Nutrient Dense Food Graphics

So you want to eat more plants. Great! But where should you start?

Different kinds of food have different amounts of the nutrients (vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients, all that jazz). If you are aiming for optimal health, eating a diet rich in a variety of fruits and veg is important. As the following graphic shows, you can focus on fruits, beans, non-starchy veg and green veg to increase the amount of nutrients you are getting in each bite of food.

Here are some more specific details on some fruits…

Caloric Density of Fruit & Veg

Use this information to help you eat the appropriate amount of calories in a day. You can calculate how many calories your body needs with Basal Metabolic Rate Calculator. Common dieting sense holds that “a calorie is a calorie” and “calories in = calories out.” But that doesn’t tell the whole story of nutrition and foods. Whole foods have synergistic effects, meaning that you can’t use simple arithmetic to determine how fruits and veg will benefit your health. The sum is often times greater than the total of its parts.

Most people need to eat between 2000-3000 calories a day. This varies widely depending on your activity level, if you are ill or well, and what kinds of foods you are eating. All of that said, you can at least aim to eat ENOUGH of certain kinds of fruits and veg to ensure both (a) adequate caloric intake and (b) sufficient nutritional intake.

For optimal health (of both you and your gut microbiome) it is best to eat a wide variety of different fruits and vegetables.