Matthew Chin

Re­porter

matthew.chin@guardian.co.tt

“I’ve al­ways been in­to sports, an ac­tive lifestyle since I could walk,” says Nathaniel Alexan­der, who iden­ti­fies as an ath­lete. In his ear­ly days, he first got ac­quaint­ed with crick­et when he was two years old and has played the sport ever since.

But now, af­ter be­ing in­tro­duced to pick­le­ball by a friend, Alexan­der has in­cor­po­rat­ed the sport in­to his dai­ly life with five to six hours a day spent play­ing, and three to four times a week of pick­le­ball train­ing.

He doesn’t smoke, vape, or drink al­co­hol. Al­though, to him, so­ca mu­sic is the clos­est form of al­co­hol he en­joys.

Tak­ing a bird’s eye view of the per­va­sive health is­sues in so­ci­ety, the 24 year old ad­vised that peo­ple should be hon­est and re­al­is­tic with their health and not to sub­sti­tute ac­cep­tance of one’s body for the work in get­ting healthy.

“I don’t think enough peo­ple are ac­tive or look at their di­et. I un­der­stand there’s this push to­wards body ac­cep­tance, and yes, there’s the men­tal as­pect of it, but you can’t push it to the point where an obese per­son looks at them­selves and says, ‘I’m hap­py. I’m fine,’ be­cause that leads to prob­lems down the road,” Alexan­der said.

“You help them with­out bring­ing them down. My main goal is bring­ing more peo­ple to the court.”

One such per­son was Alexan­der’s fa­ther, who had been over­weight be­fore join­ing the pick­le­ball court. He has now lost close to 15 pounds.

As a child, Alexan­der re­mem­bered his dad be­ing un­able to play his best crick­et be­cause of his weight. He want­ed to change this. “I’ve nev­er seen him run be­fore in the last two months, and now he’s mov­ing like I’ve nev­er seen be­fore. As he los­es weight, he’s able to do a lot more of what he wants to do. It makes me feel re­al­ly, re­al­ly good,” Alexan­der said, smil­ing with pride.

Alexan­der said he was in­tro­duced to the sport two years ago by a friend but was un­able to rec­ol­lect the ex­act mo­ment he’d be­come en­am­oured with it.

The court is al­so where some of Alexan­der’s friends go to sweat and have fun. “I just re­mem­ber go­ing to the courts and play­ing. I thought it was fun; I could play with old­er peo­ple. There was an old guy on the side who ab­solute­ly de­mol­ished me. I had no clue how to hit the ball like he did ... And then, I said to my­self, If he can play this sport at such a high lev­el, who’s to say I can’t?”Alexan­der said.

His ini­tial pick­le­ball group of ten grew to 178 in just one year. Some of whom, de­spite hav­ing in­juries, go to the court to feel bet­ter and more con­fi­dent in them­selves. “They love the sport. They call it their hap­py space,” Alexan­der said.

Alexan­der be­gan study­ing bio­med­ical en­gi­neer­ing in Au­gust 2018 and went back home in March 2020 dur­ing the pan­dem­ic to spend a year and a half with his fam­i­ly. “My mom made a joke, ‘Why don’t you just try mak­ing let­tuce?’ And I was like, sure!’” Alexan­der said.

Fol­low­ing her sug­ges­tion, he flocked to the hard­ware store and brought home PVC pipes to start gar­den­ing. His moth­er was not im­pressed, de­spite hav­ing em­bed­ded the idea in­to his mind. “She looked at me like I was a mad man and said, ‘What are you do­ing? You just went to spend mon­ey, and you’re home try­ing to grow let­tuce, which you’re not sure will grow?’ I replied, Mom, if I put my mind to it, I guar­an­tee it’ll grow,” Alexan­der said.

When his moth­er tast­ed his let­tuce, she praised it as the best she ever had. From there, Alexan­der took the ini­tia­tive to start his own health and well­ness com­pa­ny, Or­gan­ic Roots, in 2020, which lat­er evolved in­to Or­gan­ic Roots Pro Ltd, which saw the ad­di­tion of mi­cro­green sup­ple­ments to the com­pa­ny.

Ac­cord­ing to Alexan­der, who is the di­rec­tor of the com­pa­ny, no soil, fer­tilis­ers, pes­ti­cides, or her­bi­cides are used in the cul­ti­va­tion of the mi­cro­greens. On­ly wa­ter.

Cit­ing the high amount of nu­tri­ents in his cho­sen co­hort of mi­cro­greens, oth­er op­tions were ig­nored. “Broc­coli and radish have a com­pound in them called sul­foraphane, which is re­al­ly ac­ti­vat­ed through heat. And if you chew on food, it ac­ti­vates it even more. So, when we blend and dry the mi­cro­greens with heat, we mim­ic that,” Alexan­der ex­plained.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, red cab­bage and red kale are al­so part of his com­pa­ny’s mi­cro­green sup­ple­ments that are grown in­doors with the help of con­trolled tem­per­a­tures and hu­mid­i­ty, which are some fac­tors used in the op­ti­mi­sa­tion of plant health and growth us­ing com­put­er-man­aged tech­nolo­gies.

This prac­tice is called con­trolled en­vi­ron­ment agri­cul­ture (CEA). Alexan­der shared with Guardian Me­dia that he in­tends to sell the mi­cro­green sup­ple­ments in oth­er Caribbean is­lands like Ja­maica, Bar­ba­dos, An­tigua, and Grena­da, where peo­ple have been re­quest­ing the prod­uct. “The goal is to make every­one health­i­er. The prof­it will come, but that is not at the fore­front of my mind. I want to do the right things for the right rea­sons.”