About
Mission
To effect global baseline nutrition through evidence-based technology.
Vision
Global nutritional equity.
Values
- Micronutrient-focus
- Person-centered
- Maximising health and minimising harm
- Seeking balance
Principles
- Compassion
- There is objective health.
- The pursuit of happiness is that of objective realisation and everyone has a right to find it in their own way.
What is Nutrient Complete?
Nutrient Complete is:
- An evidence-based, holistic nutrition planning and coaching service.
- An innovative and novel technology that aims to solve major issues in nutrition science, implementation, and equity.
Why does it matter?
The entire world, regardless of affluence, is on a trajectory of malnutrition and chronic disease enabled by health misinformation, industries incentivised to create a promote harmful products, and a lack of resources by medical professionals to provide the care necessary to meaningfully help the public. Overweight and obesity is the main health issue of our modern age. In most countries, it has replaced undernutrition – both cause malnutrition. Nutrition encompasses such a broad range of sub-fields, from nutrigenetics and nutrigenomics to the mind-gut axis and psychologically derived digestive conditions. It is hard science but it is emerging, vast, and prone to ideological corruption and emotion. Until Nutrient Complete, there has not been a tool capable of integrating the vast body of evidence into practice and addressing the modern problem of overconsumption. While this proprietary, innovative, and novel technology is used to develop Nutrient Complete plans, it is still under development for public and institutional use. Until then, we chip away at our Mission, one by one.
How did it start?
Its founder battled overweight and obesity throughout her childhood and into adulthood during her early career as a project manager. Additionally, quality food and its role in happiness and culture became a vehicle for talking about objective aesthetics, the nature of reality, and consciousness. Through her extensive travels she was exposed to many cultures; different ways of thinking and seeing the world. Nutrition, what it means, and how it affects us was ever-present.
Psychology and neuroscience soon became an educational pursuit. During that degree Helene realised her educational aptitude for nutrition and physiological science (Helene is completing the rest of her psychology degree now to incorporate cognitive behavioural therapy into practice). She felt that nutrition was fundamental to baseline cognition and jumped ship to complete a Health Science degree in Nutrition and Exercise Science, then completed an Honours Research Degree focusing on public health behaviour change.
Several problems in need of solutions presented themselves to Helene (see case studies below). Years of considering the solutions lead to Nutrient Complete.
Helene continues to pursue research and hopes to complete her PhD and a publicly available version of the Nutrient Complete tool in due course.
Case study 1: Following extensive, costly testing, a friend was diagnosed with a “salicylate allergy” as the cause of debilitating headaches. It was the result of chronic micronutrient deficiency, metal toxicity, and excessive carbohydrate intake (exacerbated by his genetic predisposition) that caused his liver to stop processing salicylate (a plant’s defence mechanism against bugs, found in the skin of mainly cruciferous vegetables). The pathologist gave him a list of the micronutrients, and by how much of each, in which he was deficient. The dietitian gave him a list of foods to eat and avoid to correct these deficits. But, questions remained:
Unlike medication, food is complicated; what does 900 mcg of vitamin A look like in carrot? or spinach? How much must we eat? Even if we eat it, under what conditions is it adequately metabolised (bioavailability)? Can’t you just take a multivitamin?
I was asked to create a lifestyle plan for my friend using the information he was given from the health reports. However, the solution required precise knowledge of micronutrient content of food and the conditions under which is it adequately “bioavailable”.
Case study 2: A friend is chronically ill with co-morbidities that have conflicting treatments. Both diseases affect and are affected by food. She has Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (EDS) and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). The former causes dysmotility of the gastro-intestinal (GI) tract because it affects the elasticity between tissue fibres, and the GI tract depends on elastic tension to function. Therefore, she can only eat certain foods. She is also constantly nauseous and has to eat foods that can ferment in her stomach to break down, without making her throw up, because it’s ‘churning’ capabilities are compromised. Those foods often trigger her IBS. Sometimes, she cannot drink liquid that isn’t in food (unless via a feeding tube). Therefore she goes through cycles of malnutrition and dehydration leading to hospitalisation. The hospital food is inadequate and her quality of life and recovery time suffers. There is no clinical meal design program that can sufficiently accommodate the needs of individual patients, which doesn’t rely on human trial and error to design. If the food was nutritionally dense and more appropriate to her needs (as a vegan), and the amount of water in food could be tracked, she would spend fewer days in hospital, be able to manage more at home, and her quality of life would improve.
Case study 3: In East Africa I saw high calorie food rations dropped from UN helicopters, then sold by locals despite the amount of produce available on the ground. It was free and required less work than tending to farms. But, as in nearly all developing countries, the dependence on such food caused a whole new set of health problems; micronutrient deficiency and what is counterintuitively termed an “overnutrition” crisis, otherwise known as obesity. Different types of foods cause different behaviours and we are not psychologically or physiologically equipped to handle ultra-processed modern food, widely blamed for the health epidemic. (2) Australia’s public health census revealed that nearly 70% of the population is overweight or obese and fewer than 5% regularly eat the minimum recommended serves of vegetables. Not to mention, not all vegetables are created equal. We all know what’s good for us but we are unable to act. Everyone feels like a nutrition expert or at least hold strong beliefs. A solution must cause long-term behaviour change, be inclusive and equitable, and reclaim nutrition from pseudoscience.
The obesity problem in Africa is becoming the same as Australia; obesogenic environments and decreasing access and participation in health behaviour. The Nutrient Complete tool is part of a solution to health disparities of access; it can determine the most cost effective way to provide daily nutritional needs given finite resources.
Case study 4: After working with a fruitarian (someone that only eats fruit) the problem of assessing the nutritional viability of different diets became apparent.
- ‘What does a nutritionally complete diet for a vegan look like?’
- ‘How easy is it to achieve such a diet by intuition?’
- ‘How can a vegan body builder get enough complete protein and keep macros at a precise enough ratio to affect behaviour for optimum fat loss or muscle gain?’
- ‘How likely is it that the average person is getting enough micronutrients?’
These questions created more questions. To start I decided to answer something simpler:
‘What is the least amount of food a person can eat and meet their recommended daily intakes (RDI’s)?’
The answer to that seemingly simple question was elusive and took years of refining, until eventually, Nutrient Complete was born.