24 August/September 2019
Business Spotlight
By Ashleigh VanHouten
“People say protein powder isn’t
Paleo; well, going to a grocery
store isn’t Paleo, either,” says Paleo
Pro co-founder Doug Smith,
laughing. “We always say that the
foundation of health is eating happy
plants and happy animals, but we
aren’t all running around hunting
and gathering in a loincloth, and
sometimes life gets in the way of
eating perfectly. Sometimes our
nutrition options can be limited, so
we wanted to create a product line
that can help people in the modern
world live a cleaner lifestyle.”
Smith says he’s always been
physically active and enjoyed chasing
adventure, but it wasn’t until college
that he started realizing the power of
food. Later, while he was recovering
from a serious car accident, the effects
of nutrition on inflammation and
healing became even more clear
to him.
In February 2012, Smith was
on a ski trip in Kyrgyzstan when
he was involved in a car accident
that resulted in a broken spine,
ribs, and shoulder. He had to
be medevacked to Dubai before
returning to California to recover.
“This is what really turned me on to
ancestral eating, because I realized
that the wrong foods can be really
inflammatory and hinder the healing
process,” he says. Fortunately, he
recovered and was thereby inspired
to create healthy products for fellow
health-minded adventurers.Before the accident, Smith had started a company called True Protein
(now called True Nutrition) that allowed clients to customize their protein
powder. He expanded his business, working as a contract manufacturer for
other supplement companies, eventually deciding to develop his own brand
with a more ancestral approach. Thus began Paleo Pro in 2014, which he co-
founded with Bill Fitzsimmons and Dante Trudel. The new company started
with a protein powder using grass-fed, pastured beef protein as well as egg-
white protein; it has since expanded to offer bone-broth collagen powder with
turmeric, greens powder, recovery powder made with sweet potato and egg
protein, fish oil, and vitamin D, among other products.
The Paleo Pro team aims to provide convenient supplements that are as
close to real food as possible, without soy, lactose, gluten, added hormones
or antibiotics, or harmful chemical processing. Their fish oil, for example, is
sourced from a small and tightly controlled fishery in South America. They use
only small fish because the larger and longer-living fish accumulate more toxins
and metals in their tissues.
Paleo Pro’s bone-broth collagen is made with beef from Sweden that
is 100 percent grass-fed and pasture-raised, and
they use non-GMO eggs from humanely raised
chickens for their egg protein. To develop their
protein formulas, they essentially boil down the
meat into a stew until the muscle fibers break
down; then they spray the resulting broth
through a high-pressure nozzle into a heat
tunnel. The nozzle vaporizes the mixture into
droplets, which are instantly dried into powder
particles. The outcome is a high-protein,We always say that the foundation of
health is eating happy plants and happy
animals, but we aren’t all running around
hunting and gathering in a loincloth
“
“
- paleo pro co-founder doug smith