— At Our Table —

Phytonutrients Part One: The Key to Lifetime Health

Protein, fat, and carbs get all the attention. The compounds that decide lifelong health get almost none.

Allen R. Williams, Ph.D.
Allen R. Williams, Ph.D.
Co-founder
In this post
    Did you know

    A thousand and counting

    Healthy, nutritious foods should be comprised of more than a thousand phytonutrients crucial to our overall health and well-being.

    The modern food supply contains far fewer than it used to. Industrial farming, monoculture cropping, and depleted soils have stripped these compounds out of much of what's on supermarket shelves — even when the calories and the protein numbers look the same.

    Phytonutrients are naturally occurring, bioactive plant compounds with powerful antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects — and the research now shows they play a key role in preventing and managing many chronic diseases. A truly healthy diet contains over a thousand of them. But the modern food supply is significantly lower in phytonutrients than it used to be — because the soil that grows our food has been depleted. This three-part series, drawing on collaborative research with Dr. Stephan van Vliet’s team, explains why phytonutrients matter, how regenerative agriculture produces them, and what to look for in the food you eat.

    Why phytonutrients matter

    We all know that healthy foods, consumed routinely over our lifetime, bodes well for a lifetime of health. We read a lot about crude protein, fats, carbohydrates, and sugars. However, what is often left out in the healthy food discussion is the critical topic of phytonutrients. Healthy, nutritious foods should be comprised of more than a thousand phytonutrients that are crucial to our overall health and well-being.

    Let’s look at the basics of phytonutrients and what they mean to our bodies and their impact on life-long health:

    What is a phytonutrient?

    Phytonutrients are naturally occurring, bioactive compounds derived from plants that have powerful antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects in both animals and humans. Research shows that phytonutrients play a key role in the prevention and management of many chronic diseases.

    Benefits of phytonutrients

    • Anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects in all our cells.
    • Scavenging of reactive or toxic chemicals in our bodies.
    • Enhances the absorption and stability of essential nutrients.
    • Promotes beneficial oral and gut (gastrointestinal) bacteria.
    • Selectively inhibits deleterious (bad) gut bacteria.

    The research frontier

    Understanding Ag has been heavily involved in cutting-edge phytonutrient research with Dr. Stephan van Vliet and his team of scientists. Some key findings to date show that phytonutrient richness in foods is critical to human health and that phytonutrient richness in all foods starts with healthy, biologically active soil.

    Phytonutrient richness in all foods starts with healthy, biologically active soil.

    Dr. Allen R. Williams, Ph.D.

    The bottom line

    • A healthy diet contains over a thousand phytonutrients. The modern food supply has far fewer than it used to.
    • They're the working antioxidants and anti-inflammatories of the body — and the research is converging on their role in preventing chronic disease.
    • The starting point isn't the plate. It's the soil. Phytonutrient richness traces directly back to biological soil health.
    • This is part one of three. Parts Two and Three explain how regenerative practice produces phytonutrient-rich food, and apply it to pasture-raised eggs as a concrete case.
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    Allen R. Williams, Ph.D.
    About the author

    Co-founder

    Allen R. Williams, Ph.D.

    Sixth-generation farmer and Ph.D. animal scientist
    Allen R. Williams, Ph.D.

    Co-founder

    Allen R. Williams, Ph.D.

    A sixth-generation farmer and Ph.D. animal scientist, Allen spent fifteen years on faculty at Louisiana Tech and Mississippi State before going full-time into regenerative work in 2000. He's since consulted with more than 4,000 farmers and ranchers across the Americas, co-founded Libertas Land, Understanding Ag, the Soil Health Academy, Regenified, and Grass Fed Insights, and pioneered the 6-3-4™ framework now taught around the world. You've seen him inKiss the Ground,Common Ground,Roots So Deep,Sacred Cow, on TEDxBoston and the Dr. Oz Show. At Etta Hills, he's healing the same Mississippi red clay he grew up on.

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