Meat is a Superfood for Gut Health

Everyone seems to be talking about gut health lately. From probiotics and gut-friendly foods to tests that map the microbes in your belly, the conversation about the human digestive system and a healthy gut microbiome has gone mainstream. And it should—because your gut is more than a digestive organ. It’s a point of connection between you and the world and it’s teeming with life—100 trillion bacteria, fungi, and more in your gut alone, from 4000 different species, weighing over 3 pounds, all occupying the surface area of about a tennis court (Collen, 2015).

At Force of Nature, we like to think about how everything is connected. Soil health shapes animal health. Animal health shapes human health. And inside our bodies, everything is just as interconnected— our gut health and digestion supports our metabolism, immune function, fertility, mood, and energy all support one another.

This is the first in a series where we’ll explore how the meat at Force of Nature supports different aspects of human health, making it the original (and ultimate) superfood. We’re starting with the gut because it’s the front line—where food becomes information for your body. What’s more? Your digestive system supports everything from your immune system to your nervous system.

Our guts are where food crosses a delicate, one-cell-thick barrier, just about one-fifth the width of a human hair, and becomes a part of us. In fact, our guts are technically on the outside of our body, despite being called our “innards”. From mouth to, ahem, everything down south, our digestive tract is simply an inward fold of our outer skin—continuous with the world we move through. 

In this way, the gut is both a barrier and a bridge: shielding us from bacteria, viruses, fungi, or parasites that might harm us, while allowing essential molecules from the outside world to become a part of us. It also houses much of our microbiome—the beneficial community of bacteria, fungi, and viruses that work with us to regulate our digestion, immunity, metabolism, and even our mood. This thriving ecosystem is so intimately tied to us that scientists call it a "forgotten organ," housing an estimated 100 trillion microbiota—outnumbering our human cells at around 10 to 1.

The Evolution of Our Guts with Meat

Our entire bodies evolved eating meat, but the gut may have undergone some of the most dramatic evolutionary changes when animal foods—especially nutrient-dense organ meats—entered our diet. Compared to our modern intestines, our early ape relatives had guts estimated to be 30–40% longer by surface area—specialized to ferment mostly fibrous plants, similar to modern great apes (Helander & Fändriks, 2014).

Early human ancestors likely began eating meat primarily as scavengers, cleaning up the remains of predator kills after the big cats had eaten their fill. Apex predators, clever animals that they were, prioritized organ meats—the liver, kidneys, and heart as well as marrow—leaving behind lean muscle. It was only with the advent of more organized hunting strategies that early humans could claim the organ meats first—securing a jackpot of nutrients that catalyzed further biological change.

With the introduction of nutrient-dense—meaning a high concentration of essential amino acids, vitamins, and minerals per calorie—animal foods into our diet our digestive tract could shrink, and the energy savings could go to growing our brains. This is called the Expensive Tissue Hypothesis—the idea that we only make enough energy to fuel a big gut or a big brain. Eating meat may have allowed our brains to grow while our guts shrank (Schindler 2021). Now, eating meat still has many benefits for digestive and gut health because of that same nutrient density. 

Digestion Begins Before the First Bite

We might think digestion starts in the stomach, but in truth, it begins before the first bite. Simply seeing, smelling, or even imagining food sets off a cascade of digestive processes. Picture a Force of Nature Bison New York Strip, seared to perfection. You begin to salivate and it sets off a cascade of digestive processes from the mouth to the intestines.

As you chew, enzymes like amylase and protease in your saliva begin breaking down carbohydrates and proteins and your tongue senses flavor. In the case of meat, the amino acid glutamate is what registers as a savory “umami” flavor. This signals the stomach to ramp up production of hydrochloric acid (HCl) and pepsin. Chewing tougher cuts, rich in connective tissues, stimulates even more saliva, sends stronger signals to the vagus nerve, and primes the gut for the serious business of digestion.

All of these signals work in concert to prepare the small intestine—the ultimate gatekeeper—to absorb these nutrients.  (Sun-Waterhouse et al. 2021).

The Stomach and Small Intestine: Crossing the Barrier

The acidic environment of the stomach breaks down food into smaller parts: amino acids from proteins, vitamins and minerals, and even small molecules called polyphenols that act like antioxidants. Other organs chime in, too: the gallbladder helps to break down fats and the pancreas provides enzymes that help further break down food into even smaller parts. 

As food moves into the small intestine, the real magic begins: all these particles must cross a one-cell-thick lining to enter your bloodstream.

The molecules that cross your gut lining don’t just fuel digestion—they ripple outward to influence nearly every system in your body: your immune response, nervous system, circulatory system, respiratory system, fertility, metabolism, mood, focus, and capacity to recover.

