Brian Bentow of Get Saucy: Healing through Food and the Autoimmune Protocol Diet

In this episode, Brian Bentow, founder of Get Saucy, shares how a Crohn’s diagnosis flipped his Silicon Valley success story into a quest for healing. Discover how switching to the autoimmune protocol diet transformed his health, sparked a mission to make inclusive eating easy, and removing the wrong foods changed everything. Join us for a conversation on resilience, reinvention and the power of food to transform lives.

Transcript

Jillian (00:00)
Hey Brian!

Brian Bentow (00:01)
Hey, Jillian, how's it going?

Jillian (00:03)
Good! Thanks so much for being here!

Brian Bentow (00:05)
Yeah, thanks for having me on.

Jillian (00:07)
Yeah, I really appreciate it. I've really enjoyed getting to know you over the past couple weeks and we both have a love for helping to make food accessible to as many people as we can. And so I really appreciate you taking the time to talk about your business, Get Saucy.

Brian Bentow (00:24)
Yeah, thanks.

Jillian (00:24)
Do you want to share a bit of background about get saucy and an overview of what it is?

Brian Bentow (00:30)
Yeah, so Get Saucy, we make sauces, seasonings, condiments and dressings for people with autoimmune diseases, food allergies, or just want to eat super clean. And we have global cuisine flavors. So we have a tikka masala, orange chicken, Thai tomato-free marinara, barbecue sauce, taco seasoning. So if you think about all of the mainstream

global cuisines and kind of what's the iconic dish for each of those cuisines, we have, you know, a sauce or seasoning that makes it easy to make those meals.

Jillian (01:03)
Delicious.

So take me back to the early days and how Get Saucy came to be. So you were living the Silicon Valley dream with four successful exits under your belt, which by the way, congratulations. It's amazing. And then kind of suddenly out of nowhere, you receive a Crohn's diagnosis and that's a pretty hard left turn. What was that like when you

or see that diagnosis.

Brian Bentow (01:28)
Yeah, so after I was diagnosed, my gastroenterologist, I had been dealing with different types of ⁓ irritable bowel symptoms for about eight months, 10 months. And I was very reluctant to get a colonoscopy because they're not super fun. But I eventually did and my doctor gave me these pictures of my colon with ulcers and it was...

At one point I had blood in my stool and I was really scared that I might have colon cancer. And so then I'm like, all right, I got to go get the colonoscopy now. But when I got those pictures back and I looked at them, you know, I just wept and I felt, you know, all this disappointment, you know, shame and guilt that I didn't take care of my body. I was working, you know, a day job and sometimes two startups on the side. I wasn't eating healthy.

Like there was a lot that I could have been doing to take better care of myself. And I have autoimmune disease in my family. So I have a brother who has Crohn's. ⁓ My mom has an autoimmune disease. My uncle, her brother. And so, but I vowed at that moment, I became determined that I was not only going to heal from this, but I was going to be healthier than I ever was before. And I really wanted to understand, you know, how does this work? And

My doctor recommended that I go on intibio, but instead of going on intibio, I went to a functional medicine doctor first, and he told me about this diet called the autoimmune protocol diet. And I had never heard of it before. And it's similar to Whole30, where you eat, you know, whole foods, vegetables, fruit and meat, and you avoid the top 15 allergens. So you avoid, you know, nightshades, you avoid dairy, gluten.

⁓ Nuts, seeds, eggs, and so forth. And within two months of following the diet, all my symptoms resolved and my inflammation went down by over 90%. And I went back to my doctor and I showed him my blood test results and stool test results. And he looked at my C-reactive protein, my lactoferrin, calprotectin, and IgA. And he's like, my gosh, this is amazing. Which treatment are you on again?

And I said, no treatment. He's like, no, no, no, which medication? I said, no medication. He said, well, what are you doing? And I said, I'm doing the autoimmune protocol diet. He said, well, if you had these results and you're on the medication, I would be ecstatic. And then I asked him, well, why did you tell me about this diet? Why did I have to learn about it from a functional medicine doctor? And he said, well, I'm not a registered dietician. And 40 years ago, when I went to med school, I got a textbook this thick and only one page was on nutrition.

And in the last 40 years, I've only had one other patient besides you who had a similar outcome on a diet. And I even did a colonoscopy on him and his gut completely healed. However, after about a year of cooking all of his meals from scratch, he got tired of it and he went back to the way he was eating before and his symptoms came back with a vengeance. And he begged me to put him on the medication, which I did. And that's why I don't recommend the diet to anyone because I don't think it's sustainable.

