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About Max


(With my good friend and mentor Michael Besancon)

Organic food isn’t just something that I write about. It is my life.

I have been eating close to 100% organic since 2001, the time at which I started to educate myself about the conventional food I was putting into my body. And it shocked me that nearly everything was tainted with toxic pesticides, synthetic growth hormones, antibiotics and artificial preservatives, not to mention risky and unproven GMOs.

Wanting to treat my body with the most nutritious and “clean” food possible, I switched to organic. Not only did it give me more energy, but it helped to change my relationship with food. I began to view food as medicine.

It was also around that time that I started making some other serious changes in my life.

– I quit drinking alcohol in 1999.

– I quit smoking cigarettes in 2000.

– I quit nearly 11 years of antidepressants in 2001.

– I quit smoking pot in 2004.

and have never relapsed once on any of them.

PROFESSIONAL

Being an organic food journalist and immersing myself in the health and wellness world were both things that I never imagined myself doing growing up.

After graduating from college, I moved to New York City in order to work on Wall Street in investment banking. After that job, I worked in hedge funds, biotechnology, software and real estate. Through my work, I have been able to travel to Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico and Venezuela.

In the early 2000s, my passion for organic food was obvious, but I had no idea that organic trade shows, such as Natural Products Expo West, even existed. It wasn’t until 2009, when blogging started to take off, that I officially made my entrance into organic with the launch of Living Maxwell.

Several years later, I came to a stark realization. When I would speak to founders and CEOs, many of them did not know what glyphosate was or had a fundamental lack of understanding of the key regulatory and policy challenges facing our industry. They were so busy running their companies that they didn’t have time to do all of the reading and research that I was doing on a daily basis.

So, I thought that if I could create a weekly newsletter covering all of these issues — and if they actually took the time to read it — they would have a very solid grasp of what was going on in our industry. In 2016, Organic Insider was born.

Now read by many of the most influential CEOs and executives in the industry, it has been called “a must-read” and “required reading,” and it is entirely supported by companies and individuals that believe in independent organic food journalism. I made the choice not to accept any advertising on Organic Insider, as I wanted to maintain complete editorial independence.

For my work in the organic industry, I have been called “an organic sensation” by The New York Times and “one of the nation’s leading organic food experts” by Shape Magazine, and my appearance on the Fox News Channel was called “the most hard-hitting GMO report ever aired by the mainstream media.”

Additionally, I run the Organic Food Industry Group on LinkedIn, which has more than 35,000 members, and I consult with organic food companies from around the world.

LIFESTYLE

  • I eat as close to 100% organic as I can, but sometimes, it is simply not available. I eat organic for health reasons AND because supporting organic farmers, restaurants, juice bars, supermarkets and food product companies is very, very important to me. These are companies that do business the right way, and I vote with my dollars every single day.
  • In addition to drinking as much green juice as I can, I consume the fresh-frozen aqua-botanical BrainON on a daily basis. It is phenomenal, and it really impacts my mood in a positive way.
  • I always travel with food and book hotels that are near organic restaurants and supermarkets.
  • My meditation practice began in 1991, when I learned Transcendental Meditation (TM) during my junior year of college. I no longer practice TM but do a different type of meditation where the objective is to get beyond myself and all aspects of the physical world.
  • I was a tennis player growing up. I started playing tournaments when I was 8, was named to the Prince All-America team in high school and was elected captain of the team at Brown. I have since turned in my tennis rackets for a yoga mat, and I now practice ashtanga yoga.
  • Living an organic lifestyle is not an inexpensive endeavor for anyone, but I have come to believe that many of the most important aspects of health do not cost a thing. They include sleeping well, getting exposure to sunshine first thing in the morning, walking, being in nature, living with gratitude and mastering the inner game. I believe that our thoughts dictate our reality.

EDUCATION

BA — Brown University
MBA — Columbia University Graduate School of Business

SOCIAL

You can find me on social media below and thank you for stopping by my site!

Instagram: livingmaxwell
LinkedIn: Organic Insider
LinkedIn: Organic Food Industry group

livingmaxwell: a guide to organic food & drink