There’s a smarter way to nourish, and it’s not what mainstream nutrition told you.
It’s not about piling on more ‘superfoods’. It’s about getting more from what you’re already eating.
The body doesn’t absorb nutrients in isolation. It recognises them in context, bound to fats, paired with enzymes, woven into food that speaks the same biological language we evolved with. What you absorb matters far more than what you consume.
The good news? You don’t need to eat more, spend more, or supplement your way out. You just need to eat smarter. These 5 micro adjustments dramatically increase your nutrient absorption, no capsules required...
1. Pair smart. Absorb more.
Certain vitamins, minerals, and compounds work together in ways that unlock their full potential. Without that synergy, even the most nutrient dense meal can fall short.
Your digestive system is a discerning filter, always asking: Can I use this? And the answer depends on what that nutrient arrives with. Fat helps absorb vitamins. Acid helps unlock minerals. Enzymes activate co-factors.
Take iron. The form found in plants (non-heme iron) is notoriously difficult to absorb, but combine it with vitamin C (like a squeeze of lemon or a glass or orange juice), and absorption can triple. Or fat-soluble vitamins, A, D, E, and K. Found in foods like liver and egg yolks, they need dietary fat to make it across the gut wall.
Then there’s zinc and B6, two critical nutrients for hormones, skin, and metabolism. Zinc helps convert B6 to its active form, and B6 helps zinc get where it needs to go. Even humble black pepper plays its part, increasing the bioavailability of curcumin in turmeric by up to 2000%.
Let your meals become nutrient stacks. Don’t fear butter on your veg. Think “what helps this absorb?” as often as “what’s in it?” When food is paired intentionally, the body listens more deeply. Curious which combos work best? We've made you a guide.
2. Switch to raw dairy
Raw milk is more than creamy nostalgia. It’s a living, enzymatically intact food, and a missing puzzle piece for many.
Unlike pasteurised milk, raw milk contains lactase (the enzyme needed to digest lactose), as well as bioavailable calcium, magnesium, vitamin A, D, and K2, all in a form the body recognises.
Pasteurisation denatures proteins and kills off beneficial microbes. But raw milk, especially from grass-fed cows, delivers the full symphony: enzymes, fats, minerals, and immune-supporting compounds like lactoferrin and immunoglobulins. Raw cheese, kefir, and cultured butter are not just easier to digest, they actually feed the microbiome, build the gut lining, and carry fat-soluble vitamins deep into the tissues that need them most.
Swap your afternoon snack for raw milk. Add it to your coffee, your smoothie, or enjoy it straight in the sun. Let it nourish you the way milk always did, before it was tampered with.
3. Soak or ferment before you cook
Grains, seeds, nuts and legumes come with their own natural defences: phytic acid, lectins, and enzyme inhibitors, all of which can block mineral absorption and irritate the gut lining when eaten raw or unprepared.
But soaking, sprouting, or fermenting? That’s the ancestral unlock.
Traditional cultures soaked beans, fermented porridge, and sprouted bread long before modern science could explain why. These practices reduce anti-nutrients and increase bioavailability, meaning the body can actually access the zinc, magnesium, iron, and B vitamins within.
Even sourdough isn’t just about flavour. Fermentation pre digests gluten and breaks down phytic acid, making minerals in the flour more absorbable.
Soak your oats overnight in raw milk. Sourdough your grains. Fuel your mornings with sprouted buckwheat pancakes. A little prep transforms humble foods into nutrient powerhouses.
4. Sneak in organ meats
There is no food more nutrient dense, gram for gram, than organs. Revered across every ancestral culture, yet quietly abandoned in the modern diet.
Take liver: just one tablespoon delivers
- More bioavailable vitamin A (as retinol) than an entire bowl of carrots (or bowl of any food for that matter). Essential for fertility, immunity and vision.
- A complete spectrum of B vitamins, especially B12 and folate, vital for energy, detoxification, and brain function
- Highly absorbable iron, copper, and zinc, in the exact ratios your body needs to avoid imbalance
- CoQ10, choline, and amino acids that fuel mitochondria, support mood, and promote metabolic health
Heart is abundant in taurine and CoQ10, essential for cardiovascular support and cellular energy.
Kidney offers selenium, DAO enzymes for histamine breakdown, and rare peptides that support detox and immune balance.
Spleen, the richest food source of heme iron, supports red blood cell production and oxygen delivery.
Yet most of us didn’t grow up eating these sacred foods, and they can feel intimidating. But they don’t need to be centre stage to make an impact.
Blend liver into ground beef (start with 10–20%). Stir a spoonful of Organised powder into sauces, broths, or your morning smoothie. Add heart to stews, or kidney to pies. Hidden nourishment is still nourishment.
5. Eat with the seasons, and the light they were grown under
Most of us know that seasonal eating is fresher. But few realise it’s also coded. Plants don’t just grow in soil, they grow under light. And that light is information.
Every leaf, fruit, root and berry is imprinted by the angle of the sun, the length of the day, and the quality of the light spectrum it was exposed to. This is known as photobiomodulation, light shaping biology.
Just as your skin makes vitamin D in response to UVB, a beetroot grown in July at 52°N latitude has a different photonic signature than a banana grown at the equator. The pigments it produces, the enzymes it expresses, the minerals it draws up, these are not random. They’re adaptive signals, timed to support the organisms (you and me) living under that same sun.
In other words: nature syncs our food to the same light environment we live in.
- Spring greens are rich in bitters that clear out stagnant bile and reset digestion after winter’s heaviness.
- Summer berries, saturated in red and blue pigments, buffer UV exposure with antioxidant power.
- Autumn roots store energy for colder months, helping regulate blood sugar and support thyroid health.
- Winter brassicas are packed with sulphur compounds to support detoxification when indoor living ramps up toxic load.
But when we eat produce flown in from a different hemisphere, like Peruvian blueberries in January, we’re digesting signals meant for someone else's season.
And here’s the next layer: your own body responds to light, too. Sunlight on skin sparks vitamin D production. But that vitamin D doesn’t work in isolation, it relies on co-factors like vitamin A, K2, magnesium, and calcium… all found in ancestral, nutrient-dense foods.
That’s the synergy. When you pair seasonal food with seasonal light, something profound happens.
A yolky egg and raw milk in the morning sun. Sardines with buttered greens on the porch. A crisp apple under an autumn sky. These are not just meals, they’re signals. Alignments. The kind your body recognises and remembers.
Let light guide your plate, and your day. Eat foods that grew under your local sun. And eat them in its presence. Sit outside for breakfast. Let the light hit your skin. Visit a local farmer’s market and ask what was picked this week. Eat what grew under your sky. The closer your food is to your current latitude and season, the more fluently your body will understand its message.
And one more thing, perhaps the most foundational of all…
Your gut is the gatekeeper.
You can eat the most nutrient-rich diet in the world, but if your gut lining is compromised, if inflammation has frayed the tight junctions of your intestinal wall, those nutrients might never make it into your bloodstream. This is the hidden cost of modern living: antibiotics, seed oils, pesticides, stress, and processed food can all contribute to gut permeability (aka leaky gut), reducing nutrient absorption and triggering immune dysregulation.
We would never pretend that healing your gut is a small change. It’s a journey. But it is one of the most powerful needle-movers you can make in your health.
We’ve created a full Gut Repair Guide to walk you through it, alongside a Gut Health Meal Plan to get you started with foods that restore, not inflame.
Explore the guide here
Get the meal plan here
Because nourishment isn’t just about what you eat, it’s about what your body can receive.
