Nutritional Wisdom

Why do so many of us feel constantly hungry in a world where food is everywhere?

For generations, humans relied on what researchers now call “nutritional wisdom”, the body’s natural ability to guide us toward foods that contain the nutrients we need to function. Long before calorie counting apps & nutrition labels existed, people learned through taste, smell, satisfaction, & even cravings. We crave flavorful foods like fresh basil, beets, vanilla bean, or a fresh juicy steak on purpose - because flavor contains essential building blocks for human life. Flavor is the billboard of flashing lights that is telling us where the goods are!

"Eating is the act of finding wholeness from the outside world around us."

Mark Schatzker, author of The Dorito Effect & The End of Craving

What Mark means by this is that our brain and gut are intuitively sensing what nutrients we are eating and the ratios of each nutrient within a given meal. Our body is constantly on the prowl for the most complete suite of fats, vitamins, minerals, and amino acids that it can get its hands on - Driving us to crave certain foods accordingly.

For example, It’s long documented that sailors in the 16th through 19th centuries would crave fresh meat, vegetables, & fruits during the onset of scurvy - A condition defined by a severe vitamin C deficiency resulting in common symptoms like severe fatigue, bleeding gums, and poor wound healing. When sailors finally regained access to fresh foods, their symptoms resided and their cravings for them vanished.

Nutritional Wisdom Begins in the Womb

Even before birth, our system of nutrient sensing is already hard at work. Flavors from our mother’s diet pass through amniotic fluid (and later breast milk), showing us what flavors are safe to eat, shaping our early taste preferences. In other words, our relationship with food begins long before ever make a conscious choice.

• If you eat whole foods during pregnancy, baby is much more likely to enjoy whole foods too - i.e. be much less likely to be a picky eater.

• If you eat junk food during pregnancy, baby is much more likely to enjoy junk food - setting the stage for a nutrient poor diet and the accompanying health challenges later in life if those habits persist.

If you’re thinking, “I’ve already raised my kids and I’m not sure we got everything right nutritionally,” don’t worry. Humans, especially children, are remarkably resilient. The babies selected for the study below, many of them orphaned or from troubled homes, had a nutritionally poor upbringing. But despite having poor diets going into the study, the results were positively astounding.

A study conducted in the 1930s by Dr.Clara Davis revealed that when babies were allowed to select whatever foods they wanted from a list of 33 pre-approved foods, every child (15 children in total) chose a different pairing, but was instinctively able to maintain good health. This was taken as evidence that humans possess nutritional wisdom.

Here are a couple passages from the resulting paper that are particularly striking:

• Following a fever outbreak, "unusually large amounts of raw beef, carrots and beets were eaten."

• An infant who started the experiment with Rickets (vitamin D deficiency), self-selected to eat cod liver oil until his vitamin levels were normal. He was the only child to do so.

Due to the nature of the experiment & ethical concerns, the study was & likely never will be replicated. The next best thing is a study completed in 2022. In this study, researchers found that when adults were shown photos of 128 different food pairings, people intuitively preferred the pairings that had the widest array of micronutrients.

For example, have you ever noticed that most fine dining restaurants seem to have the same classic specials? Steak & Potatoes, Fish & Lemon Wedges, or Pork & Beans? This is nutritional wisdom at work! We are intuitively drawn to these tasty food pairings because they have complimentary chemistry that boosts our body's ability to absorb and utilize nutrients.

Let's take a closer look at beef & potatoes. This pairing has popped up around the world for centuries and is a staple dish in many cultures:

• Due to its amino acid content, beef is considered acidic. Potatoes on the other hand, are more alkaline and can help balance the pH in the digestive tract - reducing the risk of digestive upset.

• The Vitamin C found in the potato skins helps promote absorption of the heme-iron found in beef. 

• The combination of protein & fats from the beef along side the complex carbohydrates (slow carbs) from the potatoes works to regulate blood sugar.

• Together, this pairing increases satiety signals - making you feel full, satisfied, and energized for a longer stretch of time!

Do Other Animals Have Nutritional Wisdom?

Nutritional Wisdom in the Wild

Fred Provenza is a leading researcher in the field of animals and nutritional wisdom. During his PhD he studied goats that were subsisting on a nutrient poor diet consisting of blackbrush on the high plains of Utah. His observations revealed a very strange habit: the goats would feast on the urine drenched nesting material of rat houses... Apparently goat stomachs contain bacteria that can convert nitrogen, plentiful in urine, into protein! A nifty trick to pull out in times of food scarcity.

Other strange and sometimes gruesome nutritional behaviors in the wild are abound:

• Vegetarian sheep on the Scottish Isle of Foula sometimes scavenge for baby Acrtic terns - for their mineral content - when food is scarce.

• Caribou in Alaska will munch on snow geese eggs - but leave the chicks - when they are calcium deficient.

Animals in the wild are instinctively drawn to foods that contain the nutrients they need to survive and thrive, and humans exhibit similar abilities too - except when our nutrient sensors are hijacked by our modern world.

Natural & Artificial Flavors

Most moderate to ultra processed foods now - even many organic foods - are full of synthesized flavor compounds and this is problematic on several fronts.

Take strawberries for example. We all know that a strawberry flavored food tastes nothing like an actual strawberry. Flavor blends are often proprietary, deemed a “trade secret”, so it’s hard to identify exactly what’s in them. But from what we can gather, your average “natural” strawberry flavor can contain 300+ volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from an array of natural sources.

