Measuring your food: Not by quantity but quality.

I used to think that the nutritional value of each food item was fairly consistent  across the board.  For example, a potato grown in one state should have fairly similar nutrient content to a spud grown in any other state.  And as for potatoes grown during my grandpa's day, they should compare fairly close to today's.  A potato is a potato, right?  After about 10 yrs. of studying and learning about nutrient density in food, I found that nutrient density has diminished in most if not all of our foods.

Now I am faced with a dilemma.  Just because I am able to raise nutrient content in my potatoes, it doesn't mean I'll get paid any more for them and farming does rely on the bottom line.  Upon further study I found that there could be a win-win situation here.  By raising plant health, I would not only be increasing nutrient levels in the spuds but also building the plants resistance to fungal diseases and pests, which would increase productivity as well.  If my target is nutrient density, a good healthy plant is how to get there.

Two tools I already use in assessing plant health are a refractometer and a pH meter.  Between the two I can be assured if plant health is good enough to produce nutrient dense food.  So how can a consumer tell if they are buying nutrient dense food or just expensive organic food?  There are expensive tests that can reveal this or one can squeeze a few drops of the produce onto a refractometer and measure the Brix content.

Brix is a  scale of measurement of solids suspended in the sap of the fruit or veggie and is an indicator of the level of nutrients contained within. (this is the "denser food" referred to in the last post)  Although this is not a perfect method, it is much cheaper than a test costing anywhere from $200 to well over $1000 and is much quicker.  I use the digital one pictured above but the manual version is also easy to use and one is pictured on the Brix scale chart link above.  

I don't know if nutrient dense food will ever demand a premium price for the farmer but it sure sounds like something worth working toward.

So what does "organic' and "conventional" really mean?

I've read many times in the last several months of people citing "a study" that concluded that organic food is no more nutritious than the rest of the food on the grocery shelf.  I'm tempted to digress to talk about "studies" but maybe I'll save that for another day.  The labels "organic" and "conventional" are what I want to discuss right now.  Each state determines what standards and governing bodies are used to certify what is organic.  As long as all the right "hoops" are jumped through, those products are certified organic.  Now I'm going to say something that might shock some of you, but some of the best (most nutritious) food you can buy and the worst (least nutritious) food can be found on the organic shelf.

How can this be?  Even though both products are technically certified organic, they were raised quite differently. I've talked about this before and it will come up again.  Working with nature will generally produce higher quality food than forcing nature with nitrate fertilizers and this goes for organic or conventional.  You see there are  more options than just organic and conventional.  One can be certified organic but still be thinking conventionally and forcing nature while using all organic approved materials.  Then there are conventional producers who tend to work more with nature rather than forcing it with lots of nitrate fertilizers.  Both producers who worked with nature are capable of raising nutrient dense food.

So other than the obvious reason of better nutrition, what else is nutrient density good for?  It so happens that high nutrient dense food is the product of denser plants as well.  By denser, I mean literally the plant sap has more solids content than less dense plants.  These plants are more resistant to disease.  That is how true biological systems can work to survive without fungicides and pesticides. (easier said than done) End results of healthier plants is healthier food.  Systems that force nature will grow less dense plants, that is more watery sap, resulting in more susceptibility to disease, thus needing fungicides and pesticides.

So when I hear about a "study" lumping all organic food together, I want to know how that food was raised because it does makes a difference.  The labels "organic" and "conventional" have to be put  in proper context  before any inferences can be made. A truly scientific study would take this into account before making such a sweeping statement, but then there is a lot of that going on now days on both sides of this issue.

 In future posts, I will be looking at some simple tools that can be used to check  "density" of plants during the growing season.