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

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 Downloads

📥For paid subscribers, your 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.

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

Read more

Magnesium is the fourth most abundant mineral in the human body, and is essential for every cell. Despite being widespread in nature, it never occurs in its free (unbound) form—only in combination with other elements, particularly oxygen, calcium, or carbon. The word magnesium itself is named after a district in Greece called Magnesia (which in turn is named after an ancient Greek tribe called the Magnetes), due to the area’s abundance of magnesia alba, AKA magnesium oxide.

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

Read more

Key Takeaways

✅Vitamin D isn’t a “true” vitamin, it’s a steroid hormone that controls over 200 genes!

✅Maitake mushrooms are the 29th most nutrient-dense food, and one of our best food sources of vitamin D!

✅Let’s get nerdy about how I determine recipe serving sizes, even though that’s not the real question…

✅For paid subscribers, your downloads this week are: Top 10 Vitamin D Foods Fridge List and Stir-Fried Turnip Greens with Mushrooms and Almonds

Vitamin D for… Well, Everything!

🧬Rather than being a “true” vitamin, vitamin D is a group of fat-soluble steroid hormones that can be either obtained from the diet or synthesized from sun exposure. (For this reason, vitamin D is sometimes nicknamed “the sunshine vitamin”!)

Vitamin D has control of over 200 genes (and the proteins they regulate)! As a result, vitamin D is heavily involved in many biological processes, including immune function, cell differentiation, gut barrier function, nutrient absorption (particularly of calcium, magnesium, and phosphorus), bone formation, endocrine health, cardiometabolic health, and neurological health. As a result of these diverse functions, getting enough vitamin D is important for protecting against chronic disease (including diabetes, cancer, and degenerative neurological conditions), maintaining good gut health, and keeping a healthy immune system (including protecting against both infectious disease and autoimmunity). I mean, it’s probably easier to ask what vitamin D doesn’t do!

Because vitamin D can come from both food and our body’s own synthesis, it’s been difficult to establish a guidelines for the amount of vitamin D each individual needs. The current recommended dietary allowance (RDA) is 600 IU per day for adults (800 IU per day after the age of 70), with a tolerable upper limit set at 4000 IU daily (meaning beyond this level, the risk of harm begins to increase). However, for those with vitamin D deficiency or insufficiency, many medical professionals are shifting towards individualized doses of vitamin D supplements to sustain optimal serum levels, rather than a standard supplementation dose. This involves testing 25-hydroxyvitamin D level every 3 to 6 months, and adjusting the dose of vitamin D supplementation accordingly.

The food sources of vitamin D are slim and are all primarily fish. So if you are looking to increase your vitamin D with food, nearly any kind of fish will do: salmon, carp, eel, mackerel, swordfish, tuna, bass, halibut, etc. One of the only non-animal sources of vitamin D is mushrooms, especially maitake mushrooms. However the caveat here is that the mushrooms must be grown under UV exposure to produce naturally occurring vitamin D (mostly in the form of vitamin D2, which has been shown to bring up our vitamin D levels comparably with vitamin D3). Otherwise, you can use the simple trick in the Helpful Tip of the Week Section below to increase the vitamin D content of any mushrooms you buy at the store!

Learn About Vitamin D

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

Get 108% DV Vitamin D with Maitake Mushrooms

🍄‍🟫Although they’re categorized as vegetables, mushrooms are nutritionally unique. That’s because, unlike all other vegetables which are plants, mushrooms belong to an entirely separate biological kingdom, called Fungi. Along with having high concentrations of vitamins and minerals per calorie, mushrooms are among the most concentrated food sources of a variety of nutrients, including: ergothioneine (aka “the longevity vitamin”, several special types of fiber (glucans, chitin, and chitosan), triterpenes, catechins, gallic acid, gentisic acid, myrecetin. Mushrooms are also one of the only non-animal food sources of vitamin D, with maitake being the highest.

In addition to 108% DV vitamin D, a serving (1 cup, measured raw) of maitake mushrooms will give you 65% DV biotin, 32% DV vitamin B3, 22% DV copper, 14% DV vitamin B2, 2.1 grams of fiber, and 12.2 mg of ergothioneine, all for a measly 24 calories, which is why maitake mushrooms have such a high Nutrivore Score of 3551!

Learn About Maitake Mushrooms

Maitake mushrooms are the 29th most nutrient-dense food! Learn the Top 500 Nutrivore Foods here.

Stir-Fried Turnip Greens with Mushrooms and Almonds

🥗 Turnip greens are a cruciferous vegetable in the same family as cabbage, kale and broccoli. Not only are they packed with nutrients, but they are a hearty unique flavor that stand up to other strong seasonings such as soy sauce or your favorite spicy condiment, and they pair amazingly with the soft, meaty texture of sauteed mushrooms! If you can’t find them at the grocery store or your local farmer’s market (they’re also very easy to grow from seed if you’re looking for a project), you can use collard greens, kale, or radish tops in this recipe instead.

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 I’ve noticed an interesting theme in the comments that I want to discuss today, people asking: How is serving size is determined?

Of course, there are standards set by the USDA and based in scientific research for defining a serving of vegetables, fruits, grains, seafood, meat, cheese, nuts, etc.; but that’s not what people are asking. (If that was what you were wondering though, don’t worry, I list serving sizes for all the different food groups here.) Instead, this question pertains to the whole recipe that I’m talking about, and seems to be stemming from a diet culture-driven fear of “eating too much”.

So, when I share my nutritional analysis of a recipe, how do I determine portion size?

Most of the time, I’m not the one making the determination. Instead, the recipe developer has indicated how many servings their recipe makes, and I am simply doing the nutrient calculations based on their portion recommendations. Sometimes the recipe developer shares how many calories (or grams of protein or fiber) each serving has, and I have to figure out from that how many servings the recipe makes from that, but I’m still just matching their recommendations.

Okay, we’re getting into the weeds here, but in the instances where the recipe developer has not specified recipe yield, I have to figure it out. Here’s my process: I look at the main ingredients in the recipe, what type of recipe it is (main course, veggie side, starchy side, breakfast, snack, etc.) and guestimate based on standard serving sizes of the main ingredients. For example, if the recipe uses a pound of chicken, my first guess will be that it serves four, since a serving of meat is 4 ounces. Then I look at the nutrition (especially calories and protein grams) and see if that makes sense, and adjust up or down. For example, if I assumed 4 servings because the recipe uses a pound of chicken, but then that comes out to 900 calories and 65 grams of protein, I’ll redo the analysis with the recipe serving 6 instead. I generally aim for 600 to 750-ish calories for a main course, 200 to 400-ish calories for a side dish, 300 to 500-ish calories for breakfast or dessert, and around 300-ish calories for a snack.

And that brings me to the real answer to this question! I want to emphasize that just because the recipe developer or I have defined a portion in a specific way, that doesn’t mean that you have to eat that much food, nor do you you have to limit yourself to that much food. You’re allowed to eat more or less than a portion size of a recipe! And you’re allowed to eat enough to feel full!

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

💡In general, wild-harvested mushrooms contain high levels of vitamin D due to being exposed to sunlight out in nature, while commercially grown mushrooms contain negligible amounts. But did you know that mushrooms can actually generate vitamin D in response to UV exposure even after they’ve been harvested?

A variety of studies show that exposing fresh-picked (raw) mushrooms, such as white button or oyster, to sunlight for 15 to 30 minutes increases their vitamin D content impressively! Sliced mushrooms generate even higher vitamin D quantities, due to increased surface area allowing for greater exposure of vitamin D precursors to UV light. It’s typical in these studies for vitamin D to increase by 20 times or more, and typically yielding 100% to 200% DV per serving of mushrooms! Sun-dried mushrooms also generate vitamin D during their dehydrating process, regardless of how they were grown.

So, yes, this means you can make your own “vitamin D enhanced” mushrooms at home! A simple way to do this is to slice them, lay them out on a baking sheet, and put them outside in the sun for half an hour or so. Then cook them however you were planning (vitamin D is quite stable in the cooking process), or enjoy them raw!

This Week’s Downloads

📥For paid subscribers, your 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.

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

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

Read more

Key Takeaways

✅Oleic acid is one of the most important healthy fats for improving cholesterol levels and lowering cardiovascular disease risk.

✅The reason why olive oil is so heart healthy is that it’s mostly oleic acid! I have tips on choosing a high quality extra virgin olive oil below.

✅My answer to the question “How do I make sure I’m getting enough of all of these nutrients?” is the Nutrivore Weekly Serving Matrix.

✅For paid subscribers, your downloads this week are: Nutrients for High Cholesterol and Lemon-Rosemary Olive Oil Cake.

Oleic Acid for High Cholesterol

🧬The most common long-chain monounsaturated fat, oleic acid, reduces cardiovascular disease risk factors like high blood pressure, cholesterol, triglycerides, inflammation, and oxidative stress, and reduces actual cardiovascular disease incidence and events. Along with its well-established benefits for cardiovascular health, oleic acid may also help fight inflammation, protect against cancer, influence immune function, and even have anti-diabetic effects.

The health benefits of olive oil are mainly attributable to its very high oleic acid content. Countless research studies have demonstrated that olive oil can help to prevent cardiovascular disease by protecting the integrity of your vascular system and lowering your LDL “bad” cholesterol. In fact, a 2019 meta-analysis of 27 randomized placebo-controlled clinical trials showed that olive oil was the best plant oil for reducing LDL cholesterol, total cholesterol and triglycerides, and it additionally increased HDL cholesterol.

