Because this week’s Free Newsletter hinted at folate as a health multitasker, I want to share this downloadable handy-dandy 2-page Vitamin B9 Fun Factsheet as a perk for my paid subscribers. And, because pomegranate is a great source of vitamin B9, and pomegranate molasses concentrates all of the nutrients in pomegranate, I’m sharing one of my favorite ways to enjoy pomegranate, a downloadable version of my recipe for Pomegranate Molasses-Glazed Salmon.

📥Just for paid subscribers, your Companion Downloads this week are:

• Vitamin B9 Fun Factsheet - This 2-page PDF guide summarizes all the most important information about what vitamin B9 (folate) does, top food sources, and how much we need for each demographic group. This fun factsheet also explains the difference between natural folates and folic acid!

• Pomegranate Molasses-Glazed Salmon Recipe - A beautifully-designed PDF version of this week’s recipe that you can save or print out, to build your own personalized Nutrivore Cookbook week by week.

For Paid Subscribers

Read more

Key Takeaways

✅Vitamin B9 (aka folate) is one of those multi-tasking essential nutrients that lowers risk of more than a dozen health problems, including lowering inflammatory markers like C-reactive protein.

✅Pomegranates are famous for their polyphenols, but they’re also particularly valuable sources of fiber and vitamin B9, with a notable amount of potassium, too!

✅What matters is how you eat on average over years and decades, so instead of the on-again-off-again diet rollercoaster, I recommended embracing small steps and the best path towards lasting improvements in diet quality. (And I have structured resources to help you take those steps!)

✅For paid subscribers, your companion downloads this week are: Vitamin B9 (Folate) Fun Factsheet & Pomegranate Molasses-Glazed Salmon Recipe. Check your inbox; they’ll be arriving in a separate email (or if you use the Substack app, they’ll be in their own post).

Vitamin B9 (Folate) for Inflammation

🧬Vitamin B9 is also called folate, the generic term that refers to both naturally occurring dietary folates as well as a synthetic version called folic acid, which is used in fortified food and supplements. Like other B vitamins, folate is needed for producing healthy blood cells; it’s also required for healthy cell growth and function, and for making important genetic material like DNA. Folate also supports cardiovascular health, potentially protects against certain cancers, and reduces the risk of cognitive and neurological disorders later in life.

A number of studies have shown a beneficial effect of folate on inflammatory markers. A 2019 systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials found that folic acid supplementation can significantly lower serum levels of C-reactive protein, which is produced by the liver in response to inflammation; this effect was particularly pronounced in women and in patients with type 2 diabetes. A 2021 systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials echoed this finding, showing that compared to placebo, folic acid supplementation could improve inflammation by lowering serum concentrations of C-reactive protein.

Natural food sources of folate include liver and other organ meats, green leafy vegetables (like spinach and lettuce), asparagus, avocados, Brussels sprouts, legumes (including peas and lentils), eggs, beets, citrus fruits, orange juice, strawberries, pomegranates, broccoli, nuts, and seeds.

Learn About Vitamin B9

Want to know the top 25 best food sources of vitamin B9? Learn them here.

Get 17% DV Folate with Pomegranate

🫜Pomegranate is famous for its cholesterol-lowering polyphenols (a 1-cup serving of pomegranate arils delivers a whopping 1241mg of polyphenols), but that’s not the only valuable nutrient you get from pomegranate!

A serving of pomegranate will also give you an impressive 7 grams of fiber, 31% DV copper, 24% DV vitamin K, 17% DV vitamin B9, 13% DV vitamin B5, and 10% DV vitamin B1. (You’ll also get 9% DV potassium, which is impressive considering an extra large banana only gives you 11% DV.) You get roughly 1.5 servings from one 4-inch-diameter pomegranate.

This week’s recipe features pomegranate molasses, made by simmering pomegranate juice down to a thick, sweet and tangy syrup, concentrating both the flavor and the nutrients!

Learn About Pomegranates

Pomegranate is the 384th most nutrient-dense food! Learn the Top 500 Nutrivore Foods here.

Pomegranate Molasses-Glazed Salmon Recipe

🥗 This recipe is truly packed with nutrients thanks to a swath of sneaky nutrilicious ingredients: the sweetening power and polyphenol-filled tang of pomegranate molasses, and the omega-3-packed nutrient bomb of salmon. Mix them all together and you get a bright, sweet, slightly spicy (thanks to the ginger), new favorite in your meal rotation! It’s like a honey garlic sauce, but amped up with a whopping Nutrivore Score of 595!

See the Full Recipe

Add this recipe to your meal plan this week with Real Plans, the official Nutrivore meal planning app!

Nutrivore Mindset Corner

🧠Diet culture and all-or-nothing mentality go hand-in-hand, and the internet is packed with diet challenges that reinforce that perfect-or-bust message. So, it’s easy to believe that if you can’t overhaul your entire diet overnight, there’s no point in trying at all. Or, that if you indulge in a treat or eat something “off plan”, that that somehow wrecks all your progress. But it doesn’t matter how you eat today, or even all this week, what matters is how you eat on average over years and decades. And, the fact is that diet challenges rarely create lasting change. What does? Small steps! That means iterative diet improvements that don’t overwhelm but instead steadily build over time nutrient-dense health-promoting eating patterns that still make room for joy, step by step, so they healthy and balanced eating becomes a lifelong habit that actually sticks.

Small steps may not feel dramatic in the moment, but they compound, and each small step you take is worth feeling proud about. Adding a serving of vegetables to dinner, swapping a sugary snack for a piece of fruit, finding a new bean recipe that you love so it’s easy to eat regularly, or making a nutritious breakfast a daily ritual... these changes might seem insignificant on their own, but each of these small actions adds up to meaningful improvements in diet quality over weeks, months, and years. And that translates to better long-term health.

Sustainable habits are usually built gradually, through small adjustments that become easier and more automatic with practice. Progress doesn’t require perfection—it just requires consistency and the willingness to keep taking the next small step forward. And if you’re looking for a structure program to walk you through those steps, without going on a diet, that’s why I created the Nutrivore90 Online Course.

Instead of chasing quick fixes or rigid rules, Nutrivore90 is designed to help you build a more nutrient-dense way of eating, one manageable habit at a time. Over 90 days, you’ll focus on practical strategies that fit into real life, helping you create eating behaviors that support your health without restriction, guilt, or overwhelm. Because when small steps are repeated consistently, they become something much bigger: a sustainable foundation for lifelong health.

Learn More About Nutrivore90

Helpful Tip of the Week

💡If the thought of de-seeding a pomegranate seems intimidating, here are a few suggestions to help you get out all that goodness! Before you start, remember pomegranates are messy and their ruby-red juice can stain!

One way to remove the seeds is simply to cut the pomegranate in half, scoring each half of the exterior rind four to six times with a sharp knife. Then, hold the pomegranate half seed-side down over a bowl, and smack the rind with a large wooden spoon ejecting the majority of the seeds. Only a few deeply embedded seeds will remain to remove from the pith (spongy white tissue).

Alternatively, you can cut the pomegranate in half, again scoring vertically into several segments and soak it in water for five to ten minutes. If you break the segments apart under water, the seeds will sink to the bottom of the bowl and the pulp will float to the top, making separation easy! Freezing the entire fruit may also makes it easier to separate.

To prepare pomegranate juice directly from the fruit, put the seeds in a blender and pulse to break up the seeds. Wait a few minutes, then pour through a strainer. Fresh pomegranate juice will last up to 5 days stored in the refrigerator but can also be frozen for up to a year.

Learn More

This Week’s Companion Downloads

📥For paid subscribers, your Companion Downloads this week are:

• Vitamin B9 Fun Factsheet - This 2-page PDF guide summarizes all the most important information about what vitamin B9 (folate) does, top food sources, and how much we need for each demographic group.This fun factsheet also explains the difference between natural folates and folic acid!

• Pomegranate Molasses-Glazed Salmon Recipe - A beautifully-designed PDF version of this week’s recipe that you can save or print out, to build your own personalized Nutrivore Cookbook week by week.

Check your inbox for the Companion Downloads arriving in a separate email (or if you use the Substack app, they’ll be in their own post). You can also find them in the archive here. Thank you so much for supporting my work and Nutrivore!

Sincerely,
Dr. Sarah Ballantyne, PhD
Founder of Nutrivore

This article explains the links between pregnancy and fetal development and 13 nutrients that support healthy pregnancy progression, placental function, fetal growth, and infant development—including specific vitamins, minerals, and fatty acids. However, this article is intended for educational purposes only and should not be interpreted as medical advice. Nutrient needs during pregnancy can vary substantially based on factors such as age, genetics, preexisting health conditions, medications, pregnancy complications, dietary restrictions, and whether a pregnancy involves multiples.

In addition, nutrition is only one of many factors that influence pregnancy and fetal outcomes. Access to prenatal care, overall health status, environmental exposures, stress, sleep, physical activity, smoking status, alcohol intake, and socioeconomic factors can all play important roles. A nutrient-dense diet can meaningfully support maternal and fetal health, but it is not a guarantee, a cure, or a moral safeguard. Always discuss significant dietary changes or supplementation during pregnancy with a qualified healthcare provider.

So let’s actually start with risk factors for pregnancy complications, so we can create the appropriate context for the role of nutrition in preventing them.

Risk Factors During Pregnancy

Several factors can increase the risk of complications during pregnancy:

Read more

Because this week’s Free Newsletter talked about Conjugated Linoleic Acid as a really neat naturally-occurring trans fat with anti-inflammatory properties that may be beneficial in rheumatoid arthritis, I want to share a downloadable handy-dandy 1-page summary of Nutrients for Autoimmune Disease as a perk for my paid subscribers. And, because beef (especially grass-fed) is a great source of CLA, I’m sharing one of my favorite ways to enjoy steak while balancing it with fruits, veggies, and phytonutrient-packed herbs, a downloadable version of my recipe for Grilled Peach and Steak Salad.

📥Just for paid subscribers, your Companion Downloads this week are:

• Nutrients for Autoimmune Disease - This 1-pager PDF guide lists all the nutrients that reduce risk of autoimmune diseases along with top food sources, to give you a quick-reference for foods to add if autoimmune disease is a concern for you.

• Grilled Peach and Steak Salad Recipe - A beautifully-designed PDF version of this week’s recipe that you can save or print out, to build your own personalized Nutrivore Cookbook week by week.

For Paid Subscribers

Read more

Key Takeaways

✅Conjugated Linoleic Acid (CLA) is a very special naturally-occurring trans fat with several exciting health benefits, including lowering inflammation in rheumatoid arthritis!

✅Red meat has some valuable nutrition, so it’s good news that the science currently shows neutral to slightly beneficial effects of eating it in moderation.

✅Just because red meat isn’t bad, that doesn’t mean eat as much of it as we want. Below, I discuss the pendulum swing of food labels and how to moderate red meat consumption.

✅For paid subscribers, your companion downloads this week are: Nutrients for Autoimmune Disease and Grilled Peach and Steak Salad. Check your inbox; they’ll be arriving in a separate email (or if you use the Substack app, they’ll be in their own post).

Conjugated Linoleic Acid for Rheumatoid Arthritis

🧬Conjugated linoleic acid, or CLA, is a type of omega-6 polyunsaturated fat that’s technically a trans fat (due to the presence of a double bond in the trans configuration). But contrary to what we might expect, it’s widely known as being health-promoting! CLA exhibits a range of anti-cancer, anti-heart disease, anti-obesity, and anti-diabetes activities, while also serving a beneficial role in immunity and gut health.

Some evidence suggests CLA could benefit rheumatoid arthritis. A 2014 double-blind controlled trial found that CLA, especially when combined with vitamin E, was able to lower markers of inflammation in rheumatoid arthritis patients. And, a small 2016 randomized controlled trial showed that among patients with active rheumatoid arthritis, supplementation with 2 g of CLA daily (in addition to standard treatment) had a positive effect on bone markers, compared to standard treatment alone. Specifically, the CLA led to improved activity of telopeptides C, osteocalcin, and IGF-1! Rodent models of rheumatoid arthritis have also shown a powerful effect of CLA on disease symptoms, including significantly reducing arthritic scores, delaying the onset of arthritis, and reducing markers of inflammation.

