Lesson 01 of 14

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

What is a meal?

Before we talk about protein or carbohydrates, notice this: a meal is not a nutrition label. It's a small ecosystem — plants, animals, fungi, and minerals — meeting the ecosystem inside your body. Everything else in this app is a way of getting curious about that meeting.

Every meal does at least three things: it supplies energy, it supplies materials for repair, and it changes the environment inside your gut. Most meals do all three at once, in different proportions.

A meal can be as small as

  • · An apple
  • · A boiled egg
  • · A bowl of rice with soy sauce
  • · A handful of almonds and tea

Something to investigate

Think about the last thing you ate. What do you think it was mostly doing for you — energy, repair, or shaping the gut environment?