The top powerhouse fruits & vegetables

Posted on Wed, 14 Jan 15

Increasing your consumption of nutrient-dense, super-foods is an important way to optimize your daily intake of many important nutrients. To help, there is a new list of the most nutritious. 

The term “nutrient-dense,” or “super-foods” is increasingly used in popular healthy eating advice but a definition of nutrient density is lacking. Setting out to create a standard Jennifer Di Noia, PhD has published a list of foods that aims to define “powerhouse fruits and vegetables” and quantify nutrient density differences among them using a 3-step process.

First a list of candidates was created based on foods that have the highest probability of health benefits. Secondly, a nutrient density “score” was calculated for each food based on low energy density, high nutrient density and high vitamin and mineral bioavailability. Lastly, foods with a score greater than 10 were classified as powerhouse foods.

Here are the top 20:

And you can view the full list here.

“The rankings provide clarity on the nutrient quality of the different foods and may aid in the selection of more nutrient-dense items within the powerhouse group,” says Dr Di Noia.

Reference:

Di Noia J. Defining powerhouse fruits and vegetables: a nutrient density approach. Prev Chronic Dis. 2014 Jun 5;11:E95.