Apples (Malus domestica) belong to the sub-family Pomoideae within the plant family Rosaceae (AKA the rose family—that’s right, apples are related to roses!) Apples are classified as “pomes”—a type of fruit with a tough core containing several small seeds and a fleshy, edible outer layer (like pears). This fruit originated in Central Asia, where they were first domesticated between 4,000 and 10,000 years ago; there are now over 8,000 varieties of apples grown throughout the world (in fact, there are more varieties of apples than of any other fruit!), with 80 million tons of apples produced world-wide per year. Apples have been depicted in art, especially as religious symbols (think forbidden fruit), for nearly as long as they have been cultivated. In Ancient Greece, to throw an apple at someone was to symbolically declare one’s love; and subsequently, to catch it was to show one’s acceptance of that love! The only apples native to North America are crab apples. The apples we are familiar with today were actually introduced to North America by European colonists in the 17^th century, with the first apple orchard in North America planted in Boston. The rest is history—today the US is the second largest producer of apples world-wide (after China)! And, apples are the most consumed fresh fruit in the US—representing 12.5% of all consumed fruits world-wide!

In this article, we’re doing a deep dive review of the extensive scientific evidence for a wide range of health benefits from eating apples regularly, a comprehensive overview of the nutrients that mediate those health benefits, and a practical section with various tips like shopping, selecting, varieties to explore, storing, preparing, cooking, and even growing your own! Paid subscribers also can download a printer-friendly PDF version of this information below!

Nutrients in Apples

When in doubt, an apple is the perfect portable snack and is a great addition to any meal!

Relative to other fruits and vegetables, apples aren’t particularly notable for their micronutrients. One medium apple contains a bit of vitamin C (9% of the DV) and copper (5% of the DV) and only very small amounts of other vitamins and minerals like potassium, vitamin B2 (riboflavin), vitamin B6 (pyridoxine), vitamin K, vitamin B1 (thiamin) and manganese. However, they are great sources of fiber (4.4 grams per apple), as well as a number of important phytonutrients which contribute to their many health benefits. The main constituents of apples include polyphenols, polysaccharides (e.g., pectin), triterpenes, and phytosterols. The phytonutrient composition and distribution varies greatly between different varieties of apples and different parts of the apple (pulp vs peel). Other components within apples also vary based on cultivar. For instance, green apples tend to have less sugar than red (think Granny Smith).

Polyphenols found in apple include catechins and epicatechins, procyanidins, phenolic acids (e.g., chlorogenic acid), quercetin, dihydrochalcones, and anthocyanins (in varieties with red peels). And, apples are the biggest contributor of polyphenols to the American diet, with about 300 mg per apple. That’s incredible!

The concentrations of polyphenols depends on many factors, such as growing conditions, storage conditions, and processing of the apples. In addition, there are small changes which occur during the maturation and ripening of apples. Apple variety is a factor too! For instance, analyses of apple polyphenols have shown that

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Because this week’s Free Newsletter talked about the independent benefits of fruit, I want to share this downloadable handy-dandy 1-page summary of Nutrient Highlights in Fruit as a perk for my paid subscribers. And, because pineapple is a particularly interesting fruit thanks to its bromelain content, I’m sharing one of my favorite ways to enjoy pineapple, a downloadable version of my recipe for Pineapple and Lychee Granita.

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

• Nutrients in Fruit - This 1-pager PDF guide highlights key nutrients in fruit and their benefits, to give you a quick-reference for why two or three daily servings of fruit is so good for you.

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

For Paid Subscribers

Read more

Key Takeaways

✅Bromelain is almost exclusively found in pineapple and has amazing potential to treat many conditions from heart disease, to many types of cancer.

✅Contrary to you may have heard, fruit is independently beneficial, meaning that even if you’re rocking the veggies and legumes, you’re missing out if you’re not eating fruit.

✅The “sweet spot” for fruit intake at around two or three servings per day (with a serving being 1 cup, or a fist-sized amount, of raw fruit).

✅For paid subscribers, your companion downloads this week are: Nutrients in Fruit and Pineapple and Lychee Granita. Check your inbox; they’ll be arriving in a separate email (or if you use the Substack app, they’ll be in their own post).

Bromelain for

🧬Bromelain is an incredibly unique phytonutrient that is found almost exclusively in pineapple. Technically, bromelain is a sulfhydryl proteolytic enzyme that aids the digestion of proteins. This unique nutrient is not only found in the edible portion of pineapple, but scientific studies have shown that it is also found in the stems and leaves, in addition to various other amazing compounds such as alkaloids, flavonoids, saponins, and tannins.

There have been numerous studies looking at the wide array of benefits and potential of bromelain supplementation including in its effects on cardiovascular diseases, infectious diseases, inflammatory diseases (such as IBD), blood coagulation and fibrinolysis disorders, and various types of cancer.

Despite the extensive research and success with bromelain therapies, the mechanisms of this nutrient are not yet fully understood. More research is necessary to understand how this compound performs, and further improvements to the extraction and concentration processes are needed to reduce the cost of obtaining bromelain supplements. In the meantime, it’s a great reason to eat more pineapple!

Learn About Phytonutrients

Want to know the top 25 food sources of some of the top phytonutrients? Learn them here.

