Nutrient Density

How about upping the amount of nutrients you get from your meals? Just making a few swaps and/or adding a handful of superfoods to your recipes can do the trick. 

Nutrient density is about the number of beneficial nutrients a food has in proportion to its calories (or energy content). As explained by Dr. Josh Axe, nutrient-dense foods are “real and unprocessed,” and not “chemically altered, manmade, or filled with synthetic ingredients.” 

According to a new Frontiers in Nutrition study, our daily meals can easily be insufficient in iron, zinc, folate, calcium, and vitamins A and B12. Among the many nutrient-dense foods one can consume, some are specifically high in those nutrients: organs, small fish (and canned fish with bones), eggs, dark green leafy vegetables, bivalves, crustaceans, beef, lamb, goat, and goat milk. 

Organs

As mentioned in a previous post, including organ meats into our diet provides such an array of beneficial nutrients! Even just once a week can be sufficient, especially when it comes to a superfood like liver. (And consuming liver is okay, as most of the toxins are stored in the fat of the animal, and not the liver). 

Most ancestral diets included organ meats, alongside bones, cartilage and skin, fats, seafood, and wild plants. You can consume organ meats (such as liver, heart, brain, and intestines) from cows, pigs, lambs, goats, chickens and ducks, for instance.

Small Fish

Wild-caught seafood provides an abundance of healthy fats and micronutrients. It is usually recommended to avoid the bigger fish (tuna, shark, swordfish, etc.) in the food chain as there is more chance for them to be contaminated with a high amount of mercury. So the best picks are probably anchovies, haddock, sockeye salmon, petrale sole, wild tilapia, sardines, and wild trout. If you buy canned fish, it is better to buy fish canned in water, as even the olive oil used by some brands can be questionable.

Eggs

Egg yolks contain omega-3 fats, saturated fats, vitamins A, E, K2, and B complex, choline, healthy cholesterol, a complete amino acid profile, antioxidant and anti-inflammatory agents. As explained in a previous post, in order to get the full array of nutrients, animals have to eat what they are meant to eat. When it comes to chickens, they should be eating things such as bugs, lizards, worms, and grass. So if you buy eggs from pasture-raised chickens, the yolk is going to have a deep-yellow/slight orange color. This color is a sign of a nutrient-rich egg. If you buy eggs of mostly grain-fed chickens, the yolk is going to have a pale-yellow color. 

On a Final Note

Organ meats, small fish, and eggs are my favorites. I consume these every week. There are many more nutrient-dense foods, of course, and I will expand on a few more in my next blog post. In the meantime, have a great Memorial Day weekend!

Until next time!

References

Dr. Axe. “The 30 Most Nutrient-Dense Foods on the Planet.” Dr. Axe, 26 Sept. 2021, draxe.com/nutrition/nutrient-dense-foods/. Accessed 26 May 2022.

“Most Nutrient-Dense Foods for Biohackers.” Dave Asprey, 26 May 2022, daveasprey.com/nutrient-dense-foods-for-biohackers/. Accessed 26 May 2022.

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