Meat: the Original (and Ultimate) Superfood

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We’ve been told for decades that meat is just protein. But that story leaves out almost everything that matters. Meat is more than just a source of protein—it’s one of the most nutrient-dense foods on the planet and it’s completely aligned with the way your body evolved.

To say that meat is “just protein” is like calling a symphony “just sound.” Meat is a concert of nutrients working together to create harmony within your body. Amino acids, vitamins, minerals, peptides, bioactive compounds, and phytochemicals are coming together in a food that isn’t just helping you to build muscle—it’s working in every single one of your systems so that you, too, can find a sense of harmony (Leroy et al., 2022). 

Not only that, but that nutrient density starts with healthy soil. Most so-called superfoods are grown in isolation—monocultures that are dependent on synthetic chemicals, removed from the living systems in the soil that once gave food its richness. In fact, nutrient density has declined steadily in soils since at least the 1950’s and our food with it (Thomas, 2007).  

Regeneratively raised meat is different. It’s not isolated from the ecosystem; it’s embedded in it. These animals shape the land as much as the land shapes them, helping build soil, cycle nutrients, and foster biodiversity. And because healthy soils grow healthy plants, and healthy plants nourish healthy animals, the end result is nutrient-dense food that truly feeds us (Khangura et al., 2023).

That’s why we think meat is not just a superfood; we think it’s the ultimate superfood.

What Is a Superfood—and Does Meat Count?

You’ve likely heard the term ‘superfood’ or seen it on your grocery store shelves. Maybe you’ve seen it applied to a vegetable like kale, a fruit like acai, a seed like chia, or a powder or potion made from mushrooms like lion’s mane. But where does that term ‘superfood’ come from—and what does it actually mean?

The first instance of the use of the term ‘superfood’ was likely applied to bananas at the turn of the 20th century. A doctor had recently had success in feeding infants with celiac disease—gluten’s involvement was not yet known—with a diet of just bananas and milk. The children had near-miraculous health outcomes, and an assumption was made: it had to have been the bananas. The United Fruit Company, now Chiquita Banana, took this and ran with it. Bananas were easy to digest and packed full of vitamins and minerals—they were a “superfood.”

The term resurged in the late 20th century and really took off in the 2010s, when everything from celery to walnuts and blueberries earned the claim of ‘superfood’ (Garner, 2015). 

In modern marketing, ‘superfood’ often refers to food that is exotic, colorful, niche, or that comes with high-profile claims: anti-aging, detoxifying, good for brain health, immunity, or metabolism. But superfood is a marketing term with a halo effect. It might sell blueberries, powders, and vegetable extracts—but it rarely comes with proof.

That’s why, at Force of Nature, we want to redefine superfood. Not only that, but we think meat is the ultimate superfood and over the coming months we’re going to share testing results on our meat to show you just how packed full of the good stuff it is. 

Our definition of superfood: a superfood is a food that is easily recognized by our bodies, nutrient-dense, and bioavailable (terms we’re going to unpack for you). What makes meat even more super? It has the power to regenerate landscapes and ecosystems, something not many other superfoods can say. 

That’s not just marketing. It’s biology.

Why Biologically Appropriate Diets Matter (for Humans and Animals)

Every animal on Earth evolved over time in conversation with its environment: what it ate and drank, how it moved across the land, whether it lived alone or in groups–all of these elements talked to their biology in profound and lasting ways, shaping their form and function. As humans, we’re a long way from living in the environments that shaped us, but the truth is–a few hundred, or even a few thousand, years of modern life can’t rewrite that legacy.

At Force of Nature, we’re always looking to the evolutionary blueprint to determine what foods, environments, and activities will help animals thrive. For ruminants like bison, cattle, deer, and elk, that means eating grass, outside with room to roam, and being a part of the ecosystem (Banerjee et al. 2023). For pigs and chickens, it means a foraged diet of roots, seeds, and tubers with a side of plants and feed. 

For humans, it means eating meat.

When we say a food is biologically appropriate, this is what we mean: it’s aligned with the foods that built our bodies over millennia–the foods our bodies know. 

Eating meat isn’t a trend, it’s your biological inheritance. 

Meat Is More Than Just Protein

We tend to think of meat as just protein—and of protein as something that just builds muscle. But that’s only part of the story. Protein also builds the chemical messengers for our brains and bodies, immune cells, and hormones. It helps repair your gut lining, carry oxygen, and support fertility. In other words, protein doesn’t just build strength, it builds systems. It also contains many nutrients that plant foods alone can’t deliver—things like creatine, Vitamin B12, heme iron, taurine, and more.

