If you’ve heard of the major benefits of taking collagen as a supplement, or if you’ve already incorporated it into your wellness regimen, chances are it’s because of Joy Harari. The entrepreneur (and mother of five) started out as a holistic coach who realized there was one magic ingredient that was helping her patients like no other: marine collagen. “I knew that the world was waiting for this,” says Joy, and turns out, she was right. 

Enter Shore Magic, also known as the 360-degree beauty line featuring the purest hydrolyzed marine collagen on the market. U Beauty founder Tina Craig sat down with Joy to talk about the power of what comes from the ocean, taking an all-embracing approach to wellness and cultivating beauty from the inside out. 

Tina: Marine collagen is something I was really interested in right away because in Chinese culture, after you have a baby, you eat this seaweed soup. So when I saw it, I thought, “I get this!” I’ve been on the Shore Magic powder for three weeks now and I’ve started working out again and I’m not sore now after taking it. I’m a believer.

Joy: One of the most important things it does is help with recovery, from surgery and exercise. When the body needs to recover, collagen is unbelievably essential. The quality of our collagen is what makes it special. It gets absorbed into the system so easily because of the size of our molecule and how we make it.

Tina: How did you start as a holistic coach? What was the journey like? 

Joy: It all started way back in the day. I was born with celiac disease and my mother found this doctor who cured people. I was on his diet from age one to five, and I’d always remembered him: Dr. Haas. When I was getting my health coach credentials, I was reading The Gut Health Protocol and I saw his name. It turned out he was the father of the gut-health movement back in the sixties. This set the belief that food and health go together, an idea I was always passionate about. 

Tina: How did that lead to Shore Magic?

Joy: My kids grew up eating miso soup and seaweed. I was ahead of my time with health and wellness. I was making nori maki and feeding it to my five kids before anyone knew what sushi was! Later on, I opened a practice to treat children on the autistic spectrum and depressed and anxious adults. I was insistent kids have bone broth every single day, but it wasn’t on the shelves at the time. I knew collagen is the main component of bone broth that’s healing to the gut, so I had to find an answer. They say necessity is the mother of invention, and I needed this thing parents could pop into a smoothie for their kids.

After searching the world, it took about eight months until we found something good enough, which we tweaked until we came up with the most unbelievably pure product. I worked with it for about five years in my practice and gave it to everyone. Before I knew it, everybody wanted it for different reasons. People got off anti-anxiety medications and antidepressants after taking it, and I started seeing the magic. 

I had a choice: Do I want to help 200 people in my practice or help the world? I felt compelled to bring it out into the world, but not until it was tested on a cellular level. We had it tested and learned even more about what marine collagen does. Our published science proved that it actually crosses the blood-brain barrier, helping create new brain cells and it’s amazing for cognitive ability and memory. 

Tina: Were you met with any challenges launching such a revolutionary product? 

Joy: We stuck with things people could see and that’s why we went the beauty route, marketing it as a beauty product. People would see results quickly. They’d get compliments like, “Oh my god, you’re skin is glowing” or “Your hair looks so good.” After taking it for a month, people would tell me, “I haven’t yelled at my kids in a month. I’m so much calmer. Is it the collagen?” or “My joints got better” and so on. 

Sometimes people don’t notice a difference until they stop taking it. We call it the gentle giant. You don’t realize how much it’s helping until you take it away. 

Tina: What you put in your body matters. My grandmother raised me to always buy my clothes on sale but never my food! She’d say, “But you’re not eating the dress.” When I was five years old, I was being fed chicken feet, chicken butt, fish heads, crispy fish skin. I would gag, but my grandmother knew that everything you eat and absorb counts. 

Joy: Our collagen is made from fish skins, which we sustainably source. Cheap collagen is made from fish scales. While the nutritional profile can be similar, the results are incomparable. Most of the collagen out there is from farmed fish and I’d never accept farmed fish collagen, ever. Ours is kosher, it’s halal, the paper of our packaging is recycled: Anything I can do to ensure the best quality is what I do. Shore Magic is a huge investment in your health. It’s a huge investment in yourself. 

Tina: So how do you take your collagen powder? I’m finding I can’t drink green tea without it anymore!

Joy: I love that. I drink it in my organic coffee in the morning. But anyone with sleep issues, I recommend they take it an hour before they go to bed. 

Tina: I used to drink bone broth every night for that reason. Now I’m switching to your powder in chamomile tea. So what’s your favorite mantra?

Joy: My favorite in terms of health is to say, “You are not what you eat. You are what you absorb.” So if your gut’s not in good repair, you can be eating the healthiest food in the world, but your body’s not absorbing the nutrients.

Tina: What are five simple things you can’t live without? I’m going to guess Shore Magic is one of them!

Joy: Shore Magic for sure! [Laughs] My children and grandchildren. Exercise. And I really like my clothes and good shoes!