Because this week’s Free Newsletter talked about the link between fiber intake and IBS, I want to share this downloadable handy-dandy 1-page summary of Nutrients for Gut Health as a perk for my paid subscribers. And, because green beans are a great, affordable and versatile source of fiber, I’m sharing one of my favorite ways to enjoy them, a downloadable version of my recipe for Simple Roasted Green Beans.

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

• Nutrients for Gut Health - This 1-pager PDF guide lists all the nutrients that reduce risk of diseases of the gastrointestinal system along with top food sources, to give you a quick-reference for foods to add if gut health is a concern for you.

• Simple Roasted Green Beans 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

✅Fiber is arguably the most important nutrient for gut health, and low-fiber diets are believed to be the cause of Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS).

✅Green beans are a great source of fiber, vitamin K and vitamin C. Plus, they’re affordable and versatile. They also happen to be one of the easiest food crops to grow and are perfect for beginner gardeners and small spaces!

✅Choosing green beans instead of the “highest-scoring” vegetables is still a win because variety is part of what makes our overall diet nutrient-dense.

✅For paid subscribers, your companion downloads this week are: Nutrients for Gut Health and Simple Roasted Green Beans. 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).

Fiber for Irritable Bowel Syndrome

🧬Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a diagnosis of exclusion, and refers to gastrointestinal symptoms—such as constipation, diarrhea, cramping, abdominal pain, bloating, and gas—without a clear cause such as IBD, celiac disease, diverticular disease or stomach ulcer. It’s estimated that 11% of people globally are affected by IBS. IBS is believed to be primarily caused by low dietary fiber causing an unhealthy gut microbiome.

Fiber is a type of complex carbohydrate that our body can't digest and instead is a food source for the beneficial bacteria and other microbes that inhabit our digestive tract. Fiber also regulates peristalsis of the intestines (the rhythmic motion of muscles around the intestines that pushes food through the digestive tract), stimulates the suppression of the hunger hormone ghrelin (so we feel more full), lowers cholesterol, and slows the absorption of simple sugars into the bloodstream to regulate blood sugar levels and avoid the excess production of insulin.

Fiber supplements have shown limited utility in IBS symptom management, likely because 1) fiber diversity is also extremely important, as very small differences in fiber structure can change which gut bacteria are supported; and 2) probiotics are additionally required to improve gut microbiome composition.

We get fiber diversity when our fiber comes from whole food sources. While pulse legumes and certain fruits and veggies stand out as being particularly fiber rich, all whole plant foods—whole grains, legumes, vegetables, fruits, nuts and seeds—contribute fiber to our diets.

Probiotics supplements containing Bacillus coagulans have the best track record for IBS, but Lactobacillus plantarum and Lactobacillus acidophilus have also been shown to be very beneficial. These strains are commonly found in many fermented foods—like yogurt, sauerkraut and kimchi—and probiotic-enriched foods.

Learn About Fiber

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

Get 2.7 g Fiber with Green Beans

🫛Green beans, also known as French beans, string beans, snap beans, wax beans, or Phaseolus vulgaris L. (for us science nerds) are odd-ball members of the legume (Fabaceae) family. Compared to most other legumes, green beans (and fresh peas) are harvested for their fresh pods, as opposed to dried seeds as in other legume varieties such as lentils or black beans. As such, their “seeds” are soft when raw, and due to their unripe or immature state, are lower in mineral binding phytates.

A serving of green beans is standardized to 1 cup, measured raw. When you cook them, they reduce in volume: 1 cup raw green beans is roughly equivalent to a little more than 3/4 cup boiled green beans. A serving of green beans delivers 2.7 grams of fiber (an impressive amount for a non-starchy veggie!), 36% DV vitamin K, 15% DV vitamin C, and 46 mg of antioxidant polyphenols. They have a Nutrivore Score of 605!

Learn About Green Beans

Green beans are the 215th most nutrient-dense food! Learn the Top 500 Nutrivore Foods here.