Get Bromelain Only in Pineapple

🫜In addition to being a (almost) unique source of bromelain, a 1-cup serving of pineapple delivers 88% DV vitamin C, 67% DV manganese, 20% DV copper, 287 mg polyphenols and 2.3 g fiber! In fact, pineapple has a Nutrivore Score of 358, which makes it 2.5X more nutrient-dense than an apple, 89% more nutrient dense than a banana, 57% more nutrient-dense than honeydew melon, 24% more nutrient-dense than cranberries and 5% more nutrient-dense than mango. (Not that those other fruit options are bad, just that pineapple is awesome!)

Fun fact: The (completely normal and common) stingy feeling in your mouth when you eat pineapple isn’t just from bromelain, but ALSO from sharp, needle-like structures of calcium oxalate crystals called raphides. Raphides cause microscopic abrasions to tongues and the insides of cheeks, then bromelain gets in and breaks down proteins in the mucus lining of the mouth (so yes, pineapple is just a tiny wee little bit eating you back when you eat it), and then the acidity of the pineapple in these exposed tissues causes the stinging!

Learn About Pineapple

Pineapple is the 313th most nutrient-dense food! Learn the Top 500 Nutrivore Foods here.

Pineapple and Lychee Granita Recipe

🥗 If you are looking for the perfect way to end your meal in the lingering heat of the summer, I highly recommend this refreshing and cool, melt-in-your-mouth dessert! It is the most crisp and naturally sweetened treat out there. The sweet tangy and sour combination of the fruit and limes is just a perfect blend, not to mention packed with phytonutrients and vitamins pumping up the Nutrivore Score of this recipe to a 333! Best of all, this dessert requires no heat, so no stove, oven, cooking or baking skills required.

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

🧠You may have heard that fruit is ‘Nature’s candy’ and is not nutritionally important. But the science says otherwise.

Although “fruit and vegetables” are often lumped together when talking about the health benefits of plant foods, fruit are independently beneficial! That means that we benefit from adding fruit to our diet even if we’re eating tons of veggies! Health benefits attributed to specifically fruit include improved gastrointestinal health (including protection from IBS, IBD, diverticular disease, constipation, and colorectal cancer), reduced risk of cardiovascular disease, reduced risk of type 2 diabetes, reduced risk of metabolic syndrome, long-term weight management, protection against lung cancer, improved bone mineral density, reduced asthma severity, reduced risk of depression and other psychological conditions, reduced severity of autism spectrum disorders, reduced risk of seborrheic dermatitis, and reduced severity of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Eating about 3 servings per day is associated with these health benefits.

In fact, for some health outcomes, fruit actually has a bigger impact than vegetables. For example, while eating vegetables and fruits decreases the risk of hypertension, high blood pressure, per serving, the effect is stronger for fruit. And, gram for gram, fruit fiber reduces risk of metabolic syndrome more than vegetable fiber, cereal fiber, meaning grains, and total fiber! Fruit also has a bigger impact on the risk of Crohn’s disease, diverticular disease than either whole grains or vegetables. And fruit has been shown to be beneficial for chronic constipation and irritable bowel syndrome.

Altogether the research points to 2 or 3 servings of fruit per day being optimal for a variety of health outcomes. A serving is one cup (or a fist) for raw fruits. Most fruits will shrink to about half a cup (or half a fist) when cooked. And yes, your servings of citrus and berries also count towards total fruit. So, embrace fruit as a convenient snack, a healthy dessert, a whimsical addition to salads, and a sophisticated flavoring agent in the form of salsas, jams, and chutneys.

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, science points to a “sweet spot” for fruit intake at around two or three servings per day (with a serving being 1 cup, or a fist-sized amount, of raw fruit). Both less and more than this amount isn’t as beneficial, although even up to four or five servings per day is still better than eating no fruit!

Why isn’t this a case of “the more, the better?” In short, most studies show that this amount provides the majority of the benefits we can glean from high fruit intake. The dose response relationship between fruit consumption and our overall health isn’t linear, meaning that each serving we add to our diets doesn’t impact our health equally. The benefits of fruit intake increase until we hit that two-serving mark, with additional fruit intake not offering additional benefits. Of course, variety matters here, too: eating a serving of two different fruits per day delivers more benefits than eating two or three servings of the same type of fruit.

Only 12.5% of American adults eat the current recommended intake of fruit. So, if you’re able to hit that two-serving sweet spot (or close to it), you’re doing great! And if fruit isn’t currently a part of your routine, try adding a serving of fruit to one meal per day. This could be adding sliced banana or berries to your breakfast cereal, having some apple slices with nut butter as part of your lunch, or adding sliced fruit to salad with dinner or using fruit salsa as a condiment. Fruit also makes a convenient snack and a refreshing dessert.

If you need more strategies for developing healthier eating habits, check out my Nutrivore90 Online Course.

This Week’s Companion Downloads

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

• Nutrients in Fruit - This 1-pager PDF guide highlights key nutrients in fruit and their benefits, to give you a quick-reference for why two or three daily servings of fruit is so good for you.

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

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

Sincerely,
Dr. Sarah Ballantyne, PhD
Founder of Nutrivore

Chromium is a trace element that doesn’t get as much attention as some other “heavy hitter” minerals (like iron or calcium), but that doesn’t mean it’s not important for health! Chromium was first discovered in 1797 by a French chemist named Nicholas Louis Vauquelin, who was analyzing a bright red mineral found in a Siberian gold mine—at the time, referred to as Siberian red lead. Along with lead, the mineral contained a previously unknown metallic element that produced colorful compounds when mixed with various solutions. Vauquelin named this new element chromium from the Greek word chroma, meaning color. In fact, the green color in emerald is caused by chromium, as is the red in rubies!

