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?️ Bonus Episode: Regenerative Health Starts With Algae — Corinna Bellizzi on Honest Health with Dr. Jeffrey Burke

Description:
In this special bonus episode, we’re sharing Corinna’s full interview from the Honest Health Podcast, hosted by longtime natural health leader, Dr. Jeffrey Burke. This wide-ranging conversation explores the future of omega-3 nutrition, the unsustainable reality of fish-sourced oils, and how algae offers a powerful, regenerative solution for both people and the planet.

Corinna also shares the mission behind Orlo Nutrition—how the brand uses cutting-edge, carbon-negative technology to grow microalgae for optimal nutrient absorption and minimal environmental impact. From the evolution of the omega-3 category to her personal journey toward sustainability and launching Care More Be Better, this episode is packed with insight, inspiration, and actionable takeaways.

? Topics Covered:

• Why Corinna left fish oil behind for algae-based omega-3s
• The hidden environmental cost of fishing—even when it’s “certified sustainable”
• How algae grows, why it’s essential to life on Earth, and its role in regenerative health
• Understanding bioavailability: Polar lipids vs. traditional fish oil
• Orlo Nutrition’s carbon-negative production process and vertical algae farming
• How spirulina grown indoors outperforms open-pond spirulina in purity and nutrition
• What most supplement companies are getting wrong about algae
• The role of nutrition in brain health, longevity, and Alzheimer’s prevention
• Why we need to personalize health and nutrition—starting by listening to our own bodies

? Tree-Planting Update!

Thanks to YOU—our listeners, subscribers, and newsletter community—we’ve officially surpassed our 2025 goal of planting 20,000 trees with ForestPlanet.org. As of this episode’s release, we’ve planted nearly 22,000 trees! Now we need your input:
? Should we keep planting trees, or pivot to another Earth-first nonprofit?
Send your thoughts to: hello@caremorebebetter.com

? Connect With Us:

Corinna Bellizzi:
Website: CareMoreBeBetter.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/cbellizzi
Instagram / TikTok / Threads: @caremorebebetter
Orlo Nutrition: OrloNutrition.com

Dr. Jeffrey Burke:
Website: www.drjeffreyburke.com
Podcast: Honest Health Podcast (Available on Spotify, YouTube, and all major platforms)

? Share the Episode!

If this conversation inspired you, please share it with a friend or colleague in the wellness space. Together, we can accelerate the transition to a healthier, more sustainable future—one nutrient and one choice at a time.

Episode Transcript:

intro / outro: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Honest Health Podcast with your host, Jeffrey Burke. Honest Health brings you the brightest minds in the natural products industry, as well as athletes and entertainers. Jeff will keep you entertained and informed while educating on how to be successful on your health journeys. Now here’s your host, Jeffrey Burke.

Jeffrey Burke: Hello, and welcome back to the Honest Health Podcast, Jeffrey Burke here. I’m so glad you’re here with us today. This is my new platform. I’m using this to bring you the most UpToDate groundbreaking information from the best minds in the natural products industry. I’m also bringing you some feedback and some information from voices outside the industry.

My feeling is everybody has a message to share. A story to share and some ideas that we can all benefit from. So I’m hoping that you’re definitely gonna enjoy this today because I have been looking forward to this all week long. Karina Belize is here with us today. If you have not heard that name, you’ve been missing.

So we’re gonna really get in depth today and talk about all [00:01:00] the amazing things that she’s doing. A great background. Uh, Karina is a professional marketer, a health and nutrition expert who led the early growth of Nordic Naturals from less than 1 million to over 100 million. In annual sales, given her concern for the future health of people on the planet, she shifted her focus from fish sourced omega threes to algae leading the development and launch of Orlow Nutrition, a brand that features the world’s first carbon negative algae based supplements.

An activist at heart. She launched her first podcast, care More Be Better in 2021 to cover social and ecological issues that affect all of us. It now ranks in the top 1% of all podcasts globally. Her second show, nutrition Without Compromise launched in 2022. In addition to her work and her podcasting journey, she serves on Santa Clara University’s MBA advisory board and is part of the health-minded community of professionals who [00:02:00] seek to declare Santa Cruz County a blue zone.

These are regions where people live longer and healthier than average. Help me welcome my guest. Hello there.

Corinna Bellizzi: Wow. What an intro.

Jeffrey Burke: I’ll tell you, I’m exhausted.

Corinna Bellizzi: It makes it sound like I do a lot.

Jeffrey Burke: You do, do a lot. I’m so happy to have you here today. Thank you for making time for this. This, uh, means a lot to me.

I’m honored.

Corinna Bellizzi: Well, I’m just so glad to be here. I’m a big admirer of your show and I love the integrity with which you approach the many topics you cover. So thank

Jeffrey Burke: you.

Corinna Bellizzi: Great, great research that you present great products, and it’s nice to be considered among, among your guests. Uh,

Jeffrey Burke: it’s just, it’s great to have you here and it’s amazing how much stuff that you do and, um.

Anybody that I’ve ever dropped your name with, you know, upcoming shows and stuff, you’ve created an amazing, um, feeling within people, within the natural products industry. There’s a great respect for what you have done, what you are doing, and what they kind of think you’re gonna do moving forward. Even though who knows how that goes, [00:03:00] but you know, when you’ve, you’ve laid this foundation, you know, people are always wondering what you’re gonna do next.

Corinna Bellizzi: Hmm. The big question, I ask myself that frequently too.

Jeffrey Burke: And how’s that going for you?

Corinna Bellizzi: Well, you know, I’m in pursuit of my PhD in sustainability education presently. I really want to hone in on the intersection between what the public thinks, consumer awareness, so to speak, and how sustainable nutrition is approach today.