Simple Roasted Green Beans Recipe

🥗 Fat, salt, green beans and heat—it’s a magical combination that creates Simple Roasted Green Beans. If you are looking for a simple side dish that can be thrown together quickly, this is it! You can scale this up or down very easily, and is delicious alongside any protein including steak, pork, fish or even chicken!

If you want to play with the seasoning, swap regular salt with truffle salt, garlic salt, or your favorite seasoning blend. It turns a simple vegetable into something amazing, and is packed with nutrients like fiber, vitamin K and and vitamin C.

See Full Recipe

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

Nutrivore Mindset Corner

🧠People sometimes assume that because I created the Nutrivore Score, I always choose the highest-scoring food available. The truth is, I don’t. And I don’t think you should either. Nutrient density is one of the factors I consider when deciding what to eat, but it’s not the only one. Flavor, cost, convenience, seasonality, family preferences, and simply enjoying a variety of foods all matter, too. Green beans are a great example. While they are far from the highest-scoring vegetable, they’re delicious, versatile, affordable, and pair beautifully with countless meals. That’s more than enough reason to put them on my plate, plus they’re so abundant in my garden right now that I’m freezing them for winter just so that I don’t have to eat them every day.

One of the biggest predictors of a nutrient-dense diet isn’t eating the “best” food every time—it’s eating a wide variety of mostly whole foods averaged over time. Even though many, many vegetables score higher than green beans, I still eat green beans regularly. Every plant food contributes a different combination of vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients, and fiber types, and dietary diversity consistently predicts better health. If I only ate the "highest-scoring" vegetables, I'd actually miss out on many beneficial compounds that other options uniquely provide. (Extend this logic to every good group!)

That’s why I encourage you to think of the Nutrivore Score as a guide, not a rulebook. It’s there to help you identify opportunities, make easy swaps when they make sense, and build a more nutrient-dense dietary pattern overall. You don’t have to “win” every food choice. Health is built by the average of what you eat over years and decades, and a plate of green beans absolutely belongs in that picture.

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

💡Green beans are one of the easiest plants to grow! They grow best from seed and don’t like being transplanted, which means you don’t need to worry about up-potting seedlings! They grow best in warm weather (it’s not too late to plant them in most zones right now, and they produce very quickly), in full-sun, and in well-drained soil. They don’t need fertilizer and are a nitrogen-fixing plant, so they can actually improve growing conditions for neighboring plants. They don’t need pruning, pole varieties will climb up a trellis, fence or even strings all by themselves (no training required), the blooms are pretty, and they’ll keep producing until the first frost.

Bush beans don’t need a trellis and can grow in very limited space. I like to plant them around the edges of my vegetable garden, and in any small empty spaces, to make the best use of every square inch of soil. You can also grow them in pots! I prefer to plant purple and yellow varieties, since they’re easier to see for harvesting than green varieties. And if you have a small trellis, try a long-bean variety (like yard-long beans, snake beans, or asparagus beans) for the most food per garden space.

Learn More

This Week’s Companion Downloads

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

• Nutrients for Gut Health - This 1-pager PDF guide lists all the nutrients that reduce risk of diseases of the gastrointestinal system along with top food sources, to give you a quick-reference for foods to add if gut health is a concern for you.

• Simple Roasted Green Beans 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

Folate, also called folic acid or vitamin B9, is an oft-discussed but commonly misunderstood B vitamin. “Folate” is a 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 due to its enhanced stability during processing and storage.

Folate was first discovered in 1931, when a researcher named Lucy Wills identified a substance present in liver and yeast that could prevent rats and pregnant humans from developing anemia. Over the next decade, this nutrient was given a number of different names (including vitamin M, Lactobacillus casei factor, factor ‘S,’ vitamin BC, and norit eluate factor!) before finally being termed folic acid—deriving from the Latin word for leaf, folium, and referring to its initial isolation from spinach.

