The Signal is a fairly new part of my Substack where I share the early-stage companies, technologies, and movements shaping the future of health, detoxification, longevity, regeneration, and human potential — through my lens as a practitioner, health and detox expert, and active angel investor.
The next big thing in food + nutrition isn’t high-protein.
It isn’t vegan.
It isn't keto.
It isn’t carnivore, paleo, low-fat, or whatever label or diet is trending this month.
It’s NUTRIENT DENSITY.
And honestly, I literally don't care what diet or food trend you follow.
Because it's completely irrelevant.
What actually matters is the QUALITY of your food.
Are you eating conventional grocery-store salmon, farmed, antibiotic-treated, dyed pink, or Seatopia salmon?
Are your eggs conventional and caged, GMO-fed and nutrient-poor, or pasture-raised, soy-free eggs from Alexandre Family Farm?
Is your chicken grocery-store standard, antibiotic-exposed, corn/soy-fed, or pasture-raised, regeneratively farmed chicken from Pasturebird?
Is your olive oil blended, oxidized, and often mislabeled, or fresh, single-origin, cold-pressed olive oil from Cobram Estate Olives Limited?
Are your fruits + vegetables conventional and pesticide-laden or organic, seasonal, local, and regeneratively grown?
Is your beef feedlot and grain-finished with an inflammatory fat profile or grass-fed, grass-finished beef from White Oak Pastures?
Calories and macros are absolutely crude, outdated proxies.
They tell you almost NOTHING about whether food is actually nourishing you.
Nutrient density is where the truth lives:
Vitamins
Minerals
Amino acids
Fatty acids
The actual building blocks of human health
This is why I’m a huge fan of what Eric J. Smith is building at Edacious.
They’re doing something that should’ve existed a long time ago:
measuring real nutrient density directly from real food.
For the first time, you can see a complete macro and micronutrient profile, verified through accredited lab testing, rather than relying on assumptions, labels, or outdated food databases.
This is about moving beyond:
calories
crude macros
marketing claims
And toward:
nutritional quality
transparency
data you can actually use
If you can measure nutrient density, you can improve it.
You can differentiate it.
And, you can finally tell a truthful, data-backed story about the food you grow, raise, or make.
This is the future of food.
Watch this space.
And, don’t forget: you’re not what you eat.
You’re what you absorb, and that requires not only healthy, nutrient-dense food, but healthy digestive, metabolic, and detox systems too.
So, nutrient density only matters if your body can absorb it.
Food quality + digestive health + detox capacity.
That’s the full equation :)
Photos by: Eric J. Smith + Edacious
If nutrient density could be measured for everything you eat…would your grocery cart change? What are your favorite nutrient-dense products + companies? Let me know in the comments. I read and reply to every message.
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if something like this was readily accessible on my phone it was definitely change my food shop!!! i think my meals would look so different…