And so part of that might be handled through things like third party certifications with regenerative organic certified. Part of that might be handled through just encouraging people to shop a local and. Really to try to get at the core of what makes people tick, to make the decisions that can help spur these movements forward with greater success to feed humanity for generations to come while hopefully doing something to improve our environment along the way.

So that’s really where my focus is. I think the concept of regeneration is fascinating. Mm-hmm. I’m also somebody who really [00:04:00] thinks that we need to work to not abandon. Uh, what progress we’ve made in consumer minds from the perspective of sustainability, because there’s still a lot of confusion out there in the marketplace, and we have work to do.

Jeffrey Burke: We do have a lot of work to do. You know, I was thinking back, I was talking to a friend of mine who started in the industry about the same time I did. So we’re both what, in our 45th year now. So, uh, we’ve been around the table a few times and I tell ’em I’ve been around the block and they keep rebuilding and tearing down and rebuilding everything I’m seeing.

So as an ever changing industry. But, you know, we were talking about how the major philosophies have changed in our industry. You know how doctors now look at. This industry differently. And you know how the medical community is a little bit more closer, melted with us these days where they, it was very separatist when I first started.

Funny story, I like to say is I was working with Dr. Earl Mende in Los Angeles, and he had a chain of health food stores called Great Earth Vitamins. Oh yeah. And I, I started helping him run those as a [00:05:00] 20-year-old. I had no idea what I was doing, but he kind of took me underneath his wing and, and I was helping out at.

The Westwood Greater store, and it was after hours and we were doing inventory and there was a knock at the door and there were these three doctors at the back door from UCLA. And I said to the manager, I said, what do they want? She goes, oh, they’re here to get their vitamins. They come to the back door.

And I said, why? And she goes, they don’t want their colleagues to see them in the store. I. And I was just like, oh my goodness. Have we changed a lot since then?

Corinna Bellizzi: Yeah. Now functional medicine is something that’s spoken about in common circles, not so much on the fringes, which is a fascinating thing in itself.

It took some time to get here, but we’re still in a situation where most medical doctors only receive maybe a week of nutrition education during their, um, MD schooling, which is really. Frankly, not enough, even for any of us. Like we should have some sort of foundational education that comes through the schooling system about what basic nutrition is and why we need it.

Jeffrey Burke: Well, I, I know they’re [00:06:00] revisiting it. Maybe they’re just trying to do it, um, you know, for their own measures, you know, because I do, I do a lectures at hospitals and I do speak to a lot of doctors as well. And it’s interesting how. Well, I, I kind of get taken back a little bit because I love the interest that they have in the things that we have to offer in our industry.

I love that. But then as we have the one-on-one conversations, it seems like they’re more interested in what it can do for them individually than it can do for the patients. You know? ’cause they’re like, you know, I can’t take these statins and I can’t do this stuff. And my, my wife’s doing this and this, and I’m looking for some alternatives.

And I’m like, patients, what about the patients? And they’re just kind of. More focused on themselves. I mean, doctors have a tendency to not take care of themselves. So maybe them getting a little healthier would be a good thing. But, um, you know, it, it, it is getting better to your point. But we do have, we have a journey to go.

Corinna Bellizzi: Mm-hmm. For sure.

Jeffrey Burke: Now, you know, interesting about omega threes, um, when I first started in the industry. Which was a million years ago, omega threes and fish [00:07:00] oils were on the bottom shelf and nobody ever talked about ’em. And, uh, it, it took a long time before they were eye level and making a, a huge difference in the industry.

And I know you were very, very instrumental in not only awareness, but um, driving people to the understanding and the necessity and then the quality of Omega-3 and as well as sustainability. Um, but then you had the switch to algae, was that sustainability based?

Corinna Bellizzi: You know, it came from a variety of angles.

One is throughout my time at Nordic Naturals, I mean, I was there for nine years leading sales, marketing, and education, essentially in this kind of equal second in command position, along with person leading operations. And we partnered to grow the company over many hurdles for the years. First, we had to educate people on the fact that fish oil, Omega-3 was different than Alpha Linolenic.

Acid flex oil, chia seed oil, that you needed a direct source of EPA [00:08:00] and DHA and that the way to get that direct source of EPA and DHA was through fish, that that’s what you needed. At this point in time, we’ve actually got doctors to the point where they think, when they say the words Omega-3, they mean EPA and DHA fish oil.

Right. So they say, you need a gram a day, or you need 500 milligrams a day. And they’re not thinking 500 milligrams of oil. They’re thinking 500 milligrams of EPA and DHA, which is an amazing feat to have accomplished in really such a relatively short time. But the thing that continued to frustrate me throughout that period is I would often run into vegans or vegetarians in the aisles that I could never convince to take an.

E-P-A-D-H-A fish oil product. Sometimes I was encountering a person who was just in their twenties. A young woman sticks out in my mind. I remember being in the Los Angeles area. She was young, beautiful, and losing all of her hair. She’d been vegan for a while and was just not getting the right nutrition to support her total body wellness.

She was [00:09:00] essentially becoming too frail and I knew that DHA as a, an example. Is imperative for the growth cycle of your hair follicle. And so if you aren’t getting enough of this key nutrient, it could be one of the things that’s contributing to that, along with not getting enough protein and other micronutrients as well.

If you don’t have the gene for alopecia, right. So as it stood, I knew I could help this individual. She could just go in that direction. And so what I ended up doing was taking her over to the algae oil and I start to learn about martex DHA, because back in the day, that was all that was available. Mm-hmm.

And I said, look, you need a direct source of this specific nutrient. You’re not getting that from the flax oil. You could have some genetic things that are getting in the way of you absorbing this from Alpha Linolenic oil. Right. So like if you’re taking your flax oil, your chi seed and everything else, it’s just not giving you what your body needs to thrive.

