Nutrient Density is a critical concept in devising and recommending dietary and nutritional advice to patients and to the public. Not merely vitamins and minerals, but adequate consumption of phytochemicals is essential for proper functioning of the immune system and to enable our body’s detoxification and cellular repair mechanisms that protect us from chronic diseases

Nutritional science in the last twenty years has demonstrated that colorful plant foods contain a huge assortment of protective compounds, mostly of which still remain unnamed. Only by eating an assortment of nutrient-rich natural whole foods can we access these protective compounds and prevent the common diseases that afflict Americans. Our modern, low-nutrient eating style has led to an overweight population, the majority of whom develop diseases of nutritional ignorance, causing our medical costs to spiral out of control - Joel Fuhrman M.D.

Nutrient Density – The ratio of the amount of a nutrient in foods to the energy (calories) provided by these same foods.

Nutrient-Rich – The latest buzzword in healthful eating. It’s not low-calorie, low-carb or low-fat: It’s nutrient-rich. A term developed through consumer research to describe the concept of nutrient density. Research shows that people respond well to this term and to the positive approach to food choices it represents.

Nutrient-Dense Foods – Foods that provide substantial amounts of phytochemicals (micro nutrients), vitamins, minerals and other nutritional factors relative to calories (appropriate in calories).

Low Nutrient-Dense or “Nutrient Poor” Foods – Foods that supply calories but relatively small amounts of micronutrients or phytochemicals vitamins, minerals, water, fiber, (sometimes none at all) health promoting protein, real food carbohydrate  and essential fat and contain substances your body does not need.

Nutrient-Rich Foods – A consumer-friendly way to describe nutrient-dense foods including those from the five basic food groups, such as:

• Vegetables
• Fruits
• Beans
• Raw Nuts Seeds
• Whole Unrefined Grains
• The Unlimited Meals and Menus You Can Create From These First Class Food Categories

Nutrition Profiling – The science of ranking or classifying foods based on their nutrient composition.

ANDI – Aggregate Nutrient Density Index for Nutrient Rich Foods.

To guide people toward the most nutrient dense foods, Joel Fuhrman M.D. developed a scoring system called ANDI (Aggregate Nutrient Density Index), which ranks foods based on their ratio of nutrients to calories.

Because phytochemicals are largely unnamed and unmeasured, these rankings underestimate the healthful properties of colorful natural plant foods compared to processed foods and animal products. One thing we do know is that the foods that contain the highest amount of known nutrients are the same foods that contain the most unknown nutrients too. So even though these rankings may not consider the phytochemical number sufficiently they are still a reasonable measurement of their content.

Keep in mind that nutrient density scoring is not the only factor that determines good health. For example, if we only ate foods with a high nutrient density score our diet would be too low in fat. So we have to pick some foods with lower nutrient density scores (but preferably the healthier ones) to include in our high nutrient diet. Additionally, if a slim  or highly physically active individual ate only the highest nutrient foods they would become so full from all of the fiber and nutrients that would keep them from meeting their caloric needs and they would eventually become too thin. This of course gives you a hint at the secret to permanent weight control – to eat the greatest quantity of the foods with the highest ANDI scores, and lesser amounts of foods with lower ANDI scores. For further information, read chapter 3 of Eat for Health, in which I discuss nutrient density and the importance of phytochemicals in detail.

The Nutrient Rich Foods Way – The Nutrient Rich way is a positive, healthy eating plan that considers the complete nutrient package of foods( what foods have that you need and want, and what they contain that you don’t need from dietary sources) as a way to help people build the healthiest eating plans and encourages the selection of nutrient-rich whole foods always, or as best as possible.

What the heck is that anyway?

Yet, it is in a lot of our refined, processed, American food items and most of us are not even aware of what we are eating.

Look at this list:

whole grain rolled oats, high fructose corn syrup, oat bran concentrate, brown sugar, oat flour, dried fruit treated with sulfur dioxide to promote color retention, margarine (partially hydrogenated cottonseed oil, salt, mono and diclycerides, soy lecithin, EDTA, annatto color, artificial flavor, vitamin A, mopalmitate), malodextrin, glycerin, modified food starch, corn syrup, rice flour, dried whole eggs, malted barley extract, calcium bicarbonate, water, salt, cinnamon, artificial flavors, sorbitol, corn cereal, partially hydrogenated cottonseed oil, wheat flour, sodium bicarbonate, corn flour, malic acid, malt barley, soy, sodium alginate, enzyme modified soy protein, tumeric color, natural mixed tocopherols, yellow 6, calcuim phosphate, sodium hexametaphosphate, artificial color, niacinimide, vitamin A palmitate, potassium sorbate, BHT, reduced iron, soduim phosphate, pyridoxine hydrochloride, riboflavin, thiamin mononitrate, folic acid !

Yes. This is all one product’s ingredients. It’s a very popular, very refined and processed oat bar. Can you even imagine eating all of these ingredients? I have no idea what some of them even are. I don’t ever want to put any fake crap in my body.  But that’s what you get if you are unaware. I haven’t even begun to tell you what that stuff does to your body.

If you want an oat bar ~ you CAN have one.  How about taking 5 minutes and mixing up  a banana,  applesauce, walnuts, oats, and raisins. Can’t get much simpler or more nutrient rich than that.  Tomorrow I will be sharing a video with you and showing you just how easy it is to prepare Nutrient Rich oat bars.

