Micronutrients
We have forgotten how to eat
Walk into any supermarket today and you’re hit with around 40,000 choices. Every aisle is stacked with enriched ultra-processed foods pretending to be nutritious.
We’ve got blueberries from Chile in winter, avocados from California year-round, cashews from Nigeria, and quinoa shipped in from the Bolivia. It’s a global buffet, always in season, and we call it progress, because we deem it necessary to be healthy.
But here’s the question no one asks: why do we think we need all this to be healthy?
Somewhere along the way, we unlearned how to eat. We stopped trusting simplicity. We started believing we’re so biologically complex that only a global shopping list and a cabinet full of exotic superfoods and supplements can keep us going.
But almost every animal on Earth thrives on just a few local foods. Lions eat meat. Koalas eat eucalyptus. Most species are specialized and yet us humans act like we’re the exception.
The truth? We’re not. We just forgot. And it’s time to remember.
How We Really Evolved
Let’s zoom out. For most of human history, there were no super markets. No kale, kiwi, ginger, turmeric super smoothie in winter. No endless plant variety throughout the year.
There was meat. Fat. Organs. Eggs. Maybe some seasonal fruit, honey or roots, if you were lucky. And yet we didn’t just survive... we lived, we evolved, we thrived.
Strong bones. Broad jaws. Full sets of teeth. That’s what Weston A. Price (1939) found when he studied traditional cultures across the world, which were built on nutrient-dense animal foods.
The further your so called “superfoods” travel, the more likely they’re just marketing.
Traditional cultures didn’t count micronutrients. They didn’t fly in exotic powders. They hunted, they ate nose-to-tail, and their biology took care of the math.
The Micronutrient Powerhouses
Here’s what your ancestors knew instinctively and what most nutritionists still don’t admit:
Red meat is loaded with bioavailable iron, zinc, B12, selenium, and complete protein (Williams, 2007). In fact, iron from red meat is among the most absorbable forms available to the human body (Hurrell, R. F., & Egli, I. 2010). That’s a crucial detail, especially considering that roughly 30% of women of reproductive age worldwide suffer from anemia, mostly due to iron deficiency (WHO, 2023).
Egg yolks and butter give you fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and the magical K2, which tells your body where to send calcium (Shearer & Newman, 2008).
Organs like liver, heart, and kidney are nature’s original multivitamin and are packed with copper, folate, choline, and true vitamin A (retinol).
These nutrients come ready to use: no anti-nutrients to block absorption, no fiber to interfere, no complex prep required. Just real nutrition your body recognizes and absorbs efficiently. (Sandström, 2001)
Vitamin C
“But what about scurvy?” people always ask.
Here’s the truth: humans on all-meat diets don’t drop dead from scurvy, because fresh meat actually contains small amounts of vitamin C. And when you cut the carbs, your body needs less of it.
Vitamin C and glucose compete for the same transport pathways (Hediger, 2002). When you’re not sugar-loaded, vitamin C gets absorbed more efficiently.
That’s how Inuit and other indigenous groups living in the Arctic stayed healthy on diets of seal, fish, and caribou (Stefansson, 1935).
Your Biology Still Remembers
Your body isn’t confused. It doesn’t want kale or acai in the middle of winter.
It wants the same nutrient-dense foods that built your immune system, your brain, your bones. It wants the same foods that rebuilt my gut and my life after 21 years of chronic illness.
Red meat. Butter. Eggs. Salt. Water as a base layer.
That’s the original nutritional ledger. And it doesn’t lie.
References
Hediger, M. A. (2002). New view at C. Nature Medicine, 8(5), 445–446.
Hurrell, R. F., & Egli, I. (2010). Iron bioavailability and dietary reference values. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 91(5), 1461S–1467S.
Price, W. A. (1939). Nutrition and physical degeneration. Paul B. Hoeber, Inc.
Sandström, B. (2001). Micronutrient interactions: Effects on absorption and bioavailability. British Journal of Nutrition, 85(S2), S181–S185.
Shearer, M. J., & Newman, P. (2008). Metabolism and cell biology of vitamin K. Thrombosis and Haemostasis, 100(4), 530–547.
Stefansson, V. (1935). Adventures in diet. Harper’s Monthly Magazine.
Williams, P. G. (2007). Nutritional composition of red meat. Nutrition & Dietetics, 64(S4), S113–S119.
World Health Organization. (2023). Anaemia in women and children.