Katlin Smith

© Photo courtesy of Simple Mills

Smarter snacks

Simple Mills provides healthy ingredients, sustainably sourced

by tim talevich

Simple Mills makes crackers and snacks using nontraditional ingredients, with a goal of being healthy not only for people but also for Earth. The Connection recently chatted about sustainable food-sourcing practices with CEO Katlin Smith, who started the company in her kitchen a decade ago.

Costco Connection Simple Mills doesn’t focus on being sugar-free or fat-free. Instead it focuses on the ingredients it includes. Can you elaborate?
Katlin Smith There are so many items out there that are made with things that we want to be eating less of, instead of things we want to be eating more of. Our products [include] only carefully selected, natural ingredients, nothing artificial ever.

CC The ingredient lists on your products reflect that. Rather than wheat and corn, we see buckwheat, watermelon seed and arrowroot, to name a few. Why are these ingredients important?
KS These ingredients help people diversify their diets. And having those diverse ingredients is really important for our broader agricultural system.

I started this company after cleaning up my own diet and taking out a lot of the processed food and sugar, and realized how much of an impact that eating healthy foods can have on our bodies. And from there, I realized food has a really large impact on our planet as well. In using all these different ingredients, we’re supporting regenerative agriculture (see “Diverse ingredients”), which is designed to be a self-feeding system where you don’t need chemical inputs to grow your food, and where you don’t have to continually replant food.

CC Working closely with farmers is very important to you. How do you achieve that?
KS We believe farmers are key to transforming our food system, so we have forged direct contracts and share with them our vision to build more sustainability into how we feed people. Also, we actively support partnerships that promote farming practices that have the potential to improve soil health and food safety. It’s really remarkable how different the land looks when you see these practices implemented.