We’ll be real. For the first week or so as we remained safely at home amidst the coronavirus crisis, cooking was fun. Dreaming up plant-based meals with pantry staples like high-protein baked oatmeal and split pea soup, sans ham, was a challenge any Food Network junkie could get behind.
Now, not so much. There has to be a better way, we thought as we stared despairingly at our cutting board. And there is. Meet: Sakara Life. Co-founded by Whitney Tingle and Danielle Duboise, now the company’s Co-CEOs, Sakara Life was born in 2012, and has been delivering delicious, ready-to-eat, organic, plant-based meals ever since. Based on a proprietary nutrition program centered on nine science-backed “Pillars of Nutrition” and inspired by the paths Danielle and Whitney forged from their burnt-out to thriving selves.
“Danielle and I grew up in Sedona, Arizona, which is this mecca of crystals, vortexes, and mind/body/food medicine. Everyone around us was a shaman or a healer, we knew people that ‘ate sunshine’ and our moms used to give us chlorella tablets as kids. It was a magical way to grow up because there weren’t limits on how to live—anything felt possible. We both moved to New York City for different reasons—Danielle was studying pre-med and biochemistry, and putting her way through school by modeling and acting, while I was working on Wall Street,” offered Whitney of the company’s origins.
They became roommates in SoHo as both of their health deteriorated. Danielle got severe pneumonia and Whitney suffered from exhaustion from her long work days and chronic cystic acne flareups.
“We dove into the research to figure out how to heal ourselves and Danielle decided to study nutrition instead of to continue medical school. We made it our mission to figure out what it would mean to eat in the healthiest way possible, no extremes but it had to work and it had to taste good (Danielle never wanted to diet again!). We spent years studying, researching and talking to everyone we could find— shamans, integrative doctors, gastroenterologists, acupuncturists, MD—we found the common threads of ancient nutrition modalities like Macrobiotics and Ayurveda and cutting edge nutrition science to create what ended up as Sakara’s 9 Pillars of Nutrition,” explained Whitney.
“After a few weeks of eating this way, our lives were changed. It sounds dramatic but it’s true. That was back in 2012. We felt incredible physically, but with that came an emotional and mental shift that I don’t think we could have anticipated. We knew this transformation couldn’t just be kept to ourselves and so we decided to start cooking these meals and delivering them to friends,” she continued.
Fast forward to 2020 and they’re a nationwide company that delivers to 48 continental states and they offer a variety of meal plans: Their signature program, detox, and brides. On any given week, the seasonal menu for their meal programs changes, but expect hits like warming miso noodle soup, golden pineapple unfried rice, and lemon poppy seed donuts with citrus creme.
They also have an online clean boutique shop featuring snacks, supplements, chocolates, tea, and more.
And just because Sakara Life floods your body with delectable, organic fare doesn’t mean it will break the bank. Plans start at $25/day with a completely personalized weekly schedule. All the meals arrive at your door fresh (never frozen) and ready-to-eat, and in addition to being organic and plant-based, they’re also gluten-free, dairy-free, non-GMO, and have no refined sugar.
If that’s not what our bodies crave during this unsettling period, we don’t know what could top that. Pass the raspberry tea cake with fresh lemon curd, please.
To place your order, visit Sakara.com.
