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.