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.

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. Many processed grain products like cornmeal and breakfast cereals are also fortified with folic acid.

This article explains the biological roles of vitamin B9, the difference between folate and folic acid, the interactions between dietary vitamin B9 and our risk of over a dozen health conditions, symptoms and signs that we’re getting too little vitamin B9, how much vitamin B9 we need by demographic, and shares the top 25 best common whole (non-enriched) food sources of vitamin B9. Paid subscribers also can download a printer-friendly PDF version of this information below!

The Biological Roles of Vitamin B9

Unlike some of the B vitamins, which can have hundreds of functions in the body, the

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Because this week’s Free Newsletter talked about thiosulfinates as powerful phytonutrients for lowering cardiovascular disease risk, I want to share this downloadable handy-dandy 1-page fridge list of the top 10 thiosulfinate foods as a perk for my paid subscribers. And, because garlic is the best source of thiosulfinates, I’m sharing one of my favorite ways to eat a ton of garlic in one sitting, a downloadable version of my Mashed Acorn Squash with Forty Cloves of Garlic recipe.

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

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

• Mashed Acorn Squash with Forty Cloves of Garlic - 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

✅Thiosulfinates are the class of phytonutrients that make allium vegetables so tasty as well as so beneficial for cardiovascular health.

✅Garlic contains the most famous thiosulfinate, called allicin. You can boost allicin content by chopping or crushing your garlic and letting it sit for ten minutes before adding it to your dish.

✅Garlic is an easy ingredient to add to meals to boost intake of nutritive compounds, but there’s lots of other foods that offer impressive nutrients even when we consume them in very small amounts.

✅For paid subscribers, your companion downloads this week are: Top 10 Thiosulfinate Foods Fridge List and Mashed Acorn Squash with Forty Cloves of Garlic. 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).

Thiosulfinates for Cardiovascular Health

🧬Thiosulfinates are the compounds responsible for the distinctive pungent flavor of allium vegetables (such as onions, garlic, shallots, leeks, and chives) and they provide diverse beneficial effects, including powerful anticancer properties as well as antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and antithrombotic effects.

Thiosulfinates are excellent for reducing cardiovascular disease risk, by lowering total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol, by inhibiting the enzymes involved in cholesterol and fatty acid synthesis, and by reducing platelet clumping and abnormal clot formation. A 2020 systematic review and meta-analysis (including 81 cohort studies and over 4 million subjects!) found that the highest versus lowest consumption of alliums was associated with a 67% lower risk of cardiovascular disease mortality, a 33% lower risk of coronary heart disease mortality, and an 11% lower risk of stroke!

Learn About Thiosulfinates

Want to know all the best food sources of thiosulfinates? Learn them here.

Get 81 mg Thiosulfinates with Garlic

🧄Thanks to its phytonutrient content, especially thiosulfinates—along with having impressive amounts per calorie of vitamin B6, vitamin C, manganese, copper, selenium, and fiber—garlic has a sky-high Nutrivore Score of 5622, making it one of the most nutrient-dense foods on the planet!

While at least 19 beneficial thiosulfinates have been identified in various alliums, the most famous example is allicin, produced by the conversion of the alliin in garlic by alliinase when the garlic is sliced or crushed. Allicin has well-established anticancer and antitumor, cardioprotective (including reducing hypertension and hyperlipidemia as well as improving circulation), antibacterial, antifungal and antiparasitic properties in addition immune modulating properties.

A 2019 umbrella review of meta-analyses likewise found that garlic consumption had a powerful cholesterol-lowering effect—with eight weeks of garlic consumption leading to a 17.2 mg/dL drop in total cholesterol levels.

And while fresh garlic has higher levels of thiosulfinates, garlic powder is also a great choice! For example, a 2014 meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials found that garlic powder (in doses ranging from 300 mg to 1400 mg daily, for a period of seven days to one year) lowered triglyceride levels by 15.83 mg/dL, LDL cholesterol levels by 8.11 mg/dL, fasting blood glucose levels by 17.30 mg/dL, and systolic and diastolic blood pressure levels by 4.34 mmHg and 2.36 mmHg, respectively.

