A key part of my Positive Eating approach to weight management and nutrition is to help people increase their desire for foods that are rich in nutrients. Actually, to be more accurate, these foods are rich in micronutrients. The macronutrients – so called because they make up a large proportion of food by weight – are the energy nutrients: proteins, carbohydrates and fats. Micronutrients are the vitamins and minerals.
photo credit: futureatlas.com
Many people think of food as fuel. It’s not, or at least, not solely. Macronutrients are turned into energy in our bodies, it’s true, but micronutrients (and for that matter protein) have other, equally important roles in constantly rebuilding the body and enabling it to function correctly. Somewhat loosely, foods rich in micronutrients are said to be nutrient-dense, while foods rich in macronutrients are said to be energy-dense.
The Nutrition Unplugged blog recently covered the upcoming update of the American dietary guidelines, which are largely focussed on moving from energy-dense to nutrient-dense foods. The rising incidence of obesity seems pretty clearly linked to the increase in energy density of the Western diet, particularly through components of highly processed food such as high-fructose corn syrup. And, as the post also notes, because these processed foods are very poor in micronutrients, it’s possible to be eating far too many calories on a daily basis and still not be meeting your recommended levels of micronutrients.
photo credit: wirralwater (all good)
So, what’s the strategy? It boils down to eating more fruit and vegetables and less processed food. This is a message that’s been around for a long time, but it’s being focussed and emphasised more and more.
But isn’t that a really expensive way to eat? Is a nutrient-rich diet out of reach for the poorest members of the population? Perhaps not as much as we’ve tended to think. A 2005 study called A Nutrient Density Standard for Vegetables and Fruits: Nutrients per Calorie and Nutrients per Unit Cost, published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association by Darmon, Darmon, Maillot and Drewnowski, used French data to show two key things. Firstly, there is indeed an inverse relationship between energy density and micronutrient density: foods high in energy tend to be low in micronutrients and vice versa. And secondly, if you measure nutrients per unit cost rather than energy per unit cost, fruits and vegetables are actually excellent value for money. Since it’s micronutrients that we’re typically short of, a diet high in fruit and vegetables is an ideal direction to head in.
There have also been calls recently to reduce (or even eliminate) animal products from our diets, on the grounds that farming animals contributes to global warming even more than industry does. The figures could be (and are being) debated; I would like to see, for instance, a calculation of the difference in emissions between the pre-19th-century American plainlands covered in herds of buffalo, and those same plainlands today covered in corn and soybean crops. But the general high-level principle is that the resource cost of producing animal-based foods is greater, and the health benefits of plant-based foods are also superior.
Unfortunately, people’s appetite for food generally tends towards energy-dense rather than nutrient-dense foods – a logical survival strategy when food is scarce, but these days, in general, it isn’t, and that strategy works against us. Hence my approach of helping people to shift their thinking and desires in a nutrient-rich direction.
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