"Nutrient-Rich" Foods

I keep hearing about "nutrient-rich" foods. Do you have any ideas on how I could incorporate more into my diet?

Choosing more nutrient-rich (or "nutrient-dense") foods is how you can get more bang for the buck — or really, more bounce for the ounce — from the foods you eat from every good group.

Calorie for calorie, these foods provide a rich amount of nutrients (such as vitamins and minerals) and contain few, if any, saturated fats, trans fats and added sugars. For example, a cup of 1 percent milk contains 100 calories and offers a wide variety of nutrients: calcium, vitamin D, vitamin A, riboflavin and phosphorus, and also a good amount of protein, vitamin B12 and selenium. Compare that to a cup of non-diet soft drink, which has about the same number of calories but no nutrients to speak of.

Read more:

NutrientRich.com:

The problem with the referenced article is that it IS a "Trojan Horse". Do you have that picture in your mind? Enemy soldiers hid in a Trojan Horse that was given as a gift to the King of Troy. He accepted it and was then attacked from the inside when the enemy soldiers disembarked the horse.

Well, it's not different with the definition for nutrient rich foods that has been offered up by the Naturally Nutrient Rich Coalition and the new "MyPyramid", which promote steps to a healthier you.

Note: It's clear that you were to follow these steps as compared to the standard American diet (SAD and lifestyle, you will probably be a great deal healthier. That's not in dispute with this commentary. I applaud Government actions on this front. Just remember that the government is about maintaining a healthy economy and political interests as a priority over your health, which is why you need to beware of how you define nutrient rich or "nutrient dense" foods.

In the case of the new pyramid it's a Trojan Horse of nutrient poor foods, that are scientifically substantiated to clog your arteries, promote cancer, make it harder to stabilize your weight, speed up aging, and shorten longevity. The reference is to substantial intake of animal products and refined foods (grains in particular).

Originally there were the four food groups, which are now old. People got fat, eating foods high in animal products and refined grains at the base of the diet. Then came the new term "Nutrient Rich" or nutrient dense" which naturally gave rise to a plant-based pyramid because plant foods are the only foods that are actually nutrient rich and don't contain those food factors that you don't need from dietary sources.

Yet here's what happened. The same four food groups are now being marketed as "nutrient rich", because of useful but incomplete definition of nutrient rich foods. Animal products and refined foods are rich in some nutrients and marketed as such, but in fact they are nutrient poor being marketed in a nutrient rich wrapper.

See The Food Class System.

Just because a food is rich in some nutrients, 1 or more; does not make it a nutrient rich food. The definition of a Nutrient Rich Foods is far broader and way more powerful.

The effects of how you define nutrient rich foods are nothing short of crucial!

Here is a working definition for Nutrient Rich Foods.

How you incorporate nutrient rich foods into your diet and make the transition successfully, is what The Nutrient Rich Way is all about. The true way to eat to each nutrient rich foods is very different from what most people are learning.

I was in the nail salon the other day, and the food channel was on the TV screen. You simply can’t get away from it even if you try. Two other women were watching intently while Jada whipped up her Italian magic. As I was eavesdropping on the conversation, (what else could I do in such a small space?),  one woman says to the other…”Oh my, what a simple idea, I never thought of doing that”. I started to judge this comment, thinking to myself, how in the world could they not have known such a simple concept. Jada took some left over bread and put it in her blender and made bread crumbs. These 2 women where literally blown away by the idea of how great that would be when they were in the kitchen and out of the store bought stuff.

Not that I am bragging, but I have always made my own breadcrumbs, because the ingredients added in the store bought kind have no business in my body.

I simply take some Ezekiel (sprouted grain bread) bread, tear it up and put it in the blender and “instant nutrient rich” breadcrumbs emerge. I just assumed everyone did this. I guess I was wrong about that.

Sometimes when things are so obvious and simple to us, they simply get discarded as unimportant or don’t register in our minds as something we could do.

For me, it seems like, the more ingredients in a recipe, the less I want to cook it. The more choices when shopping, the less I want to buy. The more choices on a buffet, the more confused I get, and the less I want to eat.

What if you could keep it simple and really nail this “Nutrient Rich Eating” way of eating?

I am going to help you out with this.

Everyday I am going to post a SIMPLE TIP. If you take these simple tips, you can put the basic concepts together and form a mountain of knowledge that will change the way you eat for the better forever.