Chromium’s main function is in the potentiation of insulin, allowing the body to effectively use carbohydrates. It also influences the metabolism of fat and protein.

Chromium is found in small amounts in every food group, but is most abundant in foods such as kidneys, oysters, liver, broccoli, green beans, leafy green vegetables, mushrooms, nuts, egg yolks, and tomatoes. Brewer’s yeast and blackstrap molasses are also good sources of chromium. Unlike most minerals and vitamins, the amount of chromium in different foods hasn’t been thoroughly documented. And, chromium levels can vary dramatically among different samples of the same foods due to variations in local soil conditions, water conditions, and agricultural processes!

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

The Biological Roles of Chromium

Among the trace minerals, chromium is somewhat shrouded in mystery. In fact, some debate exists about whether it’s truly essential—although we certainly have enough evidence to show it plays a role in human health!

Chromium can exist in a number of oxidation states, but within the body, exists mostly in the form of trivalent chromium (Cr3+), which is the form believed to play a role

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Because this week’s Free Newsletter talked about glucosinolate for cardiovascular health, I want to share this downloadable handy-dandy 1-page summary of the Top 10 Glucosinolates Foods Fridge List as a perk for my paid subscribers. And, even though cauliflower is not one of the top 10, it’s still a valuable enough source of glucosinolates, I’m sharing one of my favorite ways to enjoy cauliflower, a downloadable version of my recipe for Garlic and Lemon Roasted Cauliflower Recipe.

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

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

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

For Paid Subscribers

Read more

Key Takeaways

✅Glucosinolates reduce cardiovascular disease risk by lowering blood pressure, cholesterol, oxidative stress and atherosclerosis.

✅With its impressive Nutrivore Score of 1585, cauliflower is a valuable source of glucosinolates. Yes, even when it’s baked into a pizza crust!

✅If you don’t like cauliflower, you might be a bitter supertaster!

✅For paid subscribers, your companion downloads this week are: Top 10 Glucosinolates Foods Fridge List and Garlic and Lemon Roasted Cauliflower. Check your inbox; they’ll be arriving in a separate email (or if you use the Substack app, they’ll be in their own post).

Glucosinolates for Cardiovascular Health

🧬Glucosinolates are responsible for the distinctive flavor—including bitterness, sulfurous aroma, and pungency—of cruciferous vegetables (such as broccoli, cabbage, kale, Brussels sprouts, and cauliflower). And one of many ways glucosinolates can benefit us is by improving heart health.

A variety of preclinical and clinical studies have shown that glucosinolates can reduce blood pressure and oxidative stress, as well as improve endothelial function. Glucosinolates also improve serum lipid profiles (reducing LDL cholesterol and increasing HDL cholesterol) and protect against atherosclerosis.

And for example, one recent meta-analysis showed that eating 100 grams of cruciferous vegetables (about one serving) per day, on average, leads to an 18% decrease in ischemic stroke, a 17% decrease in hemorrhagic stroke, and a 12% decrease in all-cause mortality and cardiovascular disease.

Learn About Glucosinolates

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

Get 84 mg Glucosinolates with Cauliflower

🫜“Cruciferous” vegetables, also called Brassicas or the cabbage family, originate from the Latin cruciferae, which means “cross-bearing” and refers to the shape of these plants’ flowers. And fun fact: Many of our favorite cruciferous vegetables, including cauliflower, are all members of the same species, Brassica oleracea. These veggies, which also include cabbage, kale, broccoli and Brussels sprouts do vary in their nutrient profiles, so you can count each one as its own food toward dietary diversity!

With its awesome Nutrivore Score of 1585, cauliflower is an especially valuable source of several nutrients. A 1-cup serving (measured raw) delivers 2.1 grams of fiber, 61% DV vitamin B7 (aka biotin), 57% DV vitamin C, 293 mg of polyphenols and 84 mg of glucosinolates.

Learn About Cauliflower

Cauliflower is the 81st most nutrient-dense food! Learn the Top 500 Nutrivore Foods here.

Garlic and Lemon Roasted Cauliflower Recipe

🥗 Cauliflower has gained popularity in recent years for its versatility—it can be rice, it can be pizza crust, it can even be mashed potatoes. Yes, you get the benefits of cauliflower no matter how you prepare it. But, I love this recipe for Garlic and Lemon Roasted Cauliflower because it celebrates cauliflower as itself, a tasty vegetable that makes the perfect side dish for just about any protein.

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

🧠Cauliflower is probably the most popular vegetable for healthifying foods, thanks to its relatively bland taste, low caloric density, and flexibility in the kitchen. You can buy cauliflower rice, cauliflower pizza crusts, and cauliflower dino nuggets. And, if you’re adventurous in the kitchen, you can make cauliflower gravy, cauliflower bread, and cauliflower chocolate cake. I think we can appreciate the added nutrient density of sneaking cauliflower into dishes, while rejecting the diet culture mentality that substitutes cauliflower for more carbohydrate-dense ingredients like rice, potatoes and flour to transform a “bad food” into a “good food.”

In personally love to blend cauliflower (and other veggies) with broth and adding it to soups to thicken them, and my favorite frozen pizza brand had a cauliflower crust. In my opinion, these are delicious ways to add in a few more veggies (and the valuable glucosinolates that cauliflower provides) that doesn’t take away from my enjoyment of the food I’m eating. But when it comes to rice, mashed potatoes, and chocolate cake, I opt for the real thing.

