A Letter from Our Scientific Farmer By Dr. Steve Collins, MBE MD
From Famine Relief to Berry Farming
I’m a medical doctor, with a PhD in nutrition, with over 35 years of experience in researching and treating malnutrition. My career has taken me to the frontlines of humanitarian crises, from famine in Africa to policy rooms in the United Nations, where I developed the gold standard community-based approach for treating starvation that has been adopted worldwide and has since saved millions of lives.
That work showed me just how powerful proper nutrition can be and how tragic it is when it is neglected. After years working globally, I returned to Ireland and bought a remote, hill farm in West Cork. I wanted to grow nutritious food and found the aronia berry: nature’s highest source of polyphenols, easy to grow organically, resilient, and profoundly underestimated in its nutritional value.
Nature’s Answer to a Broken Food System
Health challenges in the developed world aren’t the same as those I saw in famine zones, but they’re just as serious. Poor diets, driven by ultra-processed food and deficits in essential nutrients, are causing long-term damage to health and quality of life. The modern day epidemic of chronic illness across the developed world is challenging the very viability of our curative-based health care systems. However, many of the illnesses that are driving this breakdown and that we accept as inevitable are, in fact, preventable.
Research now shows that polyphenols, compounds abundant in diets rich in wild plants and berries are essential for maintaining our metabolic health. When taken in sufficient quantities these highly beneficial compounds can exert a very powerful preventative action, helping to prevent a wide variety of illnesses such as cardiovascular disease, cancers and neurodegenerative diseases. But even a healthy modern diet rarely provides enough. I realised we could do something meaningful: give people back the nutrition they were designed to thrive on.
Our Mission and What We Stand For
At PhyterBerry Aronia, our mission is to:
- Develop aronia products that are simple, effective, and rooted in nature, using our scientific understanding and evidence based insight.
- Inform and empower people with clear, science-backed knowledge about polyphenols and metabolic health.
- Support Irish farmers to grow crops that regenerate soil, restore biodiversity, and offer a viable alternative to chemical-intensive agriculture.
We believe good health doesn’t start in the supplement aisle, it starts in the soil.
Honesty in a Confusing Industry
In a space full of bold claims and conflicting advice, we believe it’s our responsibility to offer honest, evidence-based guidance so you can truly understand why polyphenols matter and how they work. We want to rebuild trust in nutritional science and equip you to make choices that genuinely support your body, naturally and effectively. We’re not promising miracles. We’re offering the kind of nourishment your body was designed for, delivered in a way that fits your lifestyle and explained in a way that you understand.
Best wishes
Dr. Steve Collins, MBE MD Scientific Farmer & Co-Founder, PhyterBerry Aronia