Learn how food works

What is a meal?

A meal is a temporary arrangement of living things you invite into another living thing — you.

Protein

The body's repair material. Broken down into amino acids and rebuilt into you.

Carbohydrates

The body's primary fuel — sugars, starches, and the fiber that comes with them.

Fats

Structural, flavorful, and how many vitamins actually enter your body.

Fiber

The part of plants your body can't digest — but your gut microbes can.

Plants

Diversity matters more than any single plant.

Water

The medium every reaction inside you happens in.

Cooking

Heat changes what a food is and what it does inside you.

Fermentation

Letting microbes do part of your digestion for you.

Flavor

The five (or six) tastes are a map of what a meal is doing.

Food combinations

Why certain foods keep showing up together across the world.

Seasonality

Eating with the season is the easiest way to rotate your plant diversity.

Traditional food systems

Every long-lived cuisine has already solved most of the problems you'll run into.

Building balanced meals

You now know enough to design a meal from scratch.