Nutrient Density – Eating for Better Health

More Nutrients for Less Calories

Nutrient Density refers to the ratio of nutrient content to calorie content. A nutrient dense food is the opposite to an energy dense food. A nutrient dense food provides a high level of vitamins and minerals and relatively few calories.

Eating Nutrient Dense Foods is One of the Healthiest Ways to Eat

A very obvious example would be choosing a snack. The apple or the chocolate bar?

Eating an apple will give you about 95 Calories. It also has loads of vitamins, minerals, fiber and phytochemicals.

The chocolate bar, take your pick, will have at least double the Calories of an apple, and very little nutrient content. They have almost no fiber, and so hardly make you full at all and you are likely to want another after the glucose crash comes.

This is of course a very simple example. However, if you look at some of the common staples in the standard western diet which often includes large amounts of bread, pasta, white rice, processed foods, refined foods, and alcoholic drinks, many of us are consuming ’empty calories’ with little nutrient content at all.

Shift the way you think about food. The calories in – calories out model of burning off the energy you eat through exercise, leaves out the very important consideration of nutrition. Ensuring that you eat plenty of nutrient dense foods is a pathway to good health and a strong immune system.

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Eat Well

~ Progressive Chiropractic ~