The best sources of CLA are meat and dairy products from grass-fed animals—particularly grass-fed beef, grass-fed lamb, butter and cheese from grass-fed dairy, and other full-fat dairy products. Importantly the CLA content of meat and dairy is up to 500% greater when the animals graze on pasture versus eat grain, so while some CLA also exists in grain-fed meat and dairy products, the amount is significantly lower.

Learn About CLA

Want to know the top 25 best food sources of CLA? Learn them here.

Get up to 225 mg CLA with Steak

🥩Steak can definitely fit into a healthy diet! Red meat gets a bad rap, but studies typically quote to demonize red meat often put processed meats and red meat in the same food category. When red meat and processed meats are instead analyzed separately, the stronger association with negative health outcomes is with processed meats, not red meat. For example, a huge 2017 meta-analysis that incorporated data from 123 studies showed that red meat actually slightly decreases risk of coronary heart disease up to intakes of about 65 grams per day (the equivalent of eating four 3.5-ounce (100-gram) servings per week), whereas the risk was higher with any intake of processed meats (and higher for greater intakes of red meat, especially above 1 serving per day). And a 2010 meta-analysis criticized the World Cancer Research Fund for lowering its recommended limit of red meat consumption to 71 grams (2.5 ounces) per day for exactly this reason, the fact that many studies pool red meat and processed meat together, meaning there isn’t a strong scientific underpinning for this recommendation.

Interventional studies, where study participants substitute red meat for something else in their diet and then health outcomes are measured, show that it might not matter how much red meat you consume as long as the rest of your diet is diverse, nutrient-dense, and abundant in vegetables. In fact, a 2019 review of interventional studies concluded that the evidence is not strong enough to recommend reducing red meat consumption at all.

That being said, there’s enough conflicting data on this topic that it is still prudent to moderate red meat consumption (say, sticking with 3 or 4 small servings per week), while making sure we’re eating plenty of vegetables, fruit, legumes, nuts, and seafood.

A 3.5-ounce serving of beef round, tip center steak provides a whopping 187% the daily value of vitamin B12, plus 55% DV selenium, 48% DV zinc, 31% DV vitamin B6, 31% DV vitamin B3, 15% DV choline, 15% DV vitamin B5, 14% DV vitamin B2, 13% DV biotin, 11% DV iron, 3.0 mg of coQ10 and 45 mg of CLA when conventionally-raised (and about 5 times more CLA when grass-fed). In fact, this cut of steak has a Nutrivore Score of 403!

Learn About Steak

Two different steak cuts are the 254th and 292nd most nutrient-dense food! Learn the Top 500 Nutrivore Foods here.

Grilled Peach and Steak Salad Recipe

🥗 The combination of basil and peaches with the hearty beef is the perfect blend of earthy, aromatic, and sweet all in one delicious and filling meal!

Make a double batch of this salad, as I promise you will be wanting leftovers for your lunch all week (add the dressing right before you serve). Also the delicious balsamic vinaigrette is one of my favorites and can be used for just about any salad, as its tangy kick goes well with any kind of salad ingredient: bitter green, sweet fruit, crunchy nut, or garden-fresh vegetable!

See the Full Recipe

Add this recipe to your meal plan this week with Real Plans, the official Nutrivore meal planning app!

Nutrivore Mindset Corner

🧠Whenever I say “red meat is not bad”, someone hears “all I should eat is red meat.” So let’s talk about the pendulum swing of labeling foods as “good” or “bad.”

Red meat was villainized for decades as the cause of heard disease and color cancer, but more recent science points to processed meat as a more likely culprit, along with what often goes along with high-red-meat diets (i.e., low intake of vegetables, inadequate fiber, sedentary lifestyle, and smoking. But just because we want to stop labeling red meat as “terrible”, that doesn’t mean we want the pendulum to swing all the way to “amazing.” Yet, that’s what is happening with certain fad diets right now, which have elevated red meat to near-mythical status, even claiming it can meet all of our nutritional needs on its own (it can’t).

The reality is that red meat is a nutrient-dense food that provides high-quality protein, iron, zinc, and several B vitamins. At the same time, it’s not a complete food—it lacks key nutrients like vitamin C, fiber, and a wide array of phytonutrients that we only get from plant foods. Science shows us that red meat in moderation is neutral or beneficial to our health, and that high intake may increase risk of some health problems. That means red meat can absolutely have a place in a healthy diet, in moderation and as part of a pattern of eating that embraces dietary diversity and includes plenty of fruits, vegetables, legumes, seafood, nuts and seeds.

When we move away from labeling foods as inherently “good” or “bad,” we create space for a more practical and sustainable approach: moderation and context. Instead of asking whether steak is healthy or unhealthy, we can ask how it fits into the overall pattern of what we’re eating. Are we pairing it with a variety of colorful plants? Are we balancing it with other protein sources throughout the week? These questions are far more useful—and far more aligned with long-term health—than trying to categorize a single food as universally beneficial or harmful.

This is the heart of the Nutrivore mindset: nourishment, not judgment. Foods like red meat don’t need to be feared or idolized—they just need to be understood. By stepping off the pendulum and focusing on balance, variety, and nutrient density, we can build a way of eating that supports health without sacrificing flexibility, enjoyment, or common sense.

Learn everything you need to know about the Nutrivore philosophy in my book, Nutrivore: Eat Any Food, Get Every Nutrient, and Transform Your Health!

Grab a Copy!

Helpful Tip of the Week

💡If you’re looking to moderate red meat while still enjoying satisfying, nutrient-dense meals, a simple strategy is to make targeted swaps in familiar recipes. For example, you can swap ground beef for ground chicken or turkey in tacos, chili, or pasta sauces, or use textured vegetable protein (TVP), tempeh, or plant-based ground meats as alternatives. Another easy option is a half-and-half approach—replace half the ground beef with lentils in dishes like Bolognese or sloppy joes to boost fiber and nutrient diversity without sacrificing texture or flavor. For whole cuts, try rotating in chicken thighs, pork, or seafood like salmon or shrimp, depending on the dish. And for sandwiches or quick lunches, consider swapping deli meats for options like leftover roasted chicken, tuna salad, egg salad, hummus, or bean-based spreads to reduce reliance on processed meats while still keeping things convenient. And of course, opting for vegetarian recipes for some of your meals, like enjoying Meatless Mondays, can be a great way to both up your intake of health-promoting plant proteins while moderating red meat.

Another helpful approach is to think in terms of meal building rather than ingredient elimination. If you’re having steak, consider making it one component of a more balanced plate, so you can opt for a smaller serving while pairing it with roasted vegetables, a hearty salad, and/or a legume-based side dish. (My recipe for Grilled Peach and Steak Salad above is a great example!) This keeps red meat in your diet while naturally increasing the variety of nutrients you’re getting from other foods.

This is also exactly what we practice in Nutrivore90. The goal isn’t to cut out foods like red meat, but to build eating patterns where they fit into a broader, nutrient-dense framework. By focusing on balance, variety, and adding in foundational foods, Nutrivore90 helps you move away from all-or-nothing thinking and toward a way of eating that supports health, flexibility, and long-term sustainability.

Learn More

This Week’s Companion Downloads

📥For paid subscribers, your Companion Downloads this week are:

• Nutrients for Autoimmune Disease - This 1-pager PDF guide lists all the nutrients that reduce risk of autoimmune diseases along with top food sources, to give you a quick-reference for foods to add if autoimmune disease is a concern for you.

• Grilled Peach and Steak Salad Recipe - A beautifully-designed PDF version of this week’s recipe that you can save or print out, to build your own personalized Nutrivore Cookbook week by week.

Check your inbox for the Companion Downloads arriving in a separate email (or if you use the Substack app, they’ll be in their own post). You can also find them in the archive here. Thank you so much for supporting my work and Nutrivore!

Sincerely,
Dr. Sarah Ballantyne, PhD
Founder of Nutrivore

Despite its name, vitamin D is actually a group of fat-soluble steroid hormones rather than a true vitamin (since vitamins are defined as nutrients that must be obtained from food and can’t be synthesized by the body, which isn’t the case for vitamin D!). In humans, the most important forms are vitamin D3 (also called cholecalciferol) and vitamin D2 (also called ergocalciferol).

Fascinatingly, vitamin D is believed to be the oldest hormone on earth—having existed for at least 750 million years, when phytoplankton in the ocean began producing it in reaction to sunlight exposure. Although we don’t know exactly why it first developed, it’s likely that vitamin D helped in the evolutionary transition from water to land by allowing organisms to utilize calcium and develop skeletons.

As with some other vitamins (like vitamin A, vitamin B1, and vitamin C), the discovery of vitamin D ultimately came about from trying to cure its deficiency disease! Medical writings from the early Romans and Greeks describe the bone condition we now call rickets (caused by vitamin D deficiency), and when the Industrial Revolution arrived, rickets became more and more widespread due to dietary changes and people spending increasingly less time outdoors. For centuries, physicians tried to find a cure for this mysterious disease, with attempts ranging from painful failures (such as cauterizing veins) to successes (prescribing cod liver oil). Vitamin D was finally identified as the “fourth vitamin” in 1919, and named vitamin D a few years later (owing to the custom of naming vitamins in alphabetical order, with vitamin D following C). It took many more decades before scientists began understanding its metabolism and role in maintaining calcium and phosphate levels.

Vitamin D is important for the intestinal uptake of several other nutrients (including calcium, magnesium, and phosphorus); it’s also essential for cellular differentiation, bone density, immune function, endocrine health, and cardiovascular health.

Food sources of vitamin D include fatty fish (like salmon, mackerel, sardines, and herring), fish eggs (roe), liver, red meat, and egg yolks. Mushrooms grown under UV exposure are the only substantial non-animal-food source of naturally occurring vitamin D (mostly in the form of vitamin D2); grown under the same conditions, baker’s yeast can also produce vitamin D2. And, in some countries (including the US), a number of foods that don’t naturally contain vitamin D are fortified with it, such as store-bought orange juice, cereals, some dairy products, and plant-based milks.

This article explains the biological roles of vitamin D, the interactions between dietary vitamin D and our risk of 10 categories of health problems (encompassing more than two dozen health conditions), symptoms and signs that our levels of vitamin D are too low, how much vitamin D we need by demographic (and how much is too much), and shares the top 25 best common food sources of vitamin D.

Paid subscribers also can download a printer-friendly PDF version of this information below!

The Biological Roles of Vitamin D

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Because this week’s Free Newsletter included a focus on some of the beneficial phytonutrients in cucumber and why “eating the rainbow” is such a great strategy, I want to share this downloadable handy-dandy 1-page summary of the Phytonutrients in White & Brown Foods as a perk for my paid subscribers. And, to make it easier to eat more cucumber, I’m sharing one of my favorite ways to enjoy it, a downloadable version of my recipe for Simple Cucumber Salad.

📥Just for paid subscribers, your Companion Downloads this week are:

• Phytonutrients in White & Brown Foods - This 1-pager PDF guide summarizes the phytonutrients that give white and brown fruits, vegetables, legumes and whole grains their distinctive colors and health benefits.

• Simple Cucumber Salad Recipe - A beautifully-designed PDF version of this week’s recipe that you can save or print out, to build your own personalized Nutrivore Cookbook week by week.

For Paid Subscribers

Read more

Key Takeaways

✅Lignan polyphenols show amazing potential for hormone-associated cancers (breast cancer, ovarian cancer, prostate cancer, and uterine cancer) treatment and prevention.

✅Even though they’re 95% water, cucumbers deliver a good amount of vitamin K and a wide range of beneficial phytonutrients, including cucurbitacin terpenoids and lignan polyphenols!

✅If upping your fruits and vegetables is intimidating, try focusing on “eating the rainbow” instead. You’ll get more benefit for the same amount of fruits and veggies, plus you might find it easier to hit your serving goals!

✅For paid subscribers, your companion downloads this week are: Phytonutrients in White & Brown Foods and Simple Cucumber Salad. Check your inbox; they’ll be arriving in a separate email (or if you use the Substack app, they’ll be in their own post).

