Just a quick update: My family traveled to San Francisco last week for a brief, but fun-filled trip that involved much walking and enjoying the great outdoors (urban outdoors, that is!). It’s been below freezing here in NY for a long time now, and there’s a patch of snow on my lawn that refuses to melt even when the temp registered above freezing for a few days as a respite from the winter cold.

Now … if you’ve been reading my posts at all, you know I’m a huge fan of delicious produce, and my local health food stores know that I’ll be leaving their doors with bag after bag full of healthy greens, beans, veggies and fruits. The cashiers hate to see me coming, knowing how many different produce codes they’ll have to look up to check us out so that I can feed my family the good stuff.

And don’t get me wrong — we get good produce here too, often great quality, in fact. But not as good as what I had access to in San Francisco! When I saw the produce aisle at the SF health food store I frequented during our trip, I literally left with twice as much produce as I initially intended to buy, and we had higher-maintenance meals because I just couldn’t leave without extra bunches of the shiniest, greenest, most delicate Swiss chard I’ve ever seen, along with a bunch of other equally beautiful items too numerous to expound upon. (Due to food allergies, it is immensely safer for my household to eat home-cooked meals, even on the road.  We always get hotels or apartments with a kitchen, and I always pack either my Vita-Mix or my mini-food chopper. But I typically try to keep food prep very simple on the road!)

It really does make a difference to buy local produce in terms of taste, freshness, etc. (not to mention the carbon footprint!), and of course San Francisco’s health food stores are chock full of insanely beautiful organic produce grown just a handful of miles away in the California sun. So my household was fed particularly well last week, and it was a good thing!

The good doctor at Whole Foods

On another note, it was exciting to see one of the newest additions to the displays at Whole Foods — Dr. Fuhrman’s ANDI scores. These scores are the Aggregate Nutrient Density Index of the individual foods, with kale and collards on top with a score of 1000 as the most nutrient-dense and therefore healthiest foods, and pretzels coming in at a low, low 13, and lots of others in between. (Most colorful veggies are over 200, for example.)

I know that this scoring system can appear a bit tedious, particularly if you’re new to nutrient-dense eating, and I don’t follow it rigidly myself so long as my household sticks mainly to plant-based whole foods and eats plenty of beans and greens. For my own needs and what I recommend for the vast majority of my clients, following a healthy lifestyle that’s sustainable and manageable in a busy life caring for kids means, among other things, NO calorie counting, no routine analyzing of ANDI scores (just doing so now and then to see if you’re getting in enough of the good stuff) and getting in touch with your appetite so that you don’t eat when you’re not physically hungry. If it adds stress to your life as a mom, it’s probably not a great idea, but at the same time, having a few handy “rules to live by” can free your mind up for the other important matters you have to deal with in your day.

But it’s nice to see that there are simple ways to calculate how healthful your meals are, and I know some of you out there really like having simple “numbered” guidelines to follow. Just keep in mind that ANDI scores aren’t the end-all, be-all of nutrition (and Dr. F says this himself to be sure). We do need healthy fat in our diet every single day, even though from an ANDI perspective, walnuts are a “mere” 34 — and yet they are full of healthy fatty acids that we need for brain health and more.