Nutrient density is a concept you’d be really smart to get familiar with. When you understand food from the nutrient density point of view, calorie content becomes completely irrelevant. Imagine that!
First, I need you to think about something for a minute. What are you looking for when you eat? The first thing that comes to mind for most people is energy. The second is comfort. Curiously enough, thinking of food as source of nutrients is not at the top of the list, is it?
Nutrients have become something we expect to find in vitamins, supplements, and protein shakes. But not in food, food.
Energy and nutrients are not the same thing, though. Neither are being full and being satisfied. You can get lots of energy in the form of carbohydrates — in fact the simpler these are, the faster they become glucose (energy!) and enter the blood stream — and your body can be starving for nutrients. And as long as your body is starving for nutrients you will not be satisfied. No matter how full you are, you will continue to reach for food.
The nutrient density of a food is independent of its caloric content.
Let’s say you have four foods: butter, kale, Iceberg lettuce and potato chips. Can you guess which one of these has the most nutrients per gram?
Most people guess kale. And yes, kale does have lots of nutrients, but it’s not the most nutrient dense of that bunch. Second guess usually is potato chips, but whereas they do have lots of calories — from carbohydrates and low-quality vegetable oils — potato chips offer little nutrients.
We all know that Iceberg lettuce doesn’t have a lot going on. Neither nutrients, nor calories.
Of these four, the most nutrient dense food is butter. Far more if it comes from grass-fed cows as opposed to conventional, grain-fed ones.
You might be thinking I must be wrong, since butter is “too” high in saturated fat and cholesterol, but what if you knew those are actually desirable nutrients? I must write other blog posts explaining, but right now suffice to say that plenty of evidence proves that is the case.
A little nutrition history…
Dr. Weston Price — a dentist who studied the diet of healthy populations around the world in the early 1900’s, before they had access to industrialized foods — found that the foods these different groups of people prized as the most nutrient dense were sort of different depending on what they had access to, but they were not that different, really.
Things like fish and shellfish, liver and other animal organs, eggs, and butter from various animals were the most important foods, and it wasn’t rare that one or more of these were considered sacred. He also observed that many times people would travel long distances and undergo great discomfort to obtain one of these special foods.
What do all these foods have in common?
First, and to Dr. Price’s dismay who had been partial to vegetarianism, all of them were of animal origin.
Second, Dr. Price found repetitively, a richness of the same set of nutrients: fat soluble vitamins — A, D, E and K — and a few, specific minerals — calcium, phosphorus, iron, magnesium, copper and iodine.
Then, what do all these nutrients have in common?
They all act as “catalyzers” of the rest of nutrients we need, and are specially efficient at doing so, when they are eaten together. In other words, you can be eating foods that contain other nutrients, but if you are not eating one of these nutrient dense foods as well, it is very likely that your body won’t be able to assimilate those other nutrients as well as it should because it’s missing these nutrient “translators”.
Now, just to be clear, I’m not saying these are the ONLY nutrient dense foods there are. Remember I mentioned kale has lots of nutrients too, but in order to count a food as nutrient dense FOR YOU, you need to actually assimilate the nutrients. This is the missing link with supplements and ever with superfoods like chlorella or goji berries. The intention can be right, but the implementation is generally poor.
So what about the caloric content?
Let’s continue to use butter as our example. Butter has a lot of calories because it has a lot of fat, and fat has more than double the calories than carbohydrates or proteins per gram.
But how much butter could you honestly eat in one sitting before you started to feel sick? This is the part where the density — mass over volume — is important.
One tablespoon, or two, tops? Most people couldn’t even do a whole tablespoon. Well, I can. But it requires practice ;-).
Butter is not only nutrient dense, but it is just plain dense. Just a little bit of it will satisfy you. And this is the case with most nutrient dense foods. You don’t need a whole lot because they are dense.But you need them on a regular basis so your body is always armed with those key nutrients that help assimilate the rest of nutrients.
When you focus on eating nutrient dense foods, you can trust that your body will know when you had enough. They are rich and satisfying, so you don’t need to worry about portion control. They are also highly digestible and your body usually assimilates them quickly and efficiently. This means that nutrient dense foods don’t cause weight gain, and in fact they can be great weight loss foods.
Isn’t that liberating?
8 Steps to add more nutrient density to your diet:
- Use unrefined salt instead of refined iodized salt.
- Eat organic produce instead of conventional.
- Eat raw dairy products instead of conventional, processed dairy products.
- Eat grass-fed beef and buffalo instead of grain-fed.
- Eat pasture-raised chicken and eggs instead of feedlot raised.
- Eat wild fish instead of farm raised.
- Use unrefined oils, lard, tallow and butter instead of refined oils and margarine.
- Minimize your consumption of grains and eat only properly prepared whole grains.
And if you live in New York City or close enough, come to the Nutrient Dense Foods seminar I’m giving at the Park Slope Food coop on Saturday, September 10th at 3pm. It’s free! The details are here.
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