It can be a tricky mindset balance to choose some foods that are marketed using diet mentality while avoiding labeling these foods as “healthier” or “better” options. I remind myself that a healthy diet has room for all foods, and that it’s the relative proportions and variety of foods that I eat that determines whether my diet is overall one that supports my long-term health. And I remind myself that enjoying the foods I’m eating is a necessary precondition for sticking to my overall healthier eating patterns. Sometimes that means choosing the cauliflowery version of the food, and sometimes that means not, and both decisions are valid.

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

Grab a Copy!

Helpful Tip of the Week

💡If you find cauliflower to be too bitter, perhaps even being able to taste it in hidden-veggie recipes like cauliflower pizza crust, you’re probably a bitter supertaster.

The glucosinolates in crucifers chemically resemble phenylthiocarbamide (PTC), an organic molecule with the very unusual property that it either tastes very bitter or is virtually tasteless depending on which variant of a taste receptor gene, called hTAS2R38, you have. On average, about 70% of us can detect a bitter taste in cruciferous vegetables, but those of us with two copies of the bitter sensitivity gene (called the PAV/PAV haplotype) are much more likely to hate them, eat fewer vegetables in general, and gravitate towards sweet treats!

But, never fear, because it is still possible to develop a liking for these bitter veggies!

If you genetically predisposed to disliking crucifers, try experimenting with different methods of cooking—for example, roasting as opposed to boiling may completely change the enjoyment you get from eating these veggies! Or you could try blanching before cooking to leach out some of the bitter compounds. To do this, bring water to a boil in a large pot. Add your veggies to the pot and cook for one to two minutes. Immediately transfer to ice water. It’s true that your choice of cooking method will have an impact on nutritional content and you may lose some of the nutrients but perhaps you may need to compromise on nutrients for taste. In the end, including this veggie in your diet in any form is a worthy addition—eating crucifers with less nutrients is better than not eating any at all! You might also find that balancing the bitterness with some astringency or acidity, such as tossing with lemon juice or a vinaigrette, may help too, or adding some sweetness like a little honey or maple syrup.

This Week’s Companion Downloads

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

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

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

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

Sincerely,
Dr. Sarah Ballantyne, PhD
Founder of Nutrivore

This article explains the links between Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease and 18 different nutrients —including specific vitamins, minerals, fatty acids, and amino acids. It’s important to clarify that the primary focus of this article is on nutrients associated with reducing the risk of developing these neurodegenerative diseases in the first place to emphasize the benefits of adopting nutrient-dense eating patterns as lifelong healthy habits (and not to create a list of supplements to buy).

In addition, brain health is influenced by many factors beyond food alone, including age, genetics, gender, alcohol use, previous traumatic brain injury, socioeconomic factors, and history of type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol or high blood pressure. As a reminder, a nutrient-dense diet can improve health outcomes including reducing risk of Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease, but it is not a guarantee, a cure, or a moral safeguard.

Alzheimer’s Disease

Alzheimer’s disease is a progressive neurological disorder that affects memory, thinking, and behavior. It is the most common cause of dementia, a group of brain disorders that lead to a decline in cognitive function, interfering with daily life and independent functioning. The initial symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease can be very subtle, such as mild memory lapses; but as the disease progresses, worsening symptoms eventually include severe memory loss, confusion, and cognitive disability, resulting in the inability to perform basic daily tasks. Alzheimer’s disease primarily affects people over the age of 65. In people younger than that, it’s called Early-Onset Alzheimer’s disease, which is typically linked to genetic risk factors.

The impact of Alzheimer’s on individuals and families is profound, making it crucial to understand its causes, risk factors, and ways to reduce risk.

Causes and Risk Factors of Alzheimer’s Disease

The exact cause of Alzheimer’s disease remains unknown, but it is thought to result from a combination of genetic, environmental, and lifestyle factors that affect the brain over time. Research into Alzheimer’s disease has revealed two hallmark characteristics in the brain associated with the disease:

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Because this week’s Free Newsletter talked about beta-carotene’s benefits for insulin sensitivity, I want to share this downloadable handy-dandy 1-page summary of Nutrients for Type 2 Diabetes as a perk for my paid subscribers. And, because sweet potatoes are a great source of beta-carotene, I’m sharing one of my favorite ways to enjoy sweet potatoes, a downloadable version of my super simple recipe for Baked Spiced Sweet Potatoes.

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

• Nutrients for Type 2 Diabetes - This 1-pager PDF guide lists all the nutrients that reduce risk of type 2 diabetes along with top food sources, to give you a quick-reference for foods to add if type 2 diabetes is a concern for you.

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

For Paid Subscribers

Read more

Key Takeaways

✅Among beta-carotene’s many benefits is lowering risk of type 2 diabetes and improving insulin sensitivity in type 2 diabetics.

✅Sweet potatoes are one of the most nutrient-dense starchy root vegetables.

✅The #1 strategy for improving diet quality is preparing food at home, but that doesn’t have to mean cooking everything from scratch.

✅For paid subscribers, your companion downloads this week are: Nutrients for Type 2 Diabetes and Baked Spiced Sweet Potatoes. Check your inbox; they’ll be arriving in a separate email (or if you use the Substack app, they’ll be in their own post).

Beta-Carotene for Type 2 Diabetes

🧬Beta-carotene is probably the most famous carotenoid, as a vitamin A precursor that can help improve vision, especially in low light conditions. But beta-carotene has many other benefits, including reducing risk of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and some cancers.

