D2_Agraria_Journal_21_OPT

AGRARIA JOURNAL 2021 9 As a child in elementary school I remember telling my science teacher that I was an Organic Farmer. The disdain with which she responded in front of my peers by saying “organic means contains carbon, so all farmers are organic farmers” sticks with me to this day. It was not actually that long ago that a group of back-to-the land homesteaders took a word that meant one thing in the world of science and redefined it to create a cultural touch point that now has a significant meaning globally. In much the same way, food scientists have defined nutrient density differently than have those in the broader food movement. Specifically, they determine the nutrient density index of a crop by its average level of nutrients per unit calorie. For example, kale has on average a relatively high level of nutrients but a low level of calories. By this metric then kale has a high nutrient density score. Rice has many more calories in it per unit and so would have a low nutrient density score. For the broader food movement, however, nutrient density has to do with quality, with how nutritious one bunch of kale is in relation to another. Or one bag of rice to another. Among food scientists there is an implicit assumption that all kale or rice is relatively nutritionally uniform. This assumption is foundationally flawed. My experience as a farmer has been that some crops have greater sheen, vigor, vibrancy, pest and disease resistance, flavor and shelf life than others. My understanding is that there are some profound nutrient variations in these crops, and these are really what I should be striving for rather than a label like Organic or Regenerative or local or Non-GMO etc. None of these labels correlate to the inherent nutritional quality of the crop and are effectively process standards, not quality standards. A crop is either organic or not, local or not. There is no subtlety or nuance in them. For a decade, the Bionutrient Food Association, which I helped found and serve as executive director, has been working to expand our understanding of this new definition of nutrient density, and for the past four years we have been using the scientific process to do so. We devised a strategy to move this process forward: New Definition of Nutrient Density Goes Beyond Labels BY DAN KITTREDGE PHOTO COURTESY OF BFA Bionutrient Meter developed by the Bionutrient Food Association (BFA) measures the nutrient density of food.