Learn About Garlic

Garlic is the 12th most nutrient-dense food! Learn the Top 500 Nutrivore Foods here.

Mashed Acorn Squash with Forty Cloves of Garlic

🥗 This garlic-heavy side dish is so amazingly sweet and delicious thanks to the slow roasting of many garlic cloves. Roasting garlic reduces their pungent-ness and makes them sweet and tender. You will not only be getting the benefits of thiosulfinate-filled garlic, but you will also have the added health promoting properties of carotenoids, vitamin B6 and vitamin C that come along with the winter squash varieties.

What a better way to enjoy the fall, squash season than by jazzing up your autumn table with this show-stopping side dish.

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

🧠When we think about improving diet quality, it’s easy to focus on the big changes—hitting five servings of daily vegetables, adding seafood to the menu, or building breakfasts around the Nutrivore Meal Map. But some of the easiest wins come from the smallest additions. This week’s newsletter highlights the benefits of garlic, but there are many other examples. Garnishing your dinner with just one tablespoon of parsley provides roughly half the Daily Value for vitamin K. Sprinkling one tablespoon of chia seeds over your breakfast yogurt bowl or lunch side salad adds three and a half grams of fiber plus two and a half grams of heart-healthy alpha-linolenic acid. And here’s a fun one: adding 2 tablespoons of unsweetened cocoa powder to your morning smoothie will add four grams of fiber and 13% DV magnesium.

This is one reason I often talk about easy additions as much as I talk about major dietary shifts. Fresh herbs, spices, garnishes, mushrooms, nuts and seeds, seaweed, citrus zest, and other nutrient-dense ingredients can up the nutritional value of meals without changing what you’re eating. Over the course of a week, those small additions can add up to a surprisingly broad spectrum of beneficial nutritive compounds.

The Nutrivore mindset isn’t about chasing perfection, it’s about looking for opportunities, like adding garlic to your roasted vegetables, sprinkling parsley over dinner, mixing lentils into your ground beef, or tossing a handful of herbs into a soup. Small changes don’t just add up, they compound.

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

💡This week’s tip requires just a bit of science… An interesting thing about thiosulfinates is that they aren’t even formed until the vegetable is damaged, for example sliced, crushed or chewed. This is because their precursors—antioxidant and immune-modulating S-alk(en)yl-L-cysteine sulfoxides (like alliin, the dominant sulfoxide in garlic)—reside in storage cells whereas the lyase enzyme alliinase that metabolizes sulfoxides is found in bundle sheath cells. When the cell membranes are damaged, alliinase and sulfoxides mix, forming a variety of thiosulfinates.

Alliinase is quite heat stable plus some of our gut bacteria produce enzymes with similar biological activity, so we don’t have to crush alliums before eating to benefit from thiosulfinates (see for example, the recipe above!). That being said, when it comes to garlic, we do get significantly more allicin production when we smash, chop, grate, or crush fresh garlic and then let it sit for ten minutes or so at room temperature before adding to whatever dish we’re creating! It’s an easy way to get even more health benefit from an ingredient we’re already consuming.

What I do is always start my meal prep with garlic (if the dish I’m making calls for it, of course). If a recipe calls for grated or crushed garlic, I do so into a bowl and set aside until I need it. If a recipe calls for sliced or chopped garlic, I first smash the clove with the side of my knife, then slice or chop and set aside until I need it. I don’t worry about it being exactly ten minutes, sometimes it’s more and sometimes it’s less, either way, I’m getting extra benefits from allicin production! And if the dish calls for whole roasted heads of garlic, I don’t worry about it and I skip this step.

