Collin Gow, C.N.C.

Naturevore™️ is a health and nutrition brand created by Collin Gow, C.N.C. based on his 22 years of research, 13 years as a nutritional consultant, and gleaned from the principles laid out in his soon to be published book entitled Naturevore. In the book Collin describes the Naturevore concept, which is a diet, lifeway, and mindset based on and informed by nature. Translated literally, Naturevore means—"eat nature". It means to eat as nature eats and to eat foods as close to nature as possible. 

​​

The neologism was born out of the frustration of listening to people making claims that humans are herbivores and that herbivores eat only plants. This was the tipping point, as Collin had already watched people suffer from having narrow and extreme diets such as the vegan diet, keto diet, carnivore diet, fruitarian diet, lectin avoidance diets, and others for years. Collin himself had also suffered from having a narrow diet in the past. While there are some limited benefits to some of these restricted diets (and in turn lifestyles and mindsets) for some people, in a larger context, they are not natural, not healthy long-term, and not sustainable. They are not natural for a Homo sapiens, nor for most other animals in the sense that they lack variety and complexity and have no basis in nature. Using common sense, Collin already knew that "herbivores" like cows weren't eating only plants, as naturally, while grazing, they would end up consuming lots of insects clinging to the grass they were munching on, getting vital sources of iron, copper, and protein. He was also growing tired of listening to people talk about how gorillas are super strong from eating nothing but plants. Collin knew none of this was true. It all culminated after Collin was watching a nature documentary and he saw an animal in the wild consume something he hadn't previously seen that animal consuming. This set off a rush of thoughts that led to countless hours of research and study. Soon, Collin learned about animals eating all kinds of strange things that defy our narrow categorizing of them and the Naturevore diet was born—to show the whole landscape of health and nutrition as informed by nature. Non-human animals and human animals alike don't fit into neat little categories that we assign for them. Nature is variety, is complexity, is not narrow, and its extremes seek balance.

​

Herbivores don't eat only plants, plants don't eat only sunlight, and nature is more complex than we think it is. By the same token, carnivores don't eat only meat. Cows eat insects, baboons eat gazelles, butterflies eat poop, chimps fish for algae, carnivorous plants eat mice, bears eat grasses, dinosaurs ate rocks, moose eat bark, sharks eat seaweed, giraffes eat bones, monkeys eat flowers, fish eat nuts, and the list goes on and on. I say again, nature is variety, nature is complexity, all living things are non-linear, dynamic, complex systems. In Collin's eyes, being living creatures ourselves, we should observe and study other living creatures to see what they eat and how they behave. We may learn valuable lessons from them that apply to our health and easily dispel ill-informed notions that are not accurate assessments of nature or ourselves. Narrow diets are not healthy long-term because when you start cutting too many foods or food groups out of your diet, you inevitably end up deficient in some particular nutrient. For instance, if you cut fruit out of your diet because you're diabetic, 9 times out of 10, you will end up deficient in potassium. Or, whether you're diabetic or not, if you cut out carbohydrates, then you will be deficient in fiber and many other nutrients. If you cut dairy completely out of your diet without supplementing with either clay or calcium, then you will end up deficient in calcium. Don't even get me started on the idea that you can get all of your calcium from plants either. This "fact" is not founded on any basis in nature either. But don't take my word for it here. Read the book when it comes out. While a more narrow diet may be necessary temporarily to treat a particular condition, the goal should always be to get back to a variety approved by nature and to disown labelled conditions.
 

Another big problem with all the other diets out there is that they all suffer from reductionism. That is, they all attempt to simplify the complexity of diet down to one important thing or they are created to treat only one condition or they demonize one particular nutrient in a food and think that one nutrient is the only thing in the food. For example, the vegan diet simplifies complexity down to one thing—animal foods are bad so cut them out. Similarly, the keto diet says carbs are bad, cut them out. Or statements such as "humans have teeth that more closely resemble herbivores so we should all be herbivores", or "fruit is bad for you because it is high in sugar", are reductionist statements. There are other things to consider when choosing one's diet besides tooth shape, and fruit has many nutrients besides sugar. A reductionist sees the whole human being as only his teeth and sees the whole fruit as only sugar. The other form that reductionism shows up in is when a diet is created to treat one labelled disease or condition and meanwhile forgets about overall health. For example, most if not all "health" books and diets nowadays are written and created to help people lose weight or to fix their gut issues. In these cases, the book is written to treat one label or one bodily system and never in the book does the author talk about overall health. Getting caught up in a narrow label limits one's potential for getting truly healthy. Many people cannot see this truth because they are so caught up in a label themselves. Collin's been there. He gets it. You might say, yeah but Collin is narrowing his Naturevore diet down to one thing too!—nature!—so he is guilty of reductionism also! Maybe so, but at least what he is narrowing his diet down to is everything in existence! Nature, as Collin defines it, is all the phenomena there is, or, everything that exists. It doesn't get any broader and less narrow than that! This doesn't mean that Collin recommends eating everything in existence, rather, Collin recommends eating in a way that reflects the most natural way that a human animal can eat (but he only recommends you do so if you are similar to him and if you resonate with the diet; eating the naturevore way is not for everybody). To learn the most natural way, one must learn about nature and one's dietary place in it. Reading Collin's Naturevore book is necessary to understand what that means. One last note on reductionism, while probably one of the healthiest out of the many narrow diets, even the "plant-based diet" has its problems and cannot account for all of nature. For instance, fungi, lichen, and algae are not plants. Nature defies all reductionist classifications we try to impose on it. What to do? Go naturevore.