Studies have shown that higher levels of beta-carotene in the body reduce risk of developing type 2 diabetes, and that increases beta-carotene intake can improve insulin sensitivity in type 2 diabetics! These benefits are attributable to beta-carotene’s antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activity, in addition to possibly due to positively regulating the hormone adiponectin. In type 2 diabetes, there’s an increase in reactive oxygen species (a.k.a. oxygen radicals) due to high blood sugar levels, in conjunction with a reduction in the body’s antioxidant defenses. Beta-carotene helps balance both prevent reactive oxygen species from forming and stop them from damaging cell membranes.

Learn About Carotenoids

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

Get 22,750 mcg Beta-Carotene with Sweet Potatoes

🍠Sweet potatoes are ranked in the top ten most important food crops in the world because of their nutrient density, versatility, and long-term storage without spoiling. In fact, sweet potatoes are so packed with carotenoids, most notably beta-carotene, that a 1-cup serving, measured raw, delivers over 100% DV of vitamin A even after accounting for relatively inefficient conversion! And with a Nutrivore Score of 379, sweet potatoes are among the most nutrient-dense root vegetables, also delivering 22% DV copper, 19% DV vitamin B7 (biotin), 16% vitamin B6, 15% DV manganese, and 4.0 grams of fiber.

Learn About Sweet Potatoes

Sweet potato is the 301st most nutrient-dense food! Learn the Top 500 Nutrivore Foods here.

Baked Spiced Sweet Potatoes

🥗 These baked spiced sweet potatoes are a super simple and delightful side dish to serve with pork, beef or poultry. Serve them as is or sprinkle with a little cinnamon-maple sugar right out of the oven. Bonus: roasting with a little oil actually increases the absorption of beta-carotene!

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

🧠The number one strategy to improve diet quality is to prepare food at home. And this is backed up by science (which I do summarize in my book): studies show that the more meals per week that we eat out of the house, the more nutrient insufficiencies we are likely to have and the worse our health outcomes are on average. Bonus, cooking at home is almost always more affordable and it gives us the opportunities to a) cater to our own flavor preferences, and b) to shop with nutrient density in mind.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that we can’t use pre-prepared and packaged food shortcuts like rotisserie chickens, deli side dishes and veggie trays, bagged salad mixes, frozen steam-in-the-bag veggies, jarred sauces, and canned beans, just to name a few handy-dandy options that can help us save loads of time in the kitchen while still helping us prepare a balanced, nutritious, and delicious meal. And in fact, if you aren’t very comfortable in the kitchen, leaning on these types of foods can be a great starting point for building up that cooking confidence. Leveraging packaged foods to make it easier to cook at home is an awesome strategy.

And if you don’t know how to cook at all, my recommendation is to find accessible recipes in a cookbook or online (my Baked Spiced Sweet Potatoes recipe above is a great example!), and then just jump into the deep end. The best teacher is experience when it comes to cooking. If time and skills are a challenge, save your recipe adventures for the weekend when you have more time and try to cook double or triple batches to enjoy leftovers all week or freeze the leftover to rotate through so you don’t feel like you’re eating the same thing over and over again.

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 sweet potatoes! Sweet potatoes are largely cultivated internationally, so you’re not likely to find them at your local farmers’ market unless you live in southern USA or California. Otherwise, you can find these tasty root veggies at your local grocery store year-round!

When choosing, look for firm sweet potatoes with smooth skin and no cuts or bruises. Dark discolored spots and lesions indicate damage from cold. Larger sweet potatoes tend to be starchier.

Store sweet potatoes in a cool, dark, well-ventilated place. I store mine in a wire basket inside my pantry.

Sweet potatoes do not freeze well raw due to their high-water content. However, you can freeze sweet potatoes if you blanch them first. Blanching means placing them in a pot of boiling water until they are tender before removing the potatoes, draining, and placing directly in an ice bath for a minute or two to stop the cooking process. After that, drain again, allow potatoes to cool and pat them dry with a paper towel. The key is to freeze partially cooked potatoes. Once frozen, they can be stored for up to 12 months.

When choosing sweet potato greens, look for deep green colored leaves and store them wrapped in a damp paper towel, in the crisper drawer of your refrigerator. This should allow the greens to keep for several days.

Learn More

This Week’s Companion Downloads

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

• Nutrients for Type 2 Diabetes - This 1-pager PDF guide lists all the nutrients that reduce risk of type 2 diabetes along with top food sources, to give you a quick-reference for foods to add if type 2 diabetes is a concern for you.

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

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

Sincerely,
Dr. Sarah Ballantyne, PhD
Founder of Nutrivore

Vitamin K is actually a group of fat-soluble vitamins with a similar structure, existing in the forms of K1 (phylloquinone), multiple isoforms of K2 (menaquinones—which range from MK-2 to MK-14, numbered based on the repeats of 5-carbon units in their molecular side chain), and the less common synthetic form K3 (menadione). Whereas most vitamins were named in alphabetical order, the “K” in vitamin K actually comes from the Danish word for blood clotting, koagulation, due to its important role in blood clot formation (AKA coagulation!). In fact, vitamin K was first discovered by accident during cholesterol experiments in 1929, when scientists found that feeding chickens fat-free diets led to excessive bleeding—leading them to deduce that a “coagulation vitamin” existed and had been removed along with the dietary fat.

All forms of vitamin K are critical for making important proteins in the body that are involved in blood clotting and metabolism, and are also central to maintaining bone and cardiovascular health.

