Elements recently announced a partnership with Whole30. In the announcement, Melissa Hartwig, Whole30's Co-Founder made the following statement:

“Elements are THE missing link in Whole30 on-the-go- meals. They’re totally portable, won’t spoil, and can be whipped up in two minutes flat on a road trip, at the campsite, or in any hotel room.”

To help you appreciate the complete truth of Melissa’s statement, we want to share some deeper knowledge about Elements Meals with you. In fact, we want to help you understand why Elements meals are truly a nutrition revolution.

Capturing, Preserving and Delivering Nutrition Like Never Before 

Elements’ nutrition is virtually unequalled in the market place. In fact, our ingredients have higher quality and denser macronutrients (protein, carbohydrate and fat) and micronutrients (vitamin, mineral, polyphenol and phytochemical) than virtually any other food you can buy . . . except for just-harvested, farm grown food. In fact, Elements Meals ingredients have the same nutrient values of harvested-just-today vegetables, fats and proteins. How is this possible?

Capturing Nutrition: Harvest Time Nutrition Capture

We capture our ingredients’ maximal nutrition before they are harvested.

Elements vegetables and fruits are harvested only when they are ripe … at the zenith of their nutrient, taste, texture, flavor, and Brix values. In other words, our plant carbohydrates are connected to, and thrive from, their life force until they are truly nature-directed harvest-ready.  While this may sound natural, it is a severely anomalous practice in the American food industry.

Indeed, all fruits and vegetables purchased at retail grocers are harvested prematurely, when they’re “green” . . . when nutrients, flavors, textures, and brix values are significantly under-developed. Instead of maturing on the vine, these pre-maturely gathered foods cannibalistically “age,” subject to damaging environment and temperature fluctuations, while traveling hundreds and even thousands of miles to storage facilities. They then wait additional weeks or months to be moved from storage facilities to the “fresh produce” section of our grocers (see Nutrition Scoreboard, right).

Premature harvesting and post-harvest aging are tremendously detrimental to naturally occurring plant micronutrients, i.e., vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals, polyphenols and more. Scientific studies have conclusively found, for example, that vegetables and fruits rich in Vitamin C lose over 30% of that nutrient within 3 days of harvest, more than 50% within 7 days of harvest, and more than 70% after two weeks of harvest, even when refrigerated.

Unfortunately, over 97% of retail veggies and fruits arriving “fresh” to local grocers have traveled many weeks, and even many months, to get there. In fact, some of the veggies and fruits at retail grocers are 18 months beyond their harvest date.

Post-Harvest Nutrition Capture

Within 8 hours of our nature-directed harvesting, we take three steps to capture the whole foods’ inherent macro and micro-nutrients and to maintain its life: 1) The whole food is washed; 2) It is then cut into bite size pieces; 3) Those pieces are flash-frozen using individually quick-frozen (“IQF”) technology.

The bite-size pieces are placed on a fluidized bed which moves the food through an air flow that quickly freezes each individual piece to its core -- faster than any other technology. This allows very limited and small ice crystals to form in the food, maintaining its surface texture, its membrane and structure. Slower freezing technology, like cold storage, destroys food surfaces, membranes and structures. Fundamentally reducing the freezing time preserves the whole foods’ natural taste, texture and nutritional values.

Another important benefit of freezing with IQF technology is food safety. With IQF, it is possible to achieve up to zero contact between the product and the workers. Additionally, exposure to and risk of food contamination is prevented.

Post-Harvest Nutrition Preservation

IQF flash freezing locks in all the harvest benefits inherent in our whole food ingredients. After IQF freezing, our ingredients are transported at -10 degree Fahrenheit to our freeze-drying facility in Utah. This temperature preserves the foods’ original harvest-time qualities and characteristics, including maintaining the live enzymes in the food. The food is ALIVE!

This process has been scientifically proven to be the best nutrition preservation technology in the world, bar none.

Upon arrival to our facility, our food is securely moved and stored into a sanitary freezer and maintained at that same temperature. No human contact is permitted. When the time is right, our food is moved from the -10 degree facility directly into an adjoining -40 degree facility. There, the food’s core temperature is reduced to -40 just prior to being placed in our world-class freeze driers.

The freeze-drying process can best be described, without the deep technical side, thus. After the food is placed in the freeze driers, a vacuum is then created. Temperature is further reduced and atmospheres increase. In an instant, the moisture in the food (in the form of small ice crystals) instantly vaporizes into a gaseous state, leaving all other characteristics of the whole food untouched. In other words, the food’s moisture converts from a solid to vapor without changing to its liquid state. This process has been scientifically proven to be the best nutrition preservation technology in the world, bar none.

Post-Harvest Nutrition Delivery

After our food is freeze-dried, we store it in containers that are oxygen free, sunlight free and moisture free. These three elements, e.g. oxygen, sunlight and moisture are the enemies of freeze-dried food nutrition preservation. So, let’s just say we keep a “tight lid” on our goods!

When our production schedules require, we place those freeze-dried foods into our individual portion pouches with the help of state-of-the-art technology. Each special pouch receives just the right amount of every ingredient, measured by weight. When all of the ingredients are in the pouch, nitrogen is jetted into the pouch to remove any remaining oxygen. Then, an oxygen pouch is added to the pouch to consume any oxygen that may remain. Better safe than sorry, we always say!

The pouches are then sealed and boxed . . . just for you! The quality of our pouches, together with the oxygen absorbers we use, will ensure your Elements Meals will have a wonderful 3-year shelf life (putting it very conservatively). Imagine, being able to eat nutrient dense, farm fresh food like this by simply adding 1 cup of hot/boiling water and giving it a mere 12 minutes to “steap”. After those 12 minutes, you will enjoy a whole food, farm grown, nutrient dense meal that will treat your body right.

To order a Variety Pack that fuels your nutrition, go here: Elements Meals.