Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Food & Drink

Surf Legend Laird Hamilton Has His Own Natural Supplement Brand

Jahla Seppanen
By
Laird Hamilton

Legendary big-wave surfer Laird Hamilton has the body of a Greek god and the man is in his mid-50s. Along with a life of rigorous water and board sports, nutrition may be largely to thank. Now Hamilton is giving us the chance to shed our dad-bods with a natural supplements brand secretly mixed into coffee, creamer, and coconut water powders.

It’s called Laird Superfood and it launched in 2015, growing from a passion project that involved Hamilton experimenting with ways to improve his morning coffee.

Related Videos

“I’ve always been the sort of person that looks a little deeper at the things I consume on a daily basis,” Hamilton says. “I started to add functional fats to my coffee to fuel me throughout the day. It was more of an experiment really, and it proved to be so powerful that I started making cups of my ‘special coffee’ for all of my friends, too. Those friends noticed a positive difference.”

Related

This “special coffee” is now available for us at $13 a bag, and can be mixed with special creamer made from organic coconut sugar, coconut oil, and the multi-mineral marine vitamin aquamin — which strengthens bones and can improve mobility later in life.

Tapping simple, clean, whole-food ingredients, Laird Superfood birthed a functional superfood brand…

Tapping simple, clean, whole-food ingredients, Laird Superfood birthed a functional superfood brand that finally got dudes on board (pun intended) to the trend of experimenting with nutrient-dense ingredients. Better yet, Laird Superfood designed drink mixes that are easy to incorporate into pre-existing daily habits, like our religious a.m. coffee, or post-workout smoothie.

Private investors took notice of Hamilton’s brand and in January 2019 Laird Superfood gained $32 million dollars in funding to expand its already comprehensive product offerings. Today that includes powdered superfood creamers, coffee, coconut water, performance mushrooms, coconut sugar, morning jumpstart concoctions, and soon-to-be kombucha.

The majority of Laird Superfood products come as a powder in a resealable bag, engineered to be mixed with hot or cold water.

Choose between finely ground matcha, premium freeze-dried coffee, coconut water with aquamin, a superfood mushroom blend, or lemon-ginger-cayenne morning mix, and play with new alternatives to popping a pill or downing a kale smoothie.

After a week of testing various Laird Superfood products, more subtleties in the flavors emerged.

The Manual tested a range of Laird Superfood powders and noticed first and foremost how versatile and convenient the powder form is. You can travel with it, throw the bag in your backpack for work, and bring camping without taking up precious cooler space.

Secondly, you control the strength. We’re partial to strong, bold coffee and the powder allowed us to strengthen or weaken each drink as our palate desired.

As for the taste?

Lets preface by saying Laird Superfood is healthy. Legit, straight-up, no chemical gunk healthy. It’s real superfood ingredients with no added artificial sugar and largely plant-based, gluten-free, soy-free, non-GMO, and keto friendly. So by rule, the flavor is natural and subdued.

Laird Superfood powders, whether the Cacao Superfood Creamer or Pineapple Mango Coconut Water, don’t taste sweet, nor do they taste bitter. If you’re used to Venti mochas with whip, it doesn’t taste like that (and you should probably GTFO).

After a week of testing various Laird Superfood products, more subtleties in the flavors emerged. On days when we crave an extra boost of sweetness, we added a half teaspoon of Laird Coconut Sugar. It’s low glycemic and you really don’t need much to notice an uplift.

In the end, Laird Superfood tasted good (it’s not necessarily a milkshake) but the powders won us over by how gosh darn good we felt after drinking: Cleaner, no-jitter energy with plenty of punch, better hydration, and we even noticed an inflamed glute muscle from long-distance runs got better.