The richest food sources of vitamin K1 are high-chlorophyll plant foods such as green leafy vegetables (especially kale, chard, collard greens, and spinach), broccoli, and Brussels sprouts. Vitamin K2 is found in natto (a fermented soybean product), organ meats (especially liver), egg yolks, some hard cheeses, butter, pork, and dark chicken meat. High-quality olive oil also contains vitamin K.

This article explains the biological roles of vitamin K, the difference between vitamin K1 and vitamin K2, the interactions between dietary vitamin K and our risk of four major health conditions, symptoms and signs that we’re getting too little vitamin K, how much vitamin K we need by demographic, and shares the top 25 best common whole food sources of vitamin K. Paid subscribers also can download a printer-friendly PDF version of this information below!

The Biological Roles of Vitamin K

Vitamin K serves as the essential cofactor for vitamin K-dependent proteins needed for blood coagulation, regulating cellular function, bone metabolism, and preventing

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Because this week’s Free Newsletter talked about how vitamin A supports thyroid health, I want to share this downloadable handy-dandy 2-page Vitamin A Fun Factsheet as a perk for my paid subscribers. And, because liver is the best food source of vitamin A, I’m sharing one of my favorite ways to enjoy it without having to taste it, a downloadable version of my recipe for Hidden Liver Meatballs.

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

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

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

For Paid Subscribers

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Key Takeaways

✅Vitamin A is important for thyroid health and liver is the single best food source, with a mere two teaspoons supplying the daily value.

✅If you want to eat liver but not taste it, try grinding it and mixing with ground beef in any heavily seasoned recipe like tacos or my Hidden Liver Meatballs below!

✅If you don’t want to eat liver, I’ve listed 5 awesome plant sources of vitamin A below plus what you need to do to increase absorption.

✅For paid subscribers, your companion downloads this week are: Vitamin A Fun Factsheet and Hidden Liver Meatballs. Check your inbox; they’ll be arriving in a separate email (or if you use the Substack app, they’ll be in their own post).

Vitamin A and Thyroid Health

🧬Animal studies have shown that vitamin A has a role in maintaining thyroid health and that vitamin A deficiency interferes with the pituitary-thyroid axis. A deficiency in vitamin A can have adverse outcomes such as increasing the size of the thyroid gland, increasing the secretion and synthesis of thyroid-stimulating hormone, raising circulating concentrations of thyroid hormones, reducing the thyroid gland’s iodine uptake, and impairing the synthesis and iodination of thyroglobulin (a protein produced by the thyroid gland).

In a study of children who had both vitamin A deficiency and iodine deficiency, it was found that the more severe the vitamin A deficiency, the greater the likelihood of developing goiters and abnormal thyroid hormone levels! What’s more, when these children were given salt enriched with either iodine or iodine plus vitamin A, the addition of vitamin A led to a significant decrease in thyroid volume and TSH concentration. Intriguingly, another study of iodine-deficient children found that vitamin A supplementation alone could reduce thyroid gland volume, TSH, and thyroglobulin concentrations—indicating that vitamin A has its own thyroid-protective effects independent of its interactions with iodine.

Learn About Vitamin A

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

Get 552% DV Vitamin A with Beef Liver

🫜Offal is another term for organ meats (also known as variety meats because there is a variety of different kinds!). The word itself derives from ‘off’ and ‘fall’, literally referring to the parts of the animal that fall off during butchering. Arguably the king of offal, liver is one of the top nutrient dense foods on the planet (and the best food source of vitamin A)! Fortunately, it’s also one of the easiest of all organ meats to find.

Beef liver has an impressive Nutrivore Score of 4021! A mere two teaspoons of beef liver is enough to supply the daily value of vitamin A! A 3.5-ounce (measured raw) serving additionally delivers: 2471% DV vitamin B12, 1084% DV copper, 333% DV biotin, 212% DV vitamin B2, 143% DV vitamin B5, 82% DV vitamin B3, 73% DV vitamin B9, 72% DV selenium, 64% DV vitamin B6, 61% DV choline, plus good amounts of most other nutrients.

Contrary to popular belief, liver is not full of toxins. Liver is actually the major organ responsible for detoxification. Its’ job is to filter toxins out of our blood, process them, and package them for removal. That means the best food to support our own liver is liver since it contains all the raw materials necessary for detoxification! That being said, liver is one of the few foods that is so concentrated in nutrients that eating it too frequently can cause toxicity (chronic copper and vitamin A toxicity are the two biggest concerns). If you love liver and eat it daily, make sure to limit to one serving (3.5 ounces measured raw, or about 3 ounces cooked).

Learn About Turnips

Beef liver is the 28h most nutrient-dense food! Learn the Top 500 Nutrivore Foods here.

Hidden Liver Meatballs

🥗 These Hidden Liver Meatballs are fairly heavily seasoned so the liver flavor is masked well making it more palatable for those not used to it. You can also change the ratio of ground beef to beef liver (try 1.5 pounds ground beef and 0.5 pound liver) to hide the flavor even more.

You can mix the meat and seasonings together and let it rest in the refrigerator making this a great make-ahead recipe. Buy whole liver and grind it up at home in a food processor, chop it up manually, or freeze it and then grate it on a box grater. It does make for a slightly looser meat mix, which is why the arrowroot powder or corn starch is required as a binder.