Many high-fat plant foods and vegetable oils are good sources of oleic acid, including olives and olive oil, avocado and avocado oil, palm oil and palm olein, canola oil, peanuts and peanut oil, sunflower seeds and sunflower oil (especially high-oleic sunflower oil), pecans, macadamia nuts, cashews, sesame seeds, sesame oil, grape seed oil, soybean oil, and cocoa butter.

Learn About Oleic Acid

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

Get 11g Oleic Acid with EVOO

🫒Extra-virgin olive oil (EVOO) has a Nutrivore Score of 139, and has been extracted from olives and used for thousands of years. In fact, it’s one of the oldest (and most revered!) edible oils out there, with culinary uses dating back to at least 1000 BC! Olive oil is graded based on the level of acidity—free oleic acid— and comes in various varieties including extra-virgin (highest-quality and lowest acidity, therefore richer flavor), virgin, fino, light, and pure.

Per 1-tablespoon serving, extra-virgin olive oil provides 11.3 grams of monounsaturated fat (almost all of which is oleic acid), 41% DV vitamin E (although this does vary by olive cultivar and oil extraction method), and 2.2 grams of coenzyme Q10.

Learn About EVOO

Extra virgin olive oil is the 474th most nutrient-dense food! Learn the Top 500 Nutrivore Foods here.

Lemon-Rosemary Olive Oil Cake

🥗 This Lemon-Rosemary Olive Oil Cake is not only moist and spongy with a large crumb and perfect tangy flavor from the yogurt, but it combines two amazing flavors of rosemary and lemon, while also adding in amazing nutrition benefits of olive oil!

This cake recipe can easily be made into a coffee cake by baking in a Bundt pan and glazing with a simple lemon juice and honey glaze (mix one part of each, heat and then brush over the cake surface immediately after removing from the pan, while it’s still warm).

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 popular (a special hello to everyone who subscribed to my Substack because you’ve been enjoying these videos!), and have engendered some fantastic thematic questions in the comments, which I plan to address over the next little while in my newsletters. Up first: “How do I make sure I’m getting enough of all of these nutrients?”

I love this question because that’s the heart of Nutrivore: learning the eating patterns that help you get sufficient quantities of the full range of nutrients your body needs, while staying within your calorie requirements, and without engaging in restrictive diet mentality. You could of course use one of the food journaling apps that analyzes vitamins and minerals in addition to macros; but I have a much easier, low-stress, analogue solution for you that doesn’t require weighing, measuring or overthinking your food. It’s called the Nutrivore Weekly Serving Matrix.

The Nutrivore Weekly Serving Matrix is a deceptively simple checklist that helps you:

• build balanced, nutrient-dense meals,

• prioritize the most nutritionally-important foods,

• embrace dietary diversity and eating the rainbow,

• all while leaving plenty of room for quality-of life foods.

It took me months and months of research and calculations (and many iterations with my designer to make the Nutrivore Weekly Serving Matrix as user-friendly as possible) to develop it; but for you, it takes just seconds to fill out each meal. Not only does following the weekly serving targets support you meeting your daily requirements of essential nutrients, but it also helps you to re-build your intuition for a healthy and balanced diet.

The Nutrivore Weekly Serving Matrix is included in my book, or as a digital product (complete with instructions, FAQ, and a fillable PDF version if you don’t want to print it off each week) on my website.

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

💡While all olive oil is healthy (and it’s a myth that most of the options in the grocery store are cut with vegetable oils), there are some studies showing even more health benefits from a high-polyphenol extra-virgin olive oil compared to a low-polyphenol refined olive oil. So, here are some tips for finding a high quality extra virgin olive oil:

• Look for brands that list a harvest date on the bottle, which will tell you when the olives were picked. The more recent the date, the better (choose oil no older than 12 to 18 months).

• Look for options in dark glass, tinplate/stainless steel cans, and bag-in-box since these are the best options for protecting the oil from oxidizing (clear plastic bottles are the least protective).

• Olive oil should taste pungent and peppery, even stinging the back of your throat a bit and making you cough—that’s a sign of a high polyphenol content.

• Fresher is better. Unlike vinegar or wine, olive oil does not get better with age.

• Store in a cool, dark place and use within 6 months of opening.

My preference is to use a high quality extra virgin olive oil for homemade salad dressings and condiments like hummus, and to use a cheaper oil for other cooking applications.

This Week’s Downloads

📥For paid subscribers, your 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.

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

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!

Grab a Copy!

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

Read more

Often referred to as the “silent killer,” high blood pressure can go unnoticed for years, as it typically has no obvious symptoms until it causes significant damage.

Blood pressure is measured using two numbers:

• Systolic pressure: The first number, (or top number, in fraction form) in the blood pressure measurement, which measures the pressure in the arteries when the heart beats.

• Diastolic pressure: The second number, (or bottom number, in fraction form) in the blood pressure measurement, which measures the pressure in the arteries when the heart rests between beats.

A normal blood pressure reading is usually around 120/80 mmHg. Blood pressure is considered high if readings consistently remain at or above 130/80 mmHg.

This article explains the links between blood pressure and 16 different nutrients, including specific vitamins, minerals, and fatty acids. It’s important to clarify that while nutrient-dense eating can meaningfully support healthy blood pressure regulation—and in some cases help lower elevated blood pressure—the primary focus of this article is on nutrients associated with reducing the risk of developing hypertension in the first place and supporting overall cardiovascular health.

Even for diet-sensitive conditions like high blood pressure, outcomes are influenced by many factors beyond food alone, including genetics, age, medications, kidney function, sleep, stress, physical activity, environmental exposures, and social determinants of health. A nutrient-rich diet can improve health outcomes and support better blood pressure control, but it is not a guarantee, a cure, or a moral safeguard.

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

Causes and Risk Factors of High Blood Pressure

Read more

Key Takeaways

✅Beta-glucan is a fiber type that is particularly good at lowering cholesterol and improving blood sugar regulation.

✅Raw preparations of oats like overnight oats and muesli can have up to triple the beta-glucan content of cooked oats.

✅If you’re looking to up your fiber intake, I share specific recommendations from the scientific literature on how much to add per week.

✅For paid subscribers, your downloads this week are: Top 10 Fiber Foods Fridge List and Double Berry Swiss Oatmeal

Beta-Glucans for Metabolic Health

🧬Beta-glucan fiber is particularly beneficial. It increases the viscosity of the chyme in the upper GI tract, leading to increased binding and secretion of bile acids; in turn, plasma cholesterol becomes a substrate for newly formed bile, causing blood levels to decrease. The gel formed by beta-glucans in the intestine likewise forms a barrier that slows down the absorption of glucose. And another mechanism of action is the short-chain fatty acids produced when beta-glucan is fermented by gut bacteria; these short-chain fatty acids then inhibit cholesterol biosynthesis and affect carbohydrate metabolism.

In over a dozen studies, oat consumption has been shown to improve levels of both fasting and post-meal blood sugar and insulin. In fact, meals containing between 6 and 8.4 grams of fiber from oats can reduce the blood sugar response by up to 50%, with the suppressed response lasting up to eight hours. And a 2021 meta-analysis of 103 trials found that adding oat beta-glucan to carbohydrate-containing meals reduced both blood sugar and insulin spikes by 22–28%. These benefits were seen in people with and without diabetes.

Beta-glucans are found in some grains (mainly oats and barley, but there’s also some in rye and wheat), fungi (yeast and mushrooms, particularly those mushrooms that are used medicinally like shiitake and maitake), and some types of seaweed (mainly algae). Beta-glucans are the fiber in oats that are largely responsible for their unique health benefits among grains.

Learn About Fiber

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

Get 4.1 Grams of Fiber with Oats

🍚A serving of oats is 1/4 cup measured raw and dry, which translates to 1/2 cup cooked—and that will give you 4.1 grams of fiber, 3% to 9% of which beta-glucan (and up to 26% if eaten raw, as in muesli or overnight oats). This high concentration of beta-glucan appears to be the “magic ingredient” behind oats’ most famous properties, including their cholesterol- and blood sugar-lowering effects. In fact, over 50 human studies have demonstrated that oats have cholesterol-lowering properties, reducing both total and LDL cholesterol by up to 23% (while preserving or sometimes increasing HDL cholesterol) when consumed at levels of 35 to 120 grams (1 to 3 servings) per day.

In addition to fiber, oats are great sources of manganese, vitamin B1, copper and biotin. They have a Nutrivore Score of 208!

Learn About Oats

Oats are the 416th most nutrient-dense food! Learn the Top 500 Nutrivore Foods here.

Double Berry Swiss Oatmeal

🥗 This rendition of overnight oats can be made the night before so your breakfast is waiting for you in the refrigerator when you’re ready to eat in the morning. The overall Nutrivore Score of this Double Berry Swiss Oatmeal is upped by the addition of dried mulberries and currants, as well as fresh mixed berries!

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

🧠Traditional dieting poses risks such as food obsession, cravings, emotional eating, disordered eating, eating disorders, and weight regain cycles (a.k.a. yo-yo dieting). One study showed that 35% of “normal dieters” progress to pathological dieting, with 20 to 25% of those individuals developing eating disorders.

And this is why Nutrivore is different. Nutrivore is about improving diet quality while quitting diet mentality.

First of all, it has a permissive structure—on Nutrivore, there are no foods you have to cut. There are no “good” or “bad” foods, and instead emphasis is placed on the overall quality of the whole diet. We focus on eating more of those foods that supply us with ample nutrition and that are known to improve our health, without depriving ourselves of any food. By doing so, Nutrivore supports a healthy relationship with food, putting an end to restrictive dieting leading to disordered eating.

