I grew up with dates on the table the way other people grew up with bread. They were not precious. Nobody called them a superfood, nobody printed a claim on them, nobody sold them to me. You ate a few in the afternoon and went back to your day.

That is still the test I use. Before anything goes in a pouch I ask whether it would look normal on my mother's table. If it needs a story to be worth eating, it is not the thing.

Sixteen years in the CPG industry, supply chain and operations, at companies whose products are in your cabinet right now. I have been in the room when an ingredient gets swapped for a cheaper one that survives a longer truck ride, and in the room where a gum gets added so the texture holds up in a warehouse in July.

None of that is a scandal. It is math. Cost per unit, shelf life, a product that has to taste the same in month eleven as it did in week one. Every single decision is reasonable by itself. Twenty of them stacked up is how you end up with a label you cannot read out loud.

I do not ship to a warehouse in July. That is the honest reason I can leave all of it out, and why a big company mostly cannot.

I would stand in the aisle reading the back of a package three times, looking for the thing I already knew was in there. Put it back. Pick up the next one. Read that one three times. I was doing the job I used to get paid for, on a Saturday, for a snack for my kids.

I wanted one snack I did not have to investigate. I could not find it, so I made it.

The first batches were in my kitchen, for my family. Nine things, because nine was what I had that I trusted: dates, almonds, walnuts, raw cacao, coconut oil, chia, ginger, turmeric, black pepper. No binders. Coconut oil and pressure hold a bite together perfectly well if you are willing to work in small batches.

Friends asked for some. Then they asked for more, and then they asked to pay. That is the entire founding story.

Today it is a small factory in New Jersey instead of my kitchen. Still small batches, and I taste every batch before it goes into a pouch. I know that is the part that gets cut first when a brand grows, and I would rather grow slower than lose it. The recipe has not changed since the kitchen. Not once.

I am not anti-sugar and I am not anti-snack. I am against a label you have to look things up in. This tastes like dessert because dates already taste like dessert, and your gut gets the fiber that usually gets stripped out on the way.