Growing Nutrient Dense Food

We have been really focused on this research topic over the past 18 months since we read Nourishing Traditions, then Weston A Price's book Nutrition and Human Degeneration. Those books (and many other we have read since) highlighted for us the fact that we are currently getting in our diets many many times less minerals and vitamins than our  healthy ancestors. We believe it is critical to find every way to maximize our mineral and vitamin intake especially calcium and the fat soluble Vitamins A&D. Since reading those books Bob and I have written a NZ version called Change of Heart a cookbook containing 400 recipes and the information we believe is basic and vital around how to choose and produce food that will nourish us.

Part of the solution is to look carefully at what range of foods we eat... our research has pointed us strongly in the direction of the Weston A. Price Foundation . What has worked well  for thousands of years for our ancestors will be our best bet, however we also need to be looking at how to get the mineral content back into our food which means we must look at remineralising our soil.

My ideal solution will not be an industrial one.. it needs to be an indigenous one. One that means our inputs are local, our circles are small and we can do it ourselves.  Those solutions will take a while and in the mean time we need some instant answers for those who feel desperate to get high Brix food into their bodies. The Institute has now published an 8 page  Booklet called Growing Nutrient Dense Food  ( available at shopping ) - using bought products, the best available for the job I believe. We now have to work towards similar local solutions. I feel we have made a huge step forward with the lime or calcium solution. We have as a family been keeping the bones from all of our animals and seafood and shells etc.. and burning them and returning the ash to the compost heap. Over the period of a year, I believe  this would replenish the calcium used, so long as the calcium magnesium 1:7 ratio was sorted first and as long as there is enough carbon in the soil to hold the minerals. It is easy enough to make and add charcoal, which may be a short term solution ( and a long term solution) whilst compost making builds up. Once the calcium levels can be maintained, the carbon and compost can be sorted to the point the minerals and soil life are  held in the soil then it will be a lot easier to find local solutions for the phosphate which is currently all being imported or mined and shipped around the country within agribusiness systems.

Comfrey mines it and brings it to the surface, casaurina needles are high phosphate and there will be many other plants that will recycle phosphate so long as we take care of it in oursoils an do not waste it as we have been doing by not maintaining the carbon levels and the noursihing the soil life. ..sorting the calcium comes first.....I'd love to hear from you if have serious solutions that will add to our understandings here.   Contact us using our online contact form

Lupins, oats, alfalfa and buckwheat all either concentrate or make existing phosphate more available, so regularly using these crops as carbon crops, green manure or compost crops will also help. Possibly together with high quality animal manure we can develop a sustainable phosphate fertility maintenance program. if we want to achieve essential phosphate levels for growing high brix food in the short term we need to bring in phosphate.