And so, you know, this is just a one-off. I see this person one time, but it made an impact. And then as time goes on, I start [00:10:00] to confront more and more issues of sustainability. Have people that compensate, well, you know, you say your visuals are sustainable, but what about the 15,000 dolphins that are killed every year off the coast of Peru?

Because locals see them as competition for the fish that they can’t grab anymore. I don’t have an answer for them. Right. And then I look into it and I find that there is some spotty media coverage of this stuff, but it tends to be like underground bloggers that are quickly quashed. Like they try to bury those stories as quickly as possible, right?

And yet that fishery is Marine Stewardship Council certified. It has that blue label, right? That blue label the Whole Foods tells us to go look for. And so at the end of the day, I really started to question all of these stories around sustainability. And it was when I was at a team event, I’d organized to bring my, um, my employees from Nordic Naturals over to the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute.

We got to geek out with all their scientists, tour their research [00:11:00] vessel that goes to the Mariana Trench off the coast of Monterey, two mile deep seabed, just a few miles from shore, and they send rovers and all this stuff in to investigate the health of our oceans, right? And see what’s happening deep in them.

And they’re commenting on, um, after we drive the rover in the ocean, um, in, not in the ocean. We drive the rover in the test pool. We tour the resell research festival, um, festival vessel. It felt like a festival to me, right? So then we go into this observation room and they, here on the Monterey Bay, it’s beautiful.

You can see the ocean crashing in the background, and they lower all the shades and reveal a screen. A scientist comes up and starts talking about. The warming of our oceans and then the acidity of our oceans, and starts to talk about the fact that the acidity is rising at such a rate that now mollusks are not able to develop their shells at the larval stage, they were already going through a mass die off, not [00:12:00] only of insects on land, but of let’s say, the equivalent creatures in our oceans, and that we have no way of knowing what the long term, long-term effects of this are going to be.

But what we do know is that the ocean becomes too acidic. It will stop supporting life. And when the ocean stops supporting life, we’re in serious trouble. So not to be a dooms dayer, but there was not a single thing that the scientist shared that I had an argument against. And I started to come to the perspective that basically at this point, there’s no safe way to continue fishing our seas.

We know that we are doing things like reducing the net size so that we can capture more fish or fish at a more juvenile stage, which means that the next season won’t be as good as the season prior and the next, and the next and the next. We’ve already had a couple of seasons in recent past where we knew the [00:13:00] fish stocks weren’t as much as they used to be.

So, you know, you can make your argument for temporary sustainability numbers and what the health and tonnage of these fish species are and specific waters, but really the argument is one that is continually confronted with our changing environment and that changing environment isn’t cooling, the oceans are not becoming less acidic.

Those problems are getting worsened pretty quickly. So, um, I decided it was time to pivot, but it was not just because of the environment. It was also because I came to understand after nine years of selling fish oils every day of my life, that fish got all of their EPA and DHA from the algae they consumed.

And I did not know that. Now, how is it that we’d skipped over this fact in all of my education time at Nordic Naturals? How is it that, [00:14:00] you know, I went to medical conferences to the International Society for the Study of fatty acids and lipids and this, this just never came up. Right. It was just something we didn’t talk about.

Um, I had heard that, you know, our fish were having lower levels of EPA and DHA levels were rising, and this was a confusing thing. Why was this happening? Well, the reason is different species of algae thrive at different temperatures and a different acidity levels. So with these changes in our oceans, the.

The base nutrient that the smallest bodied fish consume from the plankton and to the algae species that are growing in our oceans is all shifting. So they are not going to have the same Omega-3 EPA and DHA levels today that they had 20 years ago. We can, we can find a better way now. We can build a better mousetrap.

We can cut out that metal fish and go directly to the algae. We have all the technology that we need to go there, [00:15:00] and we can even then create extracts from this algae that have proteins and other phytonutrients that are also imperative for human health. I guess that’s a long story, but that’s far, that’s how it came.

No, it’s

Jeffrey Burke: a, it’s a wonderful story and I, I appreciate you and, and to your point, I don’t know when it, when it, when I found out about the algae, you know, being some of the main driving force for the EPA and DHA in the fish itself, I, I didn’t know that early on. No, I, it, I didn’t have a clue. And when I, when I did come into that knowledge, I, it, it took me back.

I mean, I think I was standing and I actually sat and I was just like, whoa. Because, I mean, I was just like, where has this been? Where? Where’s the person that was supposed to tell me this? And I didn’t know either. And then when you start to

Corinna Bellizzi: understand, it was the first species that existed on our planet.

We’re talking about the oldest species. Mm-hmm. 3 billion years ago. Different microalgae species started to create life essentially. And without them, we wouldn’t have [00:16:00] terrestrial plants. Without that, we wouldn’t have any other aquatic species. Nothing would exist. Life would not exist on earth. And so I think it’s also incredibly eloquent to understand that this first life form.

Could also be part of the solution that sequesters carbon, that gives us a nutrition that we need that creates the oxygen we breathe. I mean, more than half of the oxygen we breathe is created from species of algae, from the microalgae I’m talking about to the seaweeds. So you know, from fresh water to salt saltwater algae is essentially everywhere.

It’s in our clouds, it’s in our rainwater. And so that’s part of how it gets dispersed around the planet. And so if we can learn. Through the, through technology to really harness the full potential of algae, then we can, can do some pretty incredible things.

Jeffrey Burke: Wow. You know? And do you feel like the message, this message is being spoken as much as it should be?

I, I, I [00:17:00] honestly don’t think it is. I, it would be more, it would be amazing if it was, because even if you’ve been doing this for a very long time, I mean, you can’t argue with this information because it makes too much sense.

Corinna Bellizzi: And you really can’t argue with it. But I, I think people still have in their minds when they think about mical, they think about the stuff in their fish tanks or in the ponds and, and they don’t think about a nutrition source.

