Jay Z and Big Food companies have something in common. Either they don’t understand or they don’t care about the people.

In 2014, for a whopping $56 million, rapper JAY-Z acquired the music streaming service Tidal with the mission to “get everybody to respect music again”.
Tidal is built on the premise that instead of music being owned by music studios, the music is owned by musicians. Thus eliminating the middleman and allowing artist to take their music directly to customers, which allows the musicians to retain more of the money from sales. This sounds like a great plan, but Jay Z made a terrible mistake.

Before the launch of Tidal, Jay Z asked 16 musicians to exclusively release their content on Tidal in exchange for a percentage of equity in the company. These musicians then gathered for a press conference to explain their business model and launched the Tidal brand. The million dollar musicians made the launch and the company all about themselves resulting in a flop.

What Jay Z failed to realize is that the people who keep Tidal and his rap career afloat aren’t the musicians, they are paying customers who ask the question everyday, “How are you going to help ME win today.” They could care less about a bunch of rich rappers trying to make more money off the backs of the people. Jay Z positioned himself as the focus of his mission instead of focusing on serving the people.

It’s the same with big food companies. Look at Kelloggs for example. Over the past 50 years, what new innovative healthy food products have they created to help the people win? Even now 1400 disgruntled Kelloggs employees are on strike because, according to Former U.S. Secretary of Labor and economist Robert Reich, they are “Fed up with corporate greed and corruption.”
To Jay Z and CEOs of food companies:

NONE OF US ARE WINNING UNTIL ALL OF US ARE WINNING!

At Sow Strong, we are on a mission of change. We want to create partnerships with the community and to help people win by providing great tasting, innovative, healthy products.

Please order Sow Bars @ www.sowstrongfood.com.

All pending orders will ship out tomorrow! Thank you for the support and please join this mission!

Thanks for the inspiration Donald Miller

Companies like Kelloggs and General Mills knowingly put artificial food coloring in products and these colors have proven to be harmful to children. The sad part about this is that these harmful products are FDA approved even though the FDA admits to these products being harmful to children.

Investigators at the University of Southampton in the UK found that artificial food coloring, like Red40, which can be found in Apple Jacks, is directly linked to increased hyperactivity in children and can lead to ADHD. A separate study found that 8 percent of children living with ADHD may have behavioral issues tied to synthetic food colors and the FDA admits that there's evidence that suggests some children may be sensitive to the ingredients like Red40.

I believe the barometer of a culture is how the culture treats children and looking deep into the food industry it’s failed our kids by bombarding young minds with advertisements to eat junk and making food look more appealing without providing proper nourishment. Over the past decade little progress has been made by bigger corporations like McDonald’s including apples in Happy Meals and Disney forcing advertisers to meet nutrition standard yet work still needs to be done.

We are fighting against big food corporations that have tons of money but we are willing and committed to providing breakfast alternatives to children with nothing artificial.

I bought my first pack of cigarettes 🙂

According to the Truth Initiative, Over the past 50 years tobacco companies have leveraged modern science to make their products more addictive thus resulting in more tobacco related deaths. Awful.

The same is true with big food companies intentionally making junk food more addictive. Many popular snack foods have been intentionally engineered to keep its end user addicted to the products so the big companies can bring in more money.

Naturally human beings crave energy rich foods that contain sugar and fat, think fruit which contains a relatively high amount of natural sugar but little fat or a ribeye steak which contains a high amount of animal fat but a little sugar. Food scientist create products that are far higher in fat and sugar than what occurs in nature. Then salt is poured in high amounts and the result is that the we can’t put the bag of chips down.

My personal opinion is a big food companies are operating with the main goal of making money. The goal should be to make our communities and people stronger. Their methods only make the people eating their food weak, especially those who buy their products that are not informed or educated on the importance of proper nutrition to live a strong, healthy life. They are just as bad as big tobacco companies should be held accountable. But we all have a personal choice of what we put in our bodies.

Sow Strong was created with the goal of making a not just for profit company that SOWS health into the lives of its customers.

The next 100 orders of Sow Bars will have a free bottle of the best tasting, healthiest water on the planet included!

Thank you for all of the support and I’m not smoking this pack.

It was the summer of 2020 and I was in a terrible mood. Work was stressing me out and I felt this need to check emails and text messages as a distraction from my never-ending list of responsibilities. My wife was at work and I was inside our house with the kids.  Even though I was physically present, I was mentally and emotionally somewhere else.

Then one of my kids had the nerve to ask me to help them use the bathroom 🤣

I rudely opened the bathroom door for her and sat her on the toilet and went back to my phone. Then she got off the toilet and with excitement pointed at the bowl and screamed with joy “Wow daddy, look!” In my head and on my phone, I half-heartedly told her good job, but she shouted, “No daddy look, it’s a rainbow!” I looked in the toilet and her little poop was indeed in the shape of an arch. Her beautiful, full of life mind literally saw a rainbow. This wonderful child’s perspective was so pure and positive that she literally found excitement from a piece of poop. My life was forever changed by my child’s perspective on rainbow poop.

