Clean water.
Farm viability.
Ecosystem regeneration.
Climate change mitigation.
We need a comprehensive plan to understand and revitalize our food supply.
The Bionutrient Food Association is initiating the Real Food Campaign to make the nutritional density of food easily detectable and incentivize the entire food supply chain to focus on nutritional value as a key metric.
in food?
We are building and populating the database to look for the patterns that link minerals and nutrients in food to microbial health and carbon sequestration in the soil to the experience of eating.
Learn more from our annual report and analyses:
2018 RFC lab report
2019 RFC lab report
(2020 RFC lab report coming soon)
New! Check out our Data Explorer Dashboard
Working Together is the Path
Grower Partner Program
Every farm is a research farm.
Grower Partners are collaborators who provide the foundational information needed to understand links between nutrient density in food, soil health and management practices.
Ready to grow with us?
Grower Partner Program
Every farm is a research farm.
Grower Partners are collaborators who provide the foundational information needed to understand links between nutrient density in food, soil health and management practices.
Grower Partners provide the RFC with:
- Background information on management practices including land preparation, irrigation, soil amendments, and pest control.
- In season data collected periodically using the RFC Collect App.
- Samples of crops and soil at multiple times throughout the season.
RFC provides Grower Partners with:
- Crop analysis of submitted samples, including minerals, secondary metabolites, Brix and spectral signatures.
- Soil analysis including soil minerals, organic matter, biological activity, pH and spectral signature.
- Food and soil quality markers for the entire community showing how their results stack up.
- Subscription to FarmOS farm management software to improve tracking of RFC results over time.
Our pledge to our Grower Partners
The more each Grower Partner shares, the faster we learn what food quality is. That said, we promise to protect your wishes for varying levels of privacy. In the Real Food Campaign, every grower owns their own data and is free to share as much or as little as they choose. Crop and soil data can be shared for example, while still maintaining anonymity.
Organizational Partner Program
Compare, Collaborate, and Contribute.
Our Organizational Partners expand our capacity to investigate key questions at scale. If you are a decision-maker in the food supply chain, a research director, or a passionate food advocate in a volunteer organization, we would love to work with you.
Organizational Partner Program
Our Organizational Partners expand our capacity to investigate key questions at scale.
If you are a decision-maker in the food supply chain, a research director, or a passionate food advocate in a volunteer organization, we would love to work with you.
If you represent an organization or company that would like to more broadly assess your supply chain or membership feel free to reach out to us to see how we can collaborate.
Compare |
your farm, network, or community against our growing public database of nutrient density outcomes. |
Improve |
nutrition transparency in your farm or supply chain using custom, continually updated data collection tools. |
Connect |
farming practices to nutrition with our detailed nutrition outcome reports, or work with our experts to create an experiment that addresses your community’s questions. |
Citizen Scientist Partner Program
Not a grower? Not a problem!
Anyone who wants to be involved in the Real Food Campaign and who isn’t a farmer or gardener can be a citizen scientist!
We want community leaders, movement builders, foodies and anyone else who sees food as an opportunity to make the world a healthier place.
Curious what’s in your food?
It’s easy!
We’ll send you a kit with everything you need.
You gather and tag your samples, and send it back to us.
Have fun!
Throw a party where everyone brings produce from a different store or farm – or from their own garden. If you’re feeling it, take a picture or two from the night and tag us on social media!
After we process your samples we will send you reports on the nutrient levels found in each sample. Minerals, antioxidants and polyphenols are all in the report that will show which foods provided you with the most nutrient density for your money.
You’ll get an email from us (lab@bionutrient.org) about this year’s program and next steps. Soon after, your kit will arrive in the mail. Yay!
Go out and gather samples from farmers markets, grocery stores – wherever you normally buy your food.
Answer a few, simple survey questions that come with your kit.
Label, and package your sample. Send it in.
Done 🙂
You get to know what’s in your food!
And that you’re contributing to the science and data collection necessary to build the first open-source, handheld consumer tool for identifying nutrient quality!
When you sign up, you get a full kit for handling your samples.
After we process your samples, we’ll send you reports on the nutrient levels found in each sample. Minerals antioxidants and polyphenols are all in the report, and who has the most nutritious food for your money.
A month or so. As soon as your samples are processed, we’ll notify you via email that your report is available online and ready to download.
It’s easy!
We’ll send you a kit with everything you need.
You gather and tag your samples, and send it back to us.
Have fun!
Throw a party where everyone brings produce from a different store or farm – or from their own garden. If you’re feeling it, take a picture or two from the night and tag us on social media!
After we process your samples we will send you reports on the nutrient levels found in each sample. Minerals, antioxidants and polyphenols are all in the report that will show which foods provided you with the most nutrient density for your money.
What do I need to do as a citizen scientist partner?
You will get an email from us (lab@bionutrient.org) with more details about this year’s program and next steps. Soon after, your kit will arrive in the mail. Yay!
Go out and gather samples from farmers markets, grocery stores, wherever you normally buy your food, and other locations in the area.
Answer a few, simple survey questions that come with your kit.
Label, and package your sample. Send it in.
Done 🙂
What do I get in return?
You get to know what’s in your food!
And that you’re contributing to the science and data collection necessary to build the first open-source, handheld consumer tool for identifying nutrient quality!
When you sign up, you’ll get a full kit for handling your samples.
After we process your samples, we’ll send you reports on the nutrient levels found in each sample. Minerals antioxidants and polyphenols are all in the report, and who has the most nutritious food for your money.
How long does it take?
A month or so. As soon as your samples are processed, we’ll notify you via email that your report is available online and ready to download.
If there was a way, beyond labels,
wouldn’t you want to know
just what’s in your food?
What’s the process toward an understanding of nutrient density?
- Grower and community partners submit crop and food samples to the RFC lab.
- Every sample that arrives at an RFC lab is scanned using the Bionutrient Meter.
- The sample is then analyzed for a suite of elements and compounds such as antioxidants, polyphenols, cobalt, copper, calcium and more.
- The variation in nutrient density will be identified through this revolutionary process of real world data collection.
- We will use this understanding to calibrate the Bionutrient Meter and share that knowledge back to participants.
Help us build an open-source nutrient density library
In collaboration with partners and allies around the world, the Real Food Campaign is analyzing samples from a wide range of farm practices and environments.
When samples are collected, key management, location and crop data is captured. The end result is a rich series of overlapping datasets which can help us understand the connections between management, environment, soil health and nutrient density.
Access to this raw data is online now, and within two years will be available in an easy to understand, open-source library that can be used by growers everywhere to improve the quality of their crops, the health of their soil, and the health of their communities.
Healing ourselves,
and healing the land.
Just by eating
better food.
Are you in?