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

🧠It is okay to hide nutrient-dense foods you don’t like in recipes, even as an adult! Whether that’s sneaking some canned beans into your morning smoothie; chopping up mushrooms super fine and mixing with ground beef to make tacos or cottage pie; blending some roasted veggies with broth to thicken soup; adding canned sardines to your favorite tuna salad; or like this week’s featured recipe, sneaking some ground up beef liver into a heavily seasoned meatball or meatloaf—these are all ways to camouflage nutrient powerhouse foods that you might not enjoy plain.

The key here is to select options and ratios so that the sneaky nutrient-dense food is hidden enough that it doesn’t take away from your enjoyment of the dish. For example, great northern or navy beans have a milder flavor and easier-to-blend texture than something like chickpeas, so they may be a better option for a smoothie. Chicken liver has a much more mild flavor compared to beef liver (plus is often easier to find in the grocery store), so that may be the best way to go for your hidden liver meatloaf. You might find that mixing sardines into tuna salad only works for you with a 1:3 or 1:4 ratio, or that the only veggies you like blended up to thicken broth are zucchini, celery, and parsnip. This strategy only works if you actually like eating the final dish, and it’s okay to experiment with different variations until it’s to your liking.

It’s also okay not to sneak nutrient-dense foods into your meals, and instead work on building meals using the foods you already like (plus have access to and can afford) that meet your nutritional needs. And if you’re chomping at the bit to better understand what that looks like, my best resources are my book and my Nutrivore90 online course.

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

💡There’s lots of other ways to get enough vitamin A if liver is not your thing. You can get good amounts from most types of seafood (especially shrimp, salmon, sardines, and tuna) and eggs. And many plant foods are great sources, too!

Even though the conversion from vitamin A precursor carotenoids like beta-carotene to active vitamin A in the body is very inefficient—for example, the conversion factor for beta-carotene to retinal is 28:1—some plant foods are so packed with carotenoids that they’re still amazing sources of vitamin A! For example, even after accounting for poor conversion:

• 1 cup of carrots (measured raw) has 119% DV

• 1 cup of sweet potato (measured raw) has 105% DV

• 1 cup of butternut squash (measured raw) has 83% DV

• 2 cups of turnip greens (measured raw) has 71% DV

• 2 cups of dandelion greens (measured raw) has 62% DV

Orange, yellow and red fruits and veggies are almost always great sources of carotenoids, and dark leafy greens are also usually great sources. Not all carotenoids can be converted into vitamin A, but because carotenoids are beneficial in their own right, you win either way.

Note that carotenoids are fat soluble nutrients, so it greatly increases absorption if you consume high-carotenoid fruits and vegetables with a source of fat! So go ahead and dip your carrot sticks in ranch, add a pat of butter to your baked sweet potato, toss your butternut squash in olive oil before roasting, braise your turnip greens with salt pork or ham hock, or toss your dandelion greens in a delightful vinaigrette. You’ll absorb more carotenoids and other fat-soluble vitamins like vitamin K, and make them tastier at the same time!

This Week’s Companion Downloads

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

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

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

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

Sincerely,
Dr. Sarah Ballantyne, PhD
Founder of Nutrivore

Cataracts is a cloudy area in the normally-clear lens of your eye. There are no early symptoms, and later symptoms include blurry vision, colors that seem faded, light sensitivity, double vision, and difficulty seeing in the dark and at night. Cataracts is so common that over half of adults over the age of 80 either have cataracts or have already had surgery to have cataracts removed.

Age-Related Macular Degeneration is deterioration of a part of the retina called the macula, which causes blurring and eventual loss of central vision. There are no early symptoms. Age-Related Macular Degeneration is the leading cause of vision loss in older adults, affecting at least 40% of American adults over the age of 85.

Glaucoma is a group of eye diseases in which there is damage to the optic nerve that can result in loss of peripheral vision, blind spots, and blindness. There are often no early symptoms, which is why about half of people with glaucoma don’t know they have it. It’s estimated that at least 2% of American adults over the age of 40 have glaucoma.

Diabetic Retinopathy Diabetic retinopathy is a relatively common complication of diabetes where high blood sugar levels damage the blood vessels of the retina over time. There are usually no early symptoms and later symptoms include blurry vision, floating spots in your vision, and blindness. It is estimated that more than a quarter of American adults with diabetes have diabetic retinopathy, and about 5% of diabetic Americans have vision-threatening diabetic retinopathy.

This article explains the links between common eye diseases and 12 different nutrients —including specific vitamins, minerals, fatty acids, amino acids, and phytonutrients. It’s important to clarify that while some nutritional supplements can have therapeutic value for some eye diseases, the primary focus of this article is on nutrients associated with reducing the risk of developing these eye conditions in the first place to emphasize the benefits of adopting nutrient-dense eating patterns as lifelong healthy habits (and not to create a list of supplements to buy).

In addition, eye health is influenced by many factors beyond food alone, especially older age but also including genetics, gender, ethnicity, alcohol and tobacco use, sun exposure, socioeconomic status, previous eye injury, and history of diabetes, high cholesterol or high blood pressure. As a reminder, a nutrient-dense diet can improve health outcomes including reducing risk of many eye diseases, but it is not a guarantee, a cure, or a moral safeguard.

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

Risk Factors for Eye Diseases

Advancing age is the single biggest risk factor for cataracts, age-related macular degeneration and glaucoma.

