You are what you eat

While in uni I remember reading about this parasite called Toxoplasma Gondii, this parasite takes control of the brain of the host and makes it nearly completely fearless, anything that would be basic conservation instinct would in a given moment become a distant memory, potentially turning you into a hero by saving someone that is going to be run over by a truck or finding your demise by getting ran over (Sapolsky, 2017).

Actually, this might sound way too catastrophic… you would more likely be in a hospital room possibly diagnosed with some concussion and this parasite infection (if the doctors are keen enough to check).

Jokes aside, this infection is one very extreme examples of raw meat consumption or accidental contact (or not) with cat faeces (ewww-ykes!)

In all fairness we are mostly clueless, on how/what we eat (and when we eat it) affects our mood, productivity and ability to rest… everything!

In one of the oldest records of Chinese Medicine, the Huangdi Neijing the Yellow Empero’s physician: Qibo, identified as the root of every illness, coming from the quality of Stomach Qi (Ni, 1995).

Quick digression.. Gio what’s this damn Qi!..

Qi

Qi is everywhere and resides inside and around everything

Qi it’s in the air we breathe, it’s in the food, it’s in the skin and biological processes of our bodies, it’s in the heat of the stars and in the breeze of the wind.

The point of it all, in my opinion, is that we are asking the wrong question.

The right question would be how many kind of Qi are there and which ones we are dealing with in a given moment. To make it easy and simplified to maximum terms: Qi is a subtle moving entity that nourishes us as human beings both in the form of food and in the form of air and water, it provides also us with ability of moving around and to manifest as we are as human beings making us yet another manifestation of Qi. (If you want I’ll write a substack post only on this subject at some point as I can see your brain is hitching and so is mine!)

Enough digressing.. so what does this have to do with food?! - you might ask.

Let's start from our guts.

Guts

Our guts are an incredibly magical place, they can transform, conjure and move food to nutrients that we’ll be using later on as we go on our day and lives!

It’s also a very delicate ecosystem, if we don’t feed it the right stuff and at the right time we risk to throw everything off balance making it work against us.

In our guts there are colonies of many different bacterias each of them with a job, sometimes the odd stranger can find their way there an wreak havoc, with quite obvious consequences. These bacteria are basically a byproduct of fermentation and they break things down for us so we can absorb nutrients.

When the useful bacterias get decimated after years of junk food is then when problems like high blood pressure and chronic inflammation steps in.

If you, like me, could eat any kind of junk food in your twenties with impunity and suddenly right after turning 30 found out that everything that seemed to be working has betrayed you, welcome to the club of the growth-hormone-less-adulthood, here insuline resistance is the only true king (or queen - slay!) and nothing you do will seem to make a difference.. up until a certain realisation.

Mitochondria

You might have heard this word recently (or in school) through the grapevines, and probably never really understood what it is, let me break it down for you:

Mithocondria are the power house of our body, they get the nutrients from our food throughout our digestive system and burn it to make energy for our cells to be able to function, we are talking nearly a 100 quadrillions of them … it’s a lot of zeros till you get there!

Why they are so important? Well, a malfunction of these wonderful power-houses could mean not being able to use and burn energy properly and also higher percentage of fat storage among other serious implications in the long run.

Supercharge your guts

If you have never heard of probiotics and prebiotics please tune in, because this can change how you see your diet:

For probiotics I mean anything that’s basically fermented or that has fermented at some point.

Prebiotics it’s any kind of food that is basically food for our guts microbiome

Having a good combination of these foods can help both: replenish and nourish depleted good gut bacteria and in turn help your Mitochondria work better!

Quick disclaimer though: If you have any condition for which you need to be mindful about your diet please check with your GP before implementing any of those dietary advice.

The Zoe experiment with prof. Tim Specter, suggests that assuming 3 small portions of fermented foods every day, each one along one of the main meals of the day can help replenish the microbiome overtime (Spector, 2026).

I would normally have a kefir in the morning, and a choice of one of either : sauerkraut, kimchi or apple cider vinegar with mother at lunch and dinner.

It isn’t finished though, because there’s another star of the show: Poliphenols!

Polyphenols

Polyphenols are also known as coloured food or natural colours. You find it in foods like blueberries, blackberries … (most berries!) and grapefruit, oranges, etc.. you get what I’m saying: colours!

These foods are great as antioxidants and source of vitamins, but when paired together in a diet with fermented food, it’s when they shine the most.

At that point a wonderful compound called butyrate is generated by your large intestine which in turns allow for what we call mithocondrial decoupling… which is basically your body replacing old mithocondria with new ones to burn energy more effectively lowering your metabolic age and helping you fix years of bad diets (Gundry, 2024).

Poor Mythocondria health has been recently paired with cancer occurrence (Lee et al, 2026), which makes this information even more valuable, however, definitely part of a different post!

Here’s the end of the line, in conclusion all you need is a colourful dish with balanced amount of proteins and fibers with a smidge of probiotics, which is not rocket science.

However, I hope this makes it less obscure for you to understand some of the science behind food and how certain coupling can really help unlock a better quality of life.

Let me know in the comments what is your favourite fermented food if you have one, and if you have any suggestions or curiosity in regards to this topic!

See you next time

References

• Gundry, S.R. (2024). Gut check: Unleash the power of your microbiome to reverse

• Lee, D.C., Duraj, T., Cooper, I.D., Maroon, J.C., Smith, K., Abdel-Hadi, W., Omene, E., Evangeliou, A.E. and Seyfried, T.N. (2026). The glucose ketone index: A proposed quantitative biomarker to support cancer and chronic disease prevention and management. Frontiers in Science, [online] 4. doi:10.3389/fsci.2026.1763395.disease and transform your mental, physical, and emotional health (the plant paradox series). Blackstone Publishing Inc.

• Ni, M. (1995). The yellow emperor’s classic of medicine. Shambhala Publications.

• Sapolsky, R. (2017). Behave: The biology of humans at our best and worst. London: Vintage.

• Spector, T. (2026). Ferment. Jonathan Cape.