Nutrient Density - Part Two

Nutrient Density - Part Two

Tim Hammerich
Tim Hammerich
News Reporter
It’s time for your Farm of the Future Report. I’m Tim Hammerich.

The term “nutrient density” has been popping up more and more. Claims being made about farming practices like regenerative agriculture producing more nutritious food. But this brings up the question: what defines nutrient density? Bionutrient Food Association executive director Dan Kittredge, is working to answer that question.

Kittredge… “We're not saying it is nutrient dense or not. It's not a binary standard, like organic or, you know, non-GMO or, you know, I guess people are starting to try and put together regenerative standards, et cetera. Those are binary. You are or are not. What we're saying is life is a continuum. You know, everything is somewhere in the continuum.So let's try to define that continuum and then apply those numbers to it. So that let the market work from there. And so we found some quite dramatic variations, you know, three X, five X, 50 X between the spinach, with the lowest level of antioxidants. And that's finished with the highest level of antioxidants, you know, the wheat with the highest level of zinc and the wheat with the lowest level of zinc, et cetera.So we have defined a variation. Across a number of metrics and found that, you know, basically every single crop we've looked at every single metric we've looked at variation is dramatic.”

Soon consumers and producers alike will have actual data to define nutritional content.

Previous ReportNutrient Density - Part One
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