About Us

My name is Debbie Kleven. If you are interested in where I came from and how my company, Foods for Longevity, came about, I invite you to read on!

I have been a superfood producer since 1994. I began in the industry by supplying large chains across the U.S. with Organic Wheatgrass.

My company started as a humble wheatgrass growing operation at my home. Due to the massive promoting on my part, wheatgrass sales in Northern CA, and my business grew very quickly. I was interviewed for many articles including for an article in Fit magazine.

My company arriving at the next level was due to a newspaper article that was written about my company and me. After being in business for about two years, I received a call from a newspaper reporter. She had heard about my company and me and wanted to do a feature story on us. A full-page picture and article on my company and me went on the wire. It was printed in many Northern CA newspapers. My company quickly evolved into a large commercial operation. I built my first commercial greenhouse. We began fork lifting pallets of wheatgrass and filling up big rig trucks on a daily basis. I obtained supply contracts with big companies. My company became a full on, high maintenance machine. I ran this company until I sold it in 2010.

How did this all begin? As I think back on my journey, I surprisingly have to say it started when I was about 5 years old.

I come from a family of Berkeley educated scientists, educators and social workers. My grandfather, who heavily influenced my love of the sciences, was a medical doctor. He would encourage me to “cut” school to come up to his place and study with him. My mother valued education and was a very hard working, diligent single mom. When I was a little girl, I remember that she worked at her county social worker job all day, and at night she completed her masters degree with a 4.0 GPA.

Despite my family history and the love of sciences, my journey probably really started when I was 5 because of hot dogs. Sounds funny, right? I started a superfood career that began with hot dogs? Well, it really began because of my disgust for hot dogs!

As a little girl, I only visited with my father once or twice per year. When I visited with him he coerced me to eat certain meat products like hot dogs. These certain meat products repulsed me. I believe the traumatic experience of being coerced into eat meat eating that repulsed me led me to eventually become a vegetarian.

In high school I wasn’t a vegetarian, but definitely stayed away from meat most of the time. While my friends were eating burgers, I was eating salads with no dressing. When we went through the Jack in the Box drive through, I ordered super tacos with no meat! I actually asked the drive through people to scrape the meat out of the pre-made tacos. My friends laughed at me a lot and thought I was a bit odd for avoiding meat most of the time. I wasn’t even sure why I was avoiding meat.

When I was attending college in 1989 my mom told me about a book by John Robbins, Diet for a New America. This book described why others did not eat meat. I thought it would be an interesting read because I wanted to know what reasons others had for not eating meat. I got the shock of my life. I had no idea that animals were so abused, tortured, and malnourished before they were slaughtered and then ended up on our plates. That was the absolute end of eating meat for me. I immediately attended a weekend retreat with John Robbins and his wife Deo, in the Santa Cruz mountains. My whistle was now wet. It was on……

I began studying environmental science and then later changed my major to chemistry at San Diego State University. Through my studies and peers, I became aware of the environmental atrocities and the degradation of our environment. I felt angry and disillusioned by what I was learning .I became angry about the destruction and carelessness toward our beautiful planet. I was angry about the torture and abuse towards the beautiful creatures that we should be co-existing with on our planet. What was wrong with everyone? I became what I now label with humor, an “angry vegan”.

I heard about a group that was going to be meeting at school called PETA. I thought it sounded like a good group, so I went. At my first meeting with PETA I was told about organic food. I thought the concept of food grown without poison sounded excellent. I found a little health food store near me called Ocean Beach People’s Food Co-op. I had been working in the restaurant industry to support myself in college. When I saw People’s, I knew I had to work there. There was some knowledge held there, just calling out to me.

So I got a job as a cashier. I worked with some amazing people there. I really dove deeply into my health journey. I worked as a cashier, along with Jameth Sheridan (founder of Health Force Nutritional’s) and his wife Kim. Their passion to eat well, and eat a raw food diet inspired me immensely.

At Ocean Beach People’s Food Co-op, I had my first shot of wheatgrass juice. One shot of wheatgrass down the hatch, and I was hooked. I realized that green juice needed to be a daily staple in my diet.

I began reading every book I could find on health. I read books by Paul Bragg, Norman Walker, and Ann Wigmore. I was hooked on being a student of health.

In 1992 I dropped out of college. Although I loved the study of the sciences, I knew that being a business owner was my future. I dabbled in a few different businesses. In 1994 I learned how to grow wheatgrass from my friend Michael Bergonzi while I was a guest at the Optimum Health Institute in San Diego. Michael was the greenhouse manager there at that time.

