Tell me how you eat, and I'll tell you how you live.

Genuine food hydrates and nourishes, builds yet clears, grounds yet lifts … all while tasting delicious.

The Gut Universe

Life is taken care of via a taken-care-of stomach.

To me, the food that has the greatest potential for simultaneous palate and gut pleasing ... is food that’s not bound to specific culture or cuisine. I can, this way, concentrate the entire globe into a mouthful.

You can mix Italian seasoning with cumin, raw honey with turmeric, ginseng with lavender, lotus root with cinnamon. You can put truffle in cheesecake, and kimchi with carrot cake. You can literally do whatever you want and have it work for you.

I look around me and I see a rise of insanely creative foods that, unlike traditional cuisine, transcend identity. During my travels I have seen spots in Seoul, Tokyo, and Chiang Mai that aren’t merely cafés but what I would call integrated gastronomy labs.

There is a world where a baker in South Korea, enchanted by her land but also Italy's, makes a black sesame tiramisu.

I call this the Post Cuisine world, and here, flavour is just the start. Every creation must also feel alive in the body, providing both nourishment and lightness whereby the gut and palate are in harmony.

My stomach ... it takes a mango grown under full tropical sun, cacao raised under filtered shade, and maple syrup born of winter sap ... and transforms them into something that becomes me.

The Human is a microcosm.

The trap is to think tradition is truth. Indeed we have strayed from truth as generations pass. The mistake is to equate that truth, that home, that origin, to the way things used to be. Different things.

Having said all this … I will say that dishes like injera are remarkable instantiations of culture and get rave reviews from me. Korean cuisine is another survivor, and we will see why in our Undeniable Classics.

Contextual cavities

I ask myself: how could I possibly intellectualize food when I taste with senses that a computer could never ever have? Yet ... the diet and nutrition culture has made intellectualization the primary way to engage with food.

Some argue that that any diet devoid of ultra-processing is beneficial to the body. But I think this incorrect. What a specific body needs at a specific moment in time and space is impossible to prescribe with 100% correctness.

And so, such specificity must be felt, on a personal level.

I have memories of food that have given me prolonged jolts of vitality and energy. But is often the case that what worked back then, worked for reasons my immediate senses were partially blind to. The configuration was different in a dimension beyond me ... something of the intangible heart.

So again, the craving of food must be felt, not intellectualized. My purest of cravings holds the truest of 'RDA's. Even still, I do not operate by such metrics.

My body adjusts a lot better to insufficient food than it does to too much. Energy can be synthesized elsewhere, and it goes to show that food ... for me ... is to be savoured in high quality but modest quantity.

The adzuki (red) bean, when cooked thoroughly, plays wonderfully with sugar, yielding a grounded textured sweetness. The bosc pear is juicy beyond measure. And yet I can find ways to combine these two … and make it work … if that’s what my palate and gut ask for at the moment.

Context binds all of this. One can establish the conditions and let nature reveal itself. Every ingredient has a place and purpose. Fennel seeds create a warm and cool contrast. Hazelnut satiates with a floral touch. Or the Korean shiitake mushroom with a dressing made of apple, pineapple, and soy sauce fermented for 10 years, all sautéed with red/yellow/green capsicum … juicy, sweet, tangy with solid umami.

I think it is about gauging the moment, not about finding the so-called perfect food. If done correctly, taste and vitality collapse into a single sensation. The correct foods for that moment reveal themselves without effort. In other words, I just know.

The art of alive food

Dead food stagnates; alive food does not.

Alive food tends to have a nice spectrum of colour. Multiple textures, aromas that connect to earth and sun, diversity in all forms and as a matter of function. Spice, sweetness, lift, gentle bitterness, mineral depth, broth richness. It is eating a garden.

Dead food, on the other hand, is muted, heavy, too salty, overly stabilized, texturally monotone. My body slows, digestion drags, and I feel “full” but not light!

There is nuance here, for fermentation is a world unto itself, and kimchi is a fine example of food that is "old", yet still alive.

Imagine if a human were taught, at an early age, the difference between dead food and alive food, in the domain of vitality, without getting caught in the web of nutrition. Not that nutrition is total nonsense but the sprinkle is what it really is.

What we experience as vibrant flavour was really integration in nature, not necessarily culinary fanciness.

A tomato thrives in full sun, while the carrot lives as a root and pulls minerals from deeper layers. Turmeric is a tropical rhizome that loves warmth. Together they create a polyculture of taste and vitality in the bowl; they reinforce and elevate one another.

