This past week my nephew asked me what I knew about the ANDI, or Aggregate Nutrient Density Index. See the chart here. The ANDI assesses a food’s vitamin, mineral, antioxidant and phytochemical content PER CALORIE to come up with a number that reflects its nutrient density. Note that 1) not all major vitamins are included, and 2) this is the amount of nutrition per calorie, and not the total amount in the food. It’s critical to understanding the ANDI.

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ANDI scores foods not by the quantity of nutrients in a particular volume (e.g., ½ cup), or in some standard weight (e.g., 4 oz.), but in each CALORIE. Because of this, low-fat items like kale end up with a high score, but high-fat items like nuts get an unexpectedly low score.  So the ANDI score turns out, inadvertently, to be an effective way to cut calories without counting calories. Just don’t rely on it to identify highly nutritious foods that are also high in calories. Why? Because their high-calorie state spreads out all the nutrients over many more calories. Not just high-fat foods either. Even fruits get a lower rating. 

Dr. Joel Fuhrman, who made up the ANDI, recommends that 90 percent of an individual’s diet be composed of plant-based foods with high ANDI scores. Wow, that seems high. Why not 100%?, you might ask. Diets restricted to foods with high ANDI scores are deficient in fat. Nor do they contain sufficient fat-soluble vitamins, like A, D, and K. That fat-soluble vitamins are not part of the ANDI equation, I consider a major shortcoming. I see no reason to strictly limit olives, walnuts, chickpeas, navy beans, apples, swiss cheese, grapes, bananas, and peanut butter. Though adding foods with a high ANDI is a good way to increase the nutritional content of our diets, 90% is an awfully strict standard. A more realistic goal might be to increase your current intake by 10-15%. You can take it up another notch if and when you’re ready. 

Nutrients incorporated into the ANDI score include minerals such as calcium, magnesium, iron, zinc, and selenium; vitamins such as B1, B2, B6, B12, C, and E; phytochemicals and antioxidants such as alpha carotene, beta carotene, lutein, zeaxanthin, glucosinolates, and lycopene; and fiber, both soluble and insoluble. ANDI also incorporates the ORAC (oxygen radical absorbance capacity) score, which is a fancy way of conveying antioxidant strength. We don’t have a good system for measuring the phytochemical and antioxidant content of foods, despite their major benefits. ANDI seems to me a decent proxy.  

One last interesting observation:  It’s hard to believe that we have identified every last nutrient there is to know about. I think it’s a safe guess that the foods with the highest concentration of nutrients may also be likely to harbor other as yet unidentified nutrients.

To summarize, ANDI is simply a reflection of your grandmother’s sage advice:  Eat your vegetables. I don’t really need an index for that.

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I promised a friend that this week I would talk about the four main kinds of stripped carbs in processed edible items.  They are: white flour, white rice, corn starch or syrup, and sugar.  White flour is wheat stripped of its bran and germ.  White rice has been stripped of its husk.  Corn starch and corn syrup are derived from corn.  Sugar is extracted mostly from sugar cane, and less often from dates or beets.

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You may have heard of “enriched” white flour.  This is stripped flour to which minerals and vitamins (mostly iron and B vitamins) have been added so as to prevent anemia and other nutritional deficiencies.  Or you could eat whole grain wheat.  “Enriched” is the industry’s term, not mine.  I would call it “stripped flour with B vitamins and iron, but still without the fiber or the oil-rich germ.”

You may also have heard of “fortified” flour.  This is stripped flour to which folate has been added.  Folate deficiency turns out to be the cause of a particular class of birth defects called neural tube defects, of which spina bifida is the most well known.   Congress mandated that flour be fortified beginning in the 1990’s, approximately 20 years after a causal link began to be established between folate and spina bifida.  You could eat fortified flour.  It still has little or no fiber.  Or you could eat whole grain wheat.

Shortly after rice stripped of its husk was first introduced into the food supply in Southeast Asia, a significant rise was noted in the numbers of deaths from a disease called beri-beri.  Thousands died.  Beri-beri turns out to have been caused by a deficiency of thiamine, which was, not surprisingly, present in the husks that had been removed.  So now white rice is “enriched” with thiamine.  But then again you could eat whole-grain rice.

Corn starch and corn syrup are used extensively in the processed edible-items industry.  Actually, even that’s an understatement.  We began to eat large amounts of corn starch and corn syrup in the 1970s, soon after the industry identified corn syrup as a significantly less costly alternative to sugar.  

Everything is relative, however.  What’s less costly in one way turns out to have been exorbitant in another.  Rates of obesity in the U.S. began to soar.  When I traveled overseas in Europe this past summer, I checked ingredient lists in all kinds of products, and I did notice that whereas virtually all American candy and baked items are made with corn syrup, the French and British candy, cakes and breads are made with sugar.  There was also much less obesity.  Yes, I know the epidemic is multifactorial, and that it’s not being caused simply by corn syrup.  But this, nevertheless, is what I saw.

In nature, carbohydrate always comes with an intact fiber matrix, be it a fruit, a vegetable, a bean, or a whole grain.  Sugar comes from dates, beets, sugar cane, and fruit.  

So, what then?  Am I saying we can never eat anything sweet again?  No, definitely not.  We can all tolerate a treat now and then.  Maybe it’s a cookie every afternoon, or maybe it’s a slice of pie once a week.  But that’s not what’s happening.  Basically, we’re drowning in stripped carbs: Mini-frosto-hoho-choco’s for breakfast.  Or muffins.  Or yogurt with 4-5 teaspoons of corn syrup.  Doughnuts, crackers, or brownies for snacks.  Sandwiches for lunch, with corn chips.  Pasta for dinner.  

I can’t tell you exactly how much stripped carb you can tolerate.  You’re going to have to figure this one out on your own.  It’s going to depend on your particular metabolism, your genetic make-up, and how much you move, otherwise known as the amount of physical activity in which you engage on a regular basis.  Which works better for sweetening your oatmeal, maple syrup or raisins?  You can figure this out.

Just remember, for most of us it’s not carbohydrate per se that’s the problem.  It’s stripped carb, and that’s something entirely different.

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