​

The Naturevore book attempts to expand beyond reductionism and show the whole picture of health by studying all of nature in regard to nutrition, while still honoring and respecting each person's unique biochemical individuality and health issues, but without losing sight of the forest in the trees. In doing so, Collin identifies what he calls the 14 natural and ancestral medicines missing in the Modern American Human Diet™️ (M.A.H.D.™️ for short). While you'll have to read the book to find out what they are, poop is one of them. Yes, poop is a natural medicine missing in the M.A.H.D.™️  See the Intestinal Homeostasis™️ supplement on this site to learn more or click here. Together, these 14 medicines make up the Naturevore diet and, technically, they represent foods, medicines, tastes, textures, macronutrients, biological kingdoms, and elements missing in the M.A.H.D.™️ and are further elucidated in his book. Collin advocates that we make many considerations before choosing what to eat. Four of these considerations, among many, that are often missing from our mental menu, are the consideration of what other species are eating besides ourselves, i.e. other animals, what other Homo sapiens with higher life expectancy than us who are living in other countries are eating, compared to ourselves, and what traditional cultures and hunter-gatherers are eating. These beings are still close to nature, so they know more about health than you do. So not just non-human animals, but also the study of people in other countries, traditional cultures, and hunter-gatherers; these four sources of learning are at the core of the Naturevore diet and contributed greatly to forming the 14 “medicines” (food is medicine). So, contrary to most diets that focus on cutting foods, food groups, or nutrients out of the diet, or reducing all diet down to one important thing, the Naturevore diet is more about adding foods to the diet and embracing nature, which works better to improve one's health anyway. Of course, Collin refuses to succumb to reductionism, so his diet does not rest solely on what these four sources are doing. To go Naturevore is to study ALL of nature. That is to say, to study everything in existence and every subject possible before choosing your diet. So, Collin discusses many general principles for overall health, not just animals, long living peoples, traditional cultures, and hunter-gatherers. He discusses many many subjects most people wouldn't deem as related to health, yet he sees as necessary to study. He also dissects the history and the philosophical bases of how we got to such a deplorable state of health as Americans and where we are headed. What emerges in the end, though there's no such thing as ends, is the whole picture and panscape of health and nutrition, or at least as much of the picture as can be shown while not writing a 1 billion page book. Meanwhile, the reader emerges as a whole, self-naturalized™️ being.

​​

In addition, in his book, Collin shows us that the modern, Western, industrial, agricultural, "civilized", reductionist, and allopathic diet, lifestyle, medicine, and mind in general is a dysfunctional and unnatural model that is killing us and he tells us what we can do about it. It's pretty well established at this point, according to Collin, that we are all living out the burden of the diseases of civilization and that living on carpet filled with PBDEs, breathing in toxic smog from gasoline engines, vaccinating our children, eating GMO foods, using obscene amounts of plastics, blasting ultrasound at our babies, putting fluoride in the water, circumcising our babies, taking synthetic pharmaceuticals, radiating our bodies with microwaves from our cell phones, and so on and so forth, are not healthy ways of living. He claims that the only way to get truly healthy is to forsake this modern model entirely and reconnect with nature. Non-human animals and other living things do not subscribe to this horrendous model and many other countries besides America with higher life expectancy and some traditional cultures and indigenous hunter-gatherer tribes around the world are still clinging to vestiges of older, perhaps better models. While we can't all go be hunter-gatherers, there are steps we can take. For example, one step you can take is to begin learning how to identify and forage wild edible species in your area. Collin has another naturevore book coming on that subject as well.

​

Study all of nature to inform your diet, observe and mimic animals, study other countries, learn from traditional peoples and hunter-foragers and mimic their ways, read Collin's books, benefit from his years of research and experience in the fields of health and nutrition, learn what it means to eat and live naturally, ditch the other diet labels that are not holistic, get wild, get outdoors, live a nature-based lifeway, eat a nature-based diet, and go Naturevore!

​

Books coming soon! You can read my other books in the meantime: click here to do so. Please donate if you love the message and wish to help with publishing costs. The more donations, the faster to print and the sooner you get to read it! Any donation of $100 or more gets you a free copy when it comes out.