Second, instead of your health being something to be sacrificed for the sake of a weight loss-centric diet, Nutrivore is all about supplying your body with the nutrients it needs to support health and reduce risk of disease. It’s a balanced approach that fosters sustainability, a way of eating for lifelong health that additionally mends our relationship with our own bodies.

Nutrivore promotes a holistic, lifelong approach to health, emphasizing that individual food choices do not singularly define the success or failure of one’s diet or overall well-being. You can absolutely meet your body’s nutritional needs from the foods you eat while choosing some foods that aren’t particularly nutrient-dense, but are just plain tasty. It’s okay if some of our food choices are centered around joy rather than nutrient density. One food will not make or break your diet, nor make or break your health.

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

💡Upping fiber intake? Go slow!

The RDA of fiber is 14 grams per 1,000 calories. So, if you eat a 2,000 calorie per day diet, aim for at least 28 grams of fiber. Fiber is one of those “the more, the better” nutrients—for every 10 grams of daily fiber you consume, risk of all-cause mortality decreased by 10%.

That being said, if you’re looking to up your fiber intake, it’s best to do so gradually! This is because a sudden increase in fiber intake can cause a variety of unpleasant symptoms, such as gas, bloating, constipation and diarrhea—your gut microbiome needs time to adjust to your dietary changes.

It’s recommended to step up your fiber intake weekly, giving your digestive tract a full week to adjust to each incremental increase, until you hit your target fiber intake levels—the recommended amount to step up each week is 5 grams per day. So, if you’re starting out at 10 grams of fiber daily, go up to 15 grams for all of next week, the week after go up to 20 grams for the whole week, and the week after that, go up to 25 grams for the whole week. And, if a 5-gram incremental increase causes gastrointestinal symptoms, it’s okay to take smaller steps and give more time between each increase.

It’s also helpful to make sure your fiber is coming from a variety of sources (not all from supplements or fiber-fortified meal replacement products like protein bars) and that you’re incorporating some fermented foods, like sauerkraut, yogurt, kefir and kombucha.

When in doubt, consult your doctor.

Watch & Learn

🎥Check out my YouTube videos on fruit and vegetables as sources of fiber and carbohydrates, and the highest fiber recipes I analyzed last week! 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:

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

• Double Berry Swiss Oatmeal 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.

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

Read more

Key Takeaways

✅Getting enough vitamin B6 (especially in conjunction with other B-vitamins) reduces frequency and severity of migraine headaches.

✅Dark meat chicken is similarly nutritious as light meat chicken, while being harder to overcook and typically much more affordable.

✅The most important step for calculating your daily protein is Step 3, where we check to make sure that we’re not aiming for too much.

✅For paid subscribers, your downloads this week are: Vitamin B6 2-page Fun Factsheet and Barbecue Chicken Thighs with Arugula Pesto

Vitamin B6 for Migraine Headaches

🧬A whopping 14% of people get migraines, and 1 in 22 people endure a headache more than half of the days each month. One of the nutrients that could make a big difference is vitamin B6.

A 2024 analysis showed that low dietary vitamin B6 (especially in conjunction with low dietary vitamin B9) was strongly associated with increased risk for migraine headaches—eating a diet that supplied at least 50% more than the daily value of vitamin B6 on a daily basis lowered the odds of getting a migraine.

A 2015 double-blind randomized controlled clinical trial showed that a high-dose vitamin B6 supplement for 12 weeks reduced migraine severity and duration in patients who suffer recurrent migraine headaches with aura. A 2022 double-blind randomized controlled clinical trial compared high-dose vitamin B6 supplementation to vitamin B1, vitamin B9, vitamin B12, and a B-complex supplement that contained all four for episodic migraines. The strongest benefit to the Migraine Disability Assessment Questionnaire which assesses migraine-related disability was seen for vitamin B6, lowering migraine headache frequency and severity (note that all of the B-vitamins analyzed in this study were beneficial).

And finally, a 2020 systematic review found that vitamin B6, alone or in combination with other B vitamins (especially vitamin B9 and vitamin B12), was effective for helping prevent migraines with aura in adults.

Learn About Vitamin B6

Want to know the top 25 best food sources of vitamin B6? Learn them here.

Get 19% DV Vitamin B6 with Dark Meat Chicken

🍗All poultry is a reliable source of vitamin B6, including chicken, turkey, goose, duck, quail, light meat, dark meat, and giblets. For example, dark meat chicken has 19% DV per 3.5-ounce serving (measured raw, that’s about 3 ounces once cooked). While white meat seems to get all the love (especially as a weight loss diet-friendly protein), dark meat is similarly nutrient-dense with its Nutrivore Score of 281 (only 8% lower than white meat chicken), and is a particularly valuable source of protein, taurine, coQ10, vitamins B2, B3, B5, B6, B7 and B12, selenium and zinc.

Dark meat chicken has the added bonus of not drying out as easily when overcooked, and generally being more affordable!

Learn About Dark Meat Chicken

Dark meat chicken is the 365th most nutrient-dense food! Learn the Top 500 Nutrivore Foods here.

Barbecue Chicken Thighs with Arugula Pesto

🥗 Few recipes have been as consistent a part of my rotation for as many years as this barbecue chicken. In fact, I regularly make quadruple batches of the spice rub from this recipe to have on hand as an all-purpose seasoning or just to use the next time I barbecue chicken thighs to make it even more convenient.

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

🧠Let’s talk about restrictive diets—because odds are, if you’ve ever tried to improve your eating, you’ve been told to start by cutting things out. But here’s the truth: restriction doesn’t work long-term. Diets that rely on willpower to avoid ‘bad’ foods tend to backfire. Studies show they lead to food obsession, binge eating, disordered eating patterns, weight cycling, and a damaged relationship with food.

In a 2105 study, participants were asked to rate on a scale from “not at all true for me” to “very true for me” eleven questions such as “I view my attempts to diet as either successes or failures” and “I think of food as either good or bad”. One to four points were assigned for each answer, altogether giving the study participants a score on the Dichotomous Thinking in Eating Disorders Scale. For every point higher on the scale (specifically, the Eating Subscale), participants had a whopping 142% higher chance of regaining lost weight instead of maintaining lost weight. Furthermore, this study showed that higher dichotomous thinking, higher food restraint, and dieting all went hand in hand, and were each predictive of weight regain.

Food prohibition tends to cause fixation and can trigger disinhibition. Disinhibition refers to when, after giving into that one thing that was against your rules, that piece of cake or that day of being a couch potato, your health behaviors unravel, driving more and more unhealthy choices. Basically, disinhibition is the technical term for falling off the proverbial wagon.

In a 2007 study, kids were given a bowl of yellow and red M&Ms and told they could eat as many as they wanted. In the first phase, one group of kids had no restrictions whereas the other was told they weren’t allowed to eat the red ones; and in the second phase, both groups of kids were told they could eat as many M&Ms as they wanted of either color. The kids who were at first prohibited from eating red M&Ms, had an increased desire for them; when the kids were finally allowed to eat whatever M&Ms they wanted in the second phase, they ate a higher proportion of red ones compared to the kids who didn’t have any restrictions. Perhaps not surprisingly, the kids who had food restrictions at home ate the most M&Ms (and total calories) in the study, regardless of which group they were in.

This effect isn’t limited to children. When we label a food as “bad” and tell ourselves we’re not allowed to eat it, the net result is that we become fixated on that food. When we eventually succumb to our craving, our eating behaviors unravel, and the diet yo-yo begins its upwards momentum. This can also set the stage for disordered eating patterns.

Restriction turns eating into a moral issue. It disconnects you from your hunger and fullness cues and sets you up to feel like you’re either succeeding or failing at every meal.

Let’s flip that script. Instead of controlling food, we focus on adding in nutrient-dense foods to support your health and we build consistency of healthier eating patterns by intentionally making room for joy and treats, too. This shift—from restriction to nourishment and permission—is the key to sustainable change.

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

💡Let’s talk protein, and how to figure out how much to aim for. While the RDA is set at 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram bodyweight, remember that RDAs are based on avoiding deficiency, not necessarily on what’s best for our overall health. A number of scientific studies show that the optimal dietary protein range for most people is 1.2 to 1.8 grams of protein per kilogram of bodyweight, with higher intakes (up to 2.4 g/kg) appropriate for athletes or people in a calorie deficit.

Here’s how to calculate your range:

Step 1: Convert your weight to kilograms.

• If you know your weight in kilograms, awesome!

• If you know your weight in pounds, divide that number by 2.2 to get your weight in kilograms.

  • Example: 150 pounds ÷ 2.2 = 68 kg

Step 2: Multiply your weight in kilograms by your protein target range.

• Multiply your weight in kilograms by both the lower end and upper end of the optimal protein range to get your target number of grams per day.

  • Example: For a 68-kilogram person:
    Lower end: 68 kg × 1.2 g = 82 grams protein/day
    Upper end: 68 kg × 1.8 g = 122 grams protein/day

Step 3: Make sure you’re within the AMDR for protein.

Protein should make up no more than 35% of your total calories (otherwise, it increases your risk of cardiovascular disease). Since each gram of protein provides 4 calories, you can do a quick check:

• Multiply your daily calorie target by 0.35

• Divide that number by 4 to get your upper limit in grams

  • Example: For a 2,000-calorie diet:
    2,000 × 0.35 = 700 calories from protein
    700 ÷ 4 = 175 grams protein/day maximum

• Make sure this number is higher than the upper end calculated in Step 2. If it’s not, this number is your new upper end protein target.

  • Example: 122 grams is less than 175 grams, so we’re good!

This check ensures your protein intake stays within a healthy range and leaves room for other essential nutrients.

