Dan Kittredge, executive director of the Bionutrient Food Association, grew up on his family’s organic farm in Massachusetts. His parents led the Northeast Organic Farmers Association of Massachusetts for more than 30 years. His mother, Julie Rawson, was the founding executive director of NOFA-Massachusetts and his father, Jack Kittredge, was editor of Natural Farmer news publication.
Dan followed his parents’ footsteps and farmed organically, but found it difficult to make a living because his farm faced pest and disease problems. This led him on a journey to learn how to grow plants that withstood pests and disease, and he discovered the importance of soil health not only to produce pest- and disease-resistant plants but to produce nutrient dense plants and foods as well.
In 2010, Dan founded the Bionutrient Food Association, which aims is to increase food quality. Today, as regenerative agriculture, with its focus on building soil health, gains ground worldwide, Dan and his association are seen as leaders in the growing movement to produce nutrient dense foods.
Ken Roseboro, editor of The Organic & Non-GMO Report, recently interviewed Dan Kittredge.
Tell me about the Bionutrient Food Association. What led you to start it, and what is its mission?
Dan Kittredge: The BFA was founded in 2010 with a mission to increase quality in the food supply. By quality, I mean flavor, aroma, and nutritive value. I didn’t see any organizations in the broader food movement focusing on nutritional outcomes. That includes movements like organic, permaculture, biodynamics, Slow Food, local, and others. None of them were focusing on nutritional outcomes, even though they all implied that they were. And so BFA was founded as an organization to overtly focus on the nutritional caliber of food. We want to increase the level of nutrition in the food supply—whether it’s peaches, corn, apples, potatoes, beef, or rice—every year.
I saw you’re creating a definition of nutrient density. Tell me about your work with that.
Dan Kittredge: It’s a serious scientific project. We created the term “nutrient density” in 2008 to refer to this variation in nutrient levels, which no one was discussing, and there wasn’t a word for it. We created the term to have a conversation about that spectrum of variation between, for example, the unhealthiest carrot and the most nutritious carrot, the unhealthiest milk and the most nutritious milk. For example, one carrot reaches the 20th percentile of nutrient density. That carrot is not nutrient dense. Another carrot may be 80 and another may be 40. It’s a continuum-based empirical metric.
Then the question is, how do you define that? We’ve pioneered a model with beef first because there are more acres used to produce beef than anything else. Our idea is, if we can give consumers the ability to choose beef that’s at the 80s level of nutrient density, then the higher the nutrient level in the food will correlate with better ecosystem outcomes in beef production. As a result, we can incentivize the regenerative outcomes from an ecosystem’s perspective by providing consumers the ability to choose food that’s more nutritious. We plan to do this with wheat next and then proceed to other crops as well.
How will you determine the nutrient density of beef?
Dan Kittredge: We’re not only looking at minerals, vitamins, enzymes, amino acids, and fatty acids, but also polyphenols, terpenoids, and alkaloids, a broad spectrum of compounds in the meat. We’re also looking at the microbiome of the animal, the nutritional caliber of the fodder, the soil the fodder was grown in, and the management practices to produce the beef. We’re doing a deep dive into all these different components on the farm and collecting all this metadata. Our thought is that we’re going to find patterns where nutritional metrics are present and correlate with these micro biometrics and with soil metrics. We hope to have our preliminary definition of nutrient density with a 1 to 100 scale for beef by the middle of this year.
What kinds of technologies are available to determine the nutrient density of certain foods?
Dan Kittredge: I would say the best nutrient meter that will ever exist is the one God gave you, your nose and tongue. And we each have a built-in nutrient monitoring system, which is very sophisticated. So let’s always remember that the best meter is your body.
We’re attempting to build an externalized meter. For the time being, I tell people that the BRIX refractometer is the best instrument that I’m aware of. If you get a BRIX reading on a carrot, and it says average, it doesn’t matter if it’s organic or local, it’s still not very good. In the future, it should just be an app on your phone so you wouldn’t have to have a separate meter.
Speaking of organic, what kinds of findings have you had with the nutrient density of organic foods?
Dan Kittredge: What we found is that the level of life in the soil is the only thing that correlates with increased nutrition in food. The level of life in the soil does not correlate with organic, permaculture, no-till, regenerative, or local. It’s an integrated series of practices that seems to correlate, not a certification label or individual practices.
A lot of the certification labels are mechanistic reductionist frameworks. They’re not biological systems perspectives. They’re good approximations, but what we understand is that there are some critical environmental conditions. You must have a suite of different microbes present. It’s about the microbes fundamentally because they’re the ones that feed the plant, and if you don’t have air and water in the soil, the microbes will die, and the whole system will stop.
What about educating consumers about the nutrient density of foods? Do you think there will be greater consumer demand as more information about nutrient density comes to light?
Dan Kittredge: Wherever I give talks about this concept, everybody says, “I want a meter to measure nutrient density.” Whenever people hear about it, they get excited. The perspective I have is that people understand that something’s wrong with their food. And if they could know the nutrient density of carrots; for example, if one carrot measures 80 nutrient dense while others measure 40 or 20, most would buy the one measuring 80. My sense is that there’s massive pent-up demand for this. When we have tools that people can use to get nutrient density readings of foods, that idea will spread like wildfire.
As we gain greater knowledge about the nutrient density of foods do you think it will also expose the negative nutrient density of foods treated with pesticides or produced using GMOs or precision fermentation?
Dan Kittredge: It will completely show that you cannot produce high quality food in the presence of toxins. Nutrient density is about the high level of function of the microbiome. Only when you’ve got a really flourishing microbiome, do you get high quality food. And if you use lots of toxins like pesticides, they kill the microbiome. So there’s no way you can have the presence of toxins and nutrients in food.
The fake meat produced using synthetic biology is just junk. It’s so different from real food. If you do nutrient assessments of Impossible Burgers and compare that with beef, it’s just night and day. They’re completely different. That’s why Impossible Burgers are failing in the marketplace; people eat them and feel bad afterwards. Their bodies tell them they’re not good. The spectrometers will expose the lack of nutrient density in those products.
If we stay in harmony with nature, we’ll flourish, but if we go against nature with toxins and GMOs, we’re going to get sick and die.
What is your vision for the future of measuring the nutrient density of foods and defining the nutrient density?
Dan Kittredge: Once we get the science done and the meters built, I believe consumer demand will shift the way that farming is done. Where crops are being produced in a way to produce low levels of nutrients, consumers will stop buying those foods, and where soils are being supported and producing high-quality food, that market will flourish. We will transform agriculture globally, and it will suck the life force out of agribusiness. Farmers will shift their practices, which means they’re going to stop buying the chemicals, and that will drive the chemical companies out of business.
I think we’re going to regreen the planet and reverse desertification, climate change, and chronic disease. The opportunity is to powerfully and positively impact human health, human consciousness, and ecological system function through helping people choose the best food for themselves and their families. And if that correlates to soil health and carbon sequestration, then that’s how we drive the regenerative outcome. The objective is to facilitate the healing of the environment and of humanity.