Now, if I had been diagnosed with celiac disease instead of Crohn's disease, he would have recommended the gluten-free diet. But 50 years ago, doctors didn't know that if you have celiac, you can just avoid gluten. And they were prescribing anti-inflammatories, steroids, and even doing surgeries on patients. But today, if a doctor were to do the same thing, steroids, surgeries, anti-inflammatories, it would be a medical malpractice because...

The gluten-free diet has become the standard of care for people with celiac disease. And I can see a world in the future where diet becomes the first order treatment for all autoimmune diseases. know, people should go on an elimination diet for 30 days, 60 days, see if it helps, and then slowly reintroduce foods and see if they can get to symptom-free remission without medication, because it's a lot lower risk and less expensive.

But it's not easy. And so we need products. Just like if you go to the grocery store today, there's hundreds of gluten-free products. We need to have more products for people who are sensitive to these different allergens. So after I left the doctor's office, I had a lot to think about, but I found something that worked for me. So I continued doing it. Sometimes I'd eat very bland meals, just like...

rice and a can of tuna. But other times I would go online and find these recipes and I'd go to the grocery store, get a laundry list of ingredients, come home, chop them up, you know, make a giant mess, stink up the whole house, and then my wife would come downstairs and try my food and she'd be like, oh my gosh, this is horrible. And then I'd have to eat my food by myself sitting in a corner staring at a wall because no one wanted to see, or taste my food or even eat it outside. And I did that for three years and...

It wasn't super fun. So I decided, you know, well, after I had some success in my career, what would make the biggest difference in my life would be to improve the quality of my food. So I went on these different websites, meet a chef, take a chef kitchen remedy. And I started talking to chefs and it said, Hey, I'm on this diet. Can you make food for me? And they said, yes. And I had chefs dropping food off of my house twice a week. And it freed up my time. I got to go sailing 20 times, kite surfing.

I got a personal trainer, started lifting weights again, and spent more time with my family and everything was great. And then eventually I decided that I wanted to have my favorite dish, which is chicken tikka masala. And I talked to some chefs and I said, Hey, I want chicken tikka masala, but it can't have any tomatoes or dairy or gluten or cumin or any of these seed spices. And it has to be compliant with the diet. And these chefs said, that's impossible. Just stop.

You know, you're crazy. And I said next. And then I talked to some other chefs and they said, I'm not sure if it's possible, but I'll try. And they made something, but it did taste anything like Tikka masala. And eventually I was introduced to my co-founder, Suhan. And I learned that he worked at six Michelin star restaurants. He went to the International Culinary Center in New York. He was the head of production for Krilo BBQ for two and a half years and took them from 1.5 to 11 million in sales. And he...

worked in the executive dining program for JP Morgan and made meals for the CEO, Jamie Dimon, US presidents and foreign dignitaries for six years. And he had his own private catering business in Long Island, New York. And he specialized in making meals and dinner parties for people with autoimmune diseases. And so he was the perfect person for me to partner with. And so I asked them, can you make me three sauces in three months? One has to be Tikka masala. The other two can be whatever you want. And instead of three sauces, made me eight sauces.

And when I tasted the tikka masala, it reminded me of my first date with my wife.

It was the first time in over six years that I experienced that memory through my taste buds. And I was like, wow, this is amazing. Um, but you know, what if Suhan decides he doesn't want to cook for me anymore or God forbid get hit by a bus? How am I going to have my Tikka masala? So I had to create a company and put the recipes in the company and control the means of production so I can have Tikka masala every day for the rest of my life if I want to. And that's sort of how we got here. And it's sort of like if anyone's seen that movie Ratatouille where

the critic, Igor eats the ratatouille and it flashes him back to this memory of his childhood where he falls off his bike and his mom makes him ratatouille and eventually he goes into business with the chef because he wants to keep having ratatouille. I was kind of like that. Yeah, that's that's the story behind Get Saucy.

Jillian (08:20)
It's an incredible story. Your sauces are top nine allergy free and they're free from nightshades and they're made without seed oils. So for those who might not understand what that means or have that background, can you walk us through the philosophy behind those?

decisions and how that impacted the research that you were doing with your personal health journey.