Step 4: Break your protein target into meals

To make it easier to meet your daily protein goal, divide your range by 3 to estimate how much protein to include at each meal:

• Lower end example: 82 grams ÷ 3 meals = ~27 grams per meal

• Upper end example: 122 grams ÷ 3 meals = ~41 grams per meal

This gives you a ballpark to aim for without needing to track every bite. You can also spread protein across 3 meals and 1–2 snacks (for example: 25g at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, plus a 10–20g protein snack). Eating protein consistently throughout the day—rather than loading it all into one meal—supports better digestion, energy, satiety, and muscle retention.

And remember that all dietary protein counts here, not just your “protein foods”, so count the protein in meat, seafood, eggs, dairy products, vegetables, grains, legumes, fruit, and nuts, too.

Learn More

Watch & Learn

🎥Check out my YouTube videos on tips to get enough protein and more details on calculating your protein requirements! 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:

• Vitamin B6 Fun Factsheet - This 2-page PDF guide summarizes all the most important information about what vitamin B6 does, top food sources, and how much we need for each demographic group.

• Barbecue Chicken Thighs with Arugula Pesto - 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

Read more

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) states that over 38 million Americans have diabetes (about 1 in 10). Type 2 diabetes is the most common form of diabetes, accounting for approximately 90-95% of all diabetes cases. Unlike type 1 diabetes, which is an autoimmune disease typically diagnosed in childhood or early adulthood, type 2 diabetes is more closely associated with lifestyle factors and often develops later in life, typically in people 45 years or older. However, the condition is becoming more common in younger populations due to rising rates of obesity and sedentary behavior.

This article explains the links between type 2 diabetes and 20 different nutrients, including specific vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and fatty acids. It’s important to clarify that, while focusing on nutrient-dense eating can support better blood sugar regulation and metabolic health after a type 2 diabetes diagnosis, the primary focus of this article is on nutrients associated with reducing the risk of developing type 2 diabetes in the first place. Even for diet-preventable diseases like type 2 diabetes, occurrence is influenced by many factors beyond food alone, including genetics, age, medications, sleep, stress, physical activity, environmental exposures, and social determinants of health. A nutrient-rich diet can meaningfully lower risk and improve health outcomes, but it is not a guarantee or a moral safeguard.

So, let’s actually start with causes and risk factors of type 2 diabetes, to create the appropriate context for our review of the nutrients that lower risk.

Causes and Risk Factors of Type 2 Diabetes

Read more

Key Takeaways

✅Alpha-carotene, while not as extensively researched, looks to be even better us than other carotenoids. And pumpkin is one of the best food sources!

✅Winter squash count as a root vegetable in nutritional sciences! So do lots of veggies that aren’t actually roots.

✅The most common follow-up question I receive: “Does it matter if…”? The answer is almost always a comforting and celebratory “no.”

✅For paid subscribers, your downloads this week are: Top 10 Carotenoid Foods Fridge List and Pumpkin Chili.

α-Carotene for Healthy Aging

🧬Carotenoids vary in their health benefits, and one interesting stand-out is alpha-carotene, which seems to have some unique benefits of particular relevance as we age.

Alpha-carotene is more protective against cardiovascular disease mortality and all-cause mortality than beta-carotene, beta-cryptoxanthin, lutein or lycopene. Although chemically very similar to beta-carotene, alpha-carotene may have greater antioxidant benefits. And recent studies have shown that older adults with the highest serum levels of alpha-carotene have increased muscle strength and improved cognitive function compared to those with the lowest levels, whereas other carotenoids didn’t have strong associations with strength or cognition in these studies.

Learn About Carotenoids

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

Get 4660 mcg α-Carotene with Pumpkin

🍠Pumpkin is packed with carotenoids and one of the best food sources of alpha-carotene with 4660 micrograms per 1-cup serving, measured raw. A serving of pumpkin also delivers 55% DV vitamin A, 16% DV copper, 12% DV vitamin C, 10% DV vitamin B2, and 182 milligrams of polyphenols. In fact, it’s the most nutrient-dense winter squash with its impressive Nutrivore Score of 1036!

And, fun fact: canned pumpkin is even more nutrient-dense than fresh!

Learn About Pumpkin

Pumpkin is the 122nd most nutrient-dense food! Learn the Top 500 Nutrivore Foods here.

Pumpkin Chili Recipe

🥗 This Pumpkin Chili leans into pumpkin with both fresh pie pumpkin, roasted and added for texture, and canned pumpkin for a thick, incredibly flavorful, slightly sweet, chili that is also packed full of nutrient-rich vegetables and herbs. This is a great option for people who don’t tolerate beans, and with a Nutrivore Score of 555, it is a more nutrient-dense take on a standard favorite.

See Full Recipe

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

Nutrivore Mindset Corner

🧠Whether you follow me across social media or just read my weekly newsletters here on Substack, you’ve probably noticed that I spend a lot of time highlighting the nutrients and health benefits of individual foods. I especially enjoy highlight foods that have been unfairly maligned by various diets, or that have an unearned reputation of being unhealthy or nutritionally void.

One of the most common follow-up questions I get asked is “does it matter if…”? Does it matter if I eat bananas fully ripe or on the green side? Does it matter if I eat wild salmon or farmed? Does it matter if I eat nuts raw or roasted? Does it matter if I add a cream sauce to my spinach? Does it matter if I eat canned beans or do I need to prepare them from scratch? Does it matter if I puree my vegetables into a smoothie? Does it matter if I only like soup?

Man, diet culture has taught us to overthink everything, or maybe worse, diet culture has taught us that if we’re enjoying the experience of eating a food, that it somehow doesn’t count. That’s how I interpret these types of questions—at their heart, they’re asking if the way you prefer to eat a food still counts for the nutrients and/or health benefits I highlighted. The answer is always yes, most often a resounding yes, occasionally a yes with some nuance and caveats. (An example of the latter: we don’t get the blood pressure lowering benefits of potatoes when we eat them in French fry form because the extra salt counteracts the potassium.) And, I should emphasize here that I do truly enjoy answering these questions because it’s my opportunity to make you feel food about the nutrient-dense health-promotion foods you already enjoy and eat on the regular!

The studies that evaluate the health benefits of foods lump everything together, every serving of that food is counted towards a participant’s intake. They’re not splitting hairs, for example, only counting it as a serving if it’s organic, or eaten within 3 days of harvest. And, these are often population studies, looking at typical quality food, eaten in typical ways, by typical people. Even for intervention trials, the foods supplied are usually typical quality purchased from a typical store. And the health signals can be incredibly strong! We can take comfort in that broad range of typical, and that our preferences are within the average. And we can celebrate knowing that yes, it all counts, and no, it doesn’t matter…. in the best possible way.

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

💡Root vegetables are a particularly beneficial food family to consume (why I consider them a Nutrivore Foundational Food); and good news, there’s more to choose from than you think! That’s because the root vegetable family acts as a catch-all for a wide range of vegetables and fruit that all offer similar nutrition. We count “true” roots, in addition to other plant parts that grow underground, including: bulbs like onions, corms like taro, rhizomes like ginger, and tubers like potatoes. Even winter squash like pumpkin and acorn squash, which are botanically fruit, are included in the root vegetable family because they are nutritionally and culinarily similar.

Root vegetables tend to be rich in slow-burning carbohydrates, beneficial fiber types, B-vitamins (other than vitamin B12) and minerals, most notably copper, magnesium, manganese, and potassium. Starchy root vegetables include: potatoes, sweet potatoes, cassava, taro, green plantain, parsnip and winter squash. Non-starchy root vegetables (which still contain starch, but are just less concentrated) include: carrots, beets, radish, daikon, jicama, bamboo shoots, and Jerusalem artichoke.

The long-term health benefits of consuming a serving or more of root vegetables per day include:

• lower risk of several forms of cancer (including kidney and stomach),

• lower risk of age-related cognitive decline

• lower risk of anxiety and depression

• lower risk of type 2 diabetes

And root vegetables are one of the best vegetable families for reducing risk of all-cause mortality (an indirect measure of overall health and longevity). The good news is that, with so many options to choose from, this is a relatively easy vegetable family to incorporate into our routines.

Learn More

Watch & Learn

🎥Check out my YouTube videos on ways to track progress that aren’t weight loss and the benefits of orange fruits and veggies (like pumpkin)! 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:

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

• Pumpkin Chili 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.

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

Read more

Key Takeaways

✅Lactucarium is sedating, but you’d have to eat a ton of lettuce for it to actually improve your sleep.

✅Whenever I have lettuce that’s about to go bad, I stick it in the freezer to save it for a batch of lettuce soup!

✅It’s normal to feel hungrier and crave junk food and comfort food after a night of poor or too-little sleep. My tips on what to do are below!

✅For paid subscribers, your downloads this week are: Nutrients for Sleep and Lettuce Soup

Lactucarium for Sleep

🧬Lactucarium, which is found in lettuce, and also sometimes called “lettuce opium” because of its sedative and analgesic properties. In its more concentrated form, lactucarium is known to provide a sense of euphoria and promote restful sleep. In a 2011 prospective single-blind study of the efficacy and safety of lettuce seed oil in patients with sleep disorders, 60 patients were split into 2 groups and half were given capsules containing 1000 mg lettuce seed oil. After 1 week, patients receiving the lettuce seed oil reported significantly improved sleep scores as compared to those in the placebo group.

What does this translate to for us humans eating fresh lettuce? Using some rough averages, back-of-the-envelope math tells us that somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 grams (or about 18 ounces) of fresh lettuce would have a soporific effect—that translates to about a head and a half of lettuce or about 15 cups! Good news for huge lunch salads (because they probably won’t instigate an afternoon nap), and maybe less good news if you’re looking for a lettuce-y bedtime snack or that lettuce water social media trend to support sleep quality (in which case, a lettuce seed extract is probably a better bet, or better yet a focus on nutrients with a track record of improving sleep using this week’s download for paid subscribers, Nutrient for Sleep, which can be found at the bottom of this post).

