Lionberry
REGENERATIVE
Myers Mushrooms announced today that their bottling line is fully assembled! In addition to more great mushroom products from Eric and his team, that also means we can make even more LionBerry Restorative Refresher this summer to keep you hydrated. Our founder Bevin Brooks said it best in her comment: “No Sleep till HYDRATION! We […]
What in the world is an AgriCluster? Ultimately, it is a fancy compound word that refers to interconnected agricultural businesses operating within a small radius. Or, as the North American Food Systems Network says: In order to support these AgriClusters, the North American Food Systems Network created the AgriCluster Resilience and Expansion (ACRE) program. ACRE, […]
We had a wonderful time this week at the International Elderberry Symposium in Columbia, Mo.! Thanks to the amazing friends we made there, we will have some big announcements coming soon, so stay tuned! One of those big connections we made was with Elderglen, an Australian company producing elderberry products. We also got to hang […]
Thank you to the Heartland Regional Food Business Center for their post about Lionberry on Instagram! The Business Center is an incredible community resource that supports farm and food enterprises as they develop food and markets in the region. You can follow their Instagram page and view the post below. In their own words: “The […]
Pride Month is here and we are excited to announce that Lionberry will be at KC Pride, June 6-8. You can find us in the food truck section and try the first farmed sports drink, Lionberry Restorative Refresher! View this post on Instagram A post shared by KC PRIDE (@kcpride1) It’s also been fun to […]
We are thrilled to announce that Lionberry will have a booth at the Kansas State Fair in Hutchinson! This huge, 10-day event is held at the Kansas State Fairgrounds beginning Sept. 5. This will cap an exciting and busy summer of farmers markets, fairs, and festivals. You can find our full schedule here. In addition […]
Elderberry is an EASY way to start Regenerative Farming Practices! Elderberry plays a beneficial role in REGENERATIVE AGRICULTURE! 1. PREVENTS SOIL EROSION because elderberry has an extensive root systems that help stabilize soil and prevent erosion, especially in areas prone to runoff. 2. Suitable for Marginal Lands: Elderberry can thrive in soil considered less productive […]
If you have visited our LionBerry booth at a recent show, you have probably seen bottles of honey from our friends at SHoney Farm and Kennel. Located in Pottawatomie County, Kenny and Courtney started Shoney in 2021 with a single hive and have now grown into a multi-yard operation where they raise honeybees, harvest honeycomb […]
Eric Myers of Myers Mushrooms is one of our biggest small business allies! This commercial mushroom master has shared so much knowledge with us and we even wrangled him for a recent dinner when we were in Wichita for The Women’s Fair. Myers started his business in El Paso, Texas, in 2015 and eventually moved […]
Buehler Farms has been a staple in the local farming community for more than 125 years. Located in Mt. Vernon, Missouri, Buehler Farms is committed to “agroforestry” which they describe as: At Buehler Farms, we approach farming with the belief that healthy land produces healthy plants and elderberry is at the heart of that mission. […]
The phrase “food is medicine” has become the wellness world’s version of “thoughts and prayers.” Everyone says it. Everyone feels good saying it. And almost nobody means anything real when they do. That’s the danger—not the phrase itself, but what happens when language gets stretched so far it stops pointing to anything true.
The original use of the phrase belonged to grandmas, gardeners, and people who still know how to cook and where food comes from. In that world, “food is medicine” meant something simple and grounded. A piece of meat and some vegetables—and fruit when it was in season—was just a regular meal. And then there were the special things you made when someone didn’t feel well: mixtures built from botanicals, herbs, fruits, nuts, grasses, roots, seeds, and whatever the land offered that season. Things pulled straight from soil and pantry because they carried function, flavor, and a purpose. That usage was peaceful, instinctive, and honest.
Then came the influencers, using the same phrase while holding something powdered, flavored, and algorithm-optimized. “Food is medicine” became a caption under a neon shake that tastes like peach sorbet and contains a clinically irrelevant amount of plant dust. They didn’t inherit the meaning—they inherited the hashtag. And hashtags don’t carry wisdom; they carry trend cycles.
Then comes the USDA, NIH, and hospital systems, who use both phrases—but in different ways. “Food Is Medicine” is their broad, public-facing concept, the umbrella idea that nutrition is foundational for health. “Food As Medicine”—capital As—is the technical term for the clinical, billing-coded interventions:
produce prescriptions,
medically tailored meals,
medically tailored groceries.
This version has insurance pathways, reimbursement logic, metrics, screenings, and outcome evaluations. It isn’t a belief system. It’s a healthcare program.
So we end up with two phrases—Food Is Medicine and Food As Medicine—that sound almost identical but function in totally different worlds. And both of them, at their best, once pointed to something we still have right now: real plants growing from real soil, carrying real chemistry that does real things in the human body. Not ancient in the sense of “long ago,” but ancient in the sense of continuity—still alive, still growing, still here.
Once a phrase becomes universal, though, it becomes meaningless.
That’s what’s happening now.
A wellness word printed on plastic.
“Natural” stamped on a bag of potato chips.
“Immune-supporting” slapped on anything that wants to look virtuous.
Marketing fog replacing actual meaning.
It’s Peacekeepers in 1984.
It’s “community” in Big Tech.
And on the Idiocracy side, it’s the fictional Electrolyte Drink Brawndo—marketed so aggressively that the entire population believes “it’s got what plants crave.”
In the film, they irrigate crops with the Electrolyte Drink Brawndo instead of water because advertising has replaced knowledge. Marketing departments tell us what truth is. The soil dies. The crops fail. The land collapses into a dust bowl. That’s what linguistic drift does: it hollows meaning until the absurd becomes normal.
“Food is medicine” used to mean:
eat real plants,
respect soil,
trust the chemistry that grows in the field,
trust the phytonutrients that come from this earth,
food keeps you alive and makes you whole.
Now it means turmeric dust on junk food.
Or a wellness word added so a product can sell for $3 more.
This hollowed-out category is not a comfortable place for real food to sit.
The old category, where LionBerry sits—the one before wellness gloss, before powdered fantasy, before language drift washed the meaning out of the words—still exists. But sitting there is not accidental. People tell me all the time to cheapen it, powder it, plastic-bottle it, isolate it, dilute it, lab-flavor it, margin-boost it, and make it “scalable” by stripping out the thing that makes it real.
I don’t do it.
Not because it’s easy.
But because sometimes the right thing to do is always the hardest thing to do.
LionBerry sits in the old category because I fight for it to sit there.
Real plants.
Real chemistry.
Real soil.
Real function.
Zero powdered fantasy.
LionBerry is exactly what it says it is: a farm-crafted drink made out of actual food.
When I say “the phrase doesn’t need to be fixed,” I mean the phrase “food is medicine.”
We don’t need to invent a new set of buzzwords or rescue the old ones from misuse.
We don’t need to rebuild or replace the language itself.
What needs to change is this:
start making products that mean what the words used to mean.
Start making food products that are just food