You know how there are tons of companies out there that you can be a consultant for?.. Like:
Jamberry
Usborn
Mary Kay
Younique
I feel like I'm missing a couple other really popular ones, but you get the point.
While these are all really great companies and provide fun and useful things to their customers I NEVER thought I would be a consultant for anything. (PS No offense to anyone who loves these companies. I have several friends who are consultants for them, and they really are great.) I decided if I ever became a consultant for anything then there would be a really good reason and it would be for something important and worth while to me.
Rewind to a few months ago:
My awesome Aunt Kristin invited me to a Thrive Life party at her house and I excitedly accepted the invitation, because 1. I was a cooped up mama who needed to get out of the house for the night, and 2. FOOD. Free food? Samples? I'm there. I didn't even care about Thrive before I got there, but once I tried their amazing food and realized the potential their products in my home, I was IN. I'll save my story about why I became a consultant for a later blog post. For now I'll just explain why I love Thrive Life, the freeze dried food company (not to be confused with the other company, Thrive by Le-Vel, which makes pills and weight loss supplements).
Here's why Thrive is the Best:
1. It's Healthy Food Storage!
Browsing in grocery stores, most food storage products have trans fat, aka partially hydrogenated oils, which is not okay in my home. We are FAR from perfect about eating healthy foods, but trans fat is one line we have drawn and we rarely cross it. So, learning that Thrive foods don't have trans fat is AWESOME!
Most Thrive foods are GMO FREE! Only their soy based products and their instant white rice are not GMO free. That's a whole lot of food you don't have to worry about being genetically modified. Plus, most Thrive foods have a 25 YEAR SHELF LIFE!!!
2. REAL Fruit Snacks!
You can feed your kids real "fruit snacks" with Thrive's Snackies. They are bags of freeze dried fruits, vegetables, and yogurt bites. Other than the yogurt bites and coconut bites (which are freaking amazing) all of the fruits and veggies are whole foods with no added sugar or... anything. My favorites are the grapes!!!!!! I also love the pineapple, corn, and yogurt and coconut bites. It's such a delicious and healthy way to snack. I love that some of the "Snackies" come in pantry and #10 cans as well.
My 2 year old loves the freeze dried peas, corn, strawberries, yogurt bites, and pineapple. I love that I can feed her healthy snacks and that my options are no longer limited to goldfishes and gummy fruit snacks!
3. "Fresher than Fresh."
This is one of Thrive's slogans. Here's how they produce their freeze dried food:
- Their produce is vine ripened.
- The fruits/veggies are picked and flash frozen within 2-4 hours.
- The frozen food is freeze dried, which takes out all the water (freeze dried foods retain about 98% of their nutrients, whereas dehydrated foods only retain about 50% of their nutrients due to the heating process)
- The freeze dried food is packaged and ready to re-hydrate in minutes or eat as is!
Think about the fruits and veggies you buy in the store. Bananas sure as heck aren't vine ripened, and when I get fresh carrots I keep them in my fridge for a few weeks until they go limp and sad, and I inevitably end up throwing some away. I'm sure a lot of the nutrients are gone long before I toss them, though. Most of the spinach I get gets tossed into the trash because if I don't use it right away it goes bad. We all have good intentions, but unless you're a fruit and veggie guru you are probably like me and end up throwing a lot of your money away via fresh foods that go bad before you eat them. I love that with Thrive I am eating super healthy, nutritious foods that I can eat whenever I want, and I'm not wasting any of it because I only use what I need, and the rest is waiting in my pantry for me to eat later!
(Here is a great blog post about Freeze Dried vs Dehydrated food if you're interested in learning a little more)
4. I Can Use This Every Day!
When I went to my aunt's home party I thought, "I can see myself actually using this food in my every day cooking." Typically when you think of "food storage" you think of bulk food sitting in your garage for 20 years, never being touched, because it's for emergencies. I know when my parents cleaned out their home they found lots of food storage just like this. So how do you rotate your food storage effectively?! Thrive solves this problem beautifully because most of their products are not ready-made meals. They are whole foods (without preservatives and nasty additives) that you can use to make foods you already love to eat! You can order some food in 36 pound buckets (like flour and wheat), and you can order in #10 cans, AND you can order in pantry cans, which are something like half the size of #10 cans. Very nice options!
5. You Can Spend LESS on Groceries!
Which brings me to my next point: I can theoretically spend less money when I buy fruits and veggies through Thrive because I always end up throwing some fresh produce away. I haven't done the numbers yet, but I really think this is true. I do get fresh produce when I know we'll eat it, but having a can of freeze dried spinach is so awesome, because I'll throw a little into my meal, and save the rest for another day. Not wasting food is great. Saving money is great too.
6. Building Your Own Home Store!
Have you heard of building your own "home store?" It's a concept I read about in a blog a couple years ago and it intrigued me. You buy and store foods you normally eat so that if you run out of your regular supply, you can go to the "store" in your own home and get what you need. No more having to run to the grocery store for milk and come back with $60 worth of stuff. Building a home store was never really a viable option for me until now. As I mentioned above, Thrive foods have a 25 year shelf life, and a one year shelf life after the can is opened. It's not really an option to have a budget for "food storage" AND "regular groceries" in our finances right now, so I have allocated a portion of our regular grocery money to Thrive foods. This means I use them and eat them almost every day, but I can also count them as part of my "food storage" or at least part of my home store. For example, one day we ran out of milk, which is not great because my daughter loves her milk! I opened my pantry can of instant milk (which actually tastes pretty good!) and whipped up a few cups for her to last until I could get to the grocery store later. I now consider that opened canister of milk to be in my one-year-rotation home store. So convenient!
7. If I Can Do It, You Can Too
If I can do it on our budget, pretty much anyone can. In one of the pamphlets Thrive suggests if you have a $600 grocery budget then you can reallocate $200 to Thrive per month and have $400 for everything else. When I saw that I laughed because our meager grocery budget does not even come close to $600 or even $400. I am so excited that Thrive is still a viable option for our family, even with a small food budget. I definitely have to use Thrive foods in my every day cooking, but honestly it makes life so much easier! No more taking time to wash and chop veggies. No more dealing with frozen chicken that I have to thaw out and then cook. They re-hydrate so fast that using Thrive foods in my meals literally takes minutes! And it's healthy! (I still can't quite get over that part)
If anyone is interested in learning more, ordering, hosting an in-home party (because you really have to experience the food first hand to appreciate it)- call, text, FB message, or email me!!!
If you want to look at their website and/or make an order go through my link HERE (or copy and paste the URL below) because you'll get a better discount than ordering straight through them.
https://www.thrivelife.com/mindypodwys
Oh, and PS if you want to host a party in your home I bring all the food and you get Ah-Mazing host benefits (free and half-off product!!)
I think I'll do a few more blog posts on why I became a consultant, the food storage problems that Thrive solves, and hosting a party in the coming weeks and months. My twins are due in a couple months, so we'll see how that works out! One reason I actually got really excited about Thrive is because I knew once I have the babies I am not going to be able to get out of the house much, and having Thrive foods is really going to save me when that happens!