Um, as we continue to develop technologies to do things like exit the planet for some time and space, we rely on things like algae to scrub oxygen. And to ensure that we have clean air debris. Uh, in fact, some of the technology that we employ at Orlow Nutrition is, um, really technology that Isaac Buren, our CTO and co-founder work to develop in conjunction with nasa.

I. Or growing algae in space. Now, why would we do that? Because it’s essentially a bread basket of nutrition at the same time that it also has a tremendous [00:18:00] capacity to grow in weightless conditions and water, right, and also absorb carbon release oxygen, absorb carbon release oxygen absorb carbon release oxygen doubles its weight each two days when it’s got the right conditions so it can essentially grow exponentially.

And you milk it like a cow every day. I mean, not like milking a cow, but you know, it, concentrate it and just continue to extract it every single day.

Jeffrey Burke: You know, the, um, the principles of companies today that are in the, I guess put everybody into the Omega-3 category. ’cause we have a tendency as the industry to do that.

They put everybody in the same category. Do you see, um, do you see any of the companies that are. Players in that department starting to lean algae primarily, or are they picking up algae because they wanna just be able to have it in case someone asks for it?

Corinna Bellizzi: You know, not to speak ill of beautiful redheaded [00:19:00] people, but I consider it like the redheaded stepchild perspective.

Yeah. Like we really have Nordic Naturals. It’s a fish oil company, and then they have an algae omega. And even in their educational materials, it comes across that way. It’s like, oh yeah. And by the way, if you’re a vegan, you can take this thing. Right. Yeah. That’s really how it. Supported. Um, I recently at Expo West last year, I had come by the Vibrant Health Booth.

Vibrant Health had just come out with an Omega-3, and they, they released it in both, uh, standard fish oil and an algae oil. Same price, same basic concentration. And I really struggled to understand why they did that. And so I asked the founders and she said, well, you know. Mm. Fish oil outsells algae oil, four to one.

So why wouldn’t I do that? And really kind of threw shade at me for it, and I just thought, well, that was kind of a silly response. I’m just asking a question in an open and ended [00:20:00] capacity, because we know that this is more environmentally responsible. You’re releasing them at the same price. They have virtually the same formulation to them.

It really seems almost wasteful to bother with releasing two. And yet they did it. And I think that’s really kind of telling for where we are. You might have a vegetarian or vegan company that comes out with a product and then of course, and they might have an Omega-3 too, but it doesn’t tend to be the central focal point.

And so. You know, it makes me proud to be a part of this entire, um, work with or low nutrition. And the parent company backs the technologies because they grow their own algae. They’re doing so photosynthetically, they’re doing so in a carbon negative way because they’re co-located with a geothermal plant and they feed it CO2, and then that CO2 is sequestered in the algae itself.

Our waste stream becomes soil amendment, so it locks in [00:21:00] carbon for the next 30 years. So even the waste is useful at the end of the day there. This is one of the most responsible ways you could possibly make a product. The water gets reused and recycled. It’s pristine water. It’s a closed environment, so you don’t have infiltration of other algae species.

You don’t have to worry about water bugs or water beetles, or bird poop or lizards dying in a pond or any of that contamination that can happen when you’re growing algae and open ponds. So it means that because things are grown in this really tightly controlled capacity, and they’re optimized, that we get a higher yield.

A higher total percentage of micronutrients and that they’re in the most bioavailable form. So the end products that we reduce can be really. That we produce can be really minimally processed. And through that minimal processing, also retain all their phyto compounds so that even though we don’t label all of them, [00:22:00] and within the Omega-3 itself, you’ve got chlorophyll, you’ve got proteins that come from that.

Um, Omega-3 oil itself, the nano coreopsis, you have Carotinoids and vitamin A. You know, very small amounts, but they’re all in there. And you have the Omega-3 retained in its polar lipid form, which is three times more bioavailable than fish oil. So the end result on this Omega-3 product alone is that you can produce a capsule that’s smaller.

It produces as much bang for the buck as it would if you were to get a product that had one gram of EPA and DHA in it, even though it only has about 330 or 260 milligrams of it. So smaller dose, smaller pill. No fishy burp because. Well, there’s no fish oil, but it’s also because it’s in the polar lipid form.

Polar lipids, they don’t sit on top of your gastric juices and create that aldehyde byproduct. They get integrated into your gastric juices. They get more quickly absorbed into your system, and so you can get the maximum benefit. [00:23:00] And if every company. If every company approached their supplements in this way, then this industry would have a much different reputation than it does from, let’s say, the outside supplement critics that you and I hear about pretty consistently.

Oh yeah, this is an unregulated industry and all these other things that simply aren’t true. But you know, there are bad actors out there that have given supplements sometimes that bad name and that snake oil perspective. Right. Yeah.

Jeffrey Burke: You know, I, I think to myself, and you know, it, it makes almost no sense to not embrace this technology.

I mean, everything, you’re, you’re, you’re putting out a product that is more effective, more absorbable, safer, more sustainable. I mean, and for the environment, for the climate, for long-term longevity down the road for your kids, kids, kids, kids. You know? And it just does not make any sense. And it is so to your point, so true, because I’ll see these companies.

And [00:24:00] a lot of them I know and they’ve got their fish oil companies and it is that the redheaded, you know, little stepchild, I swear to God. It’s like it’s over here and there’s a shelf, like a block away and we have an algae product down there. No, we have

Corinna Bellizzi: have all my customers, they don’t buy much algae oil.

Let’s change their thinking on this. Exactly right. Like change your mindset the way you did when used to only have flex Wail. And if you think about it that way. Then you can be ahead of the curve and you can start to push your consumers to a different world. Mm-hmm. Um, I was just at Highlands Health Food in Chicago area with um, my rep Rob Seaman yesterday as we’re recording and we spent some time there and they also made a comment that, you know, they don’t have many customers coming in for an algae oil.