Learn About Phytonutrients

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

The Most Nutrient-Dense Lettuce: Red Leaf

🥬With its Nutrivore Score of 2684, red leaf lettuce is the most nutrient dense of the common lettuce varieties, thanks to delivers 65% DV vitamin K, 23% DV vitamin A, 11% DV biotin, 3480 micrograms of carotenoids and 63 milligrams of polyphenols (including anthocyanins)!

Lettuce was first farmed in Ancient Egypt as early as 2680 BC, where it was used for its leaves and harvesting oil from its seeds. In many cultures, lettuce was considered a sacred plant and it appears in many medieval writings, especially as a medicinal herb.

Learn About Red Leaf Lettuce

Red leaf lettuce is the 46th most nutrient-dense food! Learn the Top 500 Nutrivore Foods here.

Lettuce Soup Recipe

🥗We tend to think of lettuce as a purely a salad vegetable, but it’s actually delightful cooked in recipes like this lettuce soup! Plus, this soup is a great way to make sure lettuce never goes to waste. If you ever find yourself with lettuce in the fridge that is about to go bad, instead of throwing it out, trim off any bits that are starting to brown and toss it in a freezer-safe container or bag in the freezer. Once you have the equivalent of two large heads of lettuce saved up, make this soup! This soup is also a great way to use lettuce that is starting to bolt in 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

🧠We don’t always have control over our sleep. Stress, illness, hormones, caregiving, travel, anxiety, deadlines, and plain old life can all interfere—no matter how many “good sleep habits” we try to stack. And the science is very clear here: insufficient or poor-quality sleep increases appetite, heightens cravings (especially for energy-dense foods), and reduces inhibition and decision-making capacity. In other words, after a bad night’s sleep, your brain is biologically primed to seek more food and addictively delicious food. This isn’t a willpower issue or a personal failure—it’s a predictable physiological response.

On those days, the Nutrivore approach isn’t about restriction or “getting back on track.” It’s about strategic nourishment. Focus on addition, not subtraction. Prioritize meals and snacks that include protein, fiber-rich carbohydrates, colorful produce, and healthy fats to help stabilize blood sugar and energy throughout the day. Think egg and veggie scramble with multigrain toast for breakfast; a sandwich with veggies and hummus on the side for lunch, and maybe a casserole with veggies, meat, pasta and your favorite sauce for dinner—foods that are grounding, comforting, and satisfying. Comfort matters here: warm foods, familiar flavors, and meals that feel emotionally supportive can reduce the urge to graze or chase energy later on. If you’re feeling snacky, try reaching for fruit and pairing it with protein for greater satiety—think apples and cheese slices, banana and peanut butter, or berries and hard-boiled eggs. And, if you’re craving a sweet treat, that’s fine! Enjoying dessert with your nutrient-dense and balanced meals is always a healthy eating pattern focused on sustainability.

There’s also some interesting research showing that higher fiber intake and starchy carbohydrates at dinner can support better sleep. So, by focusing on adding these types of foods in, you’re also gently supporting your body’s recovery for the following night. The goal isn’t to “eat perfectly” after poor sleep; it’s to care for a tired body and brain. When you nourish instead of judge, you give your body the best chance to stabilize today—and sleep better tomorrow.

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

💡Lettuce is an easy vegetable to grow from seed, making it one of the best cost-saving vegetables even if you have limited garden space. Most varieties of lettuce prefer cooler weather (between 55 and 65°F [13-18 °C]) and do not tolerate frosts—making them perfect for spring and fall gardening in most areas—plus, there are some heat-tolerant and frost-tolerant options if you live in a less temperate climate. If you aren’t sure what varieties grow in well in your area, visit a local farmers market and ask the vendors what cultivars they’ve had success with. You can also try a mesclun mix for a variety of leafy greens to increase your odds of some happy plants.

My preference is to grow leaf lettuce varieties over head lettuce varieties because you can harvest just the outer leaves as the plant grows, for continuous bounty throughout the growing season. I dedicate two 4’ by 4’ beds to leafy greens from fall through spring, which provides more lettuce than my family of four can keep up with (which is how I know that lettuce soup is so delicious!).

Learn More

Watch & Learn

🎥Check out my YouTube videos on the best first steps if you’re starting from zero, and the benefits of leafy vegetables! 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:

• Nutrients for Sleep - This 1-pager PDF guide lists all the nutrients that improve sleep quality and/or improve insomnia along with top food sources, to give you a quick-reference for foods to add if better sleep is a goal for you.

• Lettuce Soup 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.

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

Read more

Key Takeaways

✅Quercetin lowers C-reactive protein in people with diagnosed chronic diseases and/or metabolic syndrome.

✅The best way to store pistachios if you aren’t going to nom them in the next couple of weeks is in the freezer! Plus, you can actually eat them frozen!

✅Adding flavor to your salad is a good strategy both for enhancing nutrient absorption and for supporting healthy habit formation!

✅For paid subscribers, your downloads this week are: Top 10 Polyphenol Foods Fridge List and Fig and Pistachio Salad.

Quercetin for Inflammation

🧬Quercetin is one of the most well-studied polyphenol and is frequently sold as a supplement, although it’s also widely distributed in foods (in fact, it’s the most abundant dietary flavonoid polyphenols). Across a variety of studies, quercetin demonstrates significant antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anti-aging, and cardioprotective properties. For example, in a 28-year follow-up study of 10,000 individuals, a quercetin intake of greater than 4 mg daily—about what you would get if you ate an apple per day—was associated with a significant 21% reduction in cardiovascular disease mortality.

One of the better-studied benefits of quercetin is lowering inflammation (specifically, a marker of inflammation called C-reactive protein) in people with chronic disease diagnoses and/or metabolic syndrome. (People with metabolic syndrome also get an LDL-cholesterol-lowering benefit from quercetin.) And while we still need clinical trials to confirm benefits in humans, animal model studies show the anti-inflammatory effects of quercetin could benefit osteoarthritis and inflammatory skin conditions.

In addition to benefiting us directly, quercetin is metabolized by our gut bacteria into a variety of beneficial organic acids including: phenylacetic acid, hydroxyphenyl-acetic acid, and protocatechuic acid. This is a rationale for sticking with food sources of quercetin, since the fiber they contain helps to improve gut microbiome composition and metabolic activity.

Quercetin is particularly rich in tea, cranberries, pistachios, beans, buckwheat, apples, red and yellow onions, asparagus, kale, spinach, lettuce, cherries, and broccoli.

Learn About Polyphenols

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

Get 464 mg Polyphenols with Pistachios

🫜Pistachios are an amazing source of polyphenols in general, including being abundant in quercetin. With their impressive Nutrivore Score of 265, they also deliver 48% DV vitamin E, 40% DV copper, 30% DV biotin, 28% DV vitamin B6, 20% DV vitamin B1, 6.5 grams of monounsaturated fats and 3.9 grams of linoleic acid in a 1-ounce serving!

And, fun fact: When stored improperly in bulk containers, pistachios have been known to spontaneously combust, causing fires! Not to worry though as this phenomenon occurs with nuts stored in bulk containers and is not a concern in your kitchen pantry!

Learn About Pistachios

Pistachios are the 376th most nutrient-dense food! Learn the Top 500 Nutrivore Foods here.

Fig and Pistachio Salad

🥗 This Fig and Pistachio Salad is the perfect combination of sweet fruit, crunchy nut and peppery green with a tangy dressing. The arugula can be subbed for any peppery green; arugula, turnip greens, and mustard greens work really well. Or use the leafy greens of your choosing! Crumbled goat cheese is also a wonderful addition to this salad.

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

🧠Since I’m sharing a salad recipe this week, let’s talk about the awful message from diet culture that tells us that if we add ingredients to our salad to make it taste good, it somehow doesn’t count.

Leafy greens, such as spinach, kale, collards, and Swiss chard, are among the most nutrient-dense foods available, providing an abundance of vitamins A, C, and K, folate, magnesium, and fiber. They are particularly high in chlorophyll, which has antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties, as well as carotenoids like lutein and zeaxanthin, which protect eye health. Research has consistently linked high leafy green consumption (ideally daily) to improved cardiovascular health, reduced cognitive decline, and lower risks of diabetes, osteoporosis, and certain cancers.

Many of the beneficial nutrients in leafy veggies are fat-soluble, which means your body absorbs them better when fat is present. Adding olive oil, avocado, nuts, seeds, cheese, or even a creamy dressing doesn’t cancel out the benefits of the greens—it actually helps unlock them. In other words, a salad with fat isn’t “less healthy”; it’s often more nourishing because your body can use more of what’s there.

There’s also the reality of human behavior. If a salad feels like a chore—dry, bland, or flavorless—it’s not likely to become a habit. Ingredients that add flavor, texture, and satisfaction make salads something you want to eat, not something you force yourself to tolerate. And from a Nutrivore perspective, anything that supports consistency matters. A salad you enjoy several times a week delivers far more nutritional benefit over time than a “perfect” salad you avoid altogether.

Most importantly, adding enjoyable ingredients helps shift the mindset away from restriction and toward nourishment. When salads are flavorful and satisfying, they support both nutrient sufficiency and a positive relationship with food. That combination—nutrients plus sustainability—is what makes habits stick, and that’s where real health benefits are built.