Brian Bentow (08:40)
Yes, so when you first start with the autoimmune protocol or even if it's a paleo or Whole30 or one of these diets, you start with wanting to eat the cleanest foods that are certified organic, that have no processed ingredients, no refined sugar, no preservatives, you know, just vegetables. So they're very minimally processed.

Just like if you were to make these sauces at home, right? But you put them into a jar, a glass jar. That's what we wanted to achieve. So these sauces are perfect for people sort of, you know, in their most fragile state, but they're also great if you have recovered and you're healthy. So we really wanted to make those sauces at that level, at the highest possible level you could conceive of. Nightshades, which include tomatoes and...

white potatoes, paprika, chili, it's a whole group of plants that produce a type of toxin called solanine and plants make this toxin so that animals and insects don't eat them. It's their natural defense mechanism. Tomatoes and white potatoes and so forth are fine for most people, but there are some humans who are sensitive to it. And I met a woman

who worked at the Crohn's and Colitis Foundation, and her mom had rheumatoid arthritis and her hand was all crippled. And she told her mom about these diets and her mom stopped eating nightshades and her hand went back to normal without medication. And so it's pretty amazing, and I experienced it firsthand, that just by eliminating some of these foods, it can have such a dramatic effect. And it shouldn't be that surprising because...

If somebody has an IgE-mediated allergy to, let's say peanuts or shellfish, where if they eat peanuts or shellfish, they go into anaphylactic shock, you know, it's a life-threatening severe reaction. So it shouldn't be too surprising that certain foods can cause significant health issues. And also, for example, with celiac, you know, it can be very, very harmful for people who have celiac to eat gluten.

It can cause the destruction of the villi in their small intestine. and there's just been a lot of really, amazing stories like, you know, Dr. Terry Wall and the wall diet and how she reversed her multiple sclerosis and was in a wheelchair, but then was able to walk again. You know, we we've seen these types of transformations. So making foods available to people who have food allergies.

There's the FDA top 9 allergies, but then there are also other allergies like to corn or nightshades or food dyes, which is something my daughter struggles with, or citric acid. A lot of people don't know that the preservative citric acid is made from a type of black mold called Aspergillus niger, feeding off of sugars from, let's say, cornstarch or corn husk and so forth. If you're sensitive to mold,

eating foods made with citric acid can be problem. But again, it's not a problem for everybody. It might only be, some of these allergies might only be for 1 % of the population. But if you take all the allergens, the top nine allergies, plus maybe let's call it the top 14 or 15, that might represent 10 % of the population, if you take all those allergens combined.

And there's over a hundred autoimmune diseases. And we classify these diseases by where in the body your immune system attacks these cells. So if it attacks the villi and small intestines, it's celiac. If it's in part of your large intestine, it's either ulcerative colitis or Crohn's depending on what part of the intestine. If it's attacking your myelin cells in your, you know, spine, you know, that protect your nerves, then it's multiple sclerosis.

If it attacks your skin, maybe it's eczema or psoriasis. If it attacks your joints, it's rheumatoid arthritis. But in many of these cases, they're food modulated. And so by avoiding gluten, dairy, or nightshades or eggs or whatever that, maybe it's not just one, it could be multiple. The biggest problem that doctors face that I've seen is that you could have two Crohn's patients and one needs to avoid dairy and gluten. And the other one needs to avoid, let's say,

gluten and nightshades and it's fine with dairy. And so unlike with celiac disease where it's very, very straightforward, it's just you have celiac, we have a test for that, avoid gluten, it's the end of the story. With these other diseases, it's not that simple. There's variability between people.

Jillian (12:58)
Well, I appreciate the education. I'm learning so much about this topic. And so thanks for sharing your research with me and also our listeners as well. One thing that I appreciate about your approach with Get Saucy is it's not just about restrictive eating, but really about inclusive eating. So what does making mealtime inclusive mean to you?

Brian Bentow (13:19)
Yeah, so for many years I had to eat all my meals by myself and you feel very socially isolated. You don't get to go out to restaurants with your friends. You can't even hardly, you know, can't go to people's houses and have meals together. And so I wanted to have sauces that taste good enough so that you can enjoy them with your friends and family.

They're good. You you can make meals for yourself or you could make a meal for your whole family. And instead of having to have, you know, make two meals, one for yourself and one for your spouse and kids, I wanted it to be good enough so you can make one meal for the whole family, which saves time and money. And eating together is one of the main ways that we connect and not having that connection.

