The nutritional content of food is a part of agriculture that is little understood by most farmers, let alone the general public. There is a segment of agriculture, however, that has been deliberately and methodically working to build the health of the soil and the health of the food we eat. The body of work that they have compiled is voluminous. In this section we will provide information on a wide array of topics relating to nutrient density, and add more periodically.

The cornerstone of the Real Food Campaign is the verification of the levels of nutrient density in food. We believe that nutrition can be measured, and that optimizing nutrition should be a driving force in agriculture. Those farmers who make this a priority should be recognized and rewarded for their work, and the way to do this is through the development of a set of universal standards for what constitutes nutrient dense food. To this end the RFC is working with hundreds of farmers and supporters throughout the U.S. to develop standards and a certification process for nutrient dense food.

A major component of our work is research. The RFC is collaborating with land grant colleges across the country to undertake research programs into the area of nutrient dense food and how to grow it. The University of Massachusetts at Amherst is our closest ally in this regard, and we are actively working with their departments of Plant & Soil Science and Nutrition to develop rigorous research protocols in this field. At the same time, hundreds of farmers have expressed interest in implementing NDF measures in their fields, and we are in the beginning stages of coordinating this farmer-driven research so that it can be as effective as possible, documented and of use to others who come after.

Testing all of the vitamins and minerals in a piece of fruit can be an expensive and time-consuming process. Luckily, there is a short cut. One of the best standards we have now is a measurement developed in the 19th century for the wine industry called the Brix test (see the RFC web page section for a full description of the Brix test). This simple test that anyone can do measures the level of dissolved solids in liquid extracted from any fruit or vegetable. Some of the RFC's research will be fine-tuning the relationship between the Brix test and complex nutrients like vitamins and anti-oxidants.