Most diet books promise quick fixes or promote the latest eating trend. A forthcoming book from Boulder, Colorado takes a different approach entirely—treating nutrition as a complex system that requires understanding, not just following rules.
“Systems of Nourishment: Optimize your diet through Systems Science” attempts to answer a deceptively simple question: How should we eat to optimize our health? Rather than advocating for a specific diet, the scientific approach to nutrition applies four distinct methods to understand what humans should actually eat.
The book examines how nutrients function within the body, traces human dietary evolution over seven million years, analyzes how nutrition establishments form recommendations, and reviews hundreds of scientific studies. The author’s goal is to identify where these methods agree, where they diverge, and how to resolve those differences.
Evolution as a Guide
Central to the book’s thesis is the concept of what the author calls “The Universal Human Diet”—the idea that evolution designed human physiological systems for specific foods consumed in specific ways. The problem, according to this framework, is that modern foods and even some supplements marketed as healthy are fundamentally misaligned with how humans evolved to eat.
The book traces dietary evolution from a theoretical common ancestor seven million years ago through Australopithecus, Homo Erectus, and three eras of Homo Sapiens as foragers, agriculturalists, and modernists. Using what’s described as “the foodways equation,” it shows how human physiology and diet evolved together, creating what the author argues is a largely universal nutritional physiology—with some significant individual variations.
Challenging the Nutrition Establishment
The book doesn’t shy away from criticizing mainstream dietary advice. While acknowledging that nutritional recommendations have value, the author contends that nutrition guidelines based on evolutionary biology reveal historical and ongoing mistakes because current recommendations aren’t aligned with human physiology or evolutionary history. The book specifically challenges conventional wisdom about protein, carbohydrates, fats, and even essential nutrients like Vitamin A.
Rather than prescribing a rigid eating plan, the book distills its research into seven premises readers can use to design their own diets. These premises cover food selection, processing methods to reduce harmful compounds, and combining foods to balance nutrients while making meals satisfying.
For the Thinking Eater
The book positions itself explicitly as an anti-fad alternative, targeting what it calls “intellectuals” and “thinking people” who want to understand dietary systems rather than follow trends. It’s written for readers who thrive on understanding and mastery rather than conforming to popular movements.
The author’s ultimate vision is that people can eat intuitively and pleasurably again by aligning their diets with their biological nature—treating the body as a physiological system that performs optimally when it receives everything it needs and nothing more. With ambitions for bestseller lists, Systems of Nourishment aims to stand apart in a crowded field of nutrition literature by emphasizing comprehension over compliance.
