You Are What You Eat
In the age of sterile farming and fad diets, real nourishment has become an act of remembering what it means to eat living food.
This week, during Cisco Networking Customer Advisory Board in Singapore, one presentation stopped me cold.
It was a case study from a company in Argentina that uses robotics to grow vegetables indoors, in controlled warehouses. No farmers, no insects, no rain, no human touch. Everything from seeding to harvest is managed by machines.
The idea is precision — food untouched by pests, pathogens, or human hands. The first person to touch the vegetable is the person eating it.
It’s impressive on paper, but something about it felt deeply off.
Food is not meant to be sterile. Food is a living ecosystem. When we remove life from it, the soil microbes, the trace dust of the earth, the energy of the sun, we remove part of what makes it nourishing.
We are starting to eat food that looks perfect but feels empty.
The Missing Microbes
Science is catching up to what ancient traditions always knew, our health depends on our connection to living microorganisms. Our gut microbiome, a vast network of bacteria, fungi, and viruses, influences everything from digestion to mood, immunity, and even our capacity to think clearly.
Plants grown in natural soil come covered with friendly bacteria that our ancestors consumed daily through a carrot pulled from the ground, a handful of unwashed berries, or the dust of the field carried by wind. These microorganisms didn’t harm us, they completed us.
In my earlier articles I wrote that I have managed to turn around my health following nutrition and lifestyle advice from Althony William, also knows as a Medical Medium. He notes that naturally bioavailable vitamin B12, the form our body can actually use, comes from microorganisms living in soil and on plants. He says that B12 is “basically bacteria poop.” In nature, you’d pick berries from a bush and get millions of invisible helpers that keep your nervous system, brain, and metabolism healthy. He contrasts this with modern produce: “Now everything is so washed and sterilized… dead food… of course there’s no B12 on it.”
Now, with hydroponic and sterile indoor farming, we eat vegetables untouched by rain, sunlight, proper soil or the microbial life that makes nutrients absorbable. This plants are technically alive but energetically flat, lacking the microbial codes our body recognizes as food.
Even washing and sanitizing produce too aggressively strips away the natural bacteria that support vitamin synthesis, digestion, and hormonal balance. The cleaner we make our food, the less alive it becomes and the more our own inner ecology starts to weaken.
The Diet Illusion
At the same time, we’ve turned nutrition into a battlefield of opinions. Every week, there’s a new diet protocol: high protein, zero carbs, raw vegan, carnivore, keto, fasting. Each promises control, optimization and a shortcut to longevity.
But the human body was never designed to live in extremes. It’s built for variety, rhythm, and balance.
The obsession with protein shakes and collagen powders is marketing genius, but biology nonsense. Your body doesn’t run on protein; it runs on glucose, minerals, and the complex ecosystem of micronutrients found in whole, water-rich, plant-based foods. You would be probably surprised to learn that raw leafy greens such as lettuce, spinach, Swiss chard, mâche, and watercress have the most bioavailable and assimilable proteins you can find, according to Medical Medium. Those proteins are most efficiently broken down and assimilated by the body, unlike the ones from animal sources or cooked foods.
Collagen isn’t something you drink; it’s something your body creates when it has enough vitamin C, silica (especially from plant sources like organic bamboo extract), and sulfur compounds like MSM (methylsulfonylmethane). This is more effective than using collagen powders, which are not bioavailable and do not convert into usable collagen for the skin, joints, or tissues
Meanwhile, diets that glorify fat-heavy regimes like keto can overburden the liver the very organ responsible for detoxification, hormone regulation, and energy metabolism. When the liver is drenched in fat, it struggles to cleanse environmental toxins and heavy metals that accumulate in the body. Over time, that creates inflammation, brain fog, anxiety, and hormonal chaos.
The Business of Sickness
There’s a deeper ecosystem behind our plates and it’s not microbial, it’s economic.
The Big Food and Big Pharma were never designed to keep us healthy. They were designed to manage disease. Processed foods make us sluggish, reactive, inflamed. Then pharmaceuticals step in to mask the symptoms.
This isn’t conspiracy, it’s economics. Healthy people don’t consume endlessly. Clear-minded people don’t fall for every marketing campaign. People who cook real food, sleep deeply, and think critically are harder to manipulate.
No one profits when you eat a balanced, unbranded meal of vegetables, fruit, and whole grains. But they profit immensely when you need powders, pills, and plans to fix what a plate of real food could restore.
A disoriented society is easier to sell to, govern, and distract. So the system rewards what keeps people slightly unwell, always searching for energy, clarity, and purpose in external fixes instead of internal alignment.
The Path Back to Real Nourishment
The answer isn’t to retreat from modern life or romanticize the past. It’s to restore a relationship with food and with the body, and to remember how to live in rhythm with life again.
Here’s where to start:
Eat food that lived. Choose produce grown in real soil whenever possible. Visit farmer’s markets. If organic is too costly, follow the “Dirty Dozen” rule — prioritize organic for the most pesticide-heavy items (like strawberries, spinach, and apples).
Stop sanitizing everything. Rinse your vegetables lightly instead of scrubbing them sterile. Don’t fear a little dirt, it’s where your microbiome learns. The body learns resilience through contact with nature.
Don’t chase perfection. Even “organic” food exists under skies filled with pollution. The goal isn’t purity, it’s connection. Choose foods that feel alive, that have color, scent, and energy.
Support your liver and gut. Favor water-rich fruits and leafy greens, gentle herbs like parsley and cilantro, and natural detoxifiers such as wild blueberries, celery juice, or lemon water. Skip aggressive cleanses — your body heals better when it’s supported, not shocked.
Simplify. Cook. Slow down. Eat when you’re present, not distracted. Your state of mind while eating becomes part of the meal.
When you start eating this way, consciously, simply, with respect for where food comes from, you begin to notice something.
Your thoughts become lighter. Your emotions steadier. Your sleep deeper.
Food is not just fuel, it’s information. It teaches your body how to function and your spirit how to feel. Every bite is a message to your cells, an instruction for who you are becoming.
And maybe that’s what the old saying really means: “You are what you eat,” — not as a metaphor, but as a fact.
The aliveness, the awareness, the harmony you seek, they all begin with what you put into your mouth and into your body.
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