But they have a ton of customers coming in for omega threes, so we even just left them with a few extra pouches. Like you have some vegetarian leaning people here that are on fish oil. Like [00:25:00] just give one of these out to them and talk to them about the fact that they’re doing things differently and this is the benefits that you’re going to see.

And, and, and you know, from the sustainability perspective, from the LG algae first perspective, from the polar lipids, all of that, no fishy burp, no. Gastric irritation whatsoever. You know that that means something to people. That really does, if it’s easy to swallow and they can see a benefit from it. And we, we have seen a benefit.

We’ve done, um, blood spot test comparisons from when somebody first starts taking our supplement to three and four months later, sometimes even following them at six months, nine months, a year. And we see that 97% of our customers see a dramatic increase in their Omega-3 blood spot index. So that index is coming up.

The level of Omega-3 EPA and DATA in their tissue is coming up.

Jeffrey Burke: You know, I, I see companies and I, and I’ve had this conversation over dinner, you know, and I try to keep it, you know, very, very, [00:26:00] you know, a positive conversation. But I get irritated sometimes. I said, you know, every time you come out with something new.

You have just brought it out and said, here it is. This is what we are doing. We wanna show you what it is, and you’ve got balloons and fireworks. Here’s a new division that we’re doing, and you come out with all this energy. And I ask the same thing. Why are you not doing that with LG Omega-3? Why are you not coming out and being proud of it and, and doing it right and, and showing the benefits.

It, it never goes over well in conversation.

Corinna Bellizzi: Well, and part of it I think is because Omega threes are such a big category today. True. And one of the most successful and persistently growing. So it’s like the ain’t ain’t broke. Don’t fix it. Yeah. Perspective. That’s true. Right. They got their wall of Nordic naturals.

I see my alma mater. Every time I go into a health food store, I’m like, okay, thank you very much. I’m doing my penance today in the world of algae. Trying to help people understand how there’s a better way. Right. It’s, it’s in [00:27:00] part I do feel like I’m, I’m doing penance for my earlier success in the visual category.

Um, but, you know, I, I am also brought to mind a couple of different conversations I’ve had over the years. There was this buyer, you’ll remember Wild Oats back in the day. Thank you. Right. And, uh, Krista Petris was their supplement buyer for. Wild Oats and uh, later went on to several different roles within, within the industry after Wild Oats got absorbed into the Whole Foods shenanigan.

Um, but he said, you know, I think you guys are undervaluing your contribution, what you’ve done here with Nordic Naturals. Like you’ve helped raise the entire fish oil category because it was a relatively stagnant category where products tasted terrible. Burt back was awful and they didn’t really understand the difference between Omega-3 flax oil and Omega-3 fish oil.

And pretty much the only people who took a fish oil every day were people of Scandinavian descent or those who had been [00:28:00] lined up in elementary school to take a teaspoon of cod liver oil every morning. Which you were mostly given for the vitamins A and D that it contained not so much for the omega threes.

’cause they didn’t really understand that back then. Right. So we kind of modernized. People’s understanding of what a fish oil could be. We had fruit flavored fish oil capsules. It didn’t have to be the same ranted, icky stuff that they had in the past. And so we really raised the bar of quality, which enabled people to discover the category in a different way and realize the benefit.

And it also helps that, you know. 90% of Americans are incredibly deficient at Omega-3 EPA and DHA. So if they take it for the first time, you, they feel better pretty quick. And what I will say is that we see the same exact effect when someone takes an algae oil as when they take a fish oil, but consumers are still a little slow to make that shift or to really accept and understand that like the, what we [00:29:00] did so well was.

Essentially villainize flax oil to where they think because algae oil is a plant source that it’s just like flax oil. So why would I bother? And I even hear that from doctors like, well, you know, algae and flax, that’s okay. They could do that. But I really want them to be taking fish oil. I. Because they don’t understand that the flax oil was delivering a different form of Omega-3 alpha linolenic acid, which is a precursor to EPA and DHJ, and which you have to have delta five, delta 60 saturates to break D, break it down into its components, and then you need to have the right balance of other core nutrients in your system to be able to stitch things back together so that you can create EPA and DHA in your body.

That is completely different than algae sourced omega three’s EPA and DHA because it is the same chemical constituent that exists in the fish. It’s a hundred percent the same. There’s no chemical difference [00:30:00] between algae oil, Omega-3, and fish oil, Omega-3.

Jeffrey Burke: You know, it’s gonna be, this journey is gonna be something that is gonna be continuing for a while and, you know, um, but talk to me a little bit more about Orlow.

I wanna know about this company. I love that they are so forward thinking and so advanced to their technology and so positive in their affirmations because they get it,

Corinna Bellizzi: they get it. Well, you know, really we’re led by scientists and technologists, okay? And so these people are very skilled at optimizing the growing conditions that the algae are subject to.

And what I would encourage people to do is you can go to orlow nutrition.com and take a look at our product pages and things like that, and dive a little deeper into the science You’ll see. See an example of essentially what is our vertical farming method, but for algae, and what it is, is it’s a photo bioreactor, [00:31:00] essentially glass tubes laid vertically up and down, um, that are exposed.

Um, basically there’s water inside this with the inoculated algae. Um, so the inoculation of the algae means that you’ve put a little bit of algae in there and then produce the conditions to enable it to grow. You’d feed the standard NPK type of solutions, so you’ve got your nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium there for the, um.

For them to continue to grow an organic solution. Right? And then you’ve exposed it to this perfect blend of blue and red light because that’s what the LG wants to see. So it’s this really bright, beautiful fusia. And then you have pumps there that essentially pump this through continually and that, you know, add the CO2 in.