Lignan Polyphenols for Hormone-Related Cancers

🧬Lignans are a fiber-associated polyphenolic compounds that plants produce to help defend against getting eaten by herbivores. In humans, after the consumption of lignan precursors, intestinal bacteria convert them into enterolignans called enterodiol and enterolactone which can mimic some behaviors of estrogens in ways that are beneficial for our health.

Enterolignans been shown to help normalize blood lipid levels, reduce high blood pressure, exert antioxidant activity, and act as antioxidants. Although more research is needed to know for sure, enterolignans have the potential to protect against hormone-associated cancers (breast cancer, ovarian cancer, prostate cancer, and uterine cancer) by blocking the action of true estrogens.

In vitro experiments show that enterodiol and enterolactone are able to inhibit the growth of human colon cancer cells, while enterolactone (but not enterodiol) inhibits the proliferation of breast cancer cells; these protective effects may be due to competition with estrogen for the type II estrogen receptor, the induction of sex hormone binding globulin, the inhibition of placental aromatase, or antioxidant activity. In ovarian cancer, enterolactone exhibits stronger anti-cancer effects than enterodiol, including suppressing tumor growth. In addition, lower levels of enterolactone have been found in patients with breast cancer, suggesting a potentially anti-carcinogenic role, although more research is needed in humans to assess cause and effect. Additionally, enterolactone was used in rats to reduce the size of mammary tumors, which could potentially target the initial phase of breast cancer, and prevent further disease progression at the earliest stages.

Further human studies are necessary to develop these promising results, but it is safe to say that we have only scratched the surface on the potential health benefits of lignan polyphenols! Lignan polyphenols are found in seeds (especially flaxseed and sesame seeds), zucchini, cucumber, pumpkin, broccoli, soybeans, kale, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, strawberries, blackberries, cranberries, black currants, apricots, carrots, bran (oat, wheat, and barley), and cinnamon.

Learn About Polyphenols

Want to know the top 25 best food sources of polyphenols? Learn them here.

Get 25 mg Polyphenols with Cucumber

🥒Nutritionally, cucumber has an incredibly high-water content (95% water!) and at least small or trace amounts of most vitamins and minerals. One cup of sliced cucumber (with the peel), contains only 16 calories while providing 0.5 grams of fiber, 14% DV for vitamin K, and 5% DV for vitamin B5 (pantothenic acid) and copper.

The most important nutritional value of cucumber comes from its phytonutrient content. Most notably, cucumbers contain cucurbitacin terpenoids, which are different from other terpenoids owing to their high degree of unsaturation and chemical composition. In addition, cucumbers are also rich in tannins and phytosterols. Cucumbers contain lignan polyphenols, predominantly lariciresinol, and to a lesser extent pinoresinol and secoisolariciresinol; plus, small amounts of flavonoids including cucumerin, kaempferol, and quercetin.

In fact, cucumbers are the perfect example of a vegetable that looks boring on paper (with all those low daily value percentages of vitamins and minerals), but that still offer some potentially exciting health benefits thanks to their phytonutrients, of which scientific research has only just barely scratched the surface!

Learn About Cucumbers

Cucumber is the 251st most nutrient-dense food! Learn the Top 500 Nutrivore Foods here.

Simple Cucumber Salad Recipe

🥗 This refreshing salad is not only nutritious, but it’s also very versatile! It’s delicious beside any protein—from poached fish or chicken kebabs, to grilled lamb chops. It keeps very well so it can be made ahead or you can double the batch to have some tasty leftovers the next day. And, it has a perfect flavor to bring to a barbecue! Feel free to get creating with the fresh herbs and make this one your own!

See the Full Recipe

Add this recipe to your meal plan this week with Real Plans, the official Nutrivore meal planning app!

Nutrivore Mindset Corner

🧠If you struggle to eat enough fruits and vegetables, try shifting your focus from quantity to variety. Instead of asking, “Did I eat enough produce today?” ask, “How many different colors did I eat?” There are five color families when it comes to “eating the rainbow”: red, orange and yellow, green, blue and purple, and white and brown. And shifting our mindset to thinking in terms of “eating the rainbow” can make building a nutrient-dense diet feel more approachable and even a little fun. Plus, studies show that people who eat a wider diversity of fruits and vegetables also tend to eat more of them, so this mindset shift may be the key to actually achieving your serving goals!

Studies show that 42% of health outcomes are positively influenced by color-associated pigments (i.e., classes of phytonutrients) in fruits and vegetables. These benefits included improvements in weight management, cholesterol levels, inflammation, heart disease, diabetes risk, cancer risk, and overall mortality. Because different phytonutrients benefit our health in different ways, we have the most health benefits when we eat the full range of them, practically achieved by “eating the rainbow”. And importantly, these are benefits above and beyond total fruit and vegetable intake—meaning, you get more benefit from the same amount of fruits and vegetables if those fruits and veggies are different colors!

You can count every part of the plant that you eat, so some fruits and vegetables count in multiple color families. For example, cucumber (if you eat the peel) counts in both the green color family and the white and brown color family! So, eating the rainbow is easier than you think! And remember, all plant foods count. While most of your color diversity will come from fruits and vegetables, other plant foods like legumes, whole grains, nuts, seeds, herbs, and spices also contribute valuable nutrients and phytonutrients—even if most of them fall in the white and brown color family. (Just because it’s less vibrant than the other color families, that doesn’t mean the white and brown color family is any less important!)

Thinking in terms of the rainbow encourages a more abundant, inclusive approach to food, helping you build a more nutrient-dense, satisfying diet without rigid rules or restriction.

Learn everything you need to know about the Nutrivore philosophy in my book, Nutrivore: Eat Any Food, Get Every Nutrient, and Transform Your Health!

Grab a Copy!

Helpful Tip of the Week

💡Cucumber is a warm season plant and has a long growing time, so you can find them at your local farmers’ market in late summer. Otherwise, they are so widely-cultivated that you can pick them up year-round at any grocery store.

When choosing cucumbers, look for uniformly dark green, firm cucumbers (no wrinkles!), without soft spots or blemishes. Look for cucumbers with rounded ends. If the cucumber has a bulge in the middle, it may indicate there is a large pocket of seeds in the fruit so it’s best to avoid. In general, larger cucumbers have more seeds – so look for smaller, thinner cucumbers.

After bringing cucumbers home, store wrapped in a moist towel in the fridge. They taste best when eaten soon after picked but if you don’t have access to fresh-from-the-vine cukes, they should last for about a week in the fridge, without being cut. However, the sooner you eat them, the better they will taste! After the cucumber has been cut, make sure to wrap the remainder tightly in plastic wrap and in general, make sure to keep them away from other fruits like tomatoes, bananas, and melons as they tend to be sensitive to the ethylene gas they give off.

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This Week’s Companion Downloads

📥For paid subscribers, your Companion Downloads this week are:

• Phytonutrients in White & Brown Foods - This 1-pager PDF guide summarizes the phytonutrients that give white and brown fruits, vegetables, legumes and whole grains their distinctive colors and health benefits.

• Simple Cucumber Salad Recipe - A beautifully-designed PDF version of this week’s recipe that you can save or print out, to build your own personalized Nutrivore Cookbook week by week.

Check your inbox for the Companion Downloads arriving in a separate email (or if you use the Substack app, they’ll be in their own post). You can also find them in the archive here. Thank you so much for supporting my work and Nutrivore!

Sincerely,
Dr. Sarah Ballantyne, PhD
Founder of Nutrivore

Osteopenia and osteoporosis develop when the rate of bone loss surpasses the rate of bone formation, leading to a reduction in bone density and quality. Often referred to as a “silent disease,” osteoporosis typically progresses without symptoms until a fracture occurs, commonly in the hip, wrist, or spine. These fractures can significantly impact mobility, independence, and quality of life, particularly in older adults.

Osteoporosis is a major public health concern in the United States, particularly among older adults. According to the National Osteoporosis Foundation (NOF), approximately 10 million Americans have osteoporosis, and another 44 million have low bone density, placing them at increased risk for the disease. Women are disproportionately affected, with around 80% of osteoporosis cases occurring in females, primarily due to hormonal changes after menopause that accelerate bone loss. Men are also affected, particularly in later life, though their risk tends to develop more gradually.

Hip fractures, often a consequence of osteoporosis, are especially concerning, as they can lead to significant disability and even mortality in older populations. Within the first year after a hip fracture, mortality rates range from 20% to 30%, highlighting the seriousness of this condition.

This article explains the links between bone health and 13 different nutrients (10 that reduce risk of osteoporosis and bone fracture, and 3 that getting too much increases risk of osteoporosis and bone fracture)—including specific vitamins, minerals, and amino acids. It’s important to clarify that while nutrient-dense eating can meaningfully support bone health and bone mineral density—and in some cases help reverse osteopenia and osteoporosis—the primary focus of this article is on nutrients associated with reducing the risk of developing low-mineral-density and fragile bones in the first place and supporting overall skeletal health.

In addition, bone health is influenced by many factors beyond food alone, including genetics, age, gender, ethnicity, hormones, hydration, physical activity, smoking status, alcohol intake and certain medications. A nutrient-rich diet can improve health outcomes including reducing risk of osteopenia, osteoporosis and bone fracture, but it is not a guarantee, a cure, or a moral safeguard.

So, let’s actually start with causes of and risk factors for headaches, to create the appropriate context for our review of the nutrients that lower severity and occurrence.

Causes and Risk Factors of Osteoporosis and Bone Fracture

Read more

So, is it actually true that Blue Zones are fake? Spoiler: no. But, there’s a lot to this story, so let’s start at the beginning…

The Beginnings of “Blue Zones”

To understand why the claim that Blue Zones don’t really exist is so compelling—and why it’s controversial—we need to go back to how Blue Zones were first discovered.

Dr. Giovanni Pes is a medical researcher, epidemiologist and native Sardinian who became interested in longevity research in the 1990s because many members of his own family were very long lived, including his great grand-uncle who lived to 110. In 1996, he started collecting mortality data in Sardinia and discovered a region of the island with a 30% higher concentration of centenarians (people 100 years or older) compared to the rest of Sardinia. Most fascinatingly, there was almost no gender gap, which was surprising because, in general, females are about 5 times more likely to live to 100 than males. Had Dr. Pes just discovered a longevity hotspot?

Dr. Pes presented his findings at a conference in France in 1999, and… no one believed him.

To give you a little more context here, before the identification of the first modern Blue Zone in Sardinia, interest in exceptional human longevity was already sparked by earlier reports of so-called “longevity hotspots,” most notably Vilcabamba, a remote valley in Ecuador that gained international attention following a 1973 National Geographic article. Early accounts described unusually high numbers of centenarians, often attributing their longevity to factors like mineral-rich water, simple diets, and low-stress lifestyles. Later demographic analyses showed that these longevity claims were largely the result of inaccurate age reporting, missing records, and inconsistencies in documentation rather than true exceptional lifespan. It seems as though most of the supposed centenarians were exaggerating their age. Examinations of other rumored longevity hotspots also found them to be either incorrect or impossible to verify due to insufficient documentation. So, when Dr. Pes gave his presentation at that conference in 1999, it was a time when most researchers were skeptical that any such region existed.

Dr. Pes shared in a talk at the 2018 Global Wellness Summit that, after his presentation was met with incredulity, he thought his scientific career was over. Someone at that conference even told him that he should give his presentation in a nuraghe—stone ruins found throughout Sardinia—implying that his career was in ruins. Ouch!

Serendipitously however, Dr. Michel Poulain, a Belgian gerontological demographer, was also at the conference. During a coffee break, Dr. Poulain joined a small group of researchers who were all discussing their serious doubts about Dr. Pes’s findings. Because Dr. Poulain was an expert in age validation, this group of researchers suggested he go to Sardinia and check the documents to verify the veracity of Dr. Pes’ claims. And so, he did! This started a nearly 20-year-long collaboration between Dr. Pes and Dr. Poulain.

