One of my sons told me last year that he’d read that an American today needs to eat something like 8 oranges to get the same nutritional content as their great grandparents would have got from just one.
I sort of instinctively believed him at the time, but I didn’t have any proof.
That’s about to change.
At the inspirational Goodwood Health Summit this week – a truly fabulous, annual event, generously hosted by the powerhouse that is Her Grace The Duchess of Richmond and Gordon – I met a chap called Dan Kittredge.
Dan is a man on a mission.
And that mission is all about nutrient density.
Kittredge’s hypothesis is that ‘conventional’ farming – or chemical farming as I’m increasingly terming it – denudes food of its essential nutrients. And that, as a result, it’s making us sick.
But, what if we were able to measure nutrient density in food? Because if we could prove that certain produce and certain methods of food production were depleting food of its nutritional value, then we would avoid that produce and food produced in that way, wouldn’t we?
Well, excitingly, that moment might already be here.
Dan has developed a gizmo that looks a bit like Doctor Who’s sonic screwdriver. But rather than pointing this sonic screwdriver at a Dalek, you point it at food.
The gadget takes a reading, and then tells you whether that food is nutritionally dense or nutritionally compromised.
Isn’t that incredible?
And, rather brilliantly, before too long we won’t even need the gizmo. We’ll be able to do it from our phones.
This will have conventional – sorry, chemical – farming, Big Food and the supermarkets quaking in their boots. And rightly so. They’ve done a number on us all, and for decades, by serving up food that is severely nutritionally compromised. And look at where it’s got us….
If you feel as strongly about this as I do, then I have even better news.
Because you don’t have to wait for the technology.
As Dan says, each of us is already ‘wired with extraordinarily sophisticated nutrient monitoring systems to discern what’s good, and what’s not.’
They’re called the nose, and the tongue.
That’s right - it turns out in the end that nutrient dense food just, erm, tastes better.
Well who’d have thought it…..
Nick
PS - the market’s open.
PPS - if you fancy doing a deeper dive on this, watch Dan's TED talk here.
