Snacktivist Foods: Gluten-Free Mixes From Northern Idaho Simplify Baking With Help From Ancient Grains

Jan 28

Snacktivist Foods: Gluten-Free Mixes From Northern Idaho Simplify Baking With Help From Ancient Grains

BY MANDY BRAVIROFF

What started online in 2015 as an inspiration for better health for her family has quickly become more than just another packaged food company. What you have is a Gluten Free and Vegan, Woman Owned, B-Corp company that actually works towards the true goal of making a better product for everyone, including the earth.

Joni Kindwall-Moore is the scientist behind Snacktivist Foods out of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. And I don't just throw scientist out there like it’s just another word; she truly is a food scientist with a degree in botany, who is sought near and far for information on ancient food and grains from all over the world.

From a kid living and working on a hobby farm in Western Oregon, to a young woman adventurously traveling through the Amazon, she has become one of the world’s experts on grains and how they affect one's health. Snacktivist Foods, as a whole, is a well systematized business with the objective to bring you good food and better health by eating grains that are good for you.

The Goods and Bads of Grains

Before the Colonial Food System, people used thousands of varieties of grains completely different from what we consider modern grains now. Corn, wheat and rice are part of the traditional Colonial style food system. While still important to the western way of living, these grains have pros and cons.

On the positive side, they are easily grown, harvested and accessible. However, chemical intensive farming of these grains has destroyed lands once rich in nutrients and have made the grains themselves less nutrient rich, contributing to deficiencies we see in people's diets today.

While Joni was working in nursing, she noticed a lot of people in dire health at the end of their lives. She knew that watching people at the most sensitive time in their lives was a time for her to reevaluate her own health and how she, a natural caregiver, can help people like these patients obtain better health.

She took on the study of ethnopharmacology and how people derive medicine from plants and other natural resources to try to find a better way of living. She took the theories and health benefits she learned about ancient grains from the Shaman and implemented them into her amazing and tasteful mixes.

Joni sources her natural grains from small family farms all over the United States. She believes by utilizing these forgotten grains, she can help provide a solution to the intensive farming that destroys the lands and brings healthy, necessary nutrients back to the earth.

The Snacktivist Difference

The main grains used in her mixes are Idaho Teff, Colorado Millet and Mid-Western Sorghum. She is currently on the board working with Washington State University hoping to eventually be able to grow and source these millet grains in Washington state.

For Joni and her family, this business is more than just a culinary adventure. She is driven by contributing to an agriculture movement away from GMO, Government-subsidized foods and monocrop farming.

Whether you follow a gluten-free diet or just want to use a local product to whip up some delicious baked goods at home, you’ll fall in love with anything she creates. Joni is currently working to deliver her product, plus cross-contamination training, to more restaurants locally to provide more safe and tasty options for celiacs.

You can find Snacktivist Foods at health food stores across the northwest or through Amazon. Snacktivist now offer a variety of mixes to choose from ranging from their popular Brownie Mix to a fluffy focaccia bread mix and protein-packed pancakes to kick start the day.