The history of false positives and failed validation efforts ultimately set the stage for a more rigorous, documentation-driven approach to identifying true longevity clusters—including the work of Dr. Pes and Dr. Poulain in Sardinia. In the spring of 2000, they spent 6 months visiting about 40 municipalities in two regions of Sardinia, Ogliastra and Barbagia, methodically and rigorously checking and cross-checking archival documentation and interviewing dozens of centenarians. Eventually, Dr. Poulain was convinced that this area of Sardinia did indeed exhibit extraordinary longevity, and confirmed that the probability of reaching 100 year old was about double compared to the rest of Sardinia.

As Dr. Pes and Dr. Poulain worked to verify the age claims of centenarians in Sardinia, they made a mark on a map with a blue pen every time they confirmed someone’s age. As the work developed, some parts of the map became full of blue dots—areas they began to refer to as “Blue Zones.”

Yes, we have the ubiquity of blue pens to thank for the term Blue Zone!

A Blue Zone is defined as a geographically and temporally distinct area where there is a higher proportion of long-lived people—nonagenarians, centenarians and supercentenarians, i.e., people living into their 90s, 100s and even 110 years old or older—compared to the surrounding area and the rest of the country to which the Blue Zone belongs. So, these are areas of the world where people have a higher likelihood of living to extreme old age. Importantly, these regions are defined not just by a higher proportion of people reaching advanced ages, but also by the fact that many of those individuals maintain relatively good health and functional independence well into late life. So, Blue Zones give researchers an opportunity to study the genetic, diet, lifestyle, and environmental factors that can help us live not just longer lives but also healthier lives. We’ll come back to the insight they’ve gleaned so far…

While Drs. Pes and Poulain were undergoing their rigorous age validation procedures in Sardinia, on the other side of the world, journalist Dan Buettner was in Okinawa on the invite of the Japanese Government, working on a story about the world’s longest lived people for National Geographic. (The longevity of Okinawans was well established at the time.) This work and a grant from the National Institute on Aging brought Mr. Buettner into the same sphere as Dr. Pes and Dr. Poulain. So, Dan Buettner ended up also going to Sardinia to do research for his Nat Geo story, and because his editor at National Geographic also really wanted a location in the US to be featured, Mr. Buettner also went to Loma Linda, California—a community of Seventh-day Adventists purported to live an average of 7 to 10 years longer than the rest of America.

In 2004, Dr. Poulain, Dr. Pes, and their research team published their findings in a landmark paper in the journal Experimental Gerontology, which coined the term Blue Zone for a scientific audience. And in 2005, Dan Buettner published “The Secrets of Long Life” cover story for National Geographic, where he wrote about following a day in the lives of three elders in Sardinia, Okinawa, and Loma Linda. And this is what brought the idea of Blue Zones to a wider audience.

Dr. Pes, Dr. Poulain, and Mr. Buettner then joined forces, and worked together to identify and validate additional Blue Zones. They investigated multiple regions believed to contain unusually high concentrations of centenarians, with expeditions typically taking a whole year. In some areas—such as Vilcabamba, Ecuador, or the Greek island of Crete—evidence for unusual longevity was lacking. But robust data supported the longevity hotspot claim for two additional regions: the peninsula of Nicoya in Costa Rica in 2007, and the island of Ikaria in Greece in 2008.

Dr. Poulain audited records and verified ages to determine whether unusually high longevity was truly present in each location. Dr. Pes worked to identify the dietary, behavioral, and environmental patterns associated with long life in these communities. And Dan Buettner led the expeditions—raising funds, coordinating fieldwork, and overseeing a team of writers, photographers, and support staff. Dan Buettner was also clearly the business man and the Blue Zone hype man, which helped him to get funding to accelerate this research, but also eventually opened it up for criticism.

Before we get to the controversy however, let’s summarize the (sometimes conflicting) takeaways from a couple of decades of Blue Zone research…

Lessons from Blue Zones: Genetics vs. Lifestyle

Once Blue Zones were identified and validated, the next obvious question was: what explains them? And what, if anything, can we learn from them to live longer, healthier lives?

Interestingly, Blue Zones seem to be somewhat dynamic, i.e., temporally defined in addition to geographically defined. For example, the Blue Zone in Nicoya, Costa Rica is shrinking, with a 2023 study showing that, while Nicoyan men born in 1905 have 33% lower mortality rates than the rest of the country, those born in 1945 actually have 10% higher rates, so they’re no longer living such unusually long lives. A similar 2024 study of the Okinawan Blue Zone shows that, while the older generations still experience significant longevity benefits, the younger generations show higher mortality rates compared to mainland Japan. On the flip side, new Blue Zones may emerge. There’s preliminary evidence for possible Blue Zones in The Netherlands (here) and China (here), and Dr. Poulain added the Caribbean Island of Martinique to his list of Blue Zones in 2019 (here).

Importantly, the temporal nature of Blue Zones does not invalidate their existence. Instead, their ebb and flow gives researchers even more data to look at to identify what factors contribute to exceptional longevity, because they can look at what changes lead to a shorter lifespan in one area, versus areas where longer lifespans are more stable, helping to tease out whether people live longer in these areas because of their genetics or because of their diet, lifestyle and environment.

Dr. Pes, Dr. Poulain, and other Blue Zone researchers have had two main hypotheses to explain the exceptional longevity that they observed in the Ogliastra region of Sardinia: 1) stabilization of rare gene variants associated with extended lifespans, thanks to the population being isolated; and 2) also thanks to geographic isolation, the preservation of specific “sociocultural and anthropological characteristics,” meaning, diet, lifestyle and environmental factors that extend lifespan.

When Blue Zone research began, it was believed that lifespan is about 20% determined by our genetics and 80% determined by everything else, thanks to a quite famous study of Danish twins published in 1996. More recent analyses of this same data set and other twin studies show our lifespan is about 50% determined by genetics.

So, the question is: Do people in Blue Zones just have better genes?

The answer is probably not. So far, more than two decades worth of research into Blue Zones, including Sardinia, have failed to show a concentration of longevity genes. It could be that the relevant genetic variants just haven’t been discovered yet, or that the explanation is epigenetic rather than genetic. But also, the lack of evidence supporting the first hypothesis strengthens the evidence for the second hypothesis, that the main contribution to extreme long life in Blue Zones is that these areas have so far succeeded in maintaining a traditional lifestyle. This includes a high level of physical activity that extends beyond the age of 80, low levels of stress, getting enough sleep, very high family and community support, and diets composed almost exclusively of locally-produced whole foods.

And exploration of this second hypothesis has definitely turned up quite a lot of supporting data that aligns well with what other medical research and nutritional sciences tell us about a healthy diet, lifestyle and social and physical environment. And that’s exciting because it means that there’s things that we can all do to live like people do in Blue Zones, as well as broader public health policies and structural supports—like improving affordability of whole foods and access to safe environments for physical activity—that could be put in place, to extend our lifespan and healthspan.

So, what are the action items from Blue Zone research, the things we can focus on as individuals to improve our health and lengthen our lives? This is where the story gets more complicated because the answer to that question depends on who you ask!

Let’s start with Dan Buettner’s list, which he has trademarked and published in his books. To create this list, Mr. Buettner says he did a “deep-dive literature review,” interviewed 105 experts, and over 400 centenarians. He calls them The Power 9: Secrets to Living Life Longer, Better. They are:

1. Move Naturally. Blue Zone residents live lifestyles that make movement a normal part of their day, throughout the day.

2. Purpose. Blue Zone residents have a sense of purpose that gives them a reason to keep going.

3. Downshift. Blue Zone residents have habits that allow them to relax on a regular basis, and get plenty of sleep.

4. 80% Rule for Moderate Eating. This one is really about avoiding excess calories, summarized as eating three meals per day, a bigger breakfast and a lighter dinner, and no snacking.

5. The Plant Slant. Mr. Buettner says that Blue Zone residents eat a mostly vegetarian diet, with beans or other plant proteins daily, meat once a week or less and fish about three times per week. (This is not agreed upon by all Blue Zone researchers, see below.)

6. Moderate Alcohol Consumption. Residents of many Blue Zones have one to two glasses of wine daily. (Don’t get excited about this one, see below.)

7. Right Tribe. Blue Zone residents often are part of an intentional social circle of friends who not only share their lifestyle but also serve as a support system.

8. Loved Ones First. Blue Zone residents have strong family ties.

9. Belong. Mr. Buettner says that nearly all the Blue Zone residents are part of a faith community, and while the particular faith does not matter, participation in it does. (This is not agreed upon by all Blue Zone researchers, see below.)

One of the ongoing criticisms of Blue Zones is that the Power 9 appears to be influenced by Dan Buettner’s ideology, and isn’t fully representative of what people eat and how they live across Blue Zones. So, it’s important to emphasize that the Power 9 has not been formally tested or established through peer-reviewed research as a unified, evidence-based framework.

In fact, Dr. Michel Poulain disagrees with some of the Power 9 action items and interprets the data for others a little differently. For example, he says that “‘Plant Slant’… is not consistently prominent in Blue Zones.” Instead, he sees systems where people avoid over eating. Similarly he says that “‘Wine@5’, which encourages moderate alcohol consumption, may not fully align with Blue Zone science.” Nor does the recommendation to drink wine daily agree with current research, which shows that the healthiest amount of alcohol to consume is none.

So, Dr. Poulain’s Seven Principles of Blue Zones are:

1. Move Naturally

2. Eat Wisely—which emphasizes stopping when 80% full, eating mostly whole foods, and lots of fruits and veggies that are seasonal and local.

3. Avoid Stress & Get plenty of Sleep

4. Keep Strong Family Ties

5. Stimulate Strong Community Support—not necessarily faith based

6. Respect For the Planet

7. Having a Purpose in Life

There are certainly more similarities than differences between these two lists, but those differences do matter! And while the Power 9 gets more airtime, Dr. Poulain’s Seven Principles have a higher degree of overlap with the seven Lifestyle Medicine pillars proposed by Stanford University and the six pillars of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine. I also want to add that what’s missing from both of these lists but other Blue Zone researchers have documented is the importance of smoking cessation and not abusing substances.

Focusing on the areas of agreement, these research-backed takeaways from Blue Zones are consistent with broader evidence in public health and lifestyle medicine—live an active lifestyle, eat mainly whole foods including plenty of fruits and veggies, get enough sleep, manage stress, and nurture social connection and community. Those areas of disagreement—the gap between the science and the storytelling—hint at a divide that grew among the key players in this story. That’s right—long before the famous (or infamous) critique of Blue Zones took hold, the tension was already building…

How the Business of Blue Zones Broke Up the Band

This brings us to an important part of the story, because as Blue Zones gained popularity, they became big business. And the fact is that Dan Buettner has profited from the concept.

Mr. Buettner trademarked the term “Blue Zone” in the United States in 2005, saying in an interview “People were already starting to use the term ‘Blue Zones’ in terrible ways. To promote beef and sweetened drinks, for example. Unless you protect the term, anybody can use it in the way they want.”

Dan Buettner has written ten books about the Blue Zones and their cuisines (5 of which are New York Times bestsellers); founded a multi-million dollar company, Blue Zones, LLC, which he sold in 2020 to Adventist Health but is still a consultant for; produced the Netflix series Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones, which came out in 2023; offers Blue Zone cooking courses (including a recorded online course that you can buy for $149); and regularly speaks at high-level events. The booking website KeySpeakers.com lists his speaker’s fee as between $75,000 and $125,000.

There are now many Blue Zone branded products for sale on BlueZones.com, including skin care products, coffee, herbal tea, honey, hot sauce, and frozen dinners (which are $14 each, and most of them are under 300 calories worth of food). You’ve also got Blue Zones Health which combines nutrition, health coaching, and primary care medicine, and which journalist Paul von Zielbauer discovered that several of the testimonials on the Blue Zones Health website are using a stock photos.

And the biggest ticket item, municipalities can work with Blue Zones, LLC to become a certified Blue Zone Community. This is a years long process where municipalities commit to reshaping their cities according to Blue Zone principles, like deterring driving while incentivizing walking, encouraging people to participate in more social activities, and promoting moderate consumption of meat and alcohol. The certification cost the City of Riverside, CA more than $20 million (as per here). Although, they did project they’d get $468 million in cumulative projected value, so hopefully they feel that it was worth it. Fort Worth, Texas is the largest US city to be a certified Blue Zone Community—among the “well-being improvements” the city experienced in its first four years after certification are fewer residents smoking (mirroring national trends) and more residents being active at least three times per week (also mirroring national trends).