After my stay at OHI, I went home and grew the best wheatgrass I had ever seen. There was no wheatgrass supplier anywhere near me. If I wanted to buy a shot of wheatgrass, I had to drive for 45 minutes to get to the Berkeley Whole Foods Store.

I had an epiphany when I got back from OHI. I would create a wheatgrass business and spread green everywhere! I was on a grassroots mission. Grassroots Organic Wheatgrass was what I named my business. I planned on helping save the world, in a grass roots type of style. I was convinced that if helped feed the people enzyme, chlorophyll, and nutrient rich food they would be healthier. Healthier people generally respect themselves, the animals, as a general rule, much more than those who do not respect themselves or their own health. I felt there was a correlation to the amount of green in someone’s life, to their connection to the planet, and all beings and animals living on it. My purpose in my work was clear. I was now part of the solution, and not the problem. This helped me let go of my anger and frustration regarding the atrocities toward the planet and the animals. I was actually doing something about it. Good health to all was a by-product of my work. How amazing, right?

This sense of purpose helped keep me focused. I had much help in the beginning from my friend Michael Bergonzi and his family. For a few years I worked many sixteen-hour days, most of the time seven days a week. On many occasions I had mom, aunts, and cousins helping me until wee hours of the morning. I was exhausted. I had a little baby and a business that was growing by the day.

By the time I was 29 my son was a year old I felt like I was going to die. I had been a vegan for almost 10 years. My diet was high in grains and sugar. I had a new baby and I was worked to the bone. My heart wasn’t working properly. I was told I needed open-heart surgery and would have to be on drugs for the rest of my life. I decided that what I was told by the medical establishment was not going to be my reality.

So I dug deeper in my quest for health. I found a book buy Rich Anderson called Cleanse and Purify Thyself. I did a massive intestinal cleanse with the herbal formulation from his company, Arise and Shine. After fasting and taking these herbs only for a few weeks, I eliminated thick ropes the length and shape my intestines, of putrid matter that Rich Anderson called, “intestinal mucoid plaque matter”. This was a life changing experience. The cleansing that happened in my body opened my eyes, my heart, and my human potential like never before.

I began to drink more green juice and eat fewer grains. My health problems instantly disappeared.

I started focusing on more nutrient rich foods. At the time this was mostly in the form of green juice, or whole food supplements like fish oils and such. I added a bit of deep-sea fish into my diet. This didn’t last long though. The thought of ingesting a dead animal, although I thought was nutritionally a good idea, was not a good karmic idea for me. This was a dilemma for me. I felt that I wasn’t as healthy as I should be, and I felt like meat eaters generally looked much healthier then the “sunken chest” vegetarians. I did notice that the people that I was meeting that had a high raw food, low sugar and grain diets looked the best of the vegetarians. But there was still something missing. I was on a quest for more nutrient dense food, but I just did not want to eat meat. Eating all these nutrient dense whole foods in “pill form” didn’t seem right either.

In 1999 I attended a raw food New Years Eve retreat in Eden AZ, hosted by David Wolfe. His positive and fun attitude in the industry intrigued me. It was a really great week. After this week at Eden, I began to connect with like-minded people. We helped shape each other and our “conscious food community”.

I read David Wolfe’s books over the next few years. He advocated eating more wild, un-hybrid, nutrient dense foods we now call superfoods. My wheatgrass company was a superfood company in a sense. But during one of David’s motivational classes at the Eden retreat, I wrote down that I wanted to include in my company line un-hybrid and wild foods. My new mission was now written down. It had to happen now.

When I think the implications of what we call superfoods, I really believe they should just be called “food”. Most of the “stuff” at the grocery store should be called, “other than food”.

But for our purposes now, I will refer to these highly nourishing foods as “superfoods”.

It took a few years, as I was busy with my company, but I started dabbling with the growing of less hybrid food. I started nourishing what I grew with concentrated ocean solution from the company Ocean Grown.

I now only produce and distribute nutrient dense, un-hybrid (super) foods. I source foods from companies that other than mono-crop in monolithic agri-businesses. Even if the monolithic agribusiness is organic, I do not believe it is sustainable. It is not natural or healthy to grow this way. I do not feel the large agribusinesses give all the trace minerals and nutrients back to the soil as would be needed to truly continue to grow healthy food, even when the organic claim is Made. Although, at least organic is much better than sprayed and poisoned food supply. Conventional produce is definitely out of the question. In my opinion all large mono cropping, including organic, is not in harmony with the surrounding ecosystem when growing in this manner.

I hope you enjoy the nutrient dense foods that I offer. I wish you the best in happiness and health!