To Justine Reichman, eating right is a human right.
It’s a steady drumbeat the Marin-based entrepreneur, podcaster, and founder of media company and global network NextGen Purpose has played for the last decade—one we in the U.S. have long needed to hear.
But Reichman’s mission isn’t just about building sustainability in our food and agricultural systems. “The conversation extends beyond food… to the intersection of food and fashion, beauty, planet, health, and lifestyle. All these things play a role.”
On her podcast Essential Ingredients, you’re as likely to hear a deep dive into restoring soil health with regenerative farming as you are one on gut health. On NextGen Purpose, articles run the gamut from a guide to mindful shopping and the impact of tariffs on fashion to back-to-school nutrition and wellness routines for small children.
Reichman in conversation on 'Essential Ingredients'(Laura Reoch)
“My overarching goal is to give people a platform so they can make the right choices for them,” Reichman explains. “Everyone has their own ideas and value systems and, when they impose that on everyone else without understanding what their core values are, it can feel like you’re not doing enough.”
It’s not about being perfect, she says. “Perfection gets exhausting.”
Instead, Reichman gives listeners and readers the chance to “understand the gravity [of their choices] and make small changes towards the betterment of the planet” by telling science-backed stories from doctors, researchers, entrepreneurs, and changemakers.
The idea for NextGen Purpose came about organically, first seeded by a project she stumbled into while living in Mexico City in 2015 that worked with low-income families on its outskirts to grow gardens of organic produce—some of which they’d sell, some of which they’d eat themselves.
Returning to the States a couple of years later, Reichman had a lightbulb moment while managing an accelerator program at the Founder Institute in Oakland and began connecting founders with small-scale chefs and home producers “building better-for-you-businesses” to provide the food for their events. She called the venture NextGen Chef.
When in-person events disappeared in the pandemic, Reichman pivoted online and to podcasting, giving “people a platform to share their journeys that would be aspirational for those tuning in” and breaking down concepts around food and sustainability that could be complex and confusing. Today, with so many pseudoscientific messages about food, health, and the environment coming from MAGA, MAHA, and social media, that science-backed platform is more important than ever.
(Laura Reoch)
“What’s happening is dangerous,” says Reichman. Individuals and organizations with powerful, influential voices “need to surround [themselves] with the people that are experts in those fields, and I just think we lack that at the moment.” NextGen Purpose and Essential Ingredients are helping to counter the misinformation.
In addition to continuing to talk about agricultural innovation, the differences between regenerative and organic produce, and how to make the best food choices to minimize your carbon footprint, topics coming up on the podcast will include things like how to spot greenwashing, addressing the hormonal imbalances of perimenopause, and how women investors and entrepreneurs can impact the health of the planet and its future.
When it comes to consumerism, “it’s not all sustainable, we make choices,” says Reichman. With food, as with industries like fashion and wellness, “what’s most important is understanding whose vision is behind the company and what are their intentions.” Whether their record is 100 percent perfect at the present moment doesn’t matter as much as their drive to mitigate their negative impacts..
“When I try to connect with people, it’s with their everyday lifestyle, to try to understand the options that are available to them,” says Reichman. “My goal is to give people a platform to share the information so they get an education, and to share what I’m doing so that they can see that it’s not perfection we’re after, it’s incorporation.”
// The ‘Essential Ingredients’ podcast is available on Spotify, Apple, Google, and at nextgenpurpose.com; follow ‘Essential Ingredients’ on Substack and read more at nextgenpurpose.com.