So yes, Blue Zones became big business. And that didn’t sit well with Dr. Michel Poulain. Dr. Poulain has said that he had no idea that Mr. Buettner had trademarked the term Blue Zone, and was dismayed when he finally learned about the large fees Dan Buettner was charging.

With the collaboration already strained, the breaking point came when Chanel (yes, that Chanel) launched an antiaging skincare product in 2017 called Blue Serum, marketed as containing active ingredients from the Blue Zones, specifically: “green coffee from Costa Rica, olives from Sardinia, and mastic from Greece.”

Dan Buettner didn’t approve (this was way before the partnership between Blue Zones, LLC and Immunocologie on a skin care line, which was announced in 2024), so he requested that Chanel stop using the term Blue Zone. When Chanel declined to change the product branding and marketing, Mr. Buettner started legal proceedings and asked Dr. Poulain to testify.

The lawsuit was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Dr. Poulain said he was so frustrated that he not only refused to testify, he walked away from the decade-plus long collaboration with Dan Buettner. I also gather Chanel won the lawsuit, because Blue Serum is still for sale on Amazon with Blue Zone-related marketing language on its packaging.

The upshot was that Dr. Pes, Dr. Poulain and Mr. Buettner each went their separate ways. In fact, Dan Buettner basically edited Dr. Poulain out of the Netflix series Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones, with Dr. Poulain saying in one interview “I don’t appear, just at one moment you can see me from afar.” And for his part, Dr. Poulain has continued to be critical of the ways that Dan Buettner and Blue Zones, LLC is profiting from the academic research of Blue Zones. In a 2025 peer-reviewed article, Dr. Poulain stated “While researchers have pursued their rigorous age validation methodology recently applied to Martinique and South Galicia, and studied factors that contribute to exceptional longevity, Blue Zones, LLC, the company that initiated the Blue Zone projects in the US, has moved in a lucrative business direction by branding various services and goods labeled as Blue Zone products.” Yes, all signs point to a nasty break up.

This is why there are now two different “official” Blue Zones websites, each with its own “official” list of Blue Zones (which don’t match each other). One website is owned by Blue Zones, LLC (which operates a cluster of interconnected websites like BlueZonesHealth.com and BlueZonesKitchen.com) and reflects Dan Buettner’s views. The other website is owned by Dr. Poulain, who also recently founded a nonprofit organization called Living Blue Zone International. There are four Blue Zones that appear on both “official” lists: Sardinia, Okinawa, Nicoya, and Ikaria. They disagree on Loma Linda, Martinique, and Singapore.

Dr Poulain has said that he has never considered Loma Linda to be a true Blue Zone, instead viewing it as a religious community defined by shared lifestyle practices rather than a geographically distinct population exhibiting unusual longevity patterns. Unlike the other Blue Zones—which were identified through demographic analysis of entire populations—Loma Linda represents a self-selected group of Seventh-day Adventists whose longer lifespans are largely consistent with well-established health behaviors, such as not smoking, avoiding alcohol, maintaining strong social ties, and following a plant-forward diet. From a demographer’s perspective, this makes Loma Linda fundamentally different: it reflects the health outcomes of a specific lifestyle cohort, rather than a population-level longevity phenomenon emerging from a place itself. And Dan Buettner has said that he added Loma Linda to the 2005 National Geographic piece and his list of Blue Zones online because his editor wanted him to include a place in the U.S., and quote “I never bothered to delist it.” Also remember that Dan Buettner sold Blue Zones, LLC to Adventist Health in 2020, so there may be some other factors going into why Loma Linda is still listed as a Blue Zone on Dan Buettner’s website.

Dr. Poulain added the Caribbean island of Martinique to his list of Blue Zones in 2019. Dan Buettner says that he can’t comment on it since he wasn’t involved in that validation process. And Dan Buettner has added Singapore to his list as his “sixth Blue Zone”, but Dr. Poulain has expressed skepticism, saying that he thinks Dan Buettner has been “obliged to find a new story” to keep growing the business of Blue Zones.

Here’s the most important part though… as the business of Blue Zones strays from the science of Blue Zones, it has opened up the entire concept to criticism.

Of course, this criticism isn’t coming only from outside scientists. Dr. Poulain has also raised concerns about how Blue Zones have been translated into commercial and public health initiatives, particularly by Blue Zones, LLC. In a 2025 peer-reviewed article, he describes how Blue Zones projects have evolved into a lifestyle brand and criticizes them as neoliberal initiatives focused on self-responsibility that “overlook health disparities related to poverty, unemployment, education, and other social factors,” and that “lack direct connections to the health care sector but focus on promoting lifestyle without consistently providing medical evidence.” Oof.

And this is where we get to the heart of the controversy, the critique written by Dr. Saul Newman, which argues that the claims of exceptional longevity in Blue Zones are better explained by data errors and documentation failures than by true demographic patterns.

Dr. Saul Newman’s Critique and Ig Nobel Prize

As Blue Zones became more commercialized, they also attracted more scrutiny—from both journalists and scientists.

In 2019, Dr. Saul Newman, a research fellow at the University College London (who previously accused the Australian government of funding pro-alcohol research), posted a preprint article criticizing the statistics of Blue Zones. His argument is most supposed centenarians just don’t exist. He has since updated this preprint and posted a second preprint expanding on his criticism of Blue Zones research. Both articles have yet to pass peer review.

Dr. Newman shows that when record-keeping systems improve, many claims of extreme old age tend to fall apart. In the United States, the reported number of supercentenarians (people aged 110+) fell markedly after the introduction of formal birth certificates around 1900, which he interprets as earlier ages being inaccurately recorded—either unintentionally or through exaggeration. He cites a similar pattern in Greece; when authorities audited pension rolls, roughly 70% of supposed centenarians were found to actually be deceased. While in some cases, deaths were simply never officially recorded, in other cases, pensions were still being paid to people who had died and relatives were collecting payments. Dr. Newman also notes anomalies in some datasets—such as spikes in birthdays on the first of the month or on dates divisible by five—which he argues are consistent with fabricated or estimated birth dates.

Dr. Newman said in an interview: “I’ve tracked down 80% of the people aged over 110 in the world (the other 20% are from countries you can’t meaningfully analyze). Of those, almost none have a birth certificate. In the US there are over 500 of these people; seven have a birth certificate. Even worse, only about 10% have a death certificate.”

Dr. Newman’s first preprint drew limited mainstream attention until September 2024, when it received the Ig Nobel Prize in Demography, for “detective work to discover that many of the people famous for having the longest lives lived in places that had lousy birth-and-death recordkeeping.”

The Ig Nobel Prize is a satirical award that honors genuine scientific research and achievements that, as their tagline says, “first makes people laugh, and then makes them think”. It’s organized by the Annals of Improbable Research and they get actual Nobel Laureates to hand out the awards. For example, one of the other awards the same year that Dr. Newman won went to Fordyce Ely and William E. Petersen, for “exploding a paper bag next to a cat that’s standing on the back of a cow, to explore how and when cows spew their milk.” The research study “Factors Involved in the Ejection of Milk” was published in the Journal of Animal Science in 1939.

Not relevant, but a fun detail, Dr. Newman accepted his Ig Noble prize, wearing a Tetris suit and in verse with a poem that he composed for the occasion:

The secrets fell over
Like a lover in clover
When I checked the government books
The blue zones are poor
The records no more
The 100-year-olds are all crooks.

The secret, it seems
To live out your dreams
And make sure you keep living, not dying
Is to move where
Birth certificates are rare
Teach your kids pension fraud and start lying.

Aside: I love this so, so much and really do think more acceptance speeches should be in an AABCCB rhyming scheme.

It’s worth noting that it’s fairly unusual for an Ig Nobel Prize to be awarded to work that hasn’t been published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. For example, a recent analysis by GATech shows that about 88% of Ig Nobel Prizes relate to published studies, and the remaining 12% are for a mix of news articles, books, patents, reports, and other documents.

Dr. Newman’s preprints are going on 7 years without passing peer review. However, winning the Ig Nobel Prize brought significant attention from mainstream media, which in turn amplified the visibility and perceived credibility of his work. This led to a flurry of news articles, social media posts, and interviews claiming that Dr. Newman had successfully debunked Blue Zones.

I want to acknowledge that, while longevity researchers say Dr. Newman’s preprints remain unpublished due to methodological flaws, false equivalencies and a disingenuous argument, Dr. Newman views this as a conspiracy, saying in one interview “Imagine you had to publish a debunking to the yeti in the yeti-hunting journal and the only people who peer review it are yeti experts, you’re not going to have a fun time. It’s not going to get published.”

Dr. Newman also says Dan Buettner once invited him to join an expedition in search of another Blue Zone, an opportunity to witness the age validation procedures firsthand. But Dr. Newman said that he wrote back saying “How am I gonna look for something that doesn’t exist? You haven’t proven the first five, what am I going to do—wander the Earth?”

The Nitty-Gritty Details of the Critique and Rebuttals

Given the ongoing skepticism of Blue Zones by many of my colleagues and followers, I want to go into a little more detail on the arguments Dr. Newman makes in his critiques, as well as the thorough rebuttals offered by Blue Zone researchers.

Dr. Newman argues against the existence of Blue Zones using an ecological and administrative-data approach that combines population-level correlations with discontinuities introduced by changes in record-keeping systems (such as the introduction of formal birth registration).

In his first preprint, he shows how U.S. supercentenarian records dropped sharply after state birth-certificate systems were introduced, and that remarkable-age records in Italy, England, and France are associated with poverty, deprivation, shorter life expectancy, worse health, and other indicators that are opposite to what one would expect if those places truly had unusually healthy survival. In his second preprint, Dr. Newman extends his argument globally, claiming that some of the top-ranked regions for survival to 100+ include places with implausibly poor underlying survival conditions or weak registration systems. Dr. Newman sees this as evidence that most records of extreme age can be explained by documentation errors, gaps in vital records, mistaken identities, or financial incentives like pension fraud.

Dr. Saul Newman said in an interview “What demographers call validation is actually just checking the consistency of documents. If documents are consistently wrong, then errors are not detectable.”

Dr. Newman’s logic is that when extreme-age claims cluster where documentation is weak, literacy and income are low, life expectancy is not especially high, or fraud incentives are present, the simplest explanation is that of data quality failure rather than “Blue Zones” being regions of exceptional longevity. Note that this argument is indirect. Rather than disproving individual cases, Dr. Newman’s critique argues that the overall pattern of where extreme ages appear doesn’t line up with what we’d expect based on health, lifespan, and demographic data, and is more easily explained by documentation failure, identity substitution, or pension fraud. Within this framework, Blue Zones are not treated as exceptional cases but as part of a broader pattern in which clusters of extreme age may arise from systematic data errors rather than true survival advantages.

Blue Zone researchers have published rebuttals and methodological responses (here, here, here, and here), arguing that Newman’s critique misfires because it targets the general problem of false extreme-age claims without fully accounting for the actual validation procedures used in Blue Zone identification and research.

Dr. Giovanni Pes says “The critic’s draft papers, which have been promoted in mainstream media, attempt to discredit the Blue Zones by presenting a series of false equivalencies. He argues that the excessive number of centenarians and supercentenarians in non-Blue Zone areas is due to poor demographic records, which is often the case. However, he ignores the fact that this criticism does not apply to Blue Zones, where ages have been rigorously validated with modern, accurate demographic methodology.”

Unreliable age claims are a well-known problem in gerontological demography, which is why researchers undergo rigorous validation procedures designed specifically to detect and eliminate the types of errors highlighted in the critique. In the official Blue Zones, age validation typically involves:

• Cross-checking multiple independent documentary sources (e.g., civil records, ecclesiastical records, family registries)

• Genealogical reconstruction to confirm identity continuity

• Structured interviews with claimants and relatives, used as supplementary evidence alongside documentary validation, with cross-referencing to verifiable historical events (e.g., wars, migrations, marriages, births) to corroborate life histories

• Exclusion of late-registered or unverifiable cases

• Verification across birth and death records

Cross-checking multiple independent documentary sources minimizes fraud, clerical error, memory error, and identity substitution.