And meat offers more than protein alone: it delivers amino acids, peptides, bioactive compounds, and even phytochemicals that work across every system in the body. Not sure what those are? We’re about to define each of these parts of protein, so it all makes sense (Dietzen, 2018). 

• Amino Acids: Amino acids are the building blocks of protein—and of life itself. They’re like the letters of the alphabet that you use to build words. String amino acids together and you have the proteins that build and repair your muscles, organs, and more. 
• Peptides: If amino acids are like letters, peptides are like words. They’re short chains of amino acids strung together. In your body, they act like messengers—helping to regulate your immune system, support cellular repair, and influence everything from metabolism to how your skin ages. Some peptides found in meat—like collagen—support joint health, skin elasticity, and your gut. Others, like carnosine, help reduce the build up of lactic acid in muscles during exercise that makes us feel sore, reducing fatigue and improving recovery (Dietzen, 2018). 
• Bioactive Compounds: These are naturally occurring substances in food like creatine (which fuels muscle and brain energy), taurine (which supports cellular function and cardiovascular health), and CLAs—conjugated linoleic acids (which plays a role in fat metabolism and immune health). They do specialized jobs that help your body stay sharp, responsive, and resilient (Dietzen, 2018). Many of these, like creatine and taurine, are only found in meat. 
• Phytochemicals: These are plant-based compounds that serve as antioxidant and defense molecules in the plants themselves. The really cool part? Animals that eat plants rich in phytochemicals accumulate them in their meat and fat and pass them onto you where they help with cellular and immune health in a similar way to plants (Van Vliet et al., 2021a). 

All of these nutrients act on every system in your body—because just like meat isn’t just protein, your body isn’t just muscle and meat doesn’t just build muscle—it supports your hormonal balance, fertility, immune system, metabolism, mental health, gut health, and recovery. In essays to come, we’ll explore each of these systems one by one and how they connect.

Why Nutrient Density and Bioavailability Matter More Than Labels

Let’s zoom out for a moment. Meat is a superfood because of the compounds in it and because it’s so deeply aligned with our biology. But why does that matter? In a sea of marketing for fruits, vegetables, powders, and potions as ‘superfoods’ you want the deepest nutritional return on investment. That’s where nutrient density comes in: the amount of nutrients you get per calorie or gram of food. And when it comes to those nutrients, what matters most is how well your body can actually use them.

Maybe you’ve heard the term ‘bioavailable’ tossed around in the food and supplement world. Sounds important, but what is it? Bioavailability is about how much of a nutrient your body can actually absorb and use. Just because a label on food has certain nutrients, doesn’t mean your body can easily take them in and put them to work.

Meat isn’t just nutrient dense, it’s nutrient available. Your body absorbs it easily because it’s familiar. It’s what all the generations before you ate. It’s what built you. So when you eat a Force of Nature steak or ground meat, you’re not just getting nutrition—you’re getting something your body knows how to use (Biesalki 2005). 

Take spinach, for example. Remember those smoothies from 2012 packed with raw spinach because it was the new “superfood”? Spinach is high in iron, but it’s non-heme iron—the kind your body struggles to absorb. It also contains anti-nutrients, like oxalates, which can bind up minerals like iron and make them even harder to use. In the end, your body might absorb just 1–2% of the iron in that spinach (Zhang et al., 1989).

Meat, on the other hand, contains heme iron–iron from animal blood and muscle–which your body absorbs at a rate of 15–35%. That’s a pretty big difference (Hurrell & Egli, 2010).

Nutrient Comparison (per 100g):

Grass-fed Ground Beef
• ~25 grams of protein
• High in heme iron—the kind your body absorbs easily
• Excellent source of vitamin B12

Cooked Lentils
• ~9 grams of protein
• Contains iron, but in the non-heme form, which is harder to absorb
• No vitamin B12

Raw Spinach
• ~3 grams of protein
• Contains non-heme iron, but also high in oxalates—compounds that can bind minerals like iron and make them harder to absorb
• No vitamin B12

So it’s not just about what’s in your food—it’s about what your body can actually use.

The Antioxidant Power of Meat

You might have heard of antioxidants. But what are they? These are molecules that help protect your cells from damage. Our bodies and our modern world leave us exposed to unstable particles called ‘free radicals’ and when they build up in the body, they can contribute to inflammation and disease. Antioxidants help to neutralize these. You can get antioxidants from your food, but your body also makes its own antioxidants (Quintanilla-Villanueva et al., 2024). 

