So how really do you measure food quality? It is not an easy question to answer. We do have some principles we can use to help qualify the quality of our food.
Quality indicators of food:
- Food should be free from decay.
- Food should be completely ripe when picked. Foods may appear to ripen if picked early, but vitamin and nutrient values will never attain the levels possible if the food was allowed to vine ripen.
- Food picked from your own garden is the ultimate in freshness and ripeness.
- Once food is picked, some nutrients such as vitamins start to decline. Commercially processed food sits 5-14 days in transit before you could purchase it in the market.
- You need some raw foods in your diet. Cooking destroys 35% of the isothiocyanates you would have gleaned from the raw food. You need cooked greens also to get the volume of nutrients you need. (Juicing greens is a way some have increased volume intake of raw greens.)
- Growing food yourself allows you to select vegetable varieties with more flavor and nutritional content. Commercial growers primarily select varieties that withstand weeks of shipping.
- Phytochemicals are lost in long term storage and/or preserving. These nutrients would best be gained in immediate consumption of fresh raw foods.
- Having mineralized, fully ripe foods before consumption or preservation is perhaps more important than the specific method of preservation of the food. One study concludes that fresh, frozen or canned foods have comparable vitamin and nutrient content.
- Water soluble vitamins can be leached from the foods if boiled. Steaming is preferred. Save and ingest any residual water from the cooking process.
- Some hold brix levels as a good food quality indicator, but I suggest caution. The sugar content is a concentration value of sugar in water, so the hydration of the plant has a drastic effect on the brix reading. In one anecdotal experiment: carrots which were forgotten in a large walk in cooler, were found wilted and shriveled. These were were tested and showed higher brix reading than fresh organic carrots picked directly from a nutrient dense growing plot. The taste and quality comparison did not align with the brix reading.
Joel Fuhrman MD suggests there are 4 categories of high nutrient foods. We need to think of our diets being composed of a mix of all of these categories.
- raw vegetables - snow peas, cucumbers, tomatoes
- fresh fruits - apples, grapefruit, berries, melons
- cooked greens - string beans, cabbage, asparagus
- non-green vegatables - eggplant, peppers, tomatoes, mushrooms
Joel Fuhrman MD has also made a listing of foods by nutrient density on a comparative scale of 1000 (nutirients / calories). He suggests we ingest a significant volume of our calories from foods that have a nutrient score higher than 100.- Kale 1000
- Collards 916
- Spinach 886
- Bok Choy 839
- Romaine 462
- Boston 412
- Broccoli 395
- Artichoke 352
- Cabbage 344
- Green Pep 310
- Carrots 288
- Asparagus 280
- Strawberry 254
- Cauliflower 269
- Tomato 197
- Cherries 197
- Blueberries 155
- Iceburg 132
- Orange 130
- Cantaloupe 120
- Apple 91
- Peach 88
- Kidney Beans 84
- Green Peas 84
- Sweet Potato 81
- Soybeans 74
- Tofu 69
- Mango 61
- Cucumber 59
- Oatmeal 55
- White Potato 53
- Brown Rice 49
- Salmon 48
- Skim Milk 43
- Grapes 40
- Corn 37
- Avocado 36
- Banana 36
- Walnuts 35
- Almonds 33
- Chicken Breast 32
- Low Fat Yogurt 31
- Apple Juice 30
- Eggs 29
- Feta Cheese 25
- Whole Wheat Bread 25
- Whole Milk 23
- White Pasta 22
- White Bread 21
- Peanut Butter 21
- Swiss Cheese 18
- Ground Beef 17
- Potato Chips 13
- Vanilla Ice Cream 6
- Olive Oil 2
- Cola Drink 0.6
So, we see that we need a variety of foods, and to focus on foods that are nutrient dense. This excludes processed foods and animal products as a valuable part of our diet. Research is clear that ingestion of animal proteins increases disease risk.
An interesting article in the NY Times, by Mark Bittman, suggests that for most Americans, this entire question of organic food quality is a mute point.
An interesting article in the NY Times, by Mark Bittman, suggests that for most Americans, this entire question of organic food quality is a mute point.
"The truth is that most Americans eat so badly -- we get 7 percent of our calories from soft drinks, more than we do from vegetables; the top food group by caloric intake is “sweets”; and one-third of nation’s adults are now obese -- that the organic question is a secondary one. It’s not unimportant, but it’s not the primary issue in the way Americans eat." (web)
Some foods from conventional farming are laced with more pesticides than other types of food. If you wanted to limit your pesticide intake, the following foods would be good to get as organic:
- apples
- celery
- strawberries
- peaches
- spinach
- nectarines - imported
- grapes - imported
- sweet bell pepers
- potatoes
- blueberries - domestic
- lettuce
- kale / collard greens
So how much of your diet is made up of real food, vs edible food like substances? How important is eating organic to you? I would raise an even higher bar: How much of your own food do you grow? Let's talk about it.
Resources:
- Is Organic Better for You? (web)
- Organic Food - Is 'Natural' Worth the Extra Cost? (web)
- Maximizing the Nutritional Value of Fruits and Vegetables (pdf)
- Nutritional Quality of Organically Grown Food (web)
- Organic grower products & resources (web order)
Following is a list of assumptions and/or assertions I would like to evaluate in a future article(s). If you have information to back up or disprove any of these assertions, I would be interested in dialog with you.
- Soils are being depleted by modern commercial farming practices, and therefore foods grown on these depleted soils are not as nutritious.
- Commercial food processing often adds salt and fat calories at the expense of minerals and vitamins.
- Organic foods are free of pesticide residues, while conventionally grown food, especially food from other countries, carry significant pesticide residues.
- Pesticides in and on our food has adverse effects when consumed.
- Organic farming processes present compelling advantages over conventional farming in environmental, ecology, and soil biotic composition.
- GMO organisms have been touted as the tools to feed the world, but they are actually a smoke screen for a very small number of companies to control the food production of the world.
- GMO seeds to not increase yields. They only facilitate large mono culture crops.
- Conventional farming techniques damage the soil and render it lifeless and susceptible to erosion.
- High brix (sugar content) is a significant food quality indicator.
- Healthy plants resist pest attack.
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