Few conventional farmers make the link between what they produce and the health & wellbeing of the general population; while even less in the general population directly attribute the nutrient density and contaminants in the food they eat with how they look and feel.
A 2004 US study found that important nutrients in vegetable and grain crops were 38% lower than 50 years prior*. In the same time yields increased (in cereals they rose 175%). (Along with both chronic disease and obesity rates simultaneously increasing**). More food with less nutrients is being produced.
Coincidentally the way we farm has altered since 1950 too as post war synthetics have been used to boost yield in food production systems. Is this just a co-incidence and would it be possible to buy food how we eat it- as a function of the nutrition it provides, not it’s weight or shelf life.
What if consumers could use a phone app to measure and compare the nutrients in one piece of food – a steak, or a carrot, with another, at the point of sale? If you found that a carrot from one bag was twice the nutritional quality of a carrot from another, would that change your purchasing decision? Of course it would. Would the farmer producing the carrots that were being ignored on the shelf change his practices to be more like the one that was being favored? As an economic decision- of course.
As animals, we have the skill inertly to detect nutrient density; it is called taste. As children, our sense of taste is strong and we can discern what food has the nutrients we need and what doesn’t. Humans on modern diets generally lose this ability and instead recognise sugar and salt as desirable food attributes over all else; but what if this piece of tech was introduced – would it change the future of food production (and health) back to how it should have been?
Nutrient density measurement is the dream of many in the industry; to no longer sell by the kilogram or the piece/pack but start to sell by nutrient content.
If such a seismic shift in consumer behavior was to come to fruition, there would be some very big winners; and even more bigger losers in the food production world.
Dan Kittredge, (Bionutrient Food Association) has spent 15 years not only developing the very tech which will do this, but investigating what Nutrient Density actually is and working out the production systems that stand to benefit most from this new era for the food system.
Dan’s vision would see a shift from market specifications focused on shelf life and nutritionally irrelevant visual attributes like- colour, shape & size; to market drivers that mirror how we used to eat and produce food- flavor and nutrients.
As part of a Australian & NZ tour, April 28-29 and September 8-9 sees Dan deliver his 4-day Fundamentals in Nutrient Density course at Kandanga Farm Store (the only venue for Qld). Potentially Dan’s learnings will steer the direction of attendees to be the future leaders in a food industry driven by a consumer demand for nutrients- not kilograms.
For more information on Dan’s work and the course see the Kandanga Farm Store events page or visit https://www.dankittredge.com . 
*https://www.bbc.com/future/bespoke/follow-the-food/why-modern-food-lost-its-nutrients/
**https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10830426/ , https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/overweight-obesity/overweight-and-obesity/contents/summary
