You look at a sweet tooth and you’re told “you can’t”. After that, you don’t know how to live your life

The topic of proper nutrition stopped sounding exotic a long time ago. We seem to know all about calories, sugar and superfoods. More and more pp-cafes are opening all over Russia, where you can taste your favorite dishes in a new low-calorie form. We talked to the founders of 42 Coffee Shop, the most popular “proper” coffee shop on Patrikami.

安娜-贝尔舍涅娃 和 Artyom Fedorov shared with us their experience of experiments in nutrition and told us about their favorite dishes.

– How did the idea to eat right and make a business out of it come about? Where did it all start?

Anya: Each of us came to the idea of creating a healthy eating business in our own way. As for me, if the phrase “healthy eating” had been uttered to me 10 years ago, I would have said: “Fire me! Don’t tell me!”. It was boring at best. But then I got pregnant, and my body’s margin of safety ran out. I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, type 2 diabetes, lots of different diagnoses. At the same time, doctors could do nothing, because any of the diagnoses was voiced in combination with the expression “non-standard case”. For me it was a catastrophe, because I lived-lived, and then I got into some kind of hell with injections, shots, tests, scary stories, where everything is impossible.

During this period I met Marva Ohanyan, who is the main naturopathic doctor in Russia. She sent me to study in Spain. That’s how I got my basic education, not my first, but probably the most important in my life, and learned to understand what and why we eat. After that, we met Artyom and Victor and we created a production facility to start with, and then after a while we decided to open a café.

If someone had told me 10-11 years ago that I would be doing this, that I would have a café in the sphere of healthy food, without sugar, I would have put Nutella on a loaf and said, “Don’t tell me fairy tales!”

It’s just that in one moment everything changed a lot, I realized that the choices we make every day, what we eat, what we drink, the energy we put into ourselves, -determines our life. I felt the difference, and now I only want to put my energy into what I believe in 1000%.

Artem: For me, everything started with experiments: I wanted to understand what determines the state when you can, for example, write a song, and the state when you try to do something, but nothing works. I tried different studios and practices: from banal yoga to the most unpopular things.
One of the brightest experiments: we went to Karelia and practiced a dark retreat. This is when you are in a dark room, in silence, tracking everything that happens in your mind. There was no need to eat anything in particular, you just had to be clear about what you wanted to eat. We were there for a week, and I didn’t feel hungry the whole time because I wasn’t wasting energy on visuals and mental activity, because I was concentrating on the “here and now”. That’s when I realized that we don’t know how our bodies work at all.

I was told in school that if a person didn’t eat for a week they would die, and I felt great.

Proper nutrition also came as an experiment. It was Lent, I was working in the civil service at the time, and one of my colleagues asked me if I wanted to fast with him. I agreed, because I like to try new things, it is a close approach to life for me. I fasted for two weeks, it was not difficult, because I always liked the fasting menu. Then this colleague flew to Finland, and when you go to lunch alone with other people who are not fasting, it’s hard. At one point I balked and ate a burger even though the fast wasn’t over yet. And it was a stark contrast, a very strong change of state, I just couldn’t concentrate. All my energy went just to keep awake and not to fall asleep, I just couldn’t do anything. I started observing how I felt after I ate this or that food.

– Along the way to this project, you’ve developed certain eating habits. Tell us how this has affected your quality of life?

Anya: I’ve also noticed that my concentration and productivity depend on my diet. I’ve also noticed that if I eat more natural foods, it takes less sleep to get rested and feel good. In my opinion, nutrition is a tool to make life more vibrant. In the morning we all take an external shower, I have a habit of taking an internal shower as well, that is a glass of water, you can add some juice to it, then you can drink two or three glasses.

Artem: Actually, my experiments have not been completed yet (smiles), so it’s too early to draw conclusions. I can only agree that food is a tool, and depending on the task at hand, you use certain foods. For example, if I need my brain to work faster, I’m now trying to drink coffee and eat our bar. And that really helps. And if you have too many thoughts, you can try starving yourself, it helps you to concentrate on what’s important. Often we want to eat precisely because of the hustle and bustle around us, it causes inner turmoil. It all depends on the task – there is no one-size-fits-all recipe for everyone. I had a raw food phase, but then I realized that I wasn’t doing what I wanted to do, I was limiting myself.

– How did you come up with the menu? Many people think that proper nutrition is complicated and monotonous….

Anya: When we came up with the cafe, we wanted to make the space not about restrictions, as it usually is. If you go to a vegetarian or vegan cafe, they will tell you that you can’t buy this and that from us. And we wanted to push the boundaries, because I went through that myself when I was faced with scary diagnoses. If a person comes to us who loves dairy products but has an intolerance for some reason, we have coconut yogurts, cheesecakes without cheese, without cottage cheese.

Then there are those who, like me, love sweets but are faced with being told out of the blue, “You can’t!”. After that you do not know what to do, it becomes sad to live. There is a way out of this situation too – we have healthy desserts that cleanse the body or coconut oil desserts that are good for the skin. We don’t have any rules, if you come to us and ask for a cappuccino with cow’s milk, we won’t look at you strangely. People who adhere to some ethical considerations, medical reasons, and people who just like this kind of food come to us.

Artyom: In the menu we exclude and replace exactly those products that are not useful in any diet. We tried to replace various preservatives, it is not always easy, but it is almost always possible. The menu itself was developed so that people feel comfortable, so that they could drink coffee with ordinary milk, but it was of high quality. So that each person understands that no one will look at him askew if he ate a cutlet yesterday. Sometimes visitors with children come in, and the child is happy to eat desserts without refined sugar, and doesn’t feel any difference. When I see that, I realize it’s not all for nothing.

– Why 42?

Anya: Most of our food is cooked at temperatures below 42 degrees, this preserves vitamins and minerals.

– What stereotypes about proper nutrition have you encountered?

Anya: When you tell a person that there is no refined sugar in our sweets, many people think that it is something absolutely inedible, I would have thought the same thing 10-12 years ago. But when a person tastes it, the perception changes. The main stereotype is that proper food is bland and tasteless.

– What is your favorite dish from the menu?

Anya: I really like coconut yogurt lately, both the taste and its effect on the body. Yogurt with currant jam is a memory I have from my childhood. My grandmother would treat me to yogurt or kefir with currant jam, and I would mix everything up and eat it. As for food, I love avocados, I even got a whole bag of avocados for my birthday, I was most happy about it. The body should be given the maximum, we can not take everything from one product, so you need to experiment, try different things.

– What is the most popular dish?

Artem: Probably our burger. Oatmeal is also very popular, now we’ve made a winter version, with chia, with plant milk and healthy caramel.

– And of the drinks, what is the most popular?

Artem: If we don’t take coffee, matcha is very popular.

Anya: Green matcha is better to drink in the morning or in the evening, if you have far-reaching plans, and blue matcha on the contrary is more soothing, you can drink it in the evening.

– How would you characterize the philosophy of Project 42?

Anya: Let me emphasize once again that this is a story not about limitations, but about expansion, you can come here and try something new and useful.

Artem: I think that our slogan clearly reflects our philosophy: “Healthy. Simple Everyday”. We are simple, healthy and for every day, even if you are used to eating ordinary food, you will find something to your liking.