Many of these systems don’t just receive signals from the gut—they talk back. These are known as systems like the gut–brain, gut–immune, and gut–heart axis—networks of two-way communication that make the gut less like a tube and more like a network.

Through the gut-brain axis alone, your digestive tract sends and receives constant feedback from your nervous system, shaping everything from appetite and sleep to emotions and brain health. 

What happens in the gut doesn’t stay in the gut—it echoes through the whole body.

Meat is a Superfood for Your Gut

Your gut is more than a digestive organ—it behaves more like an ecotone. An ecotone?
In ecology, an ecotone is the zone between two distinct ecosystems—like where a forest meets a meadow or a river flows through a grassland. These spaces are known for their richness, teeming with biodiversity because of the overlap between worlds.

Your gut is just like that: a living threshold between you and the outside world, teeming with life. 

This delicate edge must remain selective: welcoming nutrients, blocking invaders, and maintaining balance in constantly changing conditions. Keeping this frontier intact requires a rare kind of nourishment—nutrients that can fortify the barrier, rebuild the structures of the gut itself, and defend the boundary.

This is where meat shines as a true superfood: delivering ingredients your gut depends on.

1. Strengthening the Barrier: Meat Creates a Strong Gut

The first task of the gut is to maintain a selective, resilient barrier—strong enough to block pathogens and toxins, yet permeable enough to absorb nutrients.

Picture this: the lining of your small intestine covers an estimated 200–250 square meters—roughly the size of a tennis court—thanks to an intricate landscape of folds and projections that dramatically expand its surface area (Helander & Fändriks, 2014). Yet this vast connection with the outside world is protected by a membrane only one cell thick.

This membrane is made up of enterocytes—these cells are your body's nutrient absorbers, but they also act as gatekeepers: constantly sensing, selecting, and defending. Their lives are short—just 3 to 5 days—requiring continuous renewal to keep the gut lining healthy (Peterson & Artis, 2014).

Between these cells are tight junctions—delicate proteins that zip neighboring cells together, sealing the spaces between them and ensuring that harmful particles don’t sneak into the bloodstream. Above this sits a mucus layer that acts as a slippery, antimicrobial shield.

This entire barrier is alive—constantly turning over, adapting, repairing. And to do that, it needs very specific raw materials.

This is where meat enters the story.

• Glycine, found in cuts full of collagen like Force of Nature Bison Osso Buco and all of our ground meats, fuels the production of mucins—the slippery, protective coating that lines the gut creating a friendly environment for your microbiota(Aguayo-Cerón et al., 2023). 

• Glutamine, found in lean muscle meat, like Force of Nature Bison Flank Steak, nourishes the cells of the gut lining and helps prevent leaky gut that can cause inflammation(Wang et al., 2015).

• Vitamin A (in its ready-to-use retinol form), found in liver and Force of Nature Ancestral Blends, supports the immune system, 60% of which is around the gut(Cantorna et al., 2014).

• Zinc, abundant and highly absorbable from meat–especially organs like in Force of Nature Ancestral Blends, is essential for sealing tight junctions and supporting cellular repair (Wang et al., 2013).

Without these inputs, the lining of the gut thins and leaks. With them, it thrives creating a responsive barrier between us and our environment.

2. Building the Structures: Meat Builds Strength and Renewal in the Gut

A barrier is only as strong as the foundation beneath it. Just under the surface of your gut is a living framework—an intricate weave of supportive tissue and cells—that gives your gut the strength to stretch, respond, and renew every few days. 

This inner architecture must endure a turbulent environment: waves that move food down the digestive tract, digestive enzymes and acids, microbial activity both good and bad, and thousands of foreign compounds each day–some beneficial and some harmful–are constantly moving through the gut. To remain intact, it must be continually rebuilt. Meat provides the materials needed to keep this structure whole:

• Collagen, a peptide abundant in connective tissues like osso buco, ground meat, and braising cuts like chuck delivers peptides your body absorbs directly to repair and reinforce epithelial tissue. These peptides—including glycine, proline, and hydroxyproline—are laid down like strands of tensile thread, giving the gut wall both flexibility and tensile strength.

• Proline–an amino acid in collagen— helps form the triple-helix structures that anchor the gut lining and support the extracellular matrix that holds it together (Li et al., 2017).

• Vitamin B12, found only in animal foods, is essential for DNA synthesis and cell replication. Without it, the rapid turnover of enterocytes—every 3 to 5 days—grinds to a halt (O'Leary & Samman, 2010). 

• Heme iron, unique to meat and particularly rich in organs like liver and spleen, brings oxygen to gut tissue to support mitochondria. Enterocytes have high energy demands; they need steady oxygen delivery to fuel the cellular turnover and barrier upkeep that prevent gut permeability (Hurrell & Egli, 2010).