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

💡Like other nuts pistachios can go rancid if not stored properly. After you’ve opened the package, for short-term storage—up to a few weeks—keep pistachios in an airtight container (which could be as simply as tying a twist tie around the package opening) in a cool, dark place like a cupboard or pantry.

For longer-term storage, the refrigerator or freezer is the best option. Stored in an airtight container, pistachios will keep well in the refrigerator for several months and in the freezer for up to a year or more. Freezing does not harm their texture, and they can be eaten straight from the freezer or allowed to come to room temperature in just a few minutes.

No matter where you store them, minimizing air exposure is key. Reseal bags tightly or transfer pistachios to containers with a secure lid, and avoid storing them near strong-smelling foods (like onions) since nuts can absorb odors. If pistachios develop a bitter or paint-like smell, that’s a sign the fats have oxidized and it’s time to discard them.

Watch & Learn

🎥Check out my YouTube videos on how to document your starting point before working on healthy habits and why nuts and seeds are a Nutrivore foundational food! 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:

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

• Fig and Pistachio 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.

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

Read more

Key Takeaways

✅Potassium is one of the most important nutrients to get enough of to lower risk of stroke.

✅It’s really tough to get enough potassium though, so my tips and go-to foods are below!

✅’Tis the season for weight loss resolutions, but I recommend redefining success and looking beyond the scale.

✅For paid subscribers, your downloads this week are: Nutrients for Stroke and Shaved Brussels Salad

Potassium for Stroke Prevention

🧬Several meta-analyses have shown that people who consume more potassium have a significantly lower risk of stroke than those with lower potassium intakes (about a 13 – 30% reduced risk for potassium intakes around 3,500 mg daily or higher). Similarly, observational studies have shown that for every 1-unit increase in the ratio of dietary sodium to potassium (meaning we’re consuming more sodium than potassium), the risk of stroke rises by 22%—emphasizing the importance of keeping these nutrients in proper balance (and suggesting it’s not necessarily high sodium that’s harmful for cardiovascular health, but concurrent low potassium!).

The protective effect of potassium on stroke risk is likely due to its well-established influence on blood pressure. In a large study measuring the sodium to potassium ratio in the urine (a more reliable indicator of intake than dietary recall surveys), people with the highest urinary potassium excretion had 62% lower risk of hypertension than those with the lowest urinary potassium excretion!

Learn About Potassium

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

Get 9% DV Potassium with Apricots

🍑While a 1-cup serving of fresh apricots has 9% DV of potassium, a ½-cup serving of dried apricots have 16% DV of potassium, making them one of our best sources of this hard-to-get nutrient!

Why the difference? This really just has to do with how a serving is defined for fresh versus dried fruit, both are actually great sources of potassium, you’re just eating more in a serving when you’re eating dried apricots. So however you like apricots, appreciate them for their potassium… and their copper, vitamin A, vitamin E, carotenoids and polyphenols! They have a Nutrivore Score of 260!

Learn About Apricots

Apricots are the 382nd most nutrient-dense food! Learn the Top 500 Nutrivore Foods here.

Shaved Brussels Salad Recipe

🥗 If you think the only way to enjoy dried apricots is in trail mix, think again! They’re the shining star of this delicious Brussels slaw, and a perfect combination with toasted coconut, bacon and just a hint of cinnamon! In fact, this slaw’s Nutrivore Score is 490, impressive for such a delicious side dish! I particularly like this slaw as a side dish to some grilled pork chops!

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 have made a New Year’s Resolution to lose weight, here’s why I suggest shifting that goal away from the scale. Our weight is a very poor proxy for our health, yet so many of us were taught to measure our progress in pounds, as if our wellbeing—or our worth—could ever be captured in a single number. More important than our weight is our diet quality, fitness, sleep patterns, stress levels, and our social and physical environments. More insightful than the number on the scale is our blood pressure, cholesterol, hemoglobin A1C, and how we actually feel. (More options of health markers to track are included in my YouTube video below.)

My suggestion is to focus on healthy habits: a nutritious diet paired with a balanced relationship with food, an active lifestyle, a solid bedtime routine and sleep schedule, work-life balance, nurturing relationships and fostering community. These are all things that can help us achieve our weight-loss goals in a slow-and steady way that improves our health, rather than sacrificing our health for drastic change. These habits additionally help us maintain weight loss and lower our chances of yo-yoing, lower our risk of long-term health problems, and improve our quality of life.

Instead of only feeling accomplished when the number on the scale goes down, celebrate the actions and routines that support your health. Instead of tracking weight, build consistency of behaviors. Give yourself permission to celebrate victories that truly reflect your well being. Because success isn’t about shrinking yourself—it’s about supporting yourself.

And, if you’d like structure to build healthy eating habits while ditching diet mindset, it’s not too late to hop in on this round of Nutrivore90, my free 3-month habit-centered nutrition challenge. We started on Monday, so to join for free you need to:

1. become a free subscriber at Nutrivore90.com by Sunday

2. use your free post preview to get caught up on your Nutrivore90 Challenge Guide here

Once you’re subscribed, you’ll get the remaining challenge materials delivered to your inbox every morning.

Nutrivore90

Join this 3-month habit-centered nutrition challenge to improve diet quality while quitting diet mentality

By Sarah Ballantyne, PhD

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

💡An estimated 97.8% of Americans are falling short of dietary potassium. Why? Because there are so few rich food sources. Those foods that are famous for potassium aren’t actually providing that much: an extra-large banana has 11% DV, a large potato has 14% DV, a medium sweet potato has 10% DV, and half of a Haas avocado only has 7% DV. The only food that delivers more than half the daily value of potassium per serving is fresh hearts of palm, not something most of us have access to. (Canned hearts of palm have 5% DV potassium per 1-cup serving, which is a surprising loss of potassium in the canning process.) Basically, there are no amazing food sources of potassium, only good food sources. So unlike for other easier-to-get nutrients, we can’t rely on a single serving of any food to cover of potassium bases.

So, how do you get enough potassium? By choosing several good food sources every day. Think one to three foods at each meal with 7 – 20% DV. I made a sample potassium-rich meal plan that I shared in this video, and below are some of my go-to foods to up my daily potassium intake.

• Edamame, ½ cup —17% DV

• Molasses, 1 tablespoon, 17% DV

• Artichoke, 1 cup (raw) — 13% DV

• Green kiwi, 1 cup — 12% DV

• Black beans, ½ cup (cooked) — 12% DV

• Beet greens, 2 cups (raw), 12% DV

• Salmon, 4 ounces (raw) — 10% DV

• Carrots, 2 medium — 9% DV

You can find more good food sources of potassium at the bottom of this article, and in my Top 25 Foods for Every Nutrient e-book.

Watch & Learn

🎥Check out my YouTube videos on choosing what to track (and all the things to track besides weight!) and three nutrients for stroke prevention! 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:

• Nutrients for Stroke Prevention - This 1-pager PDF guide lists all the nutrients that reduce risk of stroke along with top food sources, to give you a quick-reference for foods to add if lowering stroke risk is a goal for you.

• Shaved Brussels 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.

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

Read more

Key Takeaways

✅If exercise is one of your New Year’s resolutions, you’ll be interested to know that beets can help improve exercise performance.

✅If you hate beets, there’s cool science behind why you might like my Balsamic Roasted Beets recipe!

✅The key to New Year’s Resolutions that stick is to ditch the reset mentality and embrace baby steps! (Plus joining the Nutrivore90 Challenge, all about habit stacking and small wins!)

✅For paid subscribers, your downloads this week are: Nutrients in Root Vegetables and Balsamic Roasted Beets

Betalains for Muscle Recovery

🧬Betalains are a class of phytonutrients found in only a few plants—beets are the best source, but you can also find betalains in chard, amaranth, prickly pear, dragon fruit, and some species of wild mushrooms. And, betalains improve endurance, performance and exercise recovery!

For example, a double-blind, cross-over design study in triathletes showed that taking a betalain-rich concentrate of beetroots (or a control) for a week helped them run a 10K faster, even though there was no change to average heart rate or perceived exertion. And, when the athletes came back the following day to test recovery by running a 5K, they still ran faster and had lower levels of markers of muscle damage and lower subjective fatigue. Similar results have been found in recreational runners and cyclists, some types of high-intensity interval training, and untrained walkers—so you don’t already need to be in shape to benefit from betalains!

Betalains can also help you kill it at the gym. In a recent study of physically active women, taking a single 2-ounce shot of beetroot juice two and a half hours before a back squat test improved velocity and power—the women also jumped higher in a countermovement jump test. And in a similar study of healthy men, a shot of beetroot juice taken two hours before resistance training helped them get more reps per set of back squats.

Learn About Betalains

Want to know the top food sources of betalains? Learn them here.

Get 246 mg Betalains with Beets

🫜Beets are the single most nutrient-dense root vegetable with their Nutrivore Score of 2013, thanks in part to being the most concentrated source of betalains. A 1-cup serving of raw beets (or about ¾ cup if boiled) also delivers 37% DV folate, 19% DV manganese, 11% DV copper, 9% DV potassium, and an impressive 326 milligrams of polyphenols and 3.8 grams of fiber–all for just 58 calories!

Learn About Beets

Beets are the 37th most nutrient-dense food! Learn the Top 500 Nutrivore Foods here.

Balsamic Roasted Beets Recipe

🥗 If you hate the earthy taste of beets it may be because you’re particularly sensitive to geosmin, the compound in beets responsible for this flavor. To overcome this disklike, choose varieties with lower levels of geosmin (like golden beets), or prepare beets in ways to help mask the undesirable taste, such as this recipe! It has also been shown that reaction of geosmin with acid results in an odorless product (argosmin), which is why pairing beets with acidic balsamic vinegar helps to eliminate the earthy flavor!