I don’t like commercial preservatives because it keeps the food alive but without the aliveness, and so I have to imagine it attempts to subtly steer the body toward the same configuration.

By the way, it is called crop yield because nature yields, by nature. But the centralized mind breaks these natural laws; soil is depleted and ecosystems are dead. Your vitality is shot. The elements need reciprocity.

There are no vegetables

There are fruits, leaves, roots, flowers, stems, tubers, bulbs, and seeds. These are from plants. Outside of this, there is also algae and fungi, and of course, milk, honey, and animal.

But there are no vegetables; nature does not produce them. It's a term we just made up for culinary purposes.

You may know that tomato is technically a fruit. Zucchini is too, as is eggplant and cucumber. Some understand this as it has seeds, so it’s a fruit. But to me, such shallow classification does not reveal anything of true substance.

To see how a thing is part of a greater integrated system ... a fruit is not just a structure with seeds (it can even have none), but the work of a plant renewing itself. Blossoms open, pollinators arrive, the ovary swells, and a fruit emerges to be eaten, carried, or dropped so that its seed can enter new ground.

So let us rearrange the map, shall we?

Spinach and kale are leaves.
Carrot is a root.
Broccoli is a cluster of unopened flowers.
Onion is an energy-storing bulb.

A cashew nut is a seed. As is a bean and a grain of rice.
Ginger and turmeric are rhizomes ... really, a type of stem.

And some of my favourites: cacao is an understory shaped by filtered light, matcha ... a shrub ... gets it signature flavour from shade, and durian is a sun-loving creamy tropical sitting high.

Taste and nature are two peas in a pod. My eating became versatile once I stopped fearing the full spectrum of life. Food became peak delicious.

And I can only speak for myself ... but to me ... fiber is the God particle of food. My gut feels structurally-sound, I think partly due to fiber ... fiber from not just plant but the chitin from shrimp shells and mushroom. I seem to have cultivated the inner environment that facilitates both easy movement and easy rest, and I continue to reach a state of deeper integration. As such, the benefits I enjoy are innumerable.

Hydration

When my food has enough water content I don’t need to walk around sipping water all day. Real food nourishes and hydrates at the same time.

In bone broth lies the emblem of “no waste”. I didn’t waste the animal, for I harnessed the blood, skin, bones, and organs. I did what Nature does. And in doing so, I created an integrated system on the plate and subsequently in my body. The benefits go beyond collagen (protein), minerals, and vitamins.

Every time we isolate, we disintegrate. We isolated not just MSG but also collagen and even protein.

But using heat, one can extract collagen from the connective tissue, minerals from the bone matrix, and nourishment from the marrow. The Korean soup dishes like 곰탕, 해장국, 청국장, & 미역국 are integrated; they are complete. They communicate with the body not just via taste, but texture, temperature, and vibes.

To eat muscle meat while avoiding the connective tissue like cartilage, marrow, and blood is a type of de-integration that may never rear its ugly head in blatant ways but, often does so subtly.

Side note: I think a chicken was really meant to be cooked whole, in its own juices, because the gelatinous bone broth you end up with is an elixir with unmatched taste, and it gives me the energy needed to perform many pull-ups at the park while sporting a light and sealed gut.

The essence of a chicken is not found in a central location, and so it must be extracted whole, through the bones and through everything else. For this, you need both Fire and Water.

You can add apple (among other things) and have its sweetness transform the overall flavour; this was done in a Seoul restaurant that made the best tori paitan (鶏白湯) ramen I’ve ever had.

Undeniable Classics

As real as Post Cuisine is, there are ... some undeniable classics. There is a reason some recipes have stood the test of time. I will tell you about some of my favourites.

Hot chocolate

Slowly acclimatize your palate to the complex fruity-bitter quality of cacao so that one day you may see it beyond a sweet treat and as the integrated, grounding-yet-lifting seed that it really is.

Hot chocolate is one drink I can think on, write on, move on, and rest on; it gets my rave reviews.

Fundamentally, we are talking just the two ingredients here, milk and cacao. I like mine with dark chocolate, sea salt, and some type of raw sugar, even maple syrup, for a woody sweetness.

A baby mammal survives on milk alone. I'm lucky that my body can make light work of milk ... so in many ways I feel I'm off to the races. Milk nourishes and hydrates at the same time. Complete protein, calcium, phosphorus, fat-soluble vitamins, potassium. A touch of sodium and magnesium. Fats that sit slow, sugars that release calm.