The truth is, no superfood will make you Laird Hamilton. The dude defies biology. But if we were to trust anyone with boosting the longevity of our health, we’d look to the guy who towed into the heaviest wave ever surfed and beat the beast with a smile.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Is erythritol harmful? What a dietitian says new data means for your Keto diet
Erythritol is common in many keto foods - what does that mean for your health?
erythritol in keto diet advice

While sugar substitutes have been around for more than a century, they didn't really become mainstream here in the United States until around the mid-70s. According to Carolyn De La Pena, professor of American Studies at UC Davis and author of Empty Pleasures: The Story of Artificial Sweeteners from Saccharin to Splenda, between 1975 and 1984, Americans increased their consumption of artificial sweeteners by 150 percent. This timeline makes sense when you take into account that the late seventies coincided with the start of our crazed diet culture and the revolving door of fad diets.
One such diet that doesn't seem to be going anywhere, however, is the Keto diet. Still hugely popular among Americans trying to shed a few pounds, Keto focuses heavily on limited or no carbohydrates. Because sugar contains carbohydrates, followers of Keto have turned to artificial sweeteners to satisfy those late-night cravings - sweeteners that, more often than not, contain erythritol. Erythritol in particular has become hugely popular because it's much better for baking than other sugar substitutes, has less of an artificial flavor, and will keep the eater in Ketosis, which is key for losing weight on the Keto diet.
A new study has made waves recently because its findings indicate there's a link between erythritol and higher rates of heart attack and stroke (though the study did note that only an association was found — not causation. So should you be worried?
We asked Dan LeMoine, RD, the award-winning author of Fear No Food and the Clinical Director at Phoenix-based Re:vitalize Nutrition, what he had to say about erythritol, including its benefits and potential health risks. "Artificial sweeteners are still sweeteners. While many are non-nutritive or zero-calorie, we tend to view them similarly as we do regular sweeteners or sugars — moderation is key. While many have amazing implications on weight loss – being low to no-calorie options and having little impact on blood sugar, some have their downside," he says.

While some of that sugar substitution has been good for waistlines and health issues that come from obesity, it seems to be causing more and more concern when it comes to other potential health issues. "For example," says LeMoine, "some research indicates the popular sweeteners stevia may have negative effects on the gut microbiome. And the recent study showing correlation between the sugar alcohol, erythritol, and heart attack and stroke."

Read more
Feeling adventurous? 5 of the weirdest cocktails from around the globe
Would you order a cocktail with a pickled human toe? You can in Canada, apparently
unusual and unique cocktails sourtoe cocktail

We all love a good cocktail, but it's easy to tire of the classics. There's nothing wrong with a perfectly frosty, salted-rimmed margarita, or a warm-to-your-bones, cherry-topped old-fashioned, but sometimes, you just want something new. Something that makes you think. Something that, perhaps, gives you a chuckle. These are those cocktails.
Pig's Blood Piña Colada (USA)

Back in 2014, bartender Jason Brown of Chicago's Kinmont restaurant and bar, concocted this cocktail after listening to a Werewolves of London lyric about a werewolf drinking a pina colada. His creativity sparked, and the "Werewolves of London" cocktail was born.

Read more
These foods high in melatonin will help you sleep better
Get a better sleep naturally by eating these 9 melatonin foods
Hands holding wine grapes.

Getting a quality night's sleep becomes more and more of a challenge as we age. Some of us have tried blackout curtains, sleep masks, weighted blankets, or any number of supplements promising better rest. If you're looking for an all-natural solution, though, melatonin is the way to go. Melatonin is a hormone produced naturally in the pineal gland in the brain. Among several functions, melatonin plays a key role in regulating the body’s circadian rhythms, or sleep-wake cycles. Accordingly, the pineal gland produces more melatonin when the sun goes down, and levels dip at daybreak. Foods high in melatonin or even melatonin supplements are a popular way to increase the concentration of melatonin and possibly improve the quality and quantity of sleep.
Melatonin supplements are typically non-habit-forming and safe for adults and children in doses of around 0.5 to 5 milligrams. However, melatonin supplements may cause drowsiness, nausea, and dizziness, and they can interfere with certain medications.

Fortunately, if you’re looking to support your body’s own natural melatonin levels but you don’t want to rely on supplements, there are several sleep-aid foods that contain melatonin. Adding any of these foods high in melatonin to your dinner plate or bedtime snack routine may help regulate your sleep patterns over time and help you get more restful sleep. Though little nutritional data exists about the specific concentration of melatonin in different foods, the following foods are known to be particularly high in melatonin.

Read more