Great food starts with
Great Ingredients
We mean it when we say “if we wouldn’t feed it to our family, we won’t feed it to you.” The Althea Farms focus on quality ingredients is a result of Charlotte learning how to cook around a variety of autoimmune diseases for a family of seven. It required becoming very attuned to how the entire family’s health reacted relative to the foods we ate. It goes without saying it also included serious label reading. Ensuring we had clean nutritious food became a passion project for our family’s health. Over the years, through a lot of research - plus some trial and error - we concluded that for us that meant absolutely no gluten, no seed oils, no glyphosates, no genetically modified anything.
We didn’t know any better than to continue the same way when we started Althea Farms. And as our business grows, we refuse to compromise on the quality of our ingredients in the name of cutting costs. Obviously there are cheaper sources for our ingredients, but we buy certified organic whenever we can even though organic pecans are not available in quantities (or qualities) sufficient to allow us to certify our products as organic. This is why we support regenerative pecan growers and will seek to ensure there is a market for regeneratively grown products within our supply chain (but that is a whole other part of the story - see below)
What do all these purity certifications mean?
Well, no matter how you feel about genetically modified foods, seed oils, gluten or glyphosate (avoiding these kinds of foods has helped us feel better) we believe that certified ingredients have been more lovingly grown, harvested, and processed which comes through in the flavor.
Eating clean food is a journey and we will continuously work to source the best, cleanest ingredients we can find. We feel so strongly about offering clean healthy snacks that we go above and beyond; regularly having our products independently lab tested to ensure our ingredients remain pure. With that said, the quality of ingredients starts at the source, so where we can, we buy direct from farmers. This lets us walk their orchards, fields and apiaries - giving us unique insight into their land management policies, their processes, their business practices, and ultimately the quality of the ingredients we put in our snacks.
Where it is not practical to buy direct, we seek out suppliers that demonstrate a commitment to clean, wholesome, regenerative production methods. We have curated a network of like-minded suppliers that provide us with ingredients that are organic, non-GMO, gluten free, glyphosate free, seed oil free, regeneratively & sustainably produced, and made without chemical processes or additives - even when government standards will allow it.