The Importance of Nutrient Density - Part I: Your Body is a Machine

Our culture has a tendency to focus on calories, the basic energy giving properties of food, as the measurement increment for food. A far more useful way to quantify what you are eating is to pay attention to the amount of usable nutrients in food. A nutrient dense food is a food that has a low ratio of nutrients to calories, meaning that there are a lot of nutrients in a relatively small amount of a food. A good example of nutrient density is to compare the amount of calcium in cheese to the amount of calcium in broccoli. Foods like chips and soda have a high ratio of nutrients to calories, meaning that there are a lot of calories but not many nutrients.

When I talk about nutrients I am talking about vitamins and minerals. There are a lot of misconceptions about vitamins and minerals. The most important thing to understand about nutrients is that they are extremely synergistic in the foods that they come in, as well as with proper food combining. For example, calcium is a mineral that is often taken as a supplement. The problem with this is that in order for our bodies to utilize calcium we need Vitamins A and D, and to utilize Vitamins A and D we need saturated fat. One food that is rich in all of these nutrients is whole, raw milk. Milk should be whole because without the fat we would not be able to utilize Vitamins A and D and raw because pasteurization diminishes vitamin content. A calcium pill will never be able capture the magical synergistic properties of whole food nutrition.

It is possible to eat a diet that has ample calories, but not enough actual nutrition. A decent analogy for this is a car. Gasoline makes a car go; you cannot drive the car without it. At the same time if you don’t change the oil, and replace the brake pads, and the tires, and all the fluids, etc., your car is going to have problems and eventually break down. The same thing is true for your body. Calories are our fuel, but nutrients are the building blocks for our body systems. We need vitamin A for vision; a deficiency can cause blindness. We need vitamin B12 to prevent anemia. We need vitamin K so that our blood will clot properly. Nutrient dense foods keep our bodies in good working order.

Weston Price labeled modern foods, like white flour and canned goods, the “displacing” foods. This is an important distinction because it is an often overlooked aspect of nutrition. When you eat junk food it takes you two steps back. The first is that the food is processed and probably contains harmful food additives or imitation foods like hydrogenated oils, MSG, artificial flavors, preservatives, and pesticide residues. The second and less recognized problem is that these foods are devoid of nutrients and therefore they are displacing foods that have nutrients. Most of us are only hungry for a certain amount of food; when we fill up on cupcakes and chips, we are less likely to eat our nutrient dense dinner. Doing this once in awhile might not be a problem, but what are the consequences of doing it everyday? Each time we skip out on nutrition we are forcing out body to work without being able to repair itself and eventually something is going to break down.