⁓ it's something is what I really noticed, you know, for those years where I had to eat by myself.

I met a woman and her sister has Crohn's disease. And every time her sister would come over, she would be really stressed about like, what can I make that she can eat that everyone else will want to eat? You know, I don't want her to feel different. You know, I want her to feel normal. So it was always really a challenge. So she was super excited about our products so that when her sister comes over, she can make a meal.

using our sauces or seasonings and everyone could be eating the same food.

in addition to selling direct to consumer, we're also working to sell to food service. So when we went to the future food tech conference this year and around March, we were in the food as medicine track and the executive chef at the Marriott Marquis Hotel said, my gosh, this is amazing. We were doing a kit cooking demo with our Tikka masala and

She said that a few weeks before that, an Indian family came and they called in room dining and they said, hey, we have all these food allergies. Can you make us something? And they looked at the queue of tickets and they looked at each other and they said, we don't know what to make that is going to taste good. You know, that would appeal to people, you know, who are Indian. We don't want them to get sick. And so they were super stressed out about it.

you know, they didn't know what to do. And they said, I wish we had your sauces and I would buy a case of your product to keep it on hand just in case they come back because it was so stressful.

And so we realize that the problem of making food that's compliant with people's restricted diets and

doesn't include their food allergies is even more important for people who work in food service, even than individuals themselves. And so now we're going to make our sauces available to, you know, hospitals, senior living, restaurants, hotels, et cetera. know, colleges and universities are starting to have top nine allergen-free dining halls. And even within a given dining hall, they might have an allergy-friendly station so that students, you know, don't trigger and have a flare up.

⁓ and maybe even have to drop out of college because they're having some sort of flare from an autoimmune disease. And you know, the school loses tuition, the parents are upset, the kids' college career is disrupted, and it's just about, you know, making sure that people have access to foods that don't trigger their allergies.

Jillian (16:19)
So you're navigating both the DTC side and also the food service side, and as someone who has scaled multiple tech startups, what surprised you the most about building a physical food product?

Brian Bentow (16:32)
Yeah, I mean, I think this business is much, much harder than most of the startups I've worked on because it's like a hardware company, but with many ingredients that expire and go out of stock. So the supply chain management and logistics, especially our products, which have 15 to 20 ingredients per product is incredibly difficult. It requires a lot of advanced planning and

pre-ordering and making sure that you have the right ingredients and are ready for the production run. Everything has to be there at the same time. Our products don't have preservatives, so the shelf life is 18 months. It's, let's say, around half the time of other shelf stable products. Now, it's plenty of time, 18 months, but it's just something to think about as well that...

you the products can expire so you need to you know have the product turnover and sell your stock before expiration date

Jillian (17:26)
It's a lot to manage. What might be one daily ritual, whether it be something that you're doing in the kitchen, maybe it's a mental reset that you're doing, that's just helping you to stay grounded as you're navigating the ups and downs of building Get Saucy.

Brian Bentow (17:26)
you

Yeah, so one of the things I like to do is around lunchtime I'll go outside, you know, get some sun, and I'll just kind of take, let's say 15 minutes at least, close my eyes, you know, I'll put something over my face and just kind of like disconnect, you know, from technology, from computers and just kind of like sit in nature and just kind of absorb that vitamin D.

So that usually helps me recharge. I think there's something about sunshine in particular that makes a huge difference for your mental health and physical health.

Jillian (18:16)
I agree, just being able to sit outside and having a minute of fresh air, just having a, taking a breath. It does help, at least for me as well too, So when you're not reaching for your own sauces, what other food brands might have a spot in your pantry or your fridge

Brian Bentow (18:31)
Yeah, so, I, I, I mean, we have our taco seasoning, which we use last night. we have our sauces. you know, I do use, these, the brown rice pasta from Jovial. there's, you know, some once in a while I'll have these like sweet potato chips, they're called Jack's. I'll have like this

coconut yogurt, Coco-Yo, the pure plain one. I'll eat Chomps, just the, there's a sea salt one with just a few ingredients. So there's a few other products that I use. We sell our products on Amazon on our website and on a website called Shop AIP. And Shop AIP kind of has a curated set of products that are all compliant with the Autumnal and Protocol Diet.

And so it's a great place to learn about all the different products that are available.

Jillian (19:16)
So since launching Get Saucy, what feedback has been expected or not has really stuck with you? What are people telling you that maybe you anticipate before launching it?

