Bionutrient Meter
Bionutrient Meter
It's finally here!
The 1st generation of the "Bionutrient Meter"
That’s right, we have built a developer/prototype model of our handheld spectrometer, and have distributed the first 300 kits. These early adopters are helping us gather the data necessary to propel our inspired open-source project forward. In collaboration with farm partners and citizen scientists from around the world, the Real Food Campaign is analyzing samples from a wide range of farm practices and environments, building a rich series of overlapping datasets which can help us understand the connections between management, environment, soil health and nutrient density.
There’s never been more need for a food-testing tool like this.
The Bionutrient Food Association has been working to improve food quality since its inception in 2010, and one of the key ways we identified to do so was to align economic leverage and supply chain transparency. It is said, people vote with their dollars. Markets are driven by demand. We believe there is a growing awareness that not all food is equal, and quality – of nutrient levels, taste, and shelf life – can vary greatly. Short of tasting before buying, the cues we shoppers have for determining the quality of our food are unreliable at best. And industrial agriculture has worked hard over many decades to develop and promote varieties that emphasize visual appeal and transportability at the expense of quality and taste.
Now imagine going to the farmers market, flashing a light at several different carrots or a head of lettuce, and comparing their nutritional values in real-time. Readings would likely show variations in quality – some are nutrient dense, while others are not. Which ones would you purchase? Given the option, wouldn’t you start basing your buying decisions on how good it was for you and your family?
Our guess is yes. If the consumer is empowered at point-of-purchase to see what it is they are buying, producers will no longer be able to skate by with visually appealing, but poorly grown and nutrient deficient product. We believe this real-time accountability in the marketplace has the potential to dramatically impact the food system, our farms, our health, and our ecosystem.
The bionutrient meter is a major step on that path.
A quick overview
We started this project because we understand a few basic points – that crop/food nutrition has declined over time, and that there has been a concurrent increase in physical, psychological, and emotional ailments correlated to nutrient deficiencies in our bodies. We also understand that money is a powerful force in the world and that historically, the economic metrics around food were dominated by yield and cost, as opposed to nutritional quality. This isn’t a surprise, as measuring food quality is difficult and expensive (until recently, hundreds of dollars per sample to do it right).
So we are aiming to do something deeply revolutionary: We wish to change this paradigm.
- To support consumers in being able to assess the relative nutritional value of food available to them
- To support growers in implementing best practices in producing high quality food
- To support researchers and supply chain actors in data collection and marketing information
- To be transparent and independent in everything we do
To do this, we have identified three separate but interrelated objectives:
- Build and calibrate a consumer tool that, with a flash of light, can be used to identify relative nutritional value in food
- Identify the spectrum of nutritional variation in crops so that a relevant conclusion can be shared (i.e. 23 out of 100 for this carrot, or 86 out of 100 for that carrot)
- Identify the causal dynamics that correlate to best quality results in crops. (i.e. what fertility and management programs and cultivars would work best in this soil type and climate to result in high quality crops)
We have accomplished proof of concept on all of these objectives, and are readying ourselves for full implementation.
We expect to have our first consumer calibrated tools available with basic definitions of crop quality and guidance for growers by next year!
To accomplish this, we need allies to work with us in this open-source, collaborative endeavor.
All who are interested in playing a part in the Real Food Campaign are encouraged to join us as farm partners and citizen scientists to help build an open-source nutrient density database and library that will answer the question, How do we grow the highest quality, tastiest, most nutrient-dense food? Learn more and get involved
Donate to the campaign. Testing samples, running them through the labs, correlating the data, to say nothing of running the 3D printer 24/7 to manufacture the Bionutrient Meter – all of this requires resources financial, human, and equipment.
Introduce allies to this project. Spread the word, share with your friends.
Together we can not only increase crop quality and decrease disease incidence, we can regenerate ecosystems, increase farm viability, and improve foundational dynamics in the broader culture.
Bionutrient Meter
How does it work?
The bionutrient meter is actually, in many ways, a shockingly simple device. It has lights (LEDs – light emitting diodes) that emit light at very specific wavelengths (fancy sciency word for colors), which then bounce off objects (like