20-30 of these flavor compounds are deemed to be essential to the strawberry flavor as they are readily detected by our nose and mouth. This is why strawberry flavored food always tastes the same. The vast flavor complexity of a real strawberry, which varies greatly from berry to berry - even on the same plant - is discarded in favor of a flavor that’s reliably the same. Flavor compounds are also a lot cheaper and less perishable than using the real thing. But these 'gains' come at a cost.

"Artificial” and “Natural” flavor additives are designed to mimic the taste of nutrient rich foods, but it's a bait and switch in the eyes of our cells. Our body tastes the flavor and expects nourishment alongside it, but often receives refined starches, sugars, and industrial oils instead - all nutrient poor inputs that fail to satisfy our deeper biological needs. Over time, this disconnect contributes to persistent cravings and a sense of never quite feeling full.

Here’s our general rule of thumb - If the flavor came from a real plant or animal that generally resembles its natural form, your body knows what to do with it. But if the flavor was engineered by a team of PhD food chemists in a lab, your body is being sold a nutritional mirage. Put it back.

Supplementation & Fortification

Supplementation can also interfere with the body’s nutritional wisdom. Unlike whole foods, which contain nutrients in natural ratios that work together, most supplements deliver nutrients in isolation, making them very poorly absorbed. In biology, nutrients rarely act alone. Fat soluble vitamins like A, D, E, and K, for example, rely on dietary fats and other compounds in order to be properly absorbed and utilized.

When isolated supplements are taken alongside highly processed foods, the body registers a nutrient delivery even when the overall diet lacks the complexity of real food. It's a nutritional smoke screen. Over time, this can subtly shift cravings in ways that reinforce processed eating patterns rather than correct them. This doesn’t mean that supplements are completely unnecessary though. They can absolutely be valuable when used intentionally and for specific needs. The issue here is an over reliance on them in place of whole foods, where nature has already built in just the right combinations, ratios, and delivery systems.

The same dynamic applies to fortified grains/flours. While this strategy aims to prevent deficiencies in populations with limited access to whole foods, it too can create a false sense of nutritional completeness, furthering a desire for "empty calories".

GLP1 Drugs Distort Nutritional Wisdom

Increasingly, we’re not just confusing our drive to consume nutrients, we’re actively trying to override them. Weight-loss drugs like Ozempic, Wegovy, and Mounjaro work by amplifying the body’s natural appetite and blood sugar regulating hormones. Originally developed for type 2 diabetes, these medications enhance pathways involving GLP-1 (and, in the case of Mounjaro, GIP as well), which help to slow digestion, stabilize blood sugar, and signal satiety to the brain more strongly and for longer periods. The result is reduced appetite, improved blood sugar control, and significant weight loss for many people.

From a nutritional wisdom perspective, however, hunger is not a flaw. It’s a vital feedback system. It reflects the body’s ongoing need for protein, vitamins, minerals, fats, and other essential nutrients. When that signal is chemically dampened, it becomes easier to unintentionally under eat, especially if food quality doesn’t change alongside appetite.

And this is where our concerns begin to arise. A meaningful portion of weight lost on GLP-1 drugs can come from lean muscle tissue, particularly when protein intake and resistance training are insufficient - and may Americans fall into this category. Muscle plays a central role in blood sugar regulation, hormone balance, and long term metabolic health. Preserving it is of the utmost importance, and it becomes even more important the older we get!

Further, slowed gastric emptying is one of the core mechanisms behind GLP-1 medications, and it’s also where some of the more complex gut health questions begin to show up. Drugs like Ozempic, Wegovy, and Mounjaro slow the rate at which food leaves the stomach, meaning meals remain in the upper digestive tract much longer than normal. This extended “holding pattern” increases feelings of fullness and is a major player in why these medications reduce appetite so effectively.

Under normal conditions, the digestive tract operates with a coordinated rhythm. Food moves from the stomach into the small intestine (where nutrients are absorbed), and between meals a cleansing wave of muscular activity known as the migrating motor complex (MMC) sweeps through the gut to clear residual particles and prevent bacterial buildup. This cyclical process is one of the body’s key defenses against microbial imbalances.

But when gastric emptying is consistently slowed, that rhythm can become less efficient. Prolonged transit may reduce the effectiveness of these cleansing waves, increasing the risk of bacterial or fungal overgrowth in the small intestine, such as SIBO or SIFO. While not everyone experiences these outcomes, the underlying principle is important: gut motility plays a central role in maintaining microbial balance.

From this perspective, the gut is not just a digestive organ. It is a time sensitive ecosystem. The speed and rhythm of digestion help regulate which microbes thrive & how efficiently nutrients are absorbed & processed. When that timing is altered, the microbial environment adapts in response - for better or for worse.

That said, for some people, GLP-1 drugs provide a critical window to regain control over overeating, food addiction, or severe metabolic dysfunction. But lasting health requires more than just appetite suppression alone. The underlying drivers of poor metabolic health in the first place - nutrient poor diets, sedentary lifestyles, chronic stress, disrupted sleep, poor light hygiene, etc - still need to be addressed if sustainable long term health is to be achieved.

The Call to Action is Simple:

The body evolved to recognize real food. Flavor wasn’t meant to simply entertain us. It was meant to guide us toward nourishment. The most satisfying flavors often aren’t created quickly, but slowly, through time, patience, & with real ingredients. In a world full of engineered foods, medications, & endless nutrition advice, learning to listen to the body again, to tap into our “nutritional wisdom”, may just be one of the most powerful ways to support our longterm health.

And in practice, that wisdom often comes down to simplicity. Nourishing food isn’t a quick affair. Many nutrients and flavors are preserved, or even enhanced, when food is prepared gently over time. Traditional methods like slow cooking & fermentation reflect the same principle: real food takes time, & the body knows the difference.