Nutrient acquisition is a major context for ecological interactions among species but ecologists and nutritionists have developed theory in isolation from each other. Developments in agent-based modelling, state–space modelling of nutrition and multi-scale modelling of landscape ecology provide the components for a new synthesis in nutritional ecology linking the nutritional biology of individual organisms to population- and community-level processes across multiple scales within an evolutionary context. We review the core elements for such a synthesis and set out the principles for a generic modelling framework that could be used to test specific ecological hypotheses.