. So, that was our first interaction with it. From there, we'd really like to capitalize on the fact that the berry helps people with medication. I had a father call me one time, and he said: “I need the berry tonight, please. What can you do?” I was out of town, and I called my business partner. I said: “Can you please give this guy the berry? Drive it over to him.”

He's about 50 minutes away from you, but please, can you drive it over to him immediately? He said he needs it for his daughter. She's crying, she's freaking out. She's going through a medical procedure, and she needs to take this medication, and she doesn't like it. And whatever I can do for my daughter. She was probably about 6 years old, 7 years old, and she took the berry. He got it to her, and it made the biggest difference. And he called me crying. And when you get calls of parents crying that this berry was able to help their children endure the medication and make it taste better, and it's basically giving people a better quality of life.

MARTIN: Yeah. Makes it hard for you to quit the business, huh?

JULIANO: Oh my gosh. It's the biggest motivation ever. If anything's bad, if I wake up, I don't want to work, which I love what I do, but that's the biggest motivation. Absolutely.

MARTIN: So, what do we do? How do we sell this?

JULIANO: So the way I like to look at the berry is the vast difference in abilities that you can do with it. I like to compare it to something like salt, pepper, paprika, a spice. Because when you have a spice in your cupboard, do you use paprika or pepper or cinnamon every single day? No, you don't use it every day. Vanilla extract. You don't use it every day. Flour? No. But you like to keep it in your cupboard because when you do need it, it's fantastic to have available and it's a huge benefit. So I like to see this as something like that where you don't necessarily need to use it every day. I mean, you could. My business partner uses it three, four, five times a day.

MARTIN: Yeah, but I think for anyone who's got starch addiction and needs to drop weight or get rid of their blood glucose problems, they definitely should use this all the time because it will be the bridge that's going to get them from where they are to where they should be.

JULIANO: Exactly. And we've had a ton of people who have. It was incredible at first. It was unbelievable when people would call the business and they would, I answer the phone myself. So when you call the company, it's me or my business partner, we answer the phone and we help you directly. So when we first got the calls of how this berry was incredible and change people's lives and they would cry, it was like, oh my gosh, this is so amazing. And now when we get the call, it's like, good. That's what I was hoping for. That's what I expected. And I'm so glad this is going into the hands of the right people. So it's not only that, but it's also a source of ridiculous fun because we've had other companies come to us and they say: “Hey, we use the berry as a party favor for our company who's basically offers a culinary experience.”

MARTIN: Okay.

JULIANO: So they go, okay, you have all this food and then when you complete the meal, now you're having dessert. So the way that I first use the berry,

MARTIN: We are hallf hour in. So let me just do another taste test.

JULIANO: Tell me how it tastes.

MARTIN: Orange.

JULIANO: Yeah. So about 20, 40 minutes. It's perfect. Yeah. Listen, you sound like you've been in the health food industry for a while. Have you ever heard of Planet Raw or like Juliano The raw Food Guy?

MARTIN: I don't know, but we're one of those.

JULIANO: So perfect. My uncle was kind of one of the pioneers in America and back in the 90s and he revolutionized, he was super, like mainstream and very celebrity driven. And I came to LA and I worked for him when I was 18. And then I found this berry when I was like 20, 21. And that's when I brought it to the business. Because my uncle is a super raw food chef, all vegetarian, vegan. However, what he did use was honey. Now, how do you feel about honey?

MARTIN: Well, it’s sugar.

JULIANO: It's sugar.

MARTIN: In small quantities, it's no big deal. In large quantities, it's a problem.

JULIANO: Exactly. So when you take a look at, this was kind of before. This was early 2010, this is before all the other sugar substitutes were popular. So he was using honey because he was like, there's a lot of health benefits with honey. So instead of vegan, he was like, we're bee-gan. But a lot of people would complain. And I saw that just and I took it upon myself to see that, acknowledge it. And I'm like, well, how about if we deliver a dessert that is vegan completely and sweetened with a lot of super healthy citrus type of items?

MARTIN: Yeah.

JULIANO: And then they had the berry. My goodness, was it the biggest hit!? And everybody loved it. It was huge. So this was kind of like just the beginning of Instagram. So it wasn't really a noteworthy thing to get viral at that point yet.

MARTIN: Yeah, I can imagine that you can make tofu taste like cheesecake with this.

JULIANO: Yes. Listen, especially if you sit there, you take something and you substitute sugar with something like citric acid or lemons or, what is that one? Rhubarb. So a lot of people,

MARTIN: That's the most acidic thing ever.