And the good news? Meat supports both. Remember the phytochemicals from above? Meat raised on diverse and healthy pastures is full of those, many of which act like antioxidants in the body (van Vliet et al., 2021). 

Even better, though? Amino acids found in meat support the production of antioxidants that your body makes itself. Amino acids like glycine and cysteine, trace minerals like selenium and copper, provide the raw materials for your body to make its own antioxidants like glutathione (often called your body’s “master antioxidant”) and melatonin (which you might have heard helps you get sleepy) (Reiter et al., 2016). 

How Healthy Soil Creates Nutrient-Dense Meat

So what makes Force of Nature meats so nutrient dense? The soil. If you’re thinking, wait a second, what does soil have to do with helping to keep me feeling strong and looking good, we’ve got you.

Just like protein isn’t just one thing, neither is soil. It’s not dirt—it’s a universe rich with life. In a single teaspoon of healthy soil, there can be over a billion microorganisms. These microbes work with plants to exchange nutrients; vitamins like B12, minerals like zinc, and phytochemicals, too (Banerjee et al. 2023).

When animals graze those plants, they digest those nutrients and, eventually, pass them along to you (Evans et al., 2024).

And just as bison evolved eating grass, and you evolved eating meat, the soil evolved with animal impact. Their waste nourishes the ground, their hooves press seeds into the earth, and together they form a relationship that’s part of a greater ecosystem—and part of your health, too (van Vliet et al., 2023). 

How Soil Shapes Phytochemicals in Meat

So if soil is the foundation for nutrient density, phytochemical richness is an indicator of soil health. Remember the phytochemicals from above–the ones that act like antioxidants in your body? Studies show that plants grown with regenerative agriculture have healthy soils with higher concentrations of phytochemicals than those grown in conventional agriculture (Montgomery & Biklé, 2021). These compounds are created as part of the plant's response to environmental cues and nutrient availability, and the soil is a big part of those responses (Provenza et al., 2019).  

These phytochemicals are also in the grasses and plants that animals eat. Meat is special because animals that graze phytochemical-rich plants filter out many of those antinutrients. What’s left are the benefits—phytochemicals like phenolics, terpenes, and carotenoids—delivered in a form your body can actually use to help with cellular repair (Montgomery & Biklé, 2021).

What starts in the soil and moves through plants and animals doesn’t stop there. Once inside your body, these compounds continue their work; supporting immunity, metabolism, brain health, and cellular repair from the inside out.

Meat as an Ecosystem

There is something else that sets meat apart from most so-called superfoods. Meat isn’t just its nutrients, it’s its ecology. When animals are raised regeneratively, they don’t extract from the land, rather, they activate it. Their hooves press seeds and manure into the soil. Their grazing stimulates plant growth and microbial diversity. Their presence restores water cycles and rebuilds soil. They are a critical part of the ecosystem. 

Compare that to kale, chia seeds, or even the powdered mushrooms in your morning smoothie. These foods are often grown in monocultures; rows of identical crops that replace biodiversity with uniformity. They rely on synthetic inputs to survive. Even most mushrooms are grown in sterile bags on sawdust, far from soil or sunlight. Nutrients may still be present, but the ecological intelligence has been stripped away.

Regeneratively raised meat is different. It’s embodied; it’s part of the ecosystem. Peer-reviewed research has shown that rotational grazing, one of the cornerstones of regenerative livestock management, increases microbial biomass and soil carbon, two critical drivers of nutrient cycling and long-term soil fertility and that, in turn, creates grasses with more phytochemicals (Khangura et al., 2023). 

It’s dense with nutrients because it reflects a functioning ecosystem. The richness of the soil, the diversity of the plants, the health of the microbial web—they all find their way into the animal, and eventually, into you. This isn’t just about calories or protein. It’s about participating in a system that builds life from the ground up (Hirt, 2020). 

Why Meat Earns the Title ‘Superfood’

So let’s return to the word superfood.

The word super comes from the Latin superus, meaning “above” or “beyond.” Today, it’s mostly used as a marketing hook, a way to sell flashy powders, trendy berries, and wellness promises that rarely come with proof.

At Force of Nature, we want to reclaim it.

Meat isn’t super because it’s rare, new, or exotic. It’s super because it’s familiar. It’s nutrient-dense, bioavailable, evolutionarily aligned, and it built your body. It’s sacred, functional, and ancestral.

It’s not a superfood because it was branded that way—but because it’s been that way since before branding existed.

It speaks the language your body has always spoken.

In essays to come, we’ll explore the systems that meat nourishes one by one. But first, we begin here: with the whole animal, and the whole human. 

Meet the author – Kate Kavanaugh

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