Together, these nutrients provide scaffolding and the fuel that allow your gut to remain a resilient, responsive edge, rather than a vulnerable one.

And while collagen supplements attempt to mimic this process, only real meat offers the full-spectrum synergy—collagen with amino acids, B12 alongside heme iron, all delivered in whole-food form your body immediately recognizes and uses.

3. Defending the Boundary: Meat Protects Gut Boundary Function

The gut isn’t just a filter, it must actively protect and defend against what would otherwise enter the body. To protect this zone, your body relies on internal shields, repair mechanisms, and microbial allies—many of which depend on specific compounds delivered through meat.

Regeneratively raised meat delivers rare and powerful forms of internal defense:

• Carnosine, a peptide, is made from two amino acids and found almost exclusively in red meat. Inside your body, it acts like a shield—neutralizing excess oxidative stress and protecting sensitive tissues. It's especially helpful in places with high cell turnover, like your gut lining (Jukić et al., 2021).

• Cuts of meat rich in collagen—like osso buco or short ribs—contain high levels of glycine and cysteine. Your body uses these to make glutathione, often called the “master antioxidant.” Glutathione is essential for protecting the cells that line your gut and helping them repair when damaged (Wang et al., 2015; Forman et al., 2009).

• Vitamin D is found almost exclusively in animal foods—and only in meaningful amounts when animals are raised outdoors with real sunlight. It helps your gut coordinate immune responses and keeps your repair cycles in rhythm with the day-night cycle (Akimbekov et al., 2020; Hemmeryckx et al., 2019).

• When animals graze on diverse, healthy pastures, they absorb plant-based compounds called polyphenols. These end up in their meat, where they continue to support health—feeding good gut bacteria, encouraging the production of short-chain fatty acids like butyrate (which fuels gut cells), and helping to keep your gut lining strong (van Vliet et al., 2021; van der Hee et al., 2020).

In this way, it’s not just the meat but how the meat was raised. Just like in your gut, meat that’s raised with biodiverse pastures—eating a variety of plants—has higher levels of Vitamin D and polyphenols, muscle richer in carnosine and glycine, and transfers that diversity and defense from the landscape into your body (van Vliet et al., 2021). 

But Not All Meat Defends the Border

Just as regeneratively raised meat can help strengthen the gut’s defenses, conventionally raised meat can compromise them—particularly when animals are fed crops or graze on land sprayed with glyphosate and other chemical inputs.

Glyphosate, the most widely used herbicide in industrial agriculture, damages the gut in multiple ways:

1. It disrupts the microbiome by blocking their ability to produce important compounds that help maintain the gut lining (Mesnage & Antoniou, 2020).

2. It also raises the amount of  the protein zonulin, which loosens the seal on tight junctions—allowing foreign particles to slip through the intestinal wall into the bloodstream (Fasano, 2020). This breach—commonly called “leaky gut”—causes inflammation, immune responses, and increased vulnerability to chronic disease.

And glyphosate isn’t the only concern. Meat from animals raised in industrial systems may also contain:

• Antibiotic residues, which decrease the diversity of beneficial microbes in the gut.

• Persistent organic pollutants (POPs), like microplastics or the chemical PFAS, which accumulate in fat tissue and activate the immune system.

These compounds compromise health in the gut—eroding its defenses, thinning its membrane, and altering its microbial landscape. As these structures become weaker, components may enter through the gut and into the bloodstream causing downstream effects (Izumi et al. 2024). 

By choosing meat from animals raised regeneratively—on chemical-free, biodiverse pastures—you’re not just supporting soil health and the landscapes our animals graze on. You’re supporting your own health.

Meat: A Superfood Conversation Between Our Guts and the World

Your gut is not merely a passive tube absorbing nutrients—it's a dynamic ecosystem, a thriving edge zone where you meet the outside world. Nutrient-rich meats, especially those raised regeneratively, provide the building blocks, messengers, and protectors to maintain the integrity of this vital border. They deliver amino acids that rebuild tissue, vitamins and minerals that regulate gut function and immune response, and compounds like collagen and polyphenols that strengthen and nourish your internal landscape. 

On the other hand, what meat doesn't contain—when raised responsibly—is equally important. Glyphosate and other contaminants can dismantle gut integrity, loosen tight junctions, and disrupt microbial harmony. This highlights why sourcing matters deeply, reinforcing that meat’s role as a superfood goes beyond nutrient density alone. It also hinges on practices that respect soil, animals, and ecosystems, creating a genuinely regenerative cycle.

Because the food you eat isn't just nourishment; it’s a conversation between you and the outside world. Your gut is where that dialogue begins—a dialogue that has the potential to bring your body and the soil into their fullest expression of health.

Meet the author – Kate Kavanaugh

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