JULIANO: Exactly. And so rhubarb is like, oh, and they just dump a ton of sugar. Even people with grapefruit, they put sugar on the grapefruit. Rhubarb, grapefruit, it tastes like you've already pre-sugared it. So it tastes like the most incredible thing. We've had people who said, I hate onions, I hate tomatoes. Onions and tomatoes have acidity. Onions taste incredible. Tomatoes taste so sweet. It just tastes like the most incredible thing. So that was a huge turning point for us where we realized not only does the berry make food delicious for people looking to change their diet and change their eating habits, but it also makes food taste great for people just looking to have fun. So the way that we love to look at this is a way for kids to eat healthy, parents to sit there and give their kids. Because a lot of kids, I'm not sure, you're in Canada, right?

MARTIN: Yeah. Personally. Yes.

JULIANO: So I'm not sure how it is in Canada, but in America, a lot of kids love to eat Mac and cheese, quesadillas and silly things like that. Right? Hot dogs. Okay.

MARTIN: All right.

JULIANO: When you have a salad, the kids don't want to eat it. And if you eat a salad, it's drenched in ranch dressing or something like that, and it’s not good for you. Okay. It's like, well, now you're completely basically diminishing the salad aspect of it.

MARTIN: Yeah.

JULIANO: When you introduce the berry and have a dressing that's a lemon, oil, salt, a vinegar, something like that, apple cider vinegar. Now you're introducing, especially with some veggies, now you're introducing something that's actually beneficial to the child.

MARTIN: All right, so to really put it, it will distort anything sour into sweet.

JULIANO: Anything sour, tart, acidic, fermented, or pickled. So those five things.

MARTIN: Which are also sour notes. Okay. Awesome.

JULIANO: Yes.

MARTIN: Yeah. So that's great. So I'm going to go see my grandchildren today, and I'm going to have a time with them. They're going to be having a salad with vinegar dressing. Let's see what happens.

JULIANO: Listen, I had my business partner, his little niece does not like to eat anything healthy. And then the mom was like: “Well let me make you salad.” Because he went there. He goes, I'll make him a salad. Boom. And they take a bite; it's disgusting. I'm not going to eat it. And he pretended. He goes, well, this is a magic berry. It's a super special. It's a wizard berry. So they ate the berry and then they had the salad because he gave them this whole show, right? Smoke and mirrors. And then they took a bite of the salad and they go: “Oh my God, this is incredible.” And they ate the whole salad. And now we got to give them berries all the time to my business partner's sister, for the daughter, because she will not eat anything healthy unless they have the magic wizard berry. And now she's a little older, but guess what? Now she likes the flavor of the salad, normally without the berries. So what it is is kind of a tool to allow you to ease into eating healthy. And it's like, oh, it's not too bad. Okay. It's actually kind of good, and it's actually kind of delicious.

MARTIN: Juliano, this is great. I think, we’ll make this available at Life Enthusiast, and let's just see what happens. May the world beat the path to your door.

JULIANO: Thank you. And now I've heard that you also sell Kava, some of the best Kava in the world.

MARTIN: Yes, we do.

JULIANO: Now, I've heard a lot of people tell me that when you have kava, it's a bit tough to take down when you have the berry. I've also heard that the kava tastes incredible with it, so that's something to have.

MARTIN: Tastes incredible, so.

JULIANO: Yeah, exactly.

MARTIN: I mean, we're in the business of making smoothies, so.

JULIANO: Perfect. Listen, just don't even throw any fruit in there, I hate people when they say, I don't hate people, but I really am hurt when I hear them say: “Oh, I’m juicing.” And they put apples in there or pineapple in there. You don't need to put that in there. Just have the berry.

MARTIN: Awesome.

JULIANO: And now your greens will taste delicious.

MARTIN: Great, Juliano, thank you very much. This is the Nature's Wild Berry, and we will get this to you. Order now, take seven.

JULIANO: And listen, what I want to do is I want to make sure that I give you a bit of a discount on there too, so you can figure it out. Whatever, whatever.

MARTIN: We will have an intro special.

JULIANO: Okay, yeah, I'll make sure I take care of that for you, brother. Because I want to make sure we get everybody the berry.

MARTIN: Yes. Thank you. This is Juliano Bonanni from Nature's Wild Berry and Martin Pytela from Life-Enthusiast.com. Give us a call. We'll help you make your life taste sweet.