Young Jackson Reamer, inspiration behind Jackson’s Honest chips, dies
Jackson Reamer, the charismatic inspiration for Crested Butte’s Jackson’s Honest chip company, succumbed to his rare neurodevelopmental disorder on Sunday. He was 16.
Jackson was a healthy baby when he was born in the spring of 2001, walking and talking shortly after he turned 1. By his fourth birthday, his body was ravaged by an unexplained illness. Unable to walk, talk or eat, he was a mere 17 pounds. His parents Scott and Megan Reamer toured him through all the nation’s top hospitals, desperate for a diagnosis.
Ultimately, he was sent home with pain medication and apologies from befuddled doctors.
Scott and Megan’s Hail Mary to save their first-born child was a diet heavy in saturated fats. After a year of arduous elimination, they flipped the food pyramid, feeding their son fish, wild game, eggs, butter, lard and coconut oil. Jackson thrived, gaining weight, sleeping through the night and playing with his family.
Two years ago, after almost a decade of feeding Jackson a paleo-type diet rich in saturated fats, doctors diagnosed him with the super-rare Aicardi– Goutières syndrome, a genetic, inflammatory disease that affects the brain. There are maybe 400 people with the syndrome and there is no cure, but treatment includes a carbohydrate and sugar-free diet laden with saturated fats that can ease chronic inflammation in the brain.
Few who suffer from the early-onset form of the syndrome live beyond childhood. Jackson was an inspiration among the tight-knit community of families with kids who have the syndrome, with his enthusiastic smile inciting hope for a better life.
During the process of crafting the saturated fat diet that sustained their son, the Reamer family — including siblings Charlie, Olivia and Ella, all of whom were fluent in Jackson’s body language and could interpret every glance from their older brother — developed a potato chip simmered at low heat in coconut oil in their Crested Butte kitchen.
After feeding friends for several years, the family in 2012 bagged their creation under the Jackson’s Honest brand, creating a vibrant Coloradobased company in an industry dominated by major corporations. They were the first company to cook chips in coconut oil and Scott and Megan directed more of a mission than a company, trumpeting the values of ancestral, natural foods dense with nutrients
Jackson and his family recently moved from their home in Crested Butte to Boulder, where services and therapies for Jackson were more abundant. He attended Fairview High School and last year he scored a touchdown for the football team, rolling across the goal line in his chair.
His namesake company continues its rise, offering an array of chips cooked in coconut oil and available at Natural Grocers and other stores across the country.
“His legacy will live on in the company his struggle founded,” said Scott Reamer. “And that’s as strong a salve as can be applied to our absolutely broken hearts.”