Katerina Schneider

EVERYONE EATS        |        DEC 15, 2020

Katerina
Schneider

CEO & FOUNDER OF RITUAL

Katerina Schneider was a vitamin skeptic most of her life. This changed when her doctor recommended a prenatal vitamin while she was pregnant with her first child. She soon discovered that a scientifically-backed vitamin made with traceable ingredients wasn’t available - so she decided to build her own. A veteran of venture capital and business, Katerina assembled a world-class scientific team that remains in-house at Ritual today, and created Essential for Women 19+, a reinvented clinical-backed daily multivitamin that contains key nutrients commonly lacking in women's diets, in bioavailable forms the body can actually use. Five years later, Ritual’s products are trusted by hundreds of thousands of customers across generations and its Essential Prenatal is one of the top-selling prenatal multivitamins in the US.

INTERVIEW BY ROSIE ELLIS
PHOTOGRAPHS BY MOLLY CRANNA

KATERINA'S HOME IN LOS ANGELES

We came by for a visit to chat about Katerina's love for macrobiotics and Japanese cuisine. We peeked into her fridge where she keeps her usual items like seaweed, fermented soy beans, millet and masa flour tortillas.

BREAKFAST

It depends on the type of workout I do that day. If I’m doing cardio, usually two to three times a week, I’ll make acai bowls for me and the girls using a plant-protein and spirulina. Being pregnant I’ve stopped using experimental herbs, but I’ll add almond butter, coconut butter, and for sweetness, frozen blueberries. The other days, because of my macrobiotic family roots, I like making millet porridge. Millet is delicious, it doesn’t add gluten and is rich in vitamins and minerals. It’s much more savory than oats, so you can add things like cauliflower or squash to it, and save it for dinner. It’s also a great way to get my kids to eat their vegetables.

LUNCH

Two days a week we have an integrative chef that comes into the office, and she’s great at accommodating all different types of diets: vegan, gluten-free, there’s also a carnivore option. The days that she’s not there I eat pretty basic: something pickled, or greens with a plant-based protein like beans or tofu.

DINNER

I’m not the type of person that avoids carbs. For my body, I need carbs, so we’re definitely a pasta family. I always have steamed vegetables for the girls but change it up every couple of days to something that they haven’t tried: romanesco, kale, different kinds of squashes and beans. They love tortillas, so sometimes we’ll hand-make those, and it’s something fun to do altogether. We use masa flour from the Hollywood Farmers Market, really good quality olive oil and lots of different spices. My husband’s family is from Mexico, so we get lots of salsas from there too.

DESSERT

I love baking with my girls and I’ve been really inspired by my friend Caroline, who makes these custom botanical cakes. I recently made a paleo upside down pear cake, and occasionally I’ll make vegan muffins in the mornings. A hack I’ve learned for vegan recipes is to use oats instead of eggs, it works the same way because they expand and help to bind everything together. My favorite thing to make, which comes from the Minimalist Baker, are these vegan cheesecakes, and for that I’ll use cashews in place of the cheese.

SPEED ROUND

Recent food discovery?
Dave’s Korean at the Farmer’s Market, I get the pickled daikon and the spicy tempeh.

Dream dinner guest?
Larry David.

Comfort food?
Millet with kabocha squash.

 

Secret food hack?

I soak rice and beans overnight (and use a pressure cooker) to get rid of lectins.

 

Go-to cookbook?
I don’t enjoy following recipes, I just like creating things.

Favorite restaurant?
My mom’s house, or Erewhon – their hot food bar is so good.

Favorite place to shop for kitchenwares?
My friend started a company called Our Place. Or Instacart.

Favorite neighborhood hole in the wall?
Angelini Osteria. Gino (the owner) knows our whole family now.

Favorite celebrity chef?
René Redzepi, the chef at Noma.

Best snack between meals??
It’s better not to snack between meals.

Whose routine would you love to see on Everyone Eats?
Larry David.

Favorite way to work off a big meal?
Pilates, walking or I have little dance parties with my kids.

Any allergies or foods you avoid?
I’m vegan, so no meat or dairy and I don’t eat processed foods.

Vitamins and supplements?
The prenatal by Ritual while I’m pregnant and our recently launched Essential Postnatal after giving birth.

Last thing you ordered for delivery?
The spicy carrot nori wraps from Mathew Kenney’s restaurant, Make Out.

Five items always in your kitchen:
Seaweed, natto (fermented soy beans), millet, masa flour for tortillas and almond milk.

 

Coffee or tea?

I drink a lot of tea. I like kukicha, which is a roasted twig tea.

 

Go-to market or grocery store?
Erewhon – or I just Instacart everything.

Cocktail of choice?
Mezcal with a big ice cube and some lime juice.

Weirdest eating habit?
I prefer to eat with my hands.

Most underrated kitchen tool?
Pressure/rice cookers, bamboo steamers. I’ve also discovered the little metal disc you put under the steamer, so it doesn’t damage your surfaces.

Where do you most feel like The Regular?
I’m very much a routine person, I go to Coffee for Sasquatch with my daughters and I’ll get a tea or a matcha there on the way to school. I also like Tartine and Toasted and Roasted. It’s owned by a husband and wife that live around here and they definitely make you feel welcome. My husband has a non-profit called Streets For All and they put up his stickers in their windows. Erewhon also, I know everyone there, my daughter thinks it’s the best store in the world.

THIRD SCOOP

How do you differentiate between using supplements and using foods to get the vitamins you need on a daily basis?

At Ritual, we have more of a food-first philosophy. When I started the company, it was about trying to understand what people are actually getting from their diets, and it turns out we’re getting a lot. Most vitamins have up to 20/40 ingredients, and you can get those just from eating a pretty average diet. So for me, supplements should fill in the blanks. We have a full scientific team who have spent years researching women’s diets, and so many women are deficient in the same things: Omega 3s, Vitamin D, and as vegans it’s nearly impossible to get any B-12. In the U.S, we don’t really eat many fermented foods, which is the best source of K2MK7. The team works to identify what we’re nutritionally lacking, and then we’ll create supplements that are easy to take, good not just for the body, but the environment too.

How do the ingredients on food packaging help you determine what or what not to purchase? What are the ingredients that you typically try to avoid?

Sugars and alcohols. I don’t eat a lot of packaged foods, nor do I want my kids to eat them, and I don’t buy products with wasteful packaging either; the things I can buy in bulk and put into smaller containers are always preferred. I tend to also steer clear of ingredients I don’t really know. I do a lot of research, so I feel like if I don’t know it, it’s probably bad. That said, I do love discovering new things, and a lot of companies are starting to use new sweeteners like hickory root and inulin, which is a probiotic and doesn’t have the same aftertaste you get from stevia.

Your mom is a macrobiotic chef, how has that influenced your food choices?

I gravitate more towards Japanese cuisine because I love the taste of things like seaweed and miso. But macrobiotic cooking is also at odds with the scientific world I’m in right now. Generally, I’m of the belief that not everything is created equal. When it comes to soy products, which get a really bad rap, I think it’s important to look at its different forms, just like you would with meat. Actually, on its basic level, it’s one of the most complete plant-based proteins in the world, it has a full amino acids profile.

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