This Week’s Companion Downloads

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

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

• Mashed Acorn Squash with Forty Cloves of Garlic - 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

Chronic fatigue (or pathological fatigue) however, refers to fatigue that is persistent, often debilitating, and not relieved by rest. It may last for months and impair a person’s ability to function in daily life. In the most extreme form, it is diagnosed as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (also called myalgic encephalomyelitis, ME/CFS). ME/CFS is characterized not only by profound fatigue, but also post-exertional malaise (worsening of symptoms after exertion), unrefreshing sleep, cognitive impairment, orthostatic intolerance, and other systemic symptoms.

According to a 2021–2022 National Health Interview Survey report, about 1.3 % of U.S. adults had physician-diagnosed ME/CFS (i.e. chronic fatigue syndrome) at the time of interview. In absolute numbers, that corresponds to approximately 3.3 million Americans living with ME/CFS. The prevalence increases with age up to a point (peaking in adults 50–69 years) and then declines in older age groups. Women are significantly more affected than men: about 1.7 % of women versus 0.9 % of men report ME/CFS. Among racial/ethnic groups, non-Hispanic White adults have a somewhat higher reported prevalence (≈1.5 %) compared to Hispanic (0.8 %) or Asian non-Hispanic (0.7 %).

Because many cases likely remain undiagnosed, the true prevalence may be higher.

This article explains the links between pathological fatigue and 8 different nutrients —including specific vitamins, minerals, and fatty acids. It’s important to clarify that while nutrient-dense eating can meaningfully support energy levels—and in some cases help alleviate pathological fatigue—the primary focus of this article is on nutrients associated with reducing the risk of developing pathological fatigue in the first place.

In addition, fatigue is influenced by many factors beyond food alone, including genetics, age, gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, hormones, sleep, infection, and environmental exposures. A nutrient-rich diet can improve health outcomes including reducing risk of pathological fatigue, but it is not a guarantee, a cure, or a moral safeguard.

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

Chronic Fatigue Causes and Risk Factors

The causes of chronic fatigue and ME/CFS are not fully understood. In fact, the condition is considered multi-factorial and likely results from the interaction of biological, psychological, and environmental factors.

Some of the hypothesized or associated mechanisms include:

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Because this week’s Free Newsletter talked about the link between vitamin B12 intake and depression risk, I want to share this downloadable handy-dandy 1-page summary of Nutrients for Anxiety and Depression as a perk for my paid subscribers. And, because ground beef is a great source of vitamin B12, I’m sharing one of my favorite ways to enjoy it, a downloadable version of my recipe for Italian Fennel Beef Sausage.

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

• Nutrients for Anxiety and Depression - This 1-pager PDF guide lists all the nutrients that reduce risk of anxiety and depression along with top food sources, to give you a quick-reference for foods to add if mental health challenges are a concern for you.

• Italian Fennel Beef Sausage - 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

✅Low intake of vitamin B12 is a risk factor for depression, although more science is needed to know how effective it is once depression is diagnosed.

✅Red meat is famous for its iron content, but it’s actually a way better food source of vitamin B12. (And one vegan food is an even better source!)

✅Nutrivore can be implemented as a diet modifier if you already have a preferred way of eating. Tips to do so are below!

✅For paid subscribers, your companion downloads this week are: Nutrients for Anxiety and Depression and Italian Fennel Beef Sausage. 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 B12 for Depression

🧬Vitamin B12 serves as a cofactor for two enzymes: methionine synthase (which requires B12 in the form of methylcobalamin), and L-methylmalonyl-coenzyme A mutase (which requires B12 in the form of 5-deoxyadenosylcobalamin). As a methionine synthase cofactor, vitamin B12 helps create the amino acid methionine from homocysteine; methionine is then used to synthesize an important methyl group donor called S-adenosylmethoinine (SAM), which is needed for methylation reactions involving DNA, RNA, proteins, and more. When methionine synthase isn’t functioning sufficiently, it can lead to excess homocysteine accumulation (potentially increasing cardiovascular disease risk), as well as aberrant DNA and protein methylation (leading to altered gene expression and chromatin structure, characteristic of cancer cells).