So bubbles of CO2 are going through that the algae then absorbs as part of their nutrition and. Produces oxygen and then all continues to grow. Over the course of two days, they’ve essentially maximized their growing [00:32:00] space, and so it’s continually kind of harvested on the other end. When we continue, the inoculation continues.

Wow, flowing continually. Two days.

Jeffrey Burke: Two days.

Corinna Bellizzi: Every two days. Oh my God. Algae has essentially doubled, and so it’s an exponential growth rate, so you have to kind of continually harvest it. It’s not like we empty these things out and clean them and start over. This is not that. Okay. Um, our spirulina is, is very similar, and so we have a slightly different configuration for the spirulina to grow in because they don’t need the same surface time to the exposure of the lights.

So they’re in bigger tubes, so to speak, um, rather than tight little skinny ones. They’re in a bigger tube and exposed to a different photo array, but still a perfect blend of red and blue. And we got to discover the ideal growing conditions for these algae species by doing lab scale and then going into production scale once we refine, refine, refine, right?[00:33:00]

And so what is really incredible about. Both of these is that in each case, by optimizing their growing conditions, their levels of omega threes improve on the nanocar opsis, which is a species we grow. Um, the levels of phytonutrients improve are yield, therefore improves. We don’t have to use as much to make the oil, so to speak, or we can make a more potent Omega-3 without having to do things like refine it with molecular distillation or CO2 extraction or any of that.

We basically just have to dewater it and run it through some processing. Which isn’t very complicated, right? The only solvent that we use is alcohol on organic alcohol, and that’s it, right? When you move to the spirulina, the spirulina is a larger, um, it’s like spiral shaped, right? That’s where it gets the name spirulina.

Um, and we essentially just would take that water and filter it through a mesh screen, and that mesh screen then leaves all this [00:34:00] kind of goopy stuff on top that. Has no odor at all. No flavor to it, aside from a slight brackish ness because it’s grown and a medium that has a little bit of salt to it, right?

So then you essentially just rinse it and then we freeze it. The freezing kind of breaks the bonds of the, um, the cell walls and enables us to extract it. We can get a very, very bright blue. Spirulina out of that, we can also refine it to get more of the green components out so that we can have a more vibrant blue and work in the food colorant space.

Um, but what was really fascinating about growing our spirulina in this way is that through its optimization, we learned that it actually produces vitamin B12 in its bioavailable, methylated form. Spirulina grown in open ponds does not have that, and in fact, spirulina [00:35:00] grown in open ponds has what you would refer to as a pseudo B12.

The reason it’s called a pseudo B12 is it essentially sits on your receptors for B12, and so could essentially present, prevent your absorption. Of vitamin B12 if you were to consume it at the same time. So we think the reason this is happening is because our growing technology does not have any UV light and so that that could potentially be changing something about how the spirulina grows.

’cause it’s the same exact species. There’s no difference other than our growing technology. Fascinating. Right.

Jeffrey Burke: Un unbelievable. And, and it can’t do anything but be in such an amazing state. ’cause you give it this euphoria utopia environment to be able to do its thing

Corinna Bellizzi: we call it’s like an algae spa, right?

Like, oh yeah, come in, soak and like, you know, optimize. But

Jeffrey Burke: do you do astaxanthin as well?

Corinna Bellizzi: Not yet. [00:36:00] I mean, I’m not putting it necessarily out of the realm of possibility, but um, it’s not something we presently do.

Jeffrey Burke: I’m definitely gonna be trying this algae. Um, I and as well as the spirulina, um, I’m very much in tune with them and I’ve tried many over the years, but I of, of course, I also want to be able to have something that gives me the most I can get.

Do you have any, any. Boxes with you. You can show everybody. Do you have anything there? Oh, yeah.

Corinna Bellizzi: So there’s a few products that we’ve integrated our spirulina in so far. Okay. This is, um, the women’s vitality mix, and there’s a seven pouch set up right now. This is the product that has the most spirulina in it presently.

Per serving, it’s got 2.8 grams of our spirulina and 2.7, sorry. But we also combine glycine, l-tyrosine cranberry fruit powder, uh, bacillus solus, which is a spore form probiotic. Uh, we also include magnesium, zinc, sodium, potassium. Frankly, I think the [00:37:00] sodium potassium also is somewhat left over from our growing.

You rinse it, but a little bit slept over.

Jeffrey Burke: Mm-hmm.

Corinna Bellizzi: Um, and then you’ll also see vitamin B12, which comes from the spirulina itself, protein, which comes from the sper itself. In fact, two grams of the 2.7 is protein. Wow. Spirulina produces all essential amino acids, so theoretically you could, you know, consume a lot more of this Lina and get a lot of protein from it as well.

Um. At any rate, but that’s all in there. Um, it also includes iron, and the iron also comes from our spirulina. So it says that along on the back. So you can see from the settlement packs it says, um, iron from Icelandic ultra spirulina, arthro, sphera, platten, which is the same species everybody else grows.

And then we have put it into our focus in memory gummies. I love this product because, oh, and I, I did open this one already. Um, you get the kind of blue [00:38:00] green from the spirulina. Um, I love

Jeffrey Burke: that

Corinna Bellizzi: it has a hundred milligrams of phosphatidyl sine. Per two, soft two, um, soft chew. Um, it’s a gummy, right? So a hundred milligrams of the phosphatidylserine, which has improving effects with time.

So it helps your memory and focus short-term memory tests and things like that with better effects over time. So you’ll realize the most benefit in the first 30 days. So, but then gradually improving benefits from there out. So encourage you to take. Uh, something that has phosphatidyl Seine in it for the long term, um, at the same time that it has our spirulina in it.