Kids have a sparkle in their eye that most adults don’t because we allow that sparkle to die. When that sparkle dies in us, it’s not good for our kids. Sowing Strong Seeds through Strong thoughts, words and the food that we eat is a step in the right direction to regain that sparkle.

Let’s regain or maintain the sparkle in our eye by starting to eat whole grain, plant-based foods like the Sow Bar. Also, kids love Sow Bars 🙂

Please check out the new website!

www.sowstrongfood.com

Thank you everyone for your support and for your orders! There are some delays with shipping. We appreciate everyone’s patience and if you have any concerns please feel free to message me and we will make it right!

Those were my first thoughts as I was on my way to Garfield Heights, Ohio to pick up a new piece of equipment that would allow us to make 1200 bars in one hour. I also had feelings of guilt because my good friend Frank took off work to come with me. During our road trip, I couldn’t help but reflect on all of the time and money that I spent to achieve my goal of making the best-tasting, healthiest nutrition bar on the planet. I always dreamed that at 35 years old I would be retiring from an illustrious NFL career, riding off into the sunset, counting my money, but instead I was driving 2 hours to make granola bars for a living.

But then, my phone rang and it was John.

John Goss, who is a great friend, gave me some wisdom his grandfather shared with him a year ago. John’s grandfather came to the US from Germany right before World War II and he didn’t speak any English. He became a farmer that worked very hard to provide for his family. Before his passing, he not only was an extremely successful businessman, but a man who left a wonderful legacy for his family. Right before he died, John asked his grandfather, “Grandpa, what is the point of this life, what are we here to do.” He responded, “Make your mark.”

The next day I rolled out of bed, still contemplating life and my career decisions. When I took my kids to school, I noticed all of the parents who lovingly dropped off their children before heading to work. In that moment, I realized that these parents were trying their best to “Make their mark.” Then it hit me like a ton of bricks, I didn’t start Sow Strong and my quest to make the best-tasting, healthiest bar on the planet just to make another nutrition bar. I started this to provide the fuel for people to make their mark! 

The current grab and go bars of the past are not good and the Sow Bar is the best-tasting, healthiest bar on the planet to provide the fuel so that you can make your mark. This is much more than a protein bar!

Sow Bars are now available at www.sowstrongfood.com

In 2013 I was introduced to Homage (clothing brand) and I admired the brand because it was more than just t-shirts. The shirts reminded me of times of playing video games with my brothers and watching WWF. The company spoke to my heart. Then Homage added the "H" to the sleeve of their shirts and like most companies that get a huge injection of cash from a bigger brand, Homage turned away from its original mission and the company no longer seemed authentic.

I compare Homage to another Ohio company, Grippo's. I'm certain that Grippo's could have sold to a bigger snack company but over the 102 years Grippo's has been in business, they have maintained their quality, even when they were forced to change their recipe due to trans fats.

I'm extremely grateful that we have been operating with no outside investment meaning that we do not have to answer to anyone pressuring us to dilute our mission in exchange for money. We want to make make sure that our bars keep the original mission, which is Sow Strong seeds into the lives of our people and community.

Update: The Sow Strong Kitchen is almost ready and we will be able to make thousands of bars a day! Thank you to everyone for your patience and support!

Sow Strong!

I couldn’t believe that I was hanging out with a billionaire. Jesse Itzler had just finished speaking at “The Summit of Greatness” and to my surprise we were at the same restaurant that night. Not wanting to seem like an eager fan, I slowly went over to introduce myself to Jesse and I totally interrupted the conversation that he was having and I bragged to him about my rap skills. I cringe thinking about it now!

Jesse is a former rapper who has built multiple, million dollar companies and is married to Sara Blakley, the founder of Spanx. Jesse is an advocate for health and seeing his transition from being a hip hop artist to a mega successful business leader/health advocate has supported my journey with Sow Strong Food and has also helped lead me to a conclusion about rap music. Today’s main stream rap music, for the most part, is complete garbage and it has many similarities to the current health/nutrition industry.

For years there has been something in the music industry called the “Loudness Wars” were sound engineers will compress the sound of songs to make the music sound louder in the ear of the listener (this is a direct contrast of the beauty of the peaks and troughs of classical musical). Couple this loudness with gimmicky hooks, autotune, mumbled flows and superficial watered down lyrics and you get bad music that will be popular today and forgotten tomorrow. It’s reminiscent of every fad “diet” and every gimmicky, flash in the pan workout plan and bar that is built to make money, promise a quick fix and give the people selling it a moment fame. 

Quietly, slowly and steadily Sowing Strong Seeds through better food is the alternative to the culture that is constantly offering loud, unrealistic quick fixes to our health that are not sustainable.

With all this being said I’m happy to announce the first Sow Strong Album that features me and Ben Kershaw rapping a cappella. Just joking. 

We drop the best bars on the planet and they are not watered down.

Sow Strong