Plant-based and animal-based foods were always meant to work in perfect unison. Dairy elevates the plant, like milk does to cacao. Similarly, bone broth elevates the plant. More generally, the animal elevates the plant, and vice versa. We must integrate plant and animal and do as nature does.

At times, I enjoy a bit of fresh cream in my hot chocolate. Cream, through its richness, creates stability within my gut that further allows the cacao to dance. If I took a picture of every hot chocolate I've ever drunk, I'd be sitting on gigabytes of gastronomy gems.

Pizza margherita

The aroma of basil in a pizza margherita combining with tomato, mozzarella, and the fermented dough to make me full yet agile is an artifact of integrated gastronomy.

Alongside this, I am drinking a cola, and I take three continuous sips. Only one of those sips hits my tongue in a way where I can register the complex taste profile, but the other two sips still create a sense of deep satisfaction. I then realize ... taste is a full body experience.

Chocolate éclair

The difference between butter and egg yolk is the difference between cream and custard. One brings richness with texture; the other, with flavour.

So, a fresh-cream-filled éclair bridges both of these worlds via the eggy notes of the choux ... it’s a “hard custard” in a way … and all of this encases the silken interior. This sweet pastry made me ecstatic as a kid and it’s no wonder why.

East Asian soybean

I think a major difference between Japanese and Korean cuisine can begin to be understood by deeply feeling the difference between a miso soup and a 된장찌개, and this requires doing the hard work of tasting both with a locked-in palate.

Both are derived from fermented soybean, both are 감칠맛, but the miso soup is more 담백한 while the Korean stew is more 구수한 (though I prefer when it's 얼큰). Some things cannot be translated and it’s more of a feeling, an integrated blend of the five senses, something that if you know, you know. 그냥 알아요.

This is only a preliminary distinction, but from here emerges a sensational story of East Asian gastronomy.

Now, it would be lazy to conclude that Japanese food is mild and Korean food is spicy, even if generally speaking. This is I think why the sensory perception is everything. There is an interesting flux in how a land and its people bend an ingredient in a particular way, for a particular part of a meal.

15 or more plant foods every day ... not as a goal, but because that's just the way the cookie crumbles when gastronomy is life. And Realness ... also known as a mineral-rich diet.

Injera

It’s unreal how much flavour and power is locked in Ethiopian (and African) cuisine.

The injera, fermented teff-grain flatbread, soaked up the juices and spices like a sponge; it had its own tanginess that added to the balance very fittingly.

In fact, after trying this for the first time, my standard for grains has gone up ~50%.

A grain should bring its own spark to the dish rather than be just deadweight or a mere salt absorber. Injera is perfect. If any part of the dish cannot be enjoyed by itself, alone, then maybe it does not belong. I can eat injera flatbread by itself, for it is tangy, spongey, chewy, and delicious. I don't know if I can say the same about plain white rice.

A dive into durian

Eating durian in the morning on an empty stomach was hands down my favourite experience in Hội An and Chiang Mai.

It is tropical but has the richness of a French dessert! Think about that for a second. And still my mind tries to categorize it, but it is in a league of its own.

Durian tastes like nothing else, and every attempt to describe it feels incomplete. First, there wave of creaminess, and then the texture — somewhere between custard and soft cheese — envelops the tongue. Caramel and vanilla at the surface, and buttery, eggy custard in the body. Tropical notes that feel like mango and jackfruit but more subtle. Savory undertones like a faint onion or garlic, more so as a shadow.

It feels both fresh and cooked, like a pastry cream made inside a fruit. Again, the paradox is simply stunning, yet I feel there is integration. The aroma, flavour, sweetness, umami depth, even the faint sulfur all align. I get why the Malaysians call it the king of fruits.

Durian matures into a tall tree ... it occupies the upper canopy and loves the full sunlight. This is what gives it the photosynthetic horsepower to fruit abundantly! And indeed, the fruit is magnificent and dominant.

Durian is native to ever-wet, lowland tropical rainforests; it needs high humidity, well-drained soil, and consistent rainfall.

Seedlings, however, prefer filtered sunlight, protected beneath taller pioneers. This is because in deep shade, they can stretch and weaken. But in dappled forest light they root deeply and build the trunk strength needed for their eventual ascent toward the canopy.

Restaurants play it safe with dessert. I see the usual: cheesecake, tiramisu, ice cream with the usual flavours. I think there is a lot of potential with durian. I want to see someone shake things up.