And, uh, lion’s mane standardized to beta glucans 1 3 1 6. So it’s a really smart formula. We also are a big fan of L-theanine, so we put L-theanine in this that gives you that kind of calm focus so it can take the edge off, like, let’s say you’ve got a little anxiety as you’re heading into a test. It’s designed to kind of calm your nerves.

Right? We also put that lthe. With our spirulina [00:39:00] in a brain performance bar. So this is something you could take an hour before, um, your performance activity, uh, whether it be a sport where you needed to be mentally sharp too, or a test or something to that effect. This gives you 11 grams of protein, around 200 calories, but it also has that spirulina in there along with, um, protein from peas.

Um. And this one does have caffeine from green tea. Mm-hmm. That’s a hundred milligrams. So it’s a pretty hefty dose of, of green tea, caffeine. But the green tea caffeine is balanced with L-theanine as well. So again, that sharp focus. Um, and so I just would say don’t take it after 5:00 PM you know, and we say take, because this is a supplement bar.

It’s not just a nutrition bar. The levels of nutrients we’re giving are at the supplement level. Um, another 400 milligrams of. Lion’s mane mushroom is in here as well. So again. Really incredible tastes good. It’s coconut and cookie dough and, um, very, very

Jeffrey Burke: [00:40:00] forward thinking. I, no pun intended, but, uh, you know, but, um, nice.

I love the labeling too. The packaging’s beautiful.

Corinna Bellizzi: Yeah. Thank you. I mean, and then of course our omega threes, we’ve done really differently. We talked a lot about them, but, um, our omega threes are in a pouch. These are made of post-consumer recycled plastic. Mm-hmm. So this one says Active Omega-3 on the front, Icelandic ultra algae, and then three times more bioavailable, polar lipid form.

It says right on the package. Carbon neutral, vegan, gluten-free, and non GMO. Um, and then we actually do a model here where we give you a refillable glass jar. If you buy a starter kit, you can do that through our website or some of our independent retailers. Now, also stock a starter kit that’s retail ready, so you get this beautiful glass jar that’s black.

It’s refillable. Um, and this perfectly protects the soft gels inside, so it ensures that no light gets through. The soft gels themselves are also essentially black. They’re colored with chlorophyll, so it’s really just a [00:41:00] hyper. Black, hyper, dark green, that looks black, right? Um, there’s also chlorophyll in the soft gels themselves within the Omega-3 oil we produce.

Um, if you were to puncture one of these and squirt it on a piece of paper, kind of spread it out, you’ll see that it’s a very, very dark green.

Jeffrey Burke: I love it. I, I love what you’re doing there. I think that it just makes so much sense. And, you know, do you, do you feel that dosing on these is, is based on your weight or do we go across the board for an adult?

Corinna Bellizzi: You know, this is the continual question that we will always get. Like, how much is enough? How much is too much? What do I need? Mm-hmm. And the reality is people’s needs are so individualized. True. And like the more that we come to understand nutrition and uh, what testing shows, the more it appears everybody’s system needs something a little bit different.

Um. I don’t eat [00:42:00] much, if any, fish. I, I’m mostly vegetarian and a good part of that reason is I still very much love sushi. And I will have a little breakdown moment here and there and go get some sashimi. Okay. Guilty. Guilty. Just love it. I know. Um, but for the most part, I don’t. Eat fish and I don’t eat meat, generally speaking.

Um, if I find my body’s craving it, I don’t deny. That’s kind of my method when it comes to foods. I recently had to get an knee surgery. I found myself craving chicken soup. I’m, I’m allowed myself to have chicken soup, but generally speaking, I eat for the earth and I go to a plant forward diet. So. As it stands, I need two doses of either our Omega-3 or D-D-H-A-A day.

And this is probably also because I have, um, one representation of the A POE four genome type. So this is where things get really complicated. What we’ve learned about omega threes is that people have different [00:43:00] absorption ability. And if you have one or two representations of a POE four, you’ll be somewhat thwarted in your ability to absorb DHA into your brain and eyes that may be in part responsible for the reality of people with this genome type having, um, more challenges with things like heart disease and Alzheimer’s.

Later in life, and it really does appear that those diseases can be turned on or off with the right nutrition and lifestyle. So, you know, if you follow the work of Dr. Joel Furman or if you follow the work of, uh, gosh, who am I thinking of right now? He’s up in the North Bay and he just did an Alzheimer’s research study that was published last June.

Oh my goodness. With an Alzheimer’s protocol. Goodness. I know who you’re talking about and I’m like blanking on his name right now. But you, you know who I’m thinking of. I do. And maybe we can circle back, [00:44:00] right? Yes. Um, Dr. Dean Ordish.

Jeffrey Burke: Thank you.

Corinna Bellizzi: Um, he, I should know. I need some more DHA today, apparently. But he published a study last June, which showed through diet and lifestyle, he could reverse the effects of early onset Alzheimer’s with the right.

Protocol and that protocol included daily supplementation of Omega-3 EPA and DHA. It included some probiotics. It included a coq 10 supplement and a couple of others that I’m not remembering right now, but it was a vegan diet with those things, and it looks very much like going plant forward is the most brain healthy way to eat.

For longevity, for brain preservation, and part of me really has come to believe that a good chunk of the [00:45:00] reason for that today is that our world has become so polluted that animals are concentrating these pollutants and a lot of those pollutants are. You know, essentially brain destroying, all the heavy metals are brain destroying, right?

So if we had cleaner food, this would probably be less of a problem. But that’s purely speculative. And I, I think, you know, if we had the ability to go back a hundred years and look at how, um, what people’s longevity markers were like, you know. That we would support something along these lines because it makes logical sense.

