The Organised Field Guide: What's Inside and Why We Made It

The reason for that specific choice of format matters.

Why a field guide, not a diet book

Most nutrition books come with a narrative. Here's the problem (usually: you're eating too much, or the wrong things, or not enough). Here's the solution (usually: eat like this, avoid that, follow this plan). Here's the science (sometimes real, sometimes selective). By the end, you either believe the narrative or you don't, and your relationship with food changes accordingly, for better or worse.

We didn't want to do that. We didn't want to tell you that you're broken and need fixing. We didn't want to sell you a blueprint. We didn't want to create a narrative that only works if you accept every premise.

Instead, we wanted to create a reference tool. Something you could open and say, "Okay, what's in eggs? What makes them different from other foods? What's actually inside an organ like liver?" Something that shows you the nutrients, the science, the practical reality of real food without telling you that you must eat a specific way.

A field guide assumes you're intelligent. It trusts you to look something up, read the information, and make your own choice. That felt honest to us.

We wanted to show you the terrain, not draw you a map and insist it's the only way to walk.

The structure and what's inside

The field guide is organised around foods, not around nutrients or dietary dogma. You have sections on proteins, fats, vegetables, fruits, herbs, fermented foods. Within each, we've documented the major foods that show up in ancestral eating patterns and whole food diets.

For each food, you get several things. First, what's actually in it. Not marketing language. Not vague terms like "superfoods." Actual nutrients. Vitamin content. Mineral content. Protein. Fat composition. The bits that actually matter to your body.

Second, context. How this food was eaten traditionally. Whether it was a daily staple or a seasonal luxury. What combination of foods would typically appear together. The real patterns of how humans ate, not invented patterns designed to fit a philosophy.

Third, practical notes. How to select it. How to prepare it. What to look for when you're buying. Whether frozen or fresh makes a difference. Whether cooking changes anything important. The real, practical stuff that separates theory from dinner.

We also included what we didn't know. Where the science is genuinely unclear. Where different populations seem to have done well on different versions of a food. Where our certainty ends and honest uncertainty begins.

How to actually use it

You don't read a field guide cover to cover. You use it when you need it. You're standing in the farmers market looking at brassicas and you're thinking, "What's actually different between kale and cabbage?" You open the guide. You read. You know.

Or you're meal-planning and thinking about iron, and you want to know which foods are actually iron-dense. You look up beef, liver, oysters, spinach. You see what's in them. You choose based on what you actually like and what you have access to.

Or you're reading an article about why sardines are good for you, and you're sceptical, so you look up sardines in the field guide and you see what they actually contain. You don't have to take anyone's word for it. You have the information.

A field guide works when you use it to answer your own questions, not when you memorise it.

What we don't include, and why

We don't include processing instructions for seed oils or recipes for processed foods. Not because those things don't exist or aren't sometimes convenient. But because the purpose of the guide is to help you build a relationship with real food, and including a detailed section on extracting and refining vegetable oils didn't serve that purpose.

We don't include calorie counts. Not because calories are meaningless, but because we wanted the guide to avoid the trap of nutrient reduction (the idea that food is just numbers, so you can optimise by the math). It's not. Your body responds to real food differently than to processed food with the same calorie count.¹ The guide reflects that reality.

We don't include supplement formulations. Not because supplements have no place (for some people, they genuinely do). But because the purpose of the guide is to orient you toward foods first. If you're building a diet around supplements, you've already started in the wrong direction.

We don't include a specific meal plan, or a prescription about what percentage of your diet should be protein versus carbohydrate. Not because those things don't matter, but because they're individual. Different bodies need different ratios. The guide gives you the information to figure out what yours needs.

Building from transparency

The entire purpose of the field guide is transparency. Here's what's actually in your food. Here's what humans have historically eaten. Here's what we know with confidence, and here's what we're genuinely uncertain about. Make your own decisions from there.

We're not hiding. We're not selectively presenting data that supports one framework. We're saying: this is the terrain. Walk it however makes sense for you.

That's the whole thing. A resource built on the assumption that you're smart enough to read information and draw your own conclusions. That your body is wise enough to respond to real food. That you don't need to be told what to do as much as you need to be shown what's true.

References

1. 1. Hall KD et al. Ultra-Processed Diets Cause Excess Calorie Intake and Weight Gain: An Inpatient Randomized Controlled Trial of Ad Libitum Food Intake. Cell Metabolism, 2019. PMID 31105044.