"Nutritional wisdom for modern living"
A letter from our founder
My name is Jivko Djamiarov, and Ancestral Superfoods began from a hospital bed in Austria.
I lived as many of you do. I worked a lot, was under constant stress and grabbed whatever convenience food was nearest. I wasn’t ignoring my health, just treating it as you do when you’re younger.
In 2013, I was in Austria for work. On the last evening, I returned to my hotel room planning to clear my emails, but I suddenly felt as though someone had hit me on the head with a hammer. A sharp shock of pain that ripped through my body.
I lay down and was sick, vomiting blood. I went straight to the hospital: a five-minute journey that felt like an hour.
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The night that changed everything
I had a plane to catch the next day. The doctor told me I wasn’t going anywhere. Within minutes, I was in intensive care, next to stroke patients.
Further tests, and I could see this wasn’t right from the look of the doctors’ faces. I asked them for honesty, as I was so far from my parents, and if they needed to get here, they would need time.
The doctor cried, then told me that I had a large brain haemorrhage. I’d be moved by ambulance in the morning for more tests.
That night, I took stock of my life. I was thirty. I asked myself the obvious question: if this is the end, how am I leaving?
I decided the answer was all right. I hadn't harmed anyone. I'd lived decently. The only thing I really wanted was to see my parents again and speak to the people I care about.
And then I asked the other question: what would I do if I got to carry on? Here was the genesis moment of Ancestral Superfoods. Not the business idea, yet, but a wish that if I got through this experience, the work I would do would be to help people not end up in the same position.
A minister came around and asked if I’d like her to read to me. It seemed appropriate to say yes.
The unexpected moment
In the morning I was moved to another hospital, to another intensive care ward.
The nurse who received me was Croatian. She asked me what I was called. I said Jivko.
I should explain that in Bulgarian, the name means “the living one”. It's not a name you think about much when it's your own.
She said: then you're my boy, my son, don't be frightened, I'll take care of you. And she did - she took two units of blood off me while she kept talking so I wouldn't worry about it.
I've thought about that woman a great deal since. I was a stranger, in a corridor, in a country that wasn't mine, and she heard my name and decided I belonged to her.
I was scanned again and then moved to a third hospital for more scans. Ten days later, I could return home.
Understanding my history
When I recovered, I started to research what had caused this and the pattern was clear. For years I'd had inflammation in my gut, and it's very likely that the autoimmune condition I'd been diagnosed with, Hashimoto's, started there.
This led to new ground. Going beyond what the food contains to how much of the nutrients are absorbed by your body.
Grains, seeds and pulses protect themselves. Phytic acid binds up iron, zinc, calcium and magnesium so that they pass straight through you. Other compounds block the enzymes that break down protein. None of this is bad, it's simply how a seed survives long enough to become a plant. But it does mean a food can look excellent on paper and give you a good deal less than you think.
Ancient Processes
What I discovered was that this problem had already been solved, repeatedly, by people with no laboratories at all. Every culture that lived on grain worked it out: soak it, sprout it, ferment it.
Sprouting wakes the seed up. Its defences stand down and it starts releasing what it had in storage, because it now believes it's becoming a plant. Fermentation carries on the job with lactic acid bacteria, breaking down what's left and producing things that weren't in the raw ingredient at all.
This knowledge is thousands of years old and it was never wrong. It was only set aside, because it takes days and industrial food needs to take minutes.
From Bulgarian Ancestry
In 1905 a Bulgarian doctor called Stamen Grigorov identified the organism that makes Bulgarian yoghurt, and it was named after his country. Not many countries have given their name to a fermentation culture. It says something about where I grew up and what was normal in the kitchen.
It's also why our ingredients are the ones that grow here rather than the ones flown in. Rosehip isn't inferior to goji berries. Our grains aren't inferior to quinoa.
When demand in Western Europe and America turns a traditional food into a global commodity, the people who lived on it for generations often can't afford it any more and move onto ultra-processed food instead. Their income goes up and their health goes down. I didn't want to be part of that.
Instead, we build from the plants of Bulgaria and Europe - the ones my grandparents ate, and the ones we can buy without taking them off somebody else's table.
What the whole experience has achieved is putting me in front of the people who would go on to make it real. They heard what I was trying to do and took it on as their own, which is a different thing from agreeing to work on something.
Elena Gerganova, Georgi Gerganov, Ivaylo Timanov, Silvia Semcheva, Dimitar Yordanov, Cvetan Hadzhiyski, Toni Ginger, Pavlin Marinov and Spas Damyanov, and every one of the investors who believed in this at the stage when belief was the only evidence available.
Between them they have decades in food, farming and manufacturing, and they understood far better than I did how difficult it would be to make what I wanted.
They agreed to do it anyway. They are the reason Ancestral Superfoods exists rather than remaining an idea I had at four in the morning.
The Expertise and Data
Everything we make is developed with Dr. Ferenc Föglein of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and his patented sprouting technology. Alongside Prof. Petko Denev of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and his extensive knowledge of functional foods.
The figures aren't ours, and I'd rather you looked at them than took my word:
- Sprouting reduces phytic acid by roughly 40–60%
- Iron bioavailability rises by up to 62%
- Protein digestibility in sprouted hemp exceeds 90%
- Lactic fermentation cuts tannins by as much as 80%
The studies behind each of these are on our science page, with references.
Jivko Djamiarov
Founder/Brand Strategy and Management
Elena Gerganova
Founder / International Trade
Ivaylo Timanov
Strategic Planning and Business Development
Georgi Gerganov
Founder/Domestic Sales
Silvia Semcheva
Legal Consultant
Anya Pavlenko
Photography and Events
Georgi Djamiarov
Distribution and Logistics
Tsvetan Hadzhijski
Design and World Building
Tony Ginger
Marketing and Advertising
Ancestral Superfoods Stockists
We are new in Britain. You haven't heard of us and nor has anyone you know, so there's no reason at all to take my word for anything.
Three of the main distributors that supply the British independent health food trade - Suma, Infinity Foods and CLF - have taken us on. Two of them are worker-owned co-operatives with high standards on sourcing and ethics.
And then there are the shops themselves:
- Planet Organic - Britain's original organic supermarket, London
- Better Food - Bristol
- Quality Vitamins & Herbs - 132 Douglas Street, Glasgow
- Food For Thought - Haydon Place, Guildford
- The Green Shop - Berwick-upon-Tweed
- Back To Nature - Cavan, Ireland
- Raw Living - rawliving.co.uk
Back To Nature had been looking after the same families for thirty-two years before we made our first batch. A shop like that doesn't put something on the shelf to be polite, and I don't take it lightly.
What is Ancestral Superfoods?
It's food. Powder you stir into yoghurt or a dressing or a smoothie, or into whatever you're eating at eleven in the morning when you'd otherwise reach for the nearest thing. We started with four formulas and now there's enough to get you through a day.
Or granolas and snacks that set you up for the day or see you through those moments you’d rather raid the fridge.
It isn't a cure and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. Prevention is a very undramatic thing. It's ten years of ordinary mornings that quietly add up to a different outcome, and the only way you find out whether it worked is by being alive to notice.
I have two children. That's most of my reasoning, if I'm honest.
I went into that hotel room in Austria as somebody who thought about everything and decided very little, and I came out of hospital with two things settled: what I wanted to give my attention to, and what I wanted to do with the time I'd been given back.
This is it. Thank you for reading all of it.
Jivko Djamiarov Founder, Ancestral Superfoods
"Our mission is to develop and produce functional foods and dietary supplements that support the gut microbiome, because it is the foundation of health."Learn More
