Are Sapient Stews the most functional foods ever designed?

By Sapient Founder, Luke Comer

Jump to section

INTRODUCTION

My intention with Sapient Stews was to design the absolute most functional foods.

I divide functional into several qualities: organoleptic, nutrition, waste, convenience and ancestral origins.

Before addressing this issue of functionality, I first want to tell you why I am designing stews in the first place. In my late twenties and early thirties, due mostly to the intensity of my life, I suffered through various maladies: fatigue, insomnia, anxiety, overall weakness, and creeping existential despair. In my attempts to heal myself, I explored multiple modalities but in time focused on food and nutrition—which I contributed to helping restore my health and vitality. I went through several stages; first I read popular books on diet, then I studied the anthropology of diet from direct sources, next the biochemistry of food and nutrients and finally, I returned to one of my favorite topics: evolution. Along the way, I started slow-cooking stews, usually about 3 per week in the colder months. After about 10 years of this, as my hobby, I launched two separate books and research projects: “The First Supper” and “On the Origin of Being”. Years later, I launched our company Sapient, with the intention of bringing optimal nutrition to the masses, all in one bowl.

Thus, our stews were conceived over many years—two decades of research and cooking, followed by the designs of the stews themselves, using elaborate record-keeping and recipe development.

ORGANOLEPTICS

Sapient Stews are functional because of good organoleptics—which refers to look, smell, and most of all, taste—the overall sensory experience. Let us enjoy our food with our body, mind and spirit. Furthermore, studies show that if your diet is “healthy” but not tasty and satiating, you will not last on that diet long enough for it to matter.

I make our stews tasty by balancing four primary tastes: sweet, salty, acidic, and umami, while minimizing bitterness. I designed them for a pleasing “mouthfeel”, while reducing astringency.

Generally, each of these flavors, along with mouthfeel, is correlated with the nutrients you need: sweet indicates carbs, salty indicates minerals (especially sodium and chloride), acidic indicates organic acids, umami indicates protein, and mouthfeel indicates fat. We also please the eye by including plant foods in varying colors, indicating varieties of fibers and phytonutrients that serve various functions in our body.

Evolution designed you to thrive. Your taste buds evolved to derive pleasure from the nutrients you actually need. Unfortunately, our modern world has messed with our heads and our bodies. Food companies manipulate foods to make them taste good, ignoring nutrition and trending us toward disease.

But not Sapient. We give you taste and nutrition—and restore you back to your instincts.

How do we know we have good organoleptics? We regularly test our foods on all kinds of people and collect anonymous survey results, tweaking our formulas until the vast majority report it tastes “good” or “awesome”. We’re not satisfied with anything less than radically delicious and radically nutritious—which leads us to our next topic.

OPTIMAL NUTRITION

Sapient Stews are functional because they optimize nutrition for humans. Our stews provide all the nutrients you need in the ratios that best align with the way your body uses them. Why eat too few nutrients? Why eat too many nutrients? Why not, as Goldilocks said, eat “just right?”

Science has shown how many nutrients we need—and in what ratios to each other. Generally, we need a certain amount of protein per day to replace the protein that is damaged and discarded from our body. If we exercise more, we need more protein because there is more damage, but we do not need much more (around 3–5%). If we eat too much protein, we merely convert that protein into other molecules which we do not need. Also, for best results, we need this protein with its underlying amino acids in certain ratios to each other.

Generally, we need carbohydrates, especially glucose, for energy for our brain, red blood cells and some other tissues. We also need carbs for our muscles, but only at higher levels of exertion, such as when running. We should consume our carbs attached to their fibers because that helps us better utilize the carbs and provides numerous other benefits as well.

We need fats for energy for almost everything else—that is, our muscles and organs when at rest or at moderate levels of exercise. It is not commonly known, but nonetheless true, that fat is the primary fuel for humans—and paradoxically, fats do not make you fat nearly as easily as carbs.

So, we apply these principles to our stews. Sapient provides you the right amount of protein—mixtures of complete and collagen proteins—so you best utilize that protein. We provide you enough carbs for your brain and other tissues—and some extra for exercise (because you gotta exercise!). We provide you with enough fats for the rest of your energy, as well as sensible balances of fatty acids, including the omegas. Our stews are packed with whole plants too, which provide lots of fiber as well as phytonutrients—that is, nutrients that boost immunity and reduce inflammation.

Do humans vary in their nutritional needs? Yes, with more lean mass, we need more nutrients. With more exercise, we need slightly more protein and fats. With intense exercise, we need considerably more carbs. We also differ in our reactions to certain foods. But otherwise, believe it or not, we are genetically set, over millions of years of evolution, to need nutrients in mostly the same way—even though we vary in the way we acquire those nutrients from food.

Sapient balances your nutrition which translates into optimal nutrition.

PRE-DIGESTION

Sapient Stews are functional because we use one of the best ways of cooking—slow cooking at low heat. We’ve evolved to pre-digest our foods through various ways—cutting, mashing, grinding, sprouting, fermenting, and most of all, cooking. Food is broken down into smaller particles, and sometimes even smaller molecules, so we don’t have to expend much energy for digestion and can instead direct that energy to other parts of our body, like our brain. While pre-digestion is good, we moderns made it bad. We now pre-digest our foods in the wrong ways, by removing fiber and other nutrients from plants, creating foods like sugar and white flours.