Can I state it anymore simply that that?

Coming up in the next post…KEEP IT SIMPLE TIP #1 – Beets

How many bananas is too many bananas?

I don’t know but your body knows.

You can overdo and overeat the GOOD stuff too.  My partner, John Allen, and I talk about this concept all the time. Contrary to that popular belief that “eating healthy doesn’t taste good and is boring” reason/excuse that many people give for eating poorly, we’ve discovered that, actually the opposite is true. Nutrient Rich foods that include green vegetables, juicy fruit, nuts, seeds, beans are satisfying and delicious. They make you feel good too even after you eat them because you are getting the nutrients your body needs and wants.

We buy bunches of ripe bananas, peel ‘em and freeze ‘em. That way we can dump them in smoothies. They are so sweet and creamy that we make ice cream out of them.

Using our beloved Vitamix high powered blender, we add bananas, dates, natural unsweetened cacao powder, and walnuts and whip up a creamy delectable ice cream. It’s so good you can finish it off in one sitting. And if you don’t listen and stop, you can eat this ice cream until the whole thing is finished off and you bust!

The actual challenge we discovered is that nutrient rich “healthy” food is so good ~ you want to keep eating. And justification for this overeating comes easy – you can simply convince yourself that since it is healthy you can keep it coming.

Over the past two years as I started to eat more and more nutrient rich foods, I found myself gaining some unwanted pounds, and I didn’t do it by eating potato chips.  Nope. I ate too much of good things. Grant it there were emotional eating situations going on as well, however, I figured I was eating healthy foods so it didn’t matter.  But it does matter. Too many bananas is too many bananas. I was certainly eating for health but overeating even healthy foods is not a healthy idea.

Nutrient rich food is truly yummy. I can’t say enough about Dr. Fuhrman’s EAT FOR HEALTH 2 book set. Book 2 is full of amazing recipes. I started to experiment and cook up these recipes and was truly wowed by the ease it took and the taste that exploded. You should try a recipe or two. I recommend the healthy chocolate cake on page 262. It’s literally made with vegetables but you wouldn’t know it unless I spilled the beans. I guarantee if you have the “healthy food doesn’t taste good” mentality – eating this cake will flip that switch off immediately.
When you start eating nutrient rich, amazing things happen to your health. You give your body the true nutrients it needs to function and perform well. You feel really good and energetic. You’ll want to eat this way and your body will start craving the good stuff.

But how do you know when enough is enough, when you’ve had enough and when you should stop?  There is no complicated answer here. It’s actually the simplest concept you probably ever heard.  LISTEN. Listen to the signs and eat when you are hungry and stop when you are full.

These “simple” rules are key to nutrient rich living and eating and natural weight loss – eat only when you hungry and stop when you are full. That will be the sure fire way of not overdosing on one too many bananas. Your body doesn’t want one too many bananas and it will give you signals to stop. Your body knows best – when it has had enough – it lets you know – you just need to LISTEN.

Can you spend today just taking the time to notice how you feel before a meal?  If you are not really hungry, wait a bit longer to eat.  As you are eating notice how your stomach feels. Do you feel satisfied? Can you stop now? It takes practice to hear and notice your body’s signals but once you connect and the more you listen, the more you will hear and you will naturally lose weight.

• 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.

The latest buzzword in healthful eating is not low-calorie, low-sodium or low-fat: It’s “nutrient-rich.”

What’s nutrient-rich eating? Just consider a 100 Calorie Pack of Hostess Twinkie Bites. Sure, it only contains 100 calories, 2.5 grams fat, 1 gram saturated fat and 160 milligrams of sodium in three tiny cakes, but what kind of nutritional reward do you get for that 100-calorie investment?

Check out the ingredient list and you’ll find a string of processed, refined ingredients, cuing you to the fact that those 100 calories are basically empty ones.
Compare that to a 100-calorie bowl of fresh strawberries, containing two cups of strawberry halves packed with fiber, vitamin C, folate, potassium and manganese, along with a cache of other minerals and vitamins and health-protective plant compounds. See the nutrient-rich difference?

Nutrient-rich foods have a high nutrient-to-calorie ratio, making them nutrition bargains, rather than only calorie, fat or sodium bargains.
While it’s good to keep your intake of calories, fat and sodium under control, you can do that the nutrient-rich way or the nutrient-poor way…

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.