Brian Bentow (19:26)
Yeah. I mean, we've gotten a lot of really, really great positive feedback about the flavor and how amazed they are that, Hey, this reminds me of Tikka masala. When we went to the future food tech conference, we did a cooking demo and gave out samples to 150 people. And we got the most compliments from people who are Indian. And they said, this reminds me of, you know, the Tikka masala I had growing up. And this is one of the best Tikka masalas I've ever had.

and it was made by a Korean guy who was born in Queens. And so that's been super fun. And, you know, I didn't anticipate that when we're also when we were at the conference, a group from senior living facilities, they came by and said, hey, this is amazing. We work for this senior living company. And there's, you know, we represent hundreds of senior living facilities.

we're looking for sauces and seasonings for our residents. They have a lot of dietary restrictions and, you know, they told us, hey, you should really look at senior living. And so that's part of the reason why we're focused on senior living as well. So just the food service side of the business was not something that I anticipated. I was initially only focused on direct to consumer and then eventually retail. And then, you know,

Obviously there's variability in people's palates and some people, you know, think that there's certain flavor notes that are too strong. And so they add a little bit of coconut milk or something to kind of soften it a little bit. And then we've also been surprised on like the versatility of the sauces. people, some people use lamb, some people use chicken.

Some people use tofu. Some people just use peas and cauliflower. Some people put it on salmon as a marinade. And some people put it on pasta. They'll buy this like chickpea pasta and put the tikka masala on the chickpea pasta. And that's not anything that I had expected. Or somebody made a tikka masala pizza. And I never thought of that. So

One of the amazing things about making a sauce is that it can be used in so many different ways and you can add whatever you want. You can add a few different vegetables and protein, you know, sources, and you can make it as fancy as you want or you can make it really simple and just literally have the chicken and pour the sauce on it and make some rice, which is mostly how I use it.

But I know a lot of people want to add a few things to it and then they get to share it on Instagram and all their creations, which is super fun.

Jillian (21:47)
Super fun and it sounds delicious. And you have a variety of recipes on your website as well.

Brian Bentow (21:52)
Yeah, so we have a couple recipes for each sauce on the website. And you can check out our Instagram, Get Saucy Kitchen, and you can see some of the videos that other people made where they've made different meals, like Tikum Sala pizza and things like that. But yeah, we want to have a lot more recipes on the website and also leave it open for other people to kind of share their recipes and what they've made.

Jillian (22:18)
Well, I know you've been so kind to offer our listeners a promo code so they can go and try out Get Saucy on your website. And that promo code is newpantry15 for 15 % off any new order. thank you for setting that up and giving people the opportunity to try the product if they haven't already.

Brian Bentow (22:37)
Awesome, yeah, so I'd love for you guys to try it and you can go to getsaucee.com and put in that coupon code and I'm sure there'll be a link to it in the description below, but love to have you guys share your feedback with us on what you did with it and what you enjoyed about it.

Jillian (22:58)
Love that. Anything else, Brian, before we head out?

Brian Bentow (23:02)
Yeah, the only thing I'll add is so the brand is Get Saucy and it means to, you know, like be sassy, to be bold. The flavors are bold, to be resourceful, to have a can-do attitude. You know, it's a sort of level up or have a blow up. So that, you know, for me, I was able to invest in myself and go to the gym and

⁓ you know, improve my physical appearance and my mental health, emotional health, because I had more time and energy once I was able to have ⁓ my meals, not having to spend all that time cooking from scratch and having my food taste better so that I would eat more of it. so, but the name of the company is heal the world through food. It's HTW, TF and

The idea is that we want people to heal, you know, that your body actually heals itself when you don't eat the foods that trigger your immune system. Um, and then the products are also very nutrient dense and they have the vitamins and minerals you need. When I healed from Crohn's, I didn't take extra supplements or, you know, do meditation or take medication. It was food and food alone.

And that's what I want to give people. Like just with food and food alone, I was able to recover in a relatively short period of time. And then staying healthy and symptom free required that I stick to the diet and you know, life is hard. Eating healthy is hard, but not having health issues is easy. And having health issues is hard.

But, you know, eating junk food is easy. We want to make eating healthy easy.

Jillian (24:35)
It's a great mission. Well, thanks so much for being here today, Brian. I appreciate it.

Brian Bentow (24:39)
Thanks, Jillian.

Jillian (24:39)
We'll be talking soon.