Blue Zones are not simply defined by raw counts of centenarians or supercentenarians. For Sardinia, the process began with municipality birth registers for the 1880–1901 cohorts, with deaths at 100+ often identified via marginal annotations in civil registers, identifying people who died at 100+ from marginal death annotations, searching for additional surviving centenarians regardless of where they later lived (accounting for migration), validating the age of each centenarian individually, and then computing an Extreme Longevity Index (ELI) as the ratio of validated centenarians to births in the same cohorts. The researchers then used spatial smoothing to delineate the area where ELI peaked, marking the borders of the Blue Zone. This approach is intended to avoid biases introduced by population movement or selective survival.

Empirical work in Sardinia, Okinawa, Nicoya, and Ikaria shows that elevated survival to advanced ages persists relative to national averages and compared to surrounding populations even after validation and cohort adjustment. In some cases, validation studies have identified and excluded erroneous age claims, yet the overall pattern of unusually high late-life survival remains.

So, while Dr. Newman’s warning is generally correct, it does not overturn the existence of Blue Zones because those were validated with methods specifically designed to detect exactly those errors.

As Dr. Pes and Dr. Austad state in a 2025 peer-reviewed article “We now know that most self-reported claims of extreme longevity are false. That does not mean, however, that exceptionally old people and populations do not exist. It only means that identifying them is not a trivial task.”

They do all seem to be at an impasse, though, with Blue Zone researchers maintaining that the validation methods successfully address the issues raised, while Dr. Newman continues to argue that the underlying data remain fundamentally unreliable. Dan Buettner said in one interview “You have one guy, a sociologist, who has no formal training in demography and who’s never been to a Blue Zone making all these sorts of parallel claims.” Meanwhile Newman claps back to the rebuttals, saying “If they don’t acknowledge their errors in my lifetime, I guess I’ll just get someone to pretend I’m still alive until that changes.” It does not sound like a constructive conversation is in the cards…

So, Are Blue Zones Debunked?

No, but not just because Dr. Newman’s preprints have yet to be published in a peer-reviewed journal. As is so often the case, the story is more complicated than the headlines suggest.

What Dr. Newman’s work does well is remind us of something demographers have known for a long time: extreme-age claims are most often false. Bad records, missing documentation, and fraud can and do distort longevity data, and many historical “longevity hotspots” have fallen apart under scrutiny. That skepticism is valid. But that doesn’t mean all longevity research collapses with it. The original Blue Zones were identified precisely in response to those problems, using methods designed to catch the very errors Dr. Newman highlights. When you focus on those rigorously validated populations—Sardinia, Okinawa, Nicoya, and Ikaria—the signal of exceptional longevity still appears to hold.

At the same time, the commercial enterprise around Blue Zones has clearly outpaced the science. And even researchers like Dr. Poulain have raised concerns about how the concept has been translated into public health messaging and business ventures.

So we’re left with three overlapping but distinct realities:

• Blue Zones as a scientific concept: a small number (so far) of rigorously validated regions with unusually high survival to advanced ages

• Blue Zones as a narrative: simplified lifestyle takeaways that are partly supported by evidence, but not formally tested as a unified model

• Blue Zones as a business: a branded ecosystem that has amplified both the reach—and the criticism—of the concept

Conflating these three is what has fueled the controversy. If you strip away the hype, the core insight from Blue Zones is actually pretty uncontroversial: people tend to live longer, healthier lives in environments that support physical activity, social connection, sufficient sleep, low stress, and diets built around mostly whole foods. That’s not a secret, and it’s not unique to Blue Zones, but these regions provide real-world examples of what that can look like across an entire population.

And if there’s one takeaway from this whole controversy, it’s this: good science is rarely as simple (or as clickable) as the story told about it.

So no, Blue Zones aren’t debunked. But they’re also not magic. They’re a starting point for asking better questions about how we live—and how we might live better.

A Word of Thanks

In March, I posted a TikTok video with a nutritional analysis of a Sardinian minestrone recipe, which I introduced by saying something to the effect of “let’s take a closer look at this traditional dish from an area of the world where people live longer on average”. A comment left on that video—“Blue Zones are debunked!”—triggered several weeks of side quest, a 12-part video series (I do have a few follow-up videos planned), and this article. So, my first thank you goes out to the original commentor!

I had heard that there were problems with Blue Zone research but wasn’t familiar with the controversy. When all of the hype was happening in early 2025, my oldest daughter was going through a health crisis, so I didn’t have time or bandwidth to dig into this research at that time. But, I think it was easier to get clarity on the full scope of the criticism and rebuttal looking at this topic now, thanks to this article in Science and the collection of 2025 peer-reviewed rebuttal articles by Dr. Pes, Dr. Poulain, Dan Buettner, and others (here, here, here, and here). I hope that my colleagues who currently believe Blue Zones are debunked will read this along with my extensive list of citations and reconsider their positions. A note: a few weeks ago when I was researching this topic initially, all of the rebuttal articles were publicly available and open access. Two of them have since been removed and placed under embargo. I guess that means I inadvertently broke that embargo when I shared screenshots and quotes from those articles in my video series, oops! I’ve never seen articles go from open access to embargoes like this before, so I can’t help wondering if that means one or more of the key players saw my video series, squee! Anyway, because the papers were open access when I read them and I have a couple hundred screenshots to cross-reference, I decided to keep any quotes from the embargoed papers in my article above.

I also want to extend a special thank you to my paid subscribers. Your support of my work is essential to me being able to keep doing it! This week’s Nutrivore Newsletter is a departure from my usual formats and doesn’t include any special downloads, so I hope you’ll let me know what you think by commenting below or sending me an e-mail, and please tell me whether you’d appreciate more myth busting content from me!

Citations

Amigo I. Shades of blue. Science. 2024;386(6724):840-845. doi:10.1126/science.adu7169

Austad SN, Pes GM. The validity of Blue Zones demography: a response to critiques. Gerontologist. 2025;65(12):gnaf246. doi:10.1093/geront/gnaf246

Brincat C. Do people in Blue Zones actually live longer? Popular Science. Published 2025. Accessed April 18, 2026.

Buettner D. Lessons From the Blue Zones: There is No Silver Bullet (or Magic Pill) for a Long, Healthy Life. Am J Lifestyle Med. Published online May 1, 2025. doi:10.1177/15598276251334310

Buettner D. The secrets of long life. National Geographic. 2005 Nov.

Buettner D, Skemp S. Blue Zones: Lessons From the World's Longest Lived. Am J Lifestyle Med. 2016;10(5):318-321. Published 2016 Jul 7. doi:10.1177/1559827616637066

Caruso C, Accardi G, Aiello A, Calabrò A, Zarcone R, Candore G. The longevity of blue zones: myth or reality. J Gerontol Geriatr. 2025;73(2):55-66. doi:10.36150/2499-6564-N865

Carvan T. Dr Saul Newman has uncovered the “secret” to living to 110. ANU News. Published September 30, 2024. Accessed April 18, 2026.

Deeg DJH, van Tilburg T, Visser M, Braam A, Stringa N, Timmermans EJ. Identification of a “Blue Zone” in the Netherlands: A Genetic, Personal, Sociocultural, and Environmental Profile. Gerontologist. 2024;64(11):gnae132. doi:10.1093/geront/gnae132

Demsas J. Are Blue Zones a mirage? Good on Paper podcast. The Atlantic. Published April 2025. Accessed April 18, 2026.

Global Wellness Summit. Blue Zones: The full and fascinating story begins. YouTube. Published 2018. Accessed April 17, 2026.

Herskind AM, McGue M, Holm NV, Sørensen TI, Harvald B, Vaupel JW. The heritability of human longevity: a population-based study of 2872 Danish twin pairs born 1870-1900. Hum Genet. 1996;97(3):319-323. doi:10.1007/BF02185763

Huang Y, Mark Jacquez G. Identification of a Blue Zone in a Typical Chinese Longevity Region. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2017;14(6):571. Published 2017 May 28. doi:10.3390/ijerph14060571

Kreouzi M, Theodorakis N, Constantinou C. Lessons Learned From Blue Zones, Lifestyle Medicine Pillars and Beyond: An Update on the Contributions of Behavior and Genetics to Wellbeing and Longevity. Am J Lifestyle Med. 2022;18(6):750-765. Published 2022 Aug 20. doi:10.1177/15598276221118494

Kyle T. Debunking the Blue Zone Diet and Winning an Ig Nobel Prize. ConscienHealth. Published 2024. Accessed April 18, 2026.

Newman SJ. Supercentenarian and remarkable age records exhibit patterns indicative of clerical errors and pension fraud [preprint]. bioRxiv. Published 2019. Updated 2024. Accessed April 18, 2026.

Newman SJ. The global pattern of centenarians highlights deep problems in demography [preprint]. medRxiv. Published 2024. Accessed April 18, 2026.

Poulain M, Herm A, Pes G. The Blue Zones: areas of exceptional longevity around the world. Vienna Yearbook of Population Research. 2013;11:87-108.

Poulain M, Herm A. Blue Zone, a Demographic Concept and Beyond. Am J Lifestyle Med. Published online May 28, 2025. doi:10.1177/15598276251342502

Poulain M, Herm A. Blue Zone: A model to live longer and better. In: Poulain M, Mackowicz J, eds. Positive Ageing and Learning From Centenarians : Living Longer and Better. London: Routledge Taylor & Francis; 2022:1-17.

Poulain M, Herm A. Exceptional longevity in Okinawa: Demographic trends since 1975. J Intern Med. 2024;295(4):387-399. doi:10.1111/joim.13764

Poulain M, Pes GM, Grasland C, et al. Identification of a geographic area characterized by extreme longevity in the Sardinia island: the AKEA study. Exp Gerontol. 2004;39(9):1423-1429. doi:10.1016/j.exger.2004.06.016

Rosero-Bixby L. The vanishing advantage of longevity in Nicoya, Costa Rica: A cohort shift. Demographic Research. 2023;49:723-736.

Roundtable on Population Health Improvement; Board on Population Health and Public Health Practice; Institute of Medicine. Lessons from the Blue Zones®. In: Business Engagement in Building Healthy Communities: Workshop Summary. Washington, DC: National Academies Press; 2015. Accessed April 18, 2026.

Shenhar B, Pridham G, De Oliveira TL, et al. Heritability of intrinsic human life span is about 50% when confounding factors are addressed. Science. 2026;391(6784):504-510. doi:10.1126/science.adz1187

von Zielbauer P. The trouble with Blue Zones. Aging With Strength. Published 2025. Accessed April 18, 2026.

Key Takeaways

✅Zinc improves skin health both internally (meaning eating zinc-rich foods) and externally (meaning topical products).

✅Black beans are a good source of zinc and feature in my Four-Bean Cassoulet recipe!

✅If beans make you toot, that’s normal! And, I have easy tips to minimize their gaseous effects below!

✅For paid subscribers, your downloads this week are: Zinc Fun Factsheet and Four-Bean Cassoulet recipe They’re in a separate post here.

Zinc for Skin Health

🧬Zinc is an essential trace mineral that serves as a cofactor for over 300 enzymes and 1000 transcription factors, giving it important roles in immune function, sensory organ function, reproduction, gene regulation, DNA synthesis, wound healing, and the metabolism and activity of multiple other nutrients. Zinc has also been studied to help many different diseases and conditions such as eye-health, genetic disorders, cardiovascular disease, neurodegenerative disease, mental health, fatigue, and skin conditions.