Vitamin B12 has a compelling relationship with depression. Across studies, a disproportionate number of patients suffering from depression have been shown to have low levels of vitamin B12—possibly due to vitamin B12 deficiency inhibiting the methylation reactions orchestrated by S-adenosylmethionine (SAM), in turn affecting depression-linked neurotransmitters. Some observational research has even linked low levels of vitamin B12 with greater risk of depression during pregnancy, even after controlling for potential confounders.

As with most of the studies of B vitamins, they too-often supplement with a combination of B vitamins, and not simply vitamin B12. So, more research is needed to understand the effects of vitamin B12 supplementation specifically on depressive symptoms after diagnosis.

Learn About Vitamin B12

Want to know the top 25 best food sources of this vitamin B12? Learn them here.

Get 90% DV Vitamin B12 with Ground Beef

🫜Ground beef is not only one of most commonly consumed and readily available cuts of beef in North America, but it offers 90% of the DV of vitamin B12 in a 3-4 oz serving (that is, a serving about the size of the open palm of your hand, or one small hamburger patty!). Ground beef is chock-full of other amazing nutrients, including offering 41% DV zinc, 29% DV selenium, 29% DV vitamin B3, and 20% DV vitamin B6 per serving.

Not only is this meat incredibly versatile, but it can hold up to just about any flavor profile from strong aromatic spice blends, to a simple salt and pepper seasoning. There are many different “mixes” of ground beef available, especially if you get yours directly from a butcher. Everything ranging from 97% lean meat/3% fat, to 70% lean meat/30% fat. The fat helps to keep the ground meat moist and offers that juicy finish on any grilled or baked ground beef meal. If the ground beef label does not specify which blend is inside, you can always ask your butcher behind the counter which blend of meat you are purchasing.

And, if you’re worried about the health effects of red meat, I covered in a recent edition of this newsletter! Read it here.

Learn About Ground Beef

Ground beef is the 455th most nutrient-dense food! Learn the Top 500 Nutrivore Foods here.

Italian Fennel Beef Sausage

🥗 These delicious sausage patties are seasoned with a unique and aromatic blend of fennel seed, star anise, and paprika, leaving you with a distinct Asian-inspired, protein-filled dish. Not only is the ground beef filled with zinc, selenium, vitamin B12, B3 and B6, but the crispy skillet-grilled crust is such a great texture. Serve these alongside a hearty potato dish and a fresh garden salad for a well-rounded and nutritious supper!

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

🧠Nutrivore is best thought of as a diet modifier—a way to improve nutrient intake regardless of how you choose to eat. Whether you’re vegan, vegetarian, pescatarian, Mediterranean, paleo, gluten-free, dairy-free, navigating allergies or ARFID, or simply trying to feed your family on a budget, the principles of Nutrivore can help you identify opportunities to increase nutrient density without abandoning the foods, traditions, or eating patterns that work for you.

Yes, you get to adapt Nutrivore to your chosen diet, no diet in particular, or implement it as an anti-diet, it’s up to you. How do you apply Nutrivore as a diet modifier? It takes understanding what types of foods supply what types of nutrients (which is the goal behind my book, website, digital resources, and this newsletter) and comparing that to your eating patterns. This will help you figure out the best foods to add that align with your preferred diet to fill nutrient gaps.

If you need help identifying foods to fill nutrient gaps due to a food or food group you don’t eat, I do have some tools for you. You can use the appendix in the paperback edition of my book Nutrivore, my Top 25 Foods for Every Nutrient e-book, or the Nutrivore.com website to find alternative foods that alight with your diet that will provide the same nutrients as each week’s habit focus. And don’t forget that you can also tap a registered dietitian or licensed nutritionist for even more personalization or more technical support like identifying when a supplement may be an appropriate strategy for you.

