The most nutrient dense foods, or what we call the most “nutrient rich” foods are leafy green vegetables. These first class foods rank highest in terms of nutrient density, and comprise the top 10 foods on the ANDI scale – The Aggregate Nutrient Density Index – and they are genuinely low calorie foods.

Recently, while reading an article on Lance Armstrong’s Live Strong blog, it occurred to me that there is a widespread belief that all nutrient dense foods are low calorie foods and they are not. This is a trap that many of us (particularly those of us who are promoting this revolutionary new way of eating) fall into, as we appeal to those considering the change to a nutrient rich diet.

All nutrient dense foods are not low calorie, although they are lower in calories by far when comparing them to nutrient barren foods such as ice cream, bread, sugar and chocolate. Nutrient dense foods, like raw or roasted nuts not withstanding, in terms of calories, by the pound they are up there with bread and sugar, because up to 50% of the weight is oil and oil contains more than twice the number of calories per gram compared to carbohydrates and protein. Albeit, this oil is a healthy fat and nuts, unlike milk chocolate and sugar, are not to be avoided. They are to be eaten intelligently.

According to the Live Strong blog:

(Note: plant based oils are extracted fat, and are no longer nutrient rich as they are dense in only 1 nutrient “fat” and that is not healthy)

Just look to your left.

Vegetables are 100 calories per pound, but watch what happens when you start moving onto fruit and grains and beans. You are talking 300-500 calories per pound, so you need to be careful as to how much of these foods you eat, remember they are “nutrient dense”, rich in all the nutrients your body needs, but you can easily overeat nutrient rich foods.

NUTS; a pound of nuts can get into the thousands of calories. 9 almonds are approximately 180-200 calories. How quickly can you eat 9 almonds? Quicker than you can assess how many calorie just ate, that’s how fast!

So what’s the moral of the story?

When we first published Nutrient Rich.com the tag line was Eat Better, Not Less! The idea was simple, the better you eat, the less you need to eat. This is still true today.

When you are eating nutrient dense foods, if you try to eat them in the same quantities that you used to eat nutrient poor foods (which would drive you to over consume anyway) you will be healthier now doubt, but over time (as your body becomes more and more nutrient rich) you can get fat, because you need less and less food. With the exception of leafy green, green and colored vegetables, nutrient dense foods need to be eaten with a sound lifestyle strategy in mind and relative to activity.

I’ll be talking more about losing weight the Nutrient Rich way in future posts, but for now suffice it to say that not all nutrient dense foods are low calorie.

~ JAM

What if I told you that I had that magic pill and was willing to share it with you?

This magical little pill has so many benefits. Some of them include purifying your blood, preventing cancer, improving circulation, strengthening your immune system, clearing blemishes, improving kidney functions, lifting your spirit and eliminating depression.

Would you want some magic?

I forgot to mention that there are no side effects to this pill.

You’d have to be a fool to turn it down.

You don’t need to visit a doctor, get a prescription orvisit a pharmacy for this magic pill. You simply need to go to the grocery store and buy some dark leafy greens. You heard right! Dark leafy greens give you all of the above benefits and more.

So why are so many American devoid of these amazing plants in their diet?

Maybe it’s because of the way vegetables are viewed.

The last commercial on TV that I saw last night made me want to throw tomatoes at the screen although I would never throw my beautiful tomatoes. But I admit, I was quite angry and frustrated at what I was witnessing on national television.  Here’s how it went down. A Mom and Dad were trying to hide the fact that there were some added veggies (heaven forbid) in the “canned dinner” (disgusting-proceesed- chemicalized- made- in- a- factory- mush) they were feeding their children. So if that weren’t bad enough, suggesting that if the kids FOUND OUT!! – they would be horrified and not eat the mush!

Or maybe it was the commercial of the girl eating a peach at her desk, suggesting that is was too messy (some juice squirted out of the peach as she bit into it) and offering the peach in a nice pretty sugarized drink instead.

Or maybe it’s those cookbooks that suggest you disguise and hide those beautiful vegetables so that the kids won’t know they are eating them.

So why the deception and perception that vegetables are disgusting and fruits are messy?

Research and facts show that you can’t get better nutrition than in fruits and vegetables. They are nutrient rich. It is, in my opinion, criminal to suggest that we need to hide their beauty and taste in some fake way. Shouldn’t we be teaching that there are simply, quick, and easy ways to prepare vegetables. Shouldn’t we be showing that they are delectable, delicious and make you feel good?  Why would we deceive?  This brings to mind the quote by Goethe, “We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves”. The information and the facts are right in front of us. We as a nation need to fight back and we can do that with our money. We should be spending our money on the products that promote our health and longevity instead of with the companies that would choose to deceive us.

Vegetables are sacred to me.  I love them. I worship them. Hell, I would marry KALE if I could. Every time I eat kale, I feel so good- energetic, powerful, and strong!    I want to share that message with the world, instead of hiding and disguising them in other dishes.

So don’t leaf me out. Include me in every meal. Here are some suggestions to integrate some leaves into your life:

1. TAKE A VISIT -Visit your local Asian Market. Buys something you’ve never tried before. Maybe it’s bok choy (see attached simple, quick and easy recipe for nutrient rich bok choy apple salad).
2. TRADE PLACES – Try adding meat (if you eat it) as the condiment and side dish to a huge bowl of salad. Instead of the other way around.
3. THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX – Make it your goal to buy most of your products without a box. What kinds of foods can you eat that are as close to their natural state as possible? Spinach, arugula, romaine, boston, swisschard, kale leafs can all be chopped up into an amazing salad and eaten raw. How simple quick and easy is that?  There are no excuses and best of all, no detrimental side effects.

• 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.