This is one of my absolute favorite ways to enjoy beets. There’s something about the sweet versus sour combination of balsamic vinegar and roasted beets, and the milder beet flavor, that’s absolutely divine!

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

🧠A brand‑new year can feel like an invitation to reinvent everything at once. Diet culture loves this moment—pushing resets, detoxes, and rigid challenges that leave us feeling defeated by February. But real, lasting change doesn’t come from overhauling your life overnight. It comes from the small habits you practice with consistency and compassion, and that you build upon, baby step by baby step.

This year, instead of aiming for perfection, aim for nourishment. Choose goals that add to your life rather than take things away. Maybe that means learning one new vegetable recipe to add to your regular rotation. Maybe it means adding a piece of fruit to your morning routine, or making sure to eat breakfast daily. Maybe it’s simply sitting down to a balanced home-cooked meal a few times per week.

When you root your goals in self‑care rather than self‑control, your habits become easier, gentler, and more sustainable. And remember: every nourishing choice counts.

And if you’d like some structure and guidance to build healthier eating habits that finally stick this year, come join my FREE 3-month habit-centered nutrition challenge, the Nutrivore90 Challenge, which starts Monday! We will gently layer one habit focus each week to improve diet quality while quitting diet mentality.

Nutrivore90

Join this 3-month habit-centered nutrition challenge to improve diet quality while quitting diet mentality

By Sarah Ballantyne, PhD

Plus, you can 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

💡Beets are one of the easiest veggies to grow making them perfect for first time gardeners. This root veggie thrives in cooler weather, comes in a variety of shapes and colors, and is entirely edible – from the sweet roots to the nutritious leafy tops.

Beets actually grow very easily from seed, with one seed often yielding up to four beets! (You can let them grow in a cluster, but they’ll grow bigger if you thin them out once you start to see the beetroot forming at the surface of the soil.) They don’t need anything special in terms of soil and, in fact, fertilizing them will cause the leaves to grow more than the root! They prefer full sun but will tolerate part shade, ideally getting 6 hours of sunlight per day.

Beets are a cool season crop, but fairly tolerant to both frosts and high temperatures. They thrive when the days are warm (60 to 70 °F / 15 to 21 °C) and nights are cool (50 to 60 °F / 10 to 15 °C). So for most zones, plant them in spring or fall—even in pots if you’re tight on space!

Learn More

Watch & Learn

🎥Check out my YouTube videos on why baby steps work even when they don’t feel big enough, and why beets taste like dirt to some people! 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:

• Nutrients in Root Vegetables - This 1-pager PDF guide highlights key nutrients in root vegetables and their benefits, to give you a quick-reference for why a daily serving of root vegetables (either starchy or non-starchy) is so good for you.

• Balsamic Roasted Beets 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.

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

Read more

Key Takeaways

✅Getting enough calcium is one of the most important things you can do to prevent kidney stones.

✅Feta is among the more nutrient-dense cheeses with its Nutrivore Score of 189!

✅There’s science to explain why tomatoes are best stored on the counter rather than in the fridge!

✅For paid subscribers, your downloads this week are: Calcium Fun Factsheet and Greek Salad with Red Wine Vinaigrette

Calcium for Kidney Stones

🧬Kidney stones affect approximately 10.6% of males and 7.1% of females in the United States. Although there are different types of kidney stones, calcium oxalate kidney stones are the most common, accounting for about 80 percent of cases. These form when the concentration of oxalates and calcium in the urine becomes too high to dilute (a condition called hyperoxaluria), which causes calcium oxalate crystals to form in the kidneys and develop into stones. While high-oxalate foods often get the blame, the bigger culprits here are inadequate hydration and too little dietary calcium.

How much dietary calcium we eat has a direct effect on how much oxalate we absorb from food! Up to 20% of ingested oxalate is absorbed in the gastrointestinal tract of healthy humans with a daily 800 mg calcium intake, but at 1200 mg calcium per day, the mean absorption of oxalate is an insignificant 2.6%. And, intervention studies involving low-calcium diets (400 mg per day) for the treatment of high urinary calcium led to over a 50% increased risk of kidney stone recurrence compared to normal-calcium diets (1200 mg per day)! In fact, some small intervention studies have shown that as long as calcium intake is adequate (1000 mg per day), even relatively large intakes of oxalate don’t affect kidney stone risk.

Learn About Calcium

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

Get 16% DV Calcium with Feta Cheese

🧀Feta is a soft, white, crumbly, Greek pickled cheese, made from sheep’s milk or a combination of goat’s and sheep’s milk. During production, feta is first dry salted in metal vessels or wooden barrels for days, before aging in brine anywhere from weeks to several months, where it becomes sharper in taste and firmer in texture as it ages. Feta is often categorized into soft and firm varieties, the firm being more expensive as it is considered higher in quality.

Feta is so popular in Greece that it accounts for 70% of cheese consumption in that country—making it a key ingredient of many traditional Greek foods, and unfortunately leaving very little available for export. The designation ‘feta’ is protected by European Union law, meaning only cheeses manufactured in traditional ways, in select Greek regions, composed solely of sheep’s milk or up to 30% goat’s milk, can be called feta. Outside of the European Union, feta is used as a generic term to describe white, crumbly cheese, aged in brine, even when it is prepared from cow’s milk.

And, feta is among the most nutrient-dense cheeses, with a Nutrivore Score of 189! Per 1.5-ounce serving, feta delivers 16% DV calcium plus 30% DV vitamin B12, 27% DV vitamin B2, 11% DV each of selenium and zinc, and 10% DV vitamin B6.

Learn About Feta

Feta is the 430th most nutrient-dense food! Learn the Top 500 Nutrivore Foods here.

Greek Salad with Red Wine Vinaigrette Recipe

🥗 This recipe is is the ultimate example of simple ingredients combining into a deliciously complex yet balanced flavor—perfect for weeknights, meal prep, and parties. The salty feta, briny olives, cool cumbers, with the sharpness of the red onion make every bite of this salad bright and satisfying.

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 teaches us that certain foods are temptations to be avoided—and holidays like Christmas can make that message especially loud. So, let’s take a moment to zoom out.

A healthy diet is not built in a single meal, day, or even week. Instead, what matters is the overall pattern of how you eat on average. A holiday meal doesn’t define your diet any more than one salad does. From a Nutrivore perspective, looking at your diet through wider lens is essential. Some days include more vegetables, fiber, and micronutrients. Other days include more celebration foods, traditions, and desserts. Both belong. When you step back and look at the full picture, these variations don’t compete with health, they coexist with it.

On days like today, nourishment can include pleasure, connection, and satisfaction just as much as vitamins and minerals. Look for small ways to add more nutrients—a serving of salad, a veggie-rich side dish, a piece of fruit, or a handful of nuts—and enjoy the flavors of the holidays without guilt. Zooming out allows food to return to its rightful place: supportive, enjoyable, and part of a much bigger 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!

And if you’d like help building healthier overall eating patterns and a better relationship with food in 2026, then join my free Nutrivore90 Challenge starting January 5th!

Nutrivore90

Join this 3-month habit-centered nutrition challenge to improve diet quality while quitting diet mentality

By Sarah Ballantyne, PhD

Helpful Tip of the Week

💡Let’s talk about why tomatoes taste so much better when stored at room temperature. Tomatoes are a climacteric fruit, meaning they continue to ripen after harvest. At room temperature, enzymes involved in ripening remain active and continue producing volatile compounds that are key components of the characteristic aroma and flavor of a ripe tomato. Much of these volatile flavor compounds are lost when we chill tomatoes below about 54°F (12°C), resulting in loss of flavor. In addition, colder temperatures reduce the expression of some genes critical to volatile synthesis, not all of which recover to normal after the tomato is returned to room temperature, so volatile flavor compound levels are unable to ever be fully restored after a tomato has been chilled. So while storing tomatoes in the fridge can extend the shelf life of your tomatoes, it also causes an irreversible loss of tomato-y flavor.

For the best flavor and texture, store tomatoes at room temperature, out of direct sunlight, and with some airflow, such as on the counter or in a fruit basket. Depending on the cultivar, ripeness at purchase, and time of year, tomatoes may last anywhere from a few days to a few weeks.

Learn More

Watch & Learn

🎥Check out my YouTube videos on leveraging habit stacking to build better eating habits and 12 ways to get enough dietary calcium! 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:

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

• Greek Salad with Red Wine Vinaigrette 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.

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

Read more

Key Takeaways

✅Glucosinolates protect our brain cells from oxidative stress, inflammation and the accumulation of tau proteins.

✅Turnips are not only rich in glucosinolates, but they have a fascinating history! Carving turnips for Halloween is a 19th century Irish and Scottish tradition that pre-dates the pumpkin.

✅Holiday treats can be enjoyed while maintaining an overall healthy diet, and I share my best tips below.

✅For paid subscribers, your downloads this week are: Nutrients for Parkinson’s Disease and Scalloped Turnips

Glucosinolates for Brain Health

🧬Glucosinolates are a special class of phytonutrients unique to the cruciferous vegetable family. Among their many benefits, glucosinolates may help reduce the risk of neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, and ALS because they are able to cross the blood-brain barrier and protect brain cells by activating the Nrf2/ARE pathway.

Sulforaphane is one of the most well-studied glucosinolates. Both in vitro and in vivo, sulforaphane has shown efficacy for neurodegenerative diseases by activating genes and molecules with antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and anti-apoptotic properties. Sulforaphane has therapeutic potential in kidney disease by stimulating the NRF2 pathway (important in protecting cells from oxidative injury). In addition, it exhibits antimicrobial activity against both Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria and prevents the growth of a range of food-borne pathogens and enteropathogenic microbes. In fact, sulforaphane has been shown to prevent the growth of H. pylori, a pathogen associated with gastric ulcers and enhanced risk of gastric cancer.