There is no single “Nutrivore diet” because there is no single right way to eat. There are many paths to nutrient sufficiency, and Nutrivore helps you find the one that works 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

💡Vitamin B12 is one of the nutrients that requires special attention on vegetarian and especially vegan diets because it is naturally found primarily in animal-source foods. Vegetarians can obtain vitamin B12 from foods like dairy products and eggs, but vegans need to be intentional about including reliable sources of this essential vitamin. Fortified foods and supplements are often recommended, but there are also a few plant foods that contain naturally occurring vitamin B12.

The best natural vegan food source of vitamin B12 is nori seaweed (a.k.a. purple laver). Research has shown that nori contains substantial amounts of vitamin B12 and has confirmed that consuming nori increases vitamin B12 levels in the body. In fact, just 4.64 grams of toasted nori (about 1½ sheets) contains enough vitamin B12 to meet the Daily Value. In fact, nori is a more concentrated food source of vitamin B12 than almost any other food—only clams and liver beat it! Nori is versatile and can be enjoyed as a snack, crumbled over salads and grain bowls, added to soups, or incorporated into homemade sushi rolls. It’s possible that other sea vegetables also contain vitamin B12, but they haven’t been measured or tested yet to confirm.

Because vitamin B12 deficiency can take years to develop but can have serious consequences—including anemia, fatigue, neurological symptoms, and sometimes irreversible cognitive impairment—it’s important for vegetarians and vegans to regularly consume reliable vitamin B12 sources, whether you choose dairy, eggs, nori, fortified foods, supplements, or a combination. Adults over the age of 19 need 2.4 micrograms of vitamin B12 daily.

This Week’s Companion Downloads

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

• Nutrients for Anxiety and Depression - This 1-pager PDF guide lists all the nutrients that reduce risk of anxiety and depression along with top food sources, to give you a quick-reference for foods to add if mental health challenges are a concern for you.

• Italian Fennel Beef Sausage - 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

Potassium is the third most abundant mineral in the human body, and is present in all plant and animal tissues; in fact, it’s necessary for every living cell to function. It was first isolated in 1807 by the English chemist Sir Humphry Davy (who also discovered sodium, calcium, magnesium, strontium, and barium!), when he electrolyzed the element from the ashes of plants, or potash (which is also where potassium got its name!). Intriguingly, a small fraction of potassium atoms (about 0.012%) in the form of potassium-40 are radioactive, and even led to the development of the “banana equivalent dose” (BED)—an informal measurement of ionizing radiation exposure, used to illustrate how radioactive something is in comparison to one banana. (For example, a single dental X-ray produces as much radiation as about 50 bananas!) However, the amounts of radioactive potassium we ingest through food aren’t enough to cause harm to our bodies; in fact, we’re already a little radioactive due to the potassium all living creatures naturally contain.

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!

Good sources of potassium include leafy green vegetables, cruciferous vegetables, melons (such as cantaloupe), bananas, apricots, plums, prunes, oranges (and orange juice), potatoes, sweet potatoes, squash, avocados, mushrooms, and legumes (especially lentils, kidney beans, white beans, and soybeans). Many nuts and seeds also have a high potassium content, including pistachios, almonds, hazelnuts, Brazil nuts, and even acorns! And, dairy products—particularly low-fat dairy like milk and yogurt—have a relatively high concentration of potassium.

This article explains the biological roles of potassium, how potassium regulates blood pressure, the interactions between dietary potassium and our risk of 4 major health conditions, symptoms and signs that we’re getting too little potassium, how much potassium we need by demographic, and shares the top 25 best common food sources of potassium. Paid subscribers also can download a printer-friendly PDF version of this information below!

The Biological Roles of Potassium

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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.

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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:

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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

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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 osteoporosis and bone fracture, to create the appropriate context for our review of the nutrients that lower occurrence.

Causes and Risk Factors of Osteoporosis and Bone Fracture

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