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How to be a Nutritarian!

Nutritarians By Crys

In the world of Paleo 2.0, the belief is that a whole food diet which includes adequate micronutrients is the best way to eat healthy.  This means you should consider having nutrient rich foods as your staple, yes be a Nutritarian!  This doesn’t mean you should ignore your intake of healthy fats, that definitely wouldn’t be Pale 2.0, where even obtaining a substantial fraction of nutrition from animal sources is necessary for health.  However Dr. Joel Furhman of which ‘Whole Foods Market’ has adopted, came up with a formula for tracking the nutritional density of foods.  This scale is called the Aggregate Nutrient Density Index (ANDI) and ranges from 1 to 1000, where 1 is the lowest and thus the least of nutritional value.

This scale is calculated with the formula H=N/C:

– H is Health

– N is Nutrition

– C is Calories

This is a great tool for a Primal lifestyle, where the intake of micronutrients are far more important than the volume of macronutrients, nutrition versus calories, so it helps to know what falls under micronutrient rich foods.

‘Whole Foods Market’ has a few top ten ANDI lists that are accessible from their ‘Health Starts Here‘ website, my favourite being the extremely nutrient dense green vegetables:

Green Vegetable ANDI Score
1. Mustard/Turnip/Collard Greens 1000
2. Kale 1000
3. Watercress 1000
4. Bok Choy/Baby Bok Choy 824
5. Spinach 739
6. Broccoli Rabe 715
7. Chinese/Napa Cabbage 704
8. Brussels Sprouts 672
9. Swiss Chard 670
10. Arugula 559

Now that you’ve done away with the gluten grains in your diet, that’s right they’re still bad even though you’ll find a top ten list on ‘Whole Foods Markets’ (notice how low they are).  It’s time to ensure you are incorporating one of the above vegetables at least once in every meal, thus you ensure that you are getting dense amounts of vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals.

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