Sapient pre-digests our stews in several ways, always without removing any fiber or other nutrients. We cut our food into smaller particles, soak all of our grains and legumes for 12 hours and most importantly, we slow cook our food at low temperatures—which best pre-digests our food and prevents damage to nutrients.

REDUCING FOOD WASTE

Sapient Stews are functional because we reduce food waste. Americans throw away 40% of our food; yes, food like meat, grains, fruit and Twinkies into the garbage. We typically don’t even send it to starving people in other countries. I designed our stews to reduce this waste in several ways. First, we freeze our stews into 500 calorie pucks that then break apart into 125 calorie blocks. So, you can tailor the calories in our stews to your needs. If you are eating alone, maybe you want 750 calories. Family night? 500 calories for Mom, 1000 for Dad, and 250 for the youngster. In the end, you reduce the amount of food you throw away while satisfying your appetite.

We also reduce food waste in the ways mentioned previously. We give your body the nutrients it needs in balanced ratios, which means you generally eat less food. While this may sound abstract, this is mostly either directly or indirectly proven. One of the reasons people get fat is because they overeat some nutrients while trying to acquire others. Think of the worse case scenario: potato chips—high in carbs, high in fats, low in protein. So you eat too many carbs and fats to attain that protein—and thus gain weight.

Overall, I estimate that our production and consumer processes reduce overall food waste from 40% down to 5–10%, and this greatly increases the value of our stews.

  • With Sapient, you can portion your meals and calories precisely.
  • You do not go hungry.
  • You do not throw away food.
  • You do not save some old and tired leftovers.
  • You give your body the nutrients it needs—and nothing more.

REDUCING PACKAGING WASTE

Sapient reduces packaging waste. I do not need to recount statistics because we all see, in front of our blunted disgust and moral evasion, the amount of packaging we throw away each day—sent off to somewhere … who knows where … to sit for thousands of years or to burn into our atmosphere as pollution.

We reduce packaging waste, first of all, by buying in bulk and making the stew for you. Our stews contain over 20 ingredients, and each ingredient comes in a package, so making these stews yourself would be enormously wasteful.

Secondly, our stews are complete meals with only one layer of packaging. Imagine ordering food from a burger and fries joint: you get packaging for your burger, packaging for your fries, potentially some ketchup and mustard packets, an absurd amount of napkins, and one larger package for everything.

We put the whole meal into one stew contained in a single wrapper. Compared to most commercial meals, we thereby reduce waste by many multiples. Furthermore, you eat the whole stew with one spoon, so no greasy fingers and no dirty napkins. You could eat our stews for several months before filling your garbage bin.

Overall, from our production to your dinner, we probably reduce packaging waste by two to ten times, depending on the comparison.

(I confess we use single-use plastic for our packaging because at the moment, there is no other viable choice for frozen foods. Our ultimate goal is to reduce the amount of any packaging. Period.)

REDUCING WATER WASTE

We also reduce water waste. You can eat our stew with one bowl and one spoon (no napkin needed) and wash them with one ounce of water.

CONVENIENCE

Sapient Stews are functional because they are so convenient. As noted before, we use over 20 ingredients in our stews to optimize organoleptics and nutrition. Imagine the complexity and time if you had to cook that yourself. With our stews you merely reach into the freezer, retrieve the pucks, and heat them on the stovetop or microwave—all within seven to twelve minutes, depending on how many blocks you cook at once. You can eat them from the pot, or transfer them to another bowl, and eat the stew with a spoon without ever dirtying your fingers and sending another napkin to the garbage bin or washing machine. You need maybe two minutes of cleaning time.

Needless to say, with similar levels of convenience, you can feed your whole family, commune, church, festival, corporation, military, disaster area or poverty zone with Sapient Stews.

ANCESTRAL WISDOM REFINED

Sapient Stews are functional because they are ancestral—perhaps the most ancestral of all meals. We tend to think that hunter-gatherers, or Paleolithic people, did not eat stews because they did not have pots. But it’s well documented that they used other containers to make stews; they hollowed out logs or dug holes in the ground and covered them with animal skins, added water and hot rocks from their fire, and then slowly cooked chunks of fatty meats, joints, organs, tubers, seeds, leaves and herbs. Humans continued to eat stews during agriculture; in fact, the earliest known recipes are for stews, dating back 4000 years ago and written on cuneiform. It appears that all cultures during agriculture ate stews regularly, from Egyptians to Ancient Greeks, Mongolians, Vikings, Chinese, and all the way until the past 100 years or so when they were replaced by pizza and Lean Cuisine.

This raises the question: Why did they eat stews?

Many if not most of our ancestors ate stews as their primary meal for nearly all the same reasons Sapient makes stews. They look, smell and taste good, and they’re simply the most sensible meal. They provide optimal nutrition because it’s so easy to combine protein, carbs and fats together in balanced ways. Stews optimize the pre-digestion of food while deactivating anti-nutrients and toxins and minimizing damage to all nutrients by keeping the temperature under boiling. They turn tough meats and joints, layered in fat, into tender delicacies. They soften rigid plant fibers and melt chunky fats into smooth pools. They reduce food and water waste, minimize kitchenware and tableware, and leave us feeling sated, nourished and ready for the challenges and fun ahead. 

Sapient Stews combine the wisdom of our ancestors with modern science, and I am confident that they are the most functional foods ever created.

Most of these ideas are covered and corroborated in my forthcoming book, published in the fall of 2025, replete with hundreds of citations.