The hunter's mind in a farmer's world (the truth about ADHD)
Myles RankinWritten on 30th August
ADHD isn't a modern invention, it's a modern diagnosis for ancient traits.
We come from barefoot tracking and dawnlight pursuits, from a lineage of people who lived in motion, whose eyes scanned the horizon without rest, whose ears tuned in to the smallest rustle in the undergrowth. Before agriculture, we moved constantly, not because we were restless, but because life required it. Vigilance wasn’t optional, it was a rhythm engrained into our biology.
Modern research reflects what our biology remembers. The DRD4 7R gene, heavily linked to ADHD, appears more often in nomadic populations. The same traits we label today as impulsive, distractible, or hyperactive, the hunger for novelty, the drive toward stimulation, the intolerance of monotony, were once celebrated adaptations. Hunters had to be responsive, unpredictable, alert, tireless. Their survival depended on it.
Yet today, these same traits are punished.
So what happens when a hunter’s brain is trapped in a farmer’s world?
The mismatch
Around 10,000 years ago, everything changed. We stopped moving with the herds. Stopped rising with the hunt. And we started planting. Waiting. Settling.
The agricultural revolution turned nomads into farmers, and in doing so, it reshaped not just the landscape, but the human nervous system.
Routine became survival. The chaos of the hunt gave way to cycles of sowing and reaping, orderly, seasonal, measured. And the brain, as it always does, adapted to the pressures of its environment. Those who thrived in agricultural societies were the ones who could wake up at the same time every morning, tend crops patiently, endure repetition without distraction.
The world we live in now, with its school bells and inboxes, office chairs, long meetings, rigid schedules, and slow, distant rewards, is built in the image of this agricultural brain
So when your brain struggles to comply… skips meals, forgets appointments, hyperfocuses on one task but can’t start another, it’s not a failure of willpower. It’s an evolutionary mismatch. A brain optimised for pursuit, trapped in a system designed for planting.
Your brain isn’t confused, it’s asking for protein
The hunter’s brain runs hot. It metabolises neurotransmitters like dopamine and norepinephrine at a faster rate, constantly seeking stimulation, reward, and motion. And because it’s so active, it requires more fuel, not just calories, but the right raw materials.
Dopamine is built from tyrosine, an amino acid found abundantly in grass-fed red meat and eggs. But tyrosine needs help to convert it… B6, copper, zinc, iron. These are found, in their most bioavailable forms, in the parts of the animal we’ve largely stopped eating… liver, heart, bone marrow, yolk.
So when your brain feels scattered, underpowered, or starved for focus, it might not be disordered at all. It might be communicating, clearly and consistently, its need for the specific inputs it evolved with:
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Tyrosine to make dopamine
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B vitamins for methylation and cognition
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Iron and copper for oxygen transport
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Zinc for memory and attention
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Fat for absorption
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Protein as the foundation of every repair and function
The executive function paradox. When cooking feels impossible.
Here’s the cruel irony… when your brain needs nutrient-dense food most, it feels impossible to prepare.
ADHD makes the act of cooking, with all its steps, timing, sequencing, and planning, feel exhausting. You may know exactly what you should eat, but the decision-making required to get from fridge to fork often feels impossibly heavy.
Traditional cultures didn’t expect each individual to cook every day. They prepared food in batches, in community, and with future fatigue in mind.
Meat was preserved as jerky, salted and dried to last for weeks without refrigeration. Organ meats were blended into stews and pâtés that lasted for days. Broth simmered constantly over the fire, available whenever it was needed. Fermentation extended shelf-life and made nutrients more absorbable. Cooking was distributed among households to ease the mental load.
Today, that can look like:
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Bone broth in the freezer
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A dozen boiled eggs on hand
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Organs that give you incomparable concentration of nutrients in just one portion
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Slow-cooked stews that feed you for days (for example see our Venison Stew recipe)
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Jerky in your bag when you're too tired to cook
It’s about designing food systems that remove friction, so your brain doesn’t have to climb a mountain every time it needs to eat.The issue isn’t a lack of knowledge. It’s a mismatch between the need and the capacity to meet it.
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ADHD isn’t just in the brain, it’s in the gut
The gut-brain axis is no longer theoretical, it is one of the most crucial systems involved in attention, mood regulation, and overall nervous system function. Your gut bacteria produce key neurotransmitters. Your vagus nerve, the bi-directional communication channel between your gut and your brain, is constantly reacting to blood sugar levels, inflammation, and microbial signals.
When we look at children with severe ADHD symptoms… the meltdowns, the hyperactivity, the sleep issues, the inability to self-soothe, what we often find underneath is not a behaviour problem, but a gut problem.
These children often also experience
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Food intolerances
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Skin conditions like eczema
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Immune sensitivity and constant colds
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Anxiety and sensory processing issues
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Difficulty with emotional regulation
Now look what most children are eating
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Seed oils in nearly everything
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Refined carbs without fibre
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Artificial colours and preservatives (many of which have known hyperactivity links)
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Pasteurised dairy stripped of enzymes
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Cereal “fortified” with synthetic nutrients that the body barely recognises
We’re feeding our children (and ourselves) food that overstimulates their nervous system while depriving their microbiome and brain of what they need to regulate, repair, and rest. Their blood sugar swings. Their gut lining becomes inflamed. Neurotransmitters can’t stabilise. And then we label them as “difficult.”
Where to begin
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Collagen-rich broths release minerals and gelatine from bones and tendons, repairing the delicate lining of the gut
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Fermented foods like raw dairy, kefir & traditional ferments carry living microbe that replenish the gut’s biodiversity & encourage the production of GABA, a calming neurotransmitter that so many ADHD brains struggle to maintain
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Organ meats deliver B vitamins, iron, and trace minerals needed for nervous system regulation
See our Gut Health Guide or our Kids Gut Health Guide
Eating for dopamine, without the crash
ADHD brains crave stimulation, but what they’re truly seeking is satisfaction. Not the kind that comes in bright packaging or instant flavour hits, but the slow, steady kind that quiets the mind and fills the body in a way that doesn’t ask for more.
Modern food is built to excite, not to nourish. It spikes blood sugar, overstimulates the palate, and leaves you stuck in a loop of craving, grazing, decision fatigue, and constant searching. You feel it in the background noise of your day, the low-level distraction of always wondering what to eat next, mentally preparing the next snack even as you're chewing the last bite, never quite full, never quite done.
But when you eat truly satisfying food, rich, grounding, animal-based meals with real fat, real minerals, and the textures your body recognises from a time long before nutrition labels, something changes.
You’re no longer spending energy thinking about food all day, you’re simply fed, in the deepest sense of the word. There's no urgency to plan every bite, no exhaustion from constructing an entire day’s worth of meals in your mind before noon, no shame spiral because you didn’t “stick to the plan.” Just a quiet internal knowing “I’ve had enough”.
What we call ADHD today may simply be the embodied memory of a different rhythm, one that thrived in movement, spontaneity, and deep sensory engagement with the world. And while we can’t return to the forests or the wild plains, we can bring pieces of that rhythm back into the everyday through how we eat, how we move, and how we nourish.
The goal was never to erase your traits, dull your hunger for novelty, or force your focus into narrow lanes. The goal is to feed the brilliance that already exists, to give it structure, steadiness, and the ancestral materials it needs to function at its best.
This is what it means to eat like a hunter in a farmer’s world.