Simplicity RULES.

TIP: Think of this simple rule when choosing to eat. If it doesn’t have a label, its probably nutrient rich. THERE ARE NO LABELS ON AN APPLE and in all Nutrient Rich Recipes the ingredients are all whole foods.

DrFuhrman’s Prescription for Improving and Maintaining Great Health: Nutritional Excellence

The quality of a diet can be based on three simple criteria:

1.  Levels of micronutrients (vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals) per calorie.

2.  Amounts of macronutrients (fat, carbohydrate, protein) to meet individual needs, without excessive calories that may lead to weight gain or health compromise.

3. Avoidance of potentially toxic substances (such as trans fats) and limited amounts of other potentially harmful substances (such as sodium).

Before I created Nutrient Rich.com, Dr. Fuhrman created The Health Equation: H=N/C or Health = Nutrients/Calories (first published in 1999 in his work, The Health Equation and later described in more detail in his book, Eat To Live) to define how the quality of calories impacts health.

This equation means your future health can be predicted by the micronutrient per calorie density of your diet. Micronutrient per calorie density is important in devising and recommending menu plans and dietary suggestions that are the most effective for tackling weight loss and for preventing and reversing disease.

Dr. Fuhrman’s Aggregate Nutrient Density Index (ANDI) and Menu Aggregate Nutrient Density Index (MANDI) food scoring system are featured in his book set Eat For Health, so people can easily recognize foods, meals and menus that offer sufficiently rich micronutrients to ideally meet their individual needs.

Assuring nutritional excellence means meeting an individual’s unique nutritional needs for profound therapeutic effects and and preventing, treating and reversing disease. According to DrFuhrman , dietary micronutrient quality must be increased accordingly to utilize dietary recommendations therapeutically for disease reversal or to protect high-risk individuals.

Though micronutrient density is critically important, it is not the only factor that determines health. For example Vitamin D levels, B12, and proper omega-3 intake are important for optimal long-term health as well as avoidance of sodium and other toxic excesses. These concerns are not addressed in the H = N/C equation. However, if the focus is consuming more micronutrient-rich natural foods then the other important nutritional benefits automatically will follow, such as lower sodium, reduced calories, high fiber and volume, a low glycemic index, and a high satiety and phytochemical index to name a few.

Eating low nutrient foods fuels overeating behavior.

Last, but not least, DrFuhrman ‘s unique contribution to the science of nutritional care, disease reversal and weight loss is his explanation of the physiology behind hunger and food cravings.

It is important to recognize that nutrient poor eating (and toxic eating) leads to increased cellular toxicity with undesirable levels of free radicals and advanced glycation end products (AGE’s), lipfusion, lipid A2E and other toxins that contribute to the development of chronic disease. His findings are that these toxic substances lead to addictive withdrawal symptoms (toxic hunger) which result in the desire to eat more frequently and overeat. Low nutrient eating, therefore, establishes a mechanism that leads to food addictions and food cravings that can’t be ignored. This is the reason why calorie counting diets fail. Without addressing dietary quality, excess food cravings are almost impossible to ignore.

Fortunately the drive to over-consume calories is blunted by high micronutrient, high food antioxidant, (NutrientRich food) consumption and the symptoms that people thought were hypoglycemia or even hunger, simply disappear after following his dietary recommendations. Not only do people lose the symptoms of fatigue, headaches, irritability and stomach cramping, but they get back in touch with true hunger felt in the throat, which simply makes eating more pleasurable and directs them to a more appropriate amount of calories for their body’s biological needs.

In a portion controlled (calorie counting) diet it is likely that the body will not get adequate fiber or micronutrients. The body will have a compounded sensation of hunger and cravings which for most is simply overwhelming. It invariably results in people either being unable to lose weight or unable to keep the weight off and eventually gaining it back. The biochemistry and physiology behind food cravings are more thoroughly explained in Dr. Fuhrman’s books and lectures, but without a thorough understanding of these principles weight loss attempts are typically doomed to fail.

If you really want to learn what’s going on behind the scenes of why a Nutrient Rich diet works so well, why eating better not less is the way to go, tune into DrFuhrman .

The MANDI and ANDI food index’s are the most powerful out there.

John Allen Mollenhauer

The consumption of nutrient-dense foods and beverages, which would ultimately be identified by a scientifically validated nutrient density profiling system, should be instituted as a nutrition platform in the Dietary Guidelines as a part of a larger educational effort to help people choose more nutrient-dense foods and as the guiding principle for consumers to plan healthful diets. By consciously choosing more nutrient-dense foods and beverages, Americans will be in a better position to meet their nutrient requirements without over consuming energy. An objective, science-based, and validated nutrient density profiling system is needed to characterize foods based on their nutrient composition and this concept should be integrated into the Dietary Guidelines.

This article sets forth guiding principles for the development and implementation of a nutrient density profiling system based on the current knowledge of diet and health and recommends that the development of a nutrient density profiling system include testing for effectiveness against accepted measures of diet quality, such as the Healthy Eating Index, and measurable public health markers, such as blood lipids and blood pressure.

Here’s where you can read the full abstract.