Delicious food that makes you happy
BY ANJA FAHS
Our food lays the foundation stone for the energy in our bodies, for our health and our well-being. What we eat influences our lives, our careers, even our relationships and family and beyond that, how we feel. In short, our food influences every part of our lives – and our minds.
Two young American women are pursuing this life concept with their ‘Sakara Life’, business enterprise. It is about simplicity in all areas of life, and especially in those related to food. Whitney Tingle and Danielle DuBoise want to put fresh, natural and healthy products on the table that are lovingly prepared as tasty, colourful meals – and they only use ingredients rich in nutrients and vitamins. Their philosophy is centred on making the right choice about what you eat, and not because you have to, but because it tastes fantastic, is fun and healthy. But it’s not just about eating a balanced diet; it’s about living a happy and healthy life.
Sakara Life is a delivery service that brings pre-prepared, unbelievably tasty organic meals to your home, or straight to your desk in your office. Every dish is lovingly put together, professionally prepared and provides the optimum level of nutrients, vitamins and minerals. There’s no need to think about shopping, cooking and selecting the right food any more. Sakara Life offers a healthy lifestyle delivered directly to your kitchen. The program begins with three meals per day, supplemented with special water for mornings and evenings, healthy teas and detox drinks. The program can also be extended at your discretion, to include finished products such as salad dressings, snacks, muesli or energy bars for example, all available through the online shop.
“We believe in a vegetarian diet with healthy, nutritional, organic products. We do not believe you should starve, feel guilty for eating a bar of chocolate, or count calories”, explained Whitney. “We believe that we feel more attractive when we eat healthy food. Of course we drink a glass of champagne with brunch and crave dark chocolate. It’s all to do with feeling happy and good in your body”. And you will certainly be happy if you eat these meals. It doesn’t matter whether you begin the day with a chocolate or super-food muesli, both are healthy and full of vitamins and minerals, and a ‘Morning Water’ with fruit extracts accompanies them. Dishes such as pumpkin soup with ginger and miso, or fresh colourful salads with a variety of vegetables and creamy tahini dressing are on the menu, or perhaps you’d prefer some spicy Indian samosas with an exotic chutney on rocket-leaf salad? The sweet waffles with maple syrup and blueberries are just as much a revelation as fluffy pumpkin muffins with delicious apple butter and fresh strawberries.
The most important part of Whitney and Danielle’s concept is the improvement in the quality of someone’s whole life if they eat the right food, not just a reduction in the size of the clothes they wear. The fact that you automatically lose weight by following their dietary program is a bonus. “It is much more important however, that everyone has the right to simply feel the best they can. To accept and love themselves and others and to be able to enjoy life to the full”, added Danielle. Both know what they’re talking about. Both come from Sedona in Arizona and have been friends for as long as they can remember. When they moved to New York City, where Danielle worked as a model and actress and Whitney was working successfully on Wall Street, they both realised very quickly how difficult it was to eat a healthy and balanced diet while managing a stressful job. With meetings that lasted for hours, dinner parties, lunch invitations and late-night working hours there was no time for a balanced dietary program, let alone going shopping in an organic supermarket to buy the ingredients to cook a healthy meal for themselves. After a while Danielle was fed up of crash diets and the rollercoaster weight changes she observed when she stood on the scales, so she changed her attitude and designed her own dietary plan. She wanted to eat healthily because she enjoyed it however, and not because of a diet. She adopted a new mantra: “Eating should make you sexy”, and trained as a holistic health coach, finding along the way that Whitney was very open and sympathetic to her cause.
Whitney’s job as banker had seen her put on 6.8 kilos in weight and her skin was in a terrible state. With Danielle’s help she put together a dietary program that helped her lose weight in the long-term and above all, improved the appearance of her skin. She gave up her job in the financial sector and trained in yoga. “We wanted to share what we had learned and experienced personally with other people”, said Whitney, “To show those affected that they too could heal their bodies with the appropriate diet, feel more attractive in their own skin and bring a higher level of consciousness, satisfaction and happiness into their lives. Our friends could see how much we’d changed and that was the foundation stone for our business enterprise”.
Danielle and Whitney launched the company in 2011 by holding a healthy-treat dinner party for friends and acquaintances. They collected 700 dollars start capital and began to build Sakara Life from scratch. To begin with they cooked the meals in their own kitchen and delivered them to the neighbourhood by bike. Soon however, they were able to rent a professional kitchen and quickly attracted customers from New York City, Washington DC, Chicago and Los Angeles. Danielle and Whitney make clever use of season highlights or events for marketing purposes. They offered a summer delivery service in the Hamptons where rich New Yorkers spend the hot summer months for example. To begin with, Miami was added as a temporary project for the duration of the well-known Art Basel Miami art exhibition, but today they deliver to the whole of Florida. In December last year they celebrated the launch of their online shop, ‘The Clean Boutique’. Naturally, both ladies are also actively represented in all the social networks and they already have over 50,000 users on Instagram. Today, Danielle and Whitney can hardly believe that they deliver healthy meals to the whole of America. Only Alaska and Hawaii are not on the list, but it certainly won’t be long before they are.
Additional Links
www.sakara.com
www.produktkulturmagazin.de
www.tgoa.de
This article was published in The Produktkulturmagazin issue Q1 2016. Picture credit © Caitlin Mitchel