A 2013 systematic review concluded that both oral and topical zinc can have a beneficial effect on acne, including exerting antibacterial and anti-inflammatory effects. Another 2020 systematic review and meta-analysis found that acne patients have significantly lower serum levels of zinc compared to controls, and that zinc supplementation can significantly improve mean inflammatory papule count (the number of inflamed acne lesions) as well as the severity and type of acne lesions. Additional research has shown that zinc deficiency or insufficiency could exacerbate atopic dermatitis (also known as eczema). In fact, one randomized controlled trial found that among eczema patients with zinc deficiency, oral zinc supplementation led to improvements in the extent and severity of the condition; however, another randomized controlled trial found no effect. So, while more research is needed, there is some promising evidence to suggest exciting potential for people with chronic skin conditions!

Learn About Zinc

Want to know the top 25 best food sources of this nutrient? Learn them here.

Get 13% DV Zinc with Black Beans

🫜Black beans are very common throughout many different cultures and cuisines, and are known for their meaty texture and tough outer shell. Legumes were even a staple food for numerous ancient cultures, and every major civilization has included a legume as part of their food system. Over time, legumes maintained their status, and have become the centerpiece of a number of iconic national dishes through the Middle East, India, Brazil, Greece, Egypt and many more!

The health benefits associated with legumes come from a number of factors working together, including the high amount of polyphenols, dietary fiber, and other minerals and vitamins. A large 2017 meta-analysis showed that all-cause mortality (a general indicator of health and longevity) decreased by 16% with increasing intake of legumes up to 150 grams (3 servings) per day. And, in a 2021 study, eating 3+ servings of legumes per week reduces all-cause mortality by 17% compared to 2 servings per month. In animal models, black beans have even demonstrated potential anti-cancer properties for colon tumor growth. Black beans are also known to improve gut microbiome composition and metabolic activity.

A 1/2-cup serving of black beans gives you 8.4 grams of protein, 6.0 grams of fiber, 43% DV vitamin B9 (folate), 36% DV copper, 29% DV vitamin B1 (thiamin), 18% DV manganese, 16% DV magnesium, 13% DV vitamin B7 (biotin), 13% DV zinc, 12% DV potassium, 11% DV iron, and 2200 mg polyphenols.

Learn About Black Beans

Black beans is the 262nd most nutrient-dense food! Learn the Top 500 Nutrivore Foods here.

Four-Bean Cassoulet

🥗 If you are looking for a one-stop-shop meal packed with tender meat, hearty beans, stewed vegetables and comforting warm seasonings, look no further than this amazing (and nutrient-dense) Four-Bean Cassoulet.

Not only do the four types of beans offer amazing fiber, minerals and vitamins, but the phytonutrients from the vegetables and boost of the protein in the tender meats fill your mouths and belly with a satiating, and down-right-delicious meal!

See the Full Recipe

Add this recipe to your meal plan this week with Real Plans, the official Nutrivore meal planning app!

Nutrivore Mindset Corner

🧠This year, I started a new style of video for social media where I do a nutritional analysis, including calculating the Nutrivore Score, of trending recipes (watch on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, or Facebook). It’s a fun way to teach about nutrients while highlighting the nutritional value of delicious, comforting recipes that many people might assume aren’t healthy because of wrong messages learned from diet culture. These videos have been very popular, which is awesome (and a special hello to everyone who subscribed to my Substack because you’ve been enjoying these videos!), and there have been some thematic questions in the comments that I have been working to address in these newsletters. Up this week: How Can I Calculate the Nutrivore Score of my own recipes?

Since I don’t have time to calculate the Nutrivore Score of all of the recipes and daily meal plans left in my comment sections, I thought I would share how to calculate the Nutrivore Score of a recipe, meal, or day of eating.

The math is simple, if annoyingly laborious:

1. For each ingredient in a recipe, multiply how many calories worth of that ingredient is going into the recipe by the ingredient’s Nutrivore Score (the free searchable database is here)

2. add up the result of that multiplication for every ingredient (the number will be absurdly large)

3. divide that sum by the total number of calories in the recipe.

Any food or meal with a Nutrivore Score over about 150 is contributing more nutrients than calories to your overall diet. If you want to calculate the Nutrivore Score of your entire meal plan, follow this procedure for every food you eat. I don’t have an exact number for you, but I think that aiming for a daily Nutrivore Score in the 250-300 range increases the likelihood of fully meeting your nutritional needs (especially if you’re also eating a wide variety of foods).

Now, if you’re not interested in calculating the Nutrivore Score of your meals by hand, I get it! I used to always have to calculate recipe Nutrivore Scores by hand, and it’s cumbersome! That’s why nowadays I use Real Plans, which does this math for me!

Real Plans is an amazing meal planning app that has tons of functionality and is fully customizable, and I’ve partnered with Real Plans to fully integrate Nutrivore into the app. Your subscription comes with a library of over 3000 recipes (including all of my recipes for no additional charge), and every single recipe is labeled with its Nutrivore Score. Even cooler, when you import your own recipes (favorites from the web, your go-to cookbooks, or your grandma’s family secret recipes—they only show up in your account), Real Plans calculates its Nutrivore Score, too. You also get a complete nutrition breakdown of every recipe, including the ones you import!

So now you can calculate the Nutrivore Score of your favorite meals, either by hand, or let Real Plans do it for you!

Learn everything you need to know about the Nutrivore philosophy in my book, Nutrivore: Eat Any Food, Get Every Nutrient, and Transform Your Health!

Grab a Copy!

Helpful Tip of the Week

💡Since I shared a beans recipe this week, and hinted to a certain limerick in my post title, I thought it might be helpful to answer the question: What if beans make me fart?

Our gut bacteria produce gas when they ferment fiber, so farting is actually a normal and healthy sign that your gut microbiome is doing its job. When you suddenly increase your fiber intake, you’re giving those bacteria a lot more food, which can temporarily lead to more gas, bloating, and yes—more farting. But if you keep eating that higher-fiber diet, your gut microbiome adapts and gas production usually settles back down. A 2022 review shows this adaptation period varies depending on how much fiber is added, the type of fiber, and the individual—but for example, one clinical trial that added a whopping 42 grams of fiber per day found that the number of daily farts doubled initially but returned to baseline after about 3 to 4 weeks.

In addition to eating beans regularly so your gut microbiome can adapt, there are some other easy things you can do to reduce the gaseous effects of beans. Rinse canned beans thoroughly under running water to wash away some of the gas-producing compounds, and if you’re using dried beans, soak them for 8 to 12 hours (or use a quick-soak method), then discard the soaking water before cooking in fresh water. Make sure beans are cooked until fully soft, since undercooked beans are harder to digest. If needed, you can also use an enzyme supplement containing alpha-galactosidase to help break down the specific carbohydrates responsible for gas before they reach your colon.

Learn More

This Week’s Companion Downloads

📥For paid subscribers, your Companion Downloads this week are:

• Zinc Fun Factsheet - This 2-page PDF guide summarizes all the most important information about what zinc does, top food sources, and how much we need for each demographic group.

• Four-Bean Cassoulet - A beautifully-designed PDF version of this week’s recipe that you can save or print out, to build your own personalized Nutrivore Cookbook week by week.

The Companion Downloads are in a separate post here. You can also find the full archive here. Thank you so much for supporting my work and Nutrivore!

Sincerely,
Dr. Sarah Ballantyne, PhD
Founder of Nutrivore

Because this week’s Free Newsletter highlighted zinc as an important nutrient for skin health, I’m sharing my Zinc Fun Factsheet 2-page download which summarizes all of the ways that zinc improves our health along with how much we need by demographic group. And because black beans (and beans in general) are a good source of zinc, I’m sharing one of my absolute favorite ways to prepare them, a downloadable version of my Four-Bean Cassoulet recipe, a bean-forward French stew.

📥Just for paid subscribers, your Companion Downloads this week are:

• Zinc Fun Factsheet - This 2-page PDF guide summarizes all the most important information about what zinc does, top food sources, and how much we need for each demographic group.

• Four-Bean Cassoulet - A beautifully-designed PDF version of this week’s recipe that you can save or print out, to build your own personalized Nutrivore Cookbook week by week.

For Paid Subscribers

Read more

Magnesium was first recognized as an element in 1755, and then officially isolated in 1808 by the English chemist Sir Humphry Davy (who was also the first to isolate sodium, calcium, potassium, strontium, and barium!). However, magnesium’s healing properties were discovered as early as 1618, when a farmer from Epsom, England noticed that the town’s bitter-tasting spring water appeared to heal scratches and rashes—and, when boiled down, yielded a salty mineral powder. This quickly led to the rise of “Epsom salt,” which we now know is made of magnesium sulfate (and which put Epsom on the map as a spa town, attracting visitors from near and far to its medicinal waters!).

Magnesium serves as a cofactor for hundreds of different enzymes, and is involved in numerous pathways in the body—including energy production, ion transport, cell signaling, protein synthesis, and nucleic acid synthesis. It also serves important structural functions in bone tissue and cells.

Importantly, this nutrient functions as an electrolyte—a class of minerals that dissociate into charged particles (called ions) when dissolved in solution, making them capable of conducting electricity. On the whole, electrolytes help regulate fluid balance within the body, regulate nerve and muscle function (including the heart!), maintain a normal blood pH, and transmit nerve signals!

Magnesium-rich foods include green leafy vegetables, nuts and seeds (especially pumpkin seeds, almonds, and cashews), fish, legumes, whole grains, cocoa, avocados, and spices. Low-fat dairy products (like milk and yogurt) are also good sources of magnesium.

This article explains the biological roles of magnesium, the interactions between dietary magnesium and our risk of over 9 health conditions, symptoms and signs that we’re getting too little magnesium, how much magnesium we need by demographic (and how much is too much), and shares the top 25 best common food sources of magnesium. Paid subscribers also can download a printer-friendly PDF version of this information below!

The Biological Roles of Magnesium

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Because we talked about how getting enough vitamin D reduces the risk of just about everything, I’m sharing my Top 10 Vitamin D Foods Fridge List as a quick-reference guide for vitamin D-rich foods. The only food on that list that isn’t seafood is maitake mushrooms, so I’m also sharing my go-to way to enjoy mushrooms with a downloadable version of my Stir-Fried Turnip Greens with Mushrooms and Almonds. Tip: this recipe works with any mushroom, any bitter green, and it’s also good with cashews!

📥Just for paid subscribers, your Companion Downloads this week are:

• Top 10 Vitamin D Foods Fridge List - This 1-pager PDF guide lists the top 10 common whole food sources of vitamin D, how much vitamin D you get per serving (and how much a serving is!), while highlighting a few other valuable nutrients each food provides.

• Stir-Fried Turnip Greens with Mushrooms and Almonds Recipe - A beautifully-designed PDF version of this week’s recipe that you can save or print out, to build your own personalized Nutrivore Cookbook week by week.

For Paid Subscribers

Read more

Migraines and severe headaches are common in the U.S., affecting a substantial portion of the population. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in 2018, 20.0% of women and 9.7% of men reported experiencing a severe headache or migraine in the past three months. The prevalence was highest among individuals aged 18–44 years and tended to decrease with age.

This article explains the links between headaches (including migraines) and 7 different nutrients, including specific vitamins, minerals, amino acids and fatty acids. It’s important to clarify that while nutrient-dense eating can decrease the frequency, severity, and duration of headaches, that no nutrient or supplement has a proven track record of treating a headache once it occurs. In addition, headaches are influenced by many factors beyond food alone, including genetics, age, medications, hormones, hydration, sleep, stress, physical activity, and caffeine intake. A nutrient-rich diet can improve health outcomes including reducing headaches, but it is not a guarantee, a cure, or a moral safeguard.

In addition, frequent or severe headaches could be a symptom of a serious underlying health condition, so make sure to consult your healthcare provider.

So, let’s actually start with causes of and risk factors for headaches, to create the appropriate context for our review of the nutrients that lower severity and occurrence.

Causes and Risk Factors of Headaches and Migraines

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Because we talked about how oleic acid can improve serum lipid profiles, I’m sharing my Nutrients for High Cholesterol 1-page summary guide with a more complete list of nutrients linked to lower cholesterol levels. Oleic acid is the main fat in olive oil, so I felt like it was a great opportunity to highlight how amazing olive oil is in baked goods, so I’m including a downloadable version of my Lemon-Rosemary Olive Oil Cake recipe! Tip: Lavender makes an amazing substitution for rosemary, if you happen to have it.