We’ve seen a decline in the core nutrition of, um, most of the foods that we grow because our soils just aren’t as rich and healthy, which is the argument for going regenerative, right? But we also see there’s a lot of plastic pollutants. There’s a lot of chemical pollutants that are in our environments that [00:46:00] animals bioaccumulate and that when we eat the animals, we get more of them.

People who eat a vegan diet eat less plastic. People who eat an animal-based diet eat a lot more plastic

Jeffrey Burke: truth.

Corinna Bellizzi: So these are, you know, they say a credit card a week is what the average person consumes in plastic.

Jeffrey Burke: Mm, yummy. You know, if you only

Corinna Bellizzi: eat vegetables and fruits and like gr some grains, then I think that that’s gonna be a small, a smaller number.

Yeah.

Jeffrey Burke: You know, I just, I mean, I, I respect my vegan friends. I know I couldn’t do it. I, I, I tried vegetarian. Well, I mean,

Corinna Bellizzi: I’m sure I’m not vegan, right? Yeah.

Jeffrey Burke: Yeah. But vegetarian, I, I, it’s a lot easier for me, you know, and especially being on the road as much as I am, it’s a lot easier these days to be able to be vegetarian on the road.

It wasn’t years. That means it’s life. Well, and some

Corinna Bellizzi: people do better on a vegan diet than others. Like I was very tightly monitoring my diet when I was going pure vegan. And then I go to my dentist checkout and [00:47:00] they notice that I have some gum, gum recession. You know, like I went from measuring twos and threes everywhere in my mouth to threes and fours everywhere.

And what did I do? I started listing my body more, adding a little bit more of animal products into my diet, go to my next dental checkup, and they’re like, you’re back to twos and threes. And I’m just like, what? You know, it’s something, I don’t know what it is. It’s not like I’m showing a deficiency in my blood workup panels, and I do get pretty comprehensive blood workup periodically.

Mm-hmm. But that’s because I, I’m a believer in it, you know, I wanna check my Omega-3 levels. I wanna make sure that I’m at close to 8%, Omega-3 saturation point in my blood. And I, I tend to come in at like 7.8 and I’m like, that’s good, that’s fine. I don’t need to do that much more. I’m in the right zone, you know?

Jeffrey Burke: I love it. I, I, I do the same thing actually. You can see the hole. I did mine yesterday. I, it was that time again. So, I mean, and I, I do the gamut. I do that as well, and I think it’s very important to do that because outta sight, outta mind, if I [00:48:00] can’t see it, I don’t think about it. So I want to know what I’m not seeing.

I. Yep. You know, so that’s important. Especially it’s a smart

Corinna Bellizzi: thing to do, test on guests. I mean, if you can do it like once a year, and the thing I’ve learned too is that don’t necessarily go through your health insurance because sometimes they don’t cover very much. That’s, and you end up paying more through that lab than if you go directly to another lab.

That’s true. So, um, unfortunately that’s just the way billing works in our medical system.

Jeffrey Burke: Well, I, I wanna thank you. This has been, this has been a, a really high point for me. I really appreciate it, and thank you for all the wonderful information. How do people find you? I. If they wanna follow you or if they wanna listen to you, what’s the easiest way?

Corinna Bellizzi: Well, I do have, um, my podcasts, of course, you mentioned them on this show already, care More, be Better is my primary show. Nutrition Without Compromise. I’m on a break between seasons, but there’s several episodes out there already where I dive into a. A lot of the intelligence we’ve shared today and with several different experts in the health space, um, some [00:49:00] in sustainability.

I’ve interviewed Dr. Isaac Burson about our technologies and things like that. I’ve done so on both my shows and he’s just a hoot. So I encourage people to check those out. Um, and then you can follow me at care more, be better. You can follow Oro Nutrition at Oro Nutrition on every platform, and I also have a couple that are at Corina Zi, but I’m probably most active on LinkedIn and I.

TikTok ish sometimes Instagram.

Jeffrey Burke: I follow you everywhere, so, uh oh.

Corinna Bellizzi: Thank you. No, I do have fun. I just don’t have much time for social media these days.

Jeffrey Burke: I know. It, it, it’s difficult and I travel so much as well myself, so I, I try to make the time, but it’s usually in the middle of the night when I’m doing it, so,

Corinna Bellizzi: yeah.

Um,

Jeffrey Burke: do me a favor, leave everybody with a thought at the day.

Corinna Bellizzi: Hmm. You know, I think the core message I wanna leave people with is that they should learn to trust their bodies. I. So often we hear from other people about the things that we [00:50:00] should be doing and what I should be doing, versus what you should be doing might be two completely different things.

Health is an individual journey, and so learn to listen to yourself. Learn. Learn to listen to how foods and supplements that you consume, make you feel when you consume them, and then focus on the things that make you feel better.

Jeffrey Burke: I love that. I’m stealing that. Thank you. Um, that was wonderful. Thank you.

You’ve been listening to Carina Belize today. We’ve been talking a lot about a lot of things today, but a lot of amazing focus on Omega-3 and with the importance of Omega-3. I think it’s really important for you to be able to pass this show on to your friends and family. Have them tune in, give them this foundation of awareness and the, the differentiation between what’s going on, what we think we know, and maybe some of the things we need to know.

And, um, I hope you’ll come back and see me again.

Corinna Bellizzi: Oh, absolutely. Anytime.

Jeffrey Burke: Uh, I, I would just love it. I think that you are a breath of, uh, [00:51:00] fresh air and you bring sunshine and light, and I think that’s really important. Uh, make sure to go to my webpage, dr jeffrey burke.com. Remember to tap on the Honest Health logo.

It’ll take you to Spotify for the audio version. You know, the one you should listen to when you’re driving, uh, and, uh, tap on the YouTube logo and you can watch all of the episodes there. I hope everyone has a wonderful day. And enjoy yourself. Get healthy, be healthy, and stay healthy. I. Have a great day.

God bless.