Although research in living humans is limited, sulforaphane is particularly promising due to its relatively high bioavailability (80% absolute bioavailability, compared to 1 – 8% for many polyphenols), enhancing the likelihood that the results of in vitro research could pan out in humans.

Learn About Glucosinolates

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

Get 345 mg Glucosinolates with Turnip

🫜A mere 1-cup serving of turnips contains a whopping 345 milligrams of glucosinolates! And with a Nutrivore Score of 1954, turnips are one of the most nutrient-dense root vegetables out there! Per serving, turnips also provide 30% DV vitamin C, 12% DV copper, and 117mg polyphenols.

Maybe the most interesting thing about turnips is that carving turnips for Halloween is a 19th century Irish and Scottish tradition that pre-dates the pumpkin! As a matter of fact, turnips were hollowed out to act as lanterns and carved with grotesque faces to scare off evil spirits and demons. The word ‘jack-o-lantern’ comes from an Irish legend and refers to a drunkard named Jack who bargains with Satan and ends up barred from heaven and hell and doomed to roam the Earth with only a hollowed-out turnip lit by a burning coal to guide his way.

Learn About Turnips

Turnip is the 67th most nutrient-dense food! Learn the Top 500 Nutrivore Foods here.

Scalloped Turnips Recipe

🥗 This recipe for scalloped turnips doubles down on cruciferous vegetables by additionally using cauliflower blended with broth to make a flavorful sauce instead of a traditional roux. This recipe is delightful with the addition of some parmesan cheese both to the sauce and sprinkled over the top before baking.

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

🧠As we enter the holiday season, it’s completely normal to feel a little food guilt creeping in. Many of us end up swinging between “being good” and “giving up,” especially when treats are everywhere. But enjoying the flavors of the holidays doesn’t mean you’ve abandoned healthy eating—not even close. A nourishing diet has room for celebration, joy, and the foods that connect us to family and tradition.

Here are a my tips for navigating the holiday season while both embracing quality-of-life foods and maintaining an overall healthy diet.

1. Give yourself full permission to enjoy treats and traditional dishes. When we tell ourselves certain foods are “off limits,” it actually increases our desire for them, often leading to feeling out of control around those foods later. Knowing you’re allowed to enjoy holiday foods helps you savor them more mindfully and with less urgency.

2. Don’t skip meals. Diet culture teaches us we need to “earn” treats, but skipping meals can backfire—leaving us overly hungry and with less control over our decisions. Pairing treats with balanced, satisfying meals helps support steady energy, improves satiety, and naturally moderates intake without restriction.

3. Keep nutrient density in the mix. Continue prioritizing balanced meals made mostly of whole and minimally processed foods so your nutritional needs are met and you’re getting in those servings of the foods that support long-term health. Holidays feel better—not harder—when nourishment and celebration coexist.

Remember: a healthy diet isn’t defined by a single meal or a single season. It’s the big picture that matters. When we nourish ourselves consistently and make room for joy along the way, food becomes something that supports our well-being—not something we have to battle with.

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

💡Let’s talk about growing our own turnips! Did you know turnips are best planted with English peas as a companion plant? However they would be stifled and not grow well with Irish potatoes? Companion crops play nice together and often benefit from growing next to each other. They may repel pests or collaborate rather than compete for soil nutrients. Non-companion crops aren’t good neighbors and don’t play nice; these plants are best kept apart in your garden plan.

In addition, turnips are a cool season crops and don’t like it hot—they not only tolerate cold temperatures, they need them to germinate, grow, set fruit, and mature. Hot weather makes root vegetables woody and leafy greens bitter. These seeds go into the ground before the last frost date in spring. Some, like carrots and kale, can even be overwintered and get sweeter after the first frost in the fall.

Learn More

Watch & Learn

🎥Check out my YouTube videos on how long it actually takes to make habits stick and nutrients for Alzheimer’s disease! 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:

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

• Scalloped Turnips 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.

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

Read more

Key Takeaways

✅Resistant starch is an important fiber type for a healthy gut microbiome.

✅Green plantains are rich in RS2 type resistant starch, plus lots of vitamins and minerals.

✅Bananas and plantains are cultivars of the same plant! I explain the difference below.

✅For paid subscribers, your downloads this week are: Holiday Recipe Booklet (which includes 5 cookie recipes!) and Cinnamon Butternut Squash and Plantain with Apple

Resistant Starch for Gut Health

🧬Resistant starch is a type of highly-fermentable insoluble fiber that isn’t fully broken down in your small intestine. It “resists” the action of your digestive enzymes because of its molecular structure; and instead, it becomes food for super important probiotic strains of bacteria in your colon.

Sources of resistant starch include grains, legumes, and seeds for RS1; green bananas, green plantains, and raw potato starch for RS2; cooked and cooled potatoes, rice and plantains for RS3; and enzymatically or chemically modified starches sold under various brand names for RS4.

Learn About Fiber

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

Green Plantains for Resistant Starch

🍌Unripe (green) plantains are also high in the RS2 form of resistant starch. (As plantains ripen, their resistant starch content decreases while their sugar content increases.) Plus, plantains are rich in polyphenols, vitamin K, vitamin C, vitamin B7 (biotin), copper, vitamin B5, carotenoids, magnesium, and potassium.

As you could probably guess, plantains are a close cousin of the banana; they share the same genus, Musa. Unlike bananas, plantains are almost always eaten cooked (in fact, they’re sometimes called “cooking bananas”), and they are usually large, more angular, and contain much more starch in comparison to sugar. They originated in Southeast Asia. And while they’re most commonly eaten as food, in some parts of East Africa, they’re also an important crop for making beer! Worldwide, plantains are much more common than the sweet “dessert” bananas common in the United States and Europe.

While there are some differences in the sugar content of green or yellow plantains, the small nutritional differences don’t make that much of a change to the Nutrivore Score:

• Green plantain, raw 173

• Yellow plantain, raw 186

And the different ways to prepare green plantain also only make slight changes to the nutrition profile. Any way you choose to eat them, green/yellow/cooked or otherwise, plantains are a great nutri-licious choice.

• Green plantain, boiled 173

• Green plantain, fried 152

• Green plantain, raw 173

Plantain is the 432nd most nutrient-dense food! Learn the Top 500 Nutrivore Foods here.

Cinnamon Butternut Squash and Plantain with Apple

🥗 Plantains pair beautifully with starchy root veggies, like this delightful combination of baked apple, plantain, butternut squash, and cinnamon. I think this is the perfect side dish with pork, but it also works well with chicken or turkey. You can use green or yellow plantains for this recipe.

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

🧠Let’s talk about nourishing yourself during busy seasons. These times of year (or life) make it easy to slip into all-or-nothing thinking: if I can’t maintain that perfect eating streak, I might as well give up and worry about getting “back on track” later. I think it’s important to give ourselves grace during stressful or hectic times, and honor the calming effects of comfort foods. At the same time, our bodies still need steady, supportive nutrition—often even more so when we’re stressed and strained.

Instead of striving for ideal meals, try anchoring your day with simple nutrient dense moments—a piece of fruit, a handful of nuts, a colorful veggie, a balanced plate when you can manage it. When leaning on comfort foods, think about easy additions to add more nutrition—a side salad or veggie sticks, steam-in-the-bag frozen veggies, a bit more protein like some beans or chicken. These small nutrient boosts keep your energy steadier, your mind clearer, and your body more resilient.

And don’t be afraid to keep things super simple. Some of my go to quick meals for busy days:

• A rotisserie chicken and a salad kit

• Mac & cheese made with bean based pasta and with frozen broccoli or peas added

• Scrambled eggs or an omelet with whatever veggies are on hand and with fruit and multigrain toast on the side

• Soup and sandwich, I particularly like pairing a veggie-rich soup (canned is fine!) with a tuna-salad or salmon-salad sandwich

• A microwave able baked potato topped with beans, salsa, and a sprinkle of cheese

Remember that it’s your overall eating patterns—not any single meal—that shape your long-term health. Giving yourself permission to make simple, time-saving swaps isn’t a setback; it’s a supportive way to care for yourself during demanding seasons.

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

💡Let’s talk bananas versus plantains. They are both members of the genus Musa, growing on plants that are technically giant herbs rather than trees, since they have a “pseudostem” made of tightly packed sheaths, rather than a true, woody trunk! In general, bananas refer to cultivars that are eaten when fully ripe and sweet, while plantains refer to larger, starchier, lower-sugar cultivars that are eaten cooked (though they can be eaten at any stage of ripeness).

One last cool fact – ripe bananas and banana plant leaves fluoresce when exposed to ultraviolet light, while green or unripe bananas do not.

Yellow plantains are higher in sugar than their green counterparts because as the plantain ripens, starches within the fruit are converted to sugar. These plantains are mid-way through the ripening process; if left to fully mature, plantains will turn completely black. Yellow plantains are sweet and can be eaten raw but are not as flavorful as bananas so are usually consumed cooked. Often they are enjoyed fried, where the sugars caramelize turning them into a tasty treat.

Watch & Learn

🎥Check out my YouTube videos on letting go of food rules and carbohydrates! 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:

• Holiday Recipe Booklet - A beautifully-designed PDF including five of my favorite cookie recipes that happen to feature nutrient-dense ingredients while tasting delicious, perfect for the holidays or any time of year!

• Cinnamon Butternut Squash and Plantain with Apple 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.

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

Read more