📥Just for paid subscribers, your Companion Downloads this week are:

• Nutrients for High Cholesterol - This 1-pager PDF guide lists all the nutrients that reduce risk of hypercholesterolemia along with top food sources, to give you a quick-reference for foods to add if high cholesterol is a concern for you.

• Lemon-Rosemary Olive Oil Cake Recipe - A beautifully-designed PDF version of this week’s recipe that you can save or print out, to build your own personalized Nutrivore Cookbook week by week.

For Paid Subscribers

Read more

Although many animals can produce their own vitamin C from glucose in their kidneys or livers, humans (along with many other primates) lost the ability to do so approximately 61 million years ago. This was due to the inactivation of the gene that produces L-gulono-lactone oxidase (GLO), an enzyme that’s needed to complete the last step of vitamin C synthesis from glucose. Scientists still speculate about the exact reasons this gene became inactivated, but the leading theory is that the habitat of our ancestors was abundant in vitamin C-rich fruits, making it unnecessary to produce the vitamin internally. So, there was no selective pressure to preserve GLO gene function, and random disabling mutations of the GLO gene eventually displaced the functional copy as a result of genetic drift.

Vitamin C has powerful antioxidant properties, along with serving as an enzyme cofactor (for example in collagen synthesis) and playing important roles in immune system and skin health. Higher intakes of vitamin C are linked to reduced risk of heart disease, some forms of cancer, type 2 diabetes, cataracts, age-related macular degeneration, gout, fatigue, chronic kidney disease, osteoporosis, periodontal disease, and more! Plus, Vitamin C can also help regulate the stress response and reduce anxiety, and there’s preliminary evidence that it may also help prevent Alzheimer’s disease.

The foods with the highest vitamin C content include: citrus fruits (oranges, grapefruit, lemons, limes), kiwis, berries, red peppers, guavas, papayas, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, tomatoes, cantaloupe, and leafy greens. Some organ meats (adrenal glands in particular) are also good sources of vitamin C. Cooking can reduce vitamin C levels in foods, with boiling being the worst offender, due to this vitamin being both water-soluble and sensitive to heat; steaming and microwaving lead to the highest vitamin C retention. Prolonged storage, too, causes vitamin C levels in foods to diminish over time.

This article explains the biological roles of vitamin C, the interactions between dietary vitamin C and our risk of over 20 health conditions, symptoms and signs that we’re getting too little vitamin C, how much vitamin C we need by demographic (and how much is too much), and shares the top 25 best common food sources of vitamin C. Paid subscribers also can download a printer-friendly PDF version of this information below!

The Biological Roles of Vitamin C

Read more

Key Takeaways

✅Anthocyanins and anthocyanidins give blue and purple fruits and vegetables their distinctive colors, and among their many benefits is improved cognition!

✅Rhubarb gets its pretty pink-violet hue from anthocyanins and anthocyanidins, and its delicious in my Rhubarb Coffee Cake recipe!

✅Enjoying treats in moderation in a skill that takes practice, and I have my full list of strategies for you below!

✅For paid subscribers, your downloads this week are: Gluten-Free Rhubarb Coffee Cake and Phytonutrients in Blue and Purple Foods

Anthocyanins and Anthocyanidins for Learning and Memory

🧬Anthocyanins and anthocyanidins are a class of flavonoid polyphenols that give many fruits and vegetables a beautiful blue, purple, violet, or deep red color (think: grapes, red cabbage, cherries, eggplant, rhubarb, blueberries, cranberries, raspberries, and blackberries!). You also get anthocyanins and anthocyanidins from some legumes, like black beans, and some grains, like black rice!

Anthocyanins and anthocyanidins are uniquely and specifically capable of both crossing the blood-brain barrier and localizing in areas of the brain involved in learning and memory (e.g. hippocampus). In addition, they have powerful anti-oxidant and anti-inflammatory properties, which is important since oxidative stress and inflammation are thought to be key contributors to cognitive impairment.

A variety of studies have shown that anthocyanin- and anthocyanidin-rich extracts from foods such as from berries, pomegranate or rhubarb, improve memory, especially working memory, attention and cognitive performance, especially executive function, in both young, healthy adults and older adults at risk for cognitive decline.

Learn About Polyphenols

Want to know the top 25 best food sources of polyphenols? Learn them here.

Get 325mg of Polyphenols with Rhubarb

🫜Rhubarb gets its beautiful deep red color from anthocyanins and anthocyanidins! Botanically, rhubarb is a vegetable but is prepared and consumed as a fruit from a culinary perspective, which is a bit of a rarity. In addition to being high in polyphenols, per serving (1 cup, diced, or a little less than 2½ stalks), rhubarb provides 30% DV vitamin K, 11% DV vitamin C, and 10% DV manganese. All that and it’s only 26 calories per cup! Hence rhubarb’s impressive Nutrivore Score of 598!

Learn About Rhubarb

Rhubarb is the 217th most nutrient-dense food! Learn the Top 500 Nutrivore Foods here.

Gluten-Free Rhubarb Coffee Cake

🥗 This is a gluten-free adaptation of a family recipe that dates back to my great-great-grandmother, who was “Nana” to her grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren and something of a legend in my family as she was a formidable, caring and selfless woman. As a kid, this coffee cake was the go-to to serve company, especially in the early spring when we could pick rhubarb fresh from the garden.

See the Full Recipe

Add this recipe to your meal plan this week with Real Plans, the official Nutrivore meal planning app!

Nutrivore Mindset Corner

🧠Here’s my philosophy on healthified desserts—like black-bean brownies, cottage cheese ice cream, and chickpea cookie dough—if swapping out an ingredient for a more nutrient-dense alternative or sneaking in some hidden protein powder or beans, doesn’t take away from my enjoyment of the sweet treat, then I’m all in. For me, it doesn’t have to taste the same as the regular version of the treat, but it does have to provide the same level of joy. And if it does, of course I’m happy to benefit from more nutrients, less sugar or lower energy density, and a healthier fat profile. BUT, if the healthified dessert in question sacrifices flavor or texture, I know that eating it will leave me less satisfied and more likely to compensate by eating more or seeking out a different treat later on.

For me personally, it’s usually better to choose the non-healthified dessert option, give myself full permission to enjoy it, and use my strategies for moderation, including: enjoying the treat mindfully and without distractions; and enjoying the treat after a balanced, nutrient-dense, and delicious meal. I believe joy is also an essential nutrient, and that choosing some foods for deliciousness (and not nutrition) helps ensure we’re enjoying our overall healthy eating patterns enough that we can stick to them long term.

Now, for me, I get more joy out of a small portion of conventional ice cream than I get from the giant bowl of low-calorie, protein ice cream. But, I recognize that for many people, it’s the opposite—being able to eat that bigger volume of a healthified dessert is what ups the joy. And if that’s you, that’s okay, and why I framed my personal decision making in terms of joy. If opting for the healthified dessert is what helps you adopt overall healthy eating patters, that’s awesome! If option for the conventional dessert works better for you, that’s awesome!

Learn everything you need to know about the Nutrivore philosophy in my book, Nutrivore: Eat Any Food, Get Every Nutrient, and Transform Your Health!

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Helpful Tip of the Week

💡Since I just talked about enjoying treats in moderation, I figured I should share my full collection of strategies for doing so! These tips are designed to help you learn (or re-learn) how to enjoy quality-of-life foods in a way that feels balanced, satisfying, and sustainable. Note, this is a skill—and like any skill, it takes practice.

• Give yourself unconditional permission to eat them. When you remove the mental restriction, food loses its power to control your thoughts. This defuses the “forbidden fruit” effect and helps normalize foods that once felt off-limits. It’s completely normal to overdo foods you previously restricted—that’s a part of the process. As you rebuild trust with yourself and your body, the intensity and novelty typically wear off. (If it doesn’t, see the tip below on asking for help.)

• Slow down and savor. Take the time to really taste and enjoy your treat, paying attention to flavor, texture, and satisfaction. Try to eat without distractions—like watching TV or scrolling your phone—so your brain fully registers the experience. You may find you’re satisfied with less, and you’ll enjoy it more.

• Prepare your nutrient-dense foundation foods in ways you enjoy. Experiment with seasonings, cooking methods, and flavor combinations that make your meals genuinely satisfying. When your everyday meals are crave-worthy, you won’t rely on treats alone for pleasure—your quality-of-life foods become part of a delicious, well-rounded menu instead of the main event.

• Pair them with nutrient-dense meals. Enjoying a treat after a satisfying, nutrient-rich meal helps you feel physically full and emotionally content. For example, a few cookies after a colorful, balanced lunch can feel like a bonus—not a binge. When your nutritional needs are met, and nutrient-dense foods are prepared in ways you enjoy, it’s easier to enjoy quality-of-life foods without guilt or overindulgence.

• Eat big enough meals. Make sure your meals are satisfying and balanced (and don’t skip them!) so you’re not overly hungry or feeling deprived when a treat comes along. When your body feels nourished and full, it’s easier to enjoy quality-of-life foods in moderation, without turning them into a meal replacement or eating past fullness. If you’re contemplating a treat between meals, pair it with a nutritious snack that includes some protein and fiber (like apple slices and peanut butter, or veggie sticks and hummus).

• Buy single servings or portion ahead. Choosing individual portions of treats—or portioning them out yourself—can make it easier to enjoy them mindfully, without accidentally slipping into autopilot eating. This removes the decision-making burden in the moment and helps you feel more in control and satisfied with what you’ve planned.

• Let go of guilt. One treat doesn’t undo your progress—in fact, it’s part of what makes your progress sustainable. Guilt adds stress and undermines your ability to make nourishing choices. Enjoying food with confidence and self-compassion helps reinforce a positive, long-term relationship with eating.

• Regulate appetite and cravings with a healthy lifestyle. Consistent sleep, regular movement, and daily stress management are key players when it comes to regulating appetite and cravings. If you find yourself reaching for snacks late at night, consider whether you’re truly hungry or just trying to stay awake—sometimes the best thing you can do is simply head to bed. Gentle, regular physical activity (like a walk or stretching) can also help reduce cravings and stabilize hunger signals throughout the day. These simple habits support your body’s natural rhythms and make it easier to stay balanced without relying on willpower alone.

• Don’t skip breakfast. Eating a balanced breakfast within two hours of waking helps set the tone for the entire day. It supports stable blood sugar, reduces stress hormone fluctuations, and helps regulate appetite and cravings later on—making it easier to stay grounded in your healthy habits and avoid impulsive food decisions.

• Plan it, instead of being impulsive. Craving chocolate cake? Instead of trying to resist all day and then giving in when your willpower wears thin, decide ahead of time when and how you’ll enjoy it. Planning a treat—for example, a slice of cake after a satisfying dinner—can help you stay present, eat more mindfully, and avoid feelings of guilt or loss of control.

• Ask for help if you need it. If you’re really struggling with a permissive mindset—or if you notice that food guilt, anxiety, or past disordered eating patterns are interfering with your progress—please reach out to a qualified support professional. An eating disorders specialist, intuitive eating coach, or anti-diet registered dietitian can provide personalized guidance, validation, and strategies that help you rebuild your relationship with food in a safe and sustainable way.

A permissive mindset isn’t about giving up on health goals. It’s about creating space for real life inside your healthy habits. And that’s what makes Nutrivore sustainable.

Watch & Learn

🎥Check out my YouTube videos on what foods count as protein and FAQ about the Nutrivore Meal Map! And don’t forget to subscribe and hit bell notifications, so you never miss a new video!

This Week’s Downloads

📥For paid subscribers, your downloads this week are:

• Phytonutrients in Blue and Purple Foods. - This 1-pager PDF guide summarizes the phytonutrients that give blue and purple fruits, vegetables, and legumes their distinctive colors and health benefits.

• Gluten-Free Rhubarb Coffee Cake - A beautifully-designed PDF version of this week’s recipe that you can save or print out, to build your own personalized Nutrivore Cookbook week by week.

You can find buttons to download at the bottom of this Substack. Thank you so much for supporting my work and Nutrivore!

Sincerely,
Dr. Sarah Ballantyne, PhD
Founder of Nutrivore

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