Other risk factors for cataracts include: diabetes, sun exposure, smoking and other tobacco use, obesity, family history of cataracts, prolonged use of corticosteroid

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Because this week’s Free Newsletter talked about the early evidence that vitamin B5 can improve rheumatoid arthritis symptoms, I want to share this downloadable handy-dandy 1-page summary of Top 10 Vitamin B5 Foods Fridge List as a perk for my paid subscribers. And, because blue cheese is a good (non-organ meat) source of vitamin B5, I’m sharing one of my favorite ways to enjoy blue cheese, a downloadable version of my recipe for Blue Cheese Vinaigrette.

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

• Top 10 Vitamin B5 Foods Fridge List - This 1-pager PDF guide lists the top 10 common whole food sources of vitamin B5, how much vitamin B5 you get per serving (and how much a serving is!), while highlighting a few other valuable nutrients each food provides.

• Blue Cheese 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.

For Paid Subscribers

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Calcium is the most abundant mineral in the human body, composing up to 2% of our total body weight—the vast majority of which is located in our bones and teeth. Along with its famous role in building strong bones, calcium serves as a second messenger in cell-signaling pathways.

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!

Calcium was first isolated in 1808 by Sir Humphry Davy (Britain’s leading scientist at the time, and also the inventor of the miner’s safety lamp!), who used electrolysis to isolate calcium from a mixture of lime and mercury oxide. But, humans have been using calcium long before we knew its chemical makeup! The Ancient Romans mixed calcium oxide with water to use as mortar for stone structures, and literature from the 10th century AD references plaster of paris (a mixture of calcium sulphate and dehydrated gypsum) to use for setting broken bones. The word calcium derives from the Latin calx, meaning “lime.”

Along with dairy products (particularly low-fat items), good sources of calcium are bone-in sardines, green vegetables (especially Brassica vegetables like kale, collard greens, turnip greens, bok choy, broccoli, and cabbage), and seaweed. Some other plant foods like spinach, rhubarb, and beans are also relatively rich in calcium, but also contain high levels of oxalate or phytate, which bind to calcium and inhibit its absorption. Other food sources include fortified foods like orange juice, soy milk, and certain cereals.

This article explains the biological roles of calcium, the interactions between dietary calcium and our risk of a dozen health conditions, symptoms and signs that we’re getting too little calcium, problems from too much calcium, how much calcium we need by demographic, and shares the top 25 best common whole food sources of calcium (20 of which are not dairy products!). Paid subscribers also can download a printer-friendly PDF version of this information below!

The Biological Roles of Calcium

Calcium’s two main functions are structural and regulatory: one, supporting skeletal health, and two, helping regulate

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Because this week’s Free Newsletter talked about selenium as one of many nutrients that seafood supplies, I want to share this downloadable handy-dandy 1-page summary of Nutrients in Seafood as a perk for my paid subscribers. And, because oysters is a great source of selenium and much more, I’m sharing one of my favorite albeit decadent ways to enjoy oysters, a downloadable version of my recipe for Oysters on the Half Shell.

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

• Nutrients in Seafood - This 1-pager PDF guide highlights key nutrients in seafood and their benefits, to give you a quick-reference for why three or more weekly servings of seafood (either fish or shellfish) is so good for you.

• Oysters on the Half Shell Recipe - A beautifully-designed PDF version of this week’s recipe that you can save or print out, to build your own personalized Nutrivore Cookbook week by week.

For Paid Subscribers

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Cancer can originate in nearly any part of the body, with different types classified based on their tissue of origin. Some cancers, like leukemia, do not form solid tumors but instead affect the blood and bone marrow. Cancer risk is determined by a combination of genetic, environmental, and lifestyle factors, and while some risk is inherited (i.e., specific gene mutations that increase risk of certain cancer types), most cancer incidence occurs due to an accumulation of mutations acquired over a lifetime. Early detection and preventive measures can significantly improve survival rates and treatment outcomes.

While research bases for less common cancers are still developing, there has been some amazing discoveries and studies completed on the most common cancer types, which have culminated in treatment, lifestyle supports, and alternative therapies that have been shown to improve outcomes.

This article explains the links between cancer risk and 30 different micronutrients (including some with complex relationships to cancer risk, so not straightforwardly just decreasing risk across the board)—including specific vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and fatty acids. This long list of nutrients is not meant to imply that you should track or optimize each one individually. Rather, it illustrates the value of nutrient-dense, diverse eating patterns, which naturally provide these nutrients by emphasizing a wide variety of mostly whole foods. For my best resource on what this looks like day-to-day, I recommend grabbing a copy of my book, Nutrivore. And for a structured program to help you improve diet quality while quitting diet mentality, check out my Nutrivore90 Online Course. I also want to be clear that while a nutrient-dense diet is associated with a lower risk of developing many types of cancer, nutrition cannot eliminate cancer risk, nor should these nutrients be viewed as treatments for cancer.

In addition, cancer risk is influenced by many factors beyond food alone, including genetics, age, environmental exposures, infections, hormone status, body weight, physical activity, smoking, alcohol consumption, sun exposure, and chance. A nutrient-dense diet can meaningfully reduce the risk of many cancers and support overall health, but it is not a guarantee, a cure, or a moral safeguard.

So, let’s actually start with causes of and risk factors for cancer in general and the most common cancer types, to create the appropriate context for our review of the nutrients that lower occurrence.

Predominant Cancer Types in the United States

Cancer remains one of the leading causes of death in the United States. According to the American Cancer Society (ACS) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the most common types of cancer in the U.S. include breast cancer, lung cancer, prostate cancer, colorectal cancer, and skin cancer. These cancers have varying risk factors and strategies for prevention and early detection.

Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in women, with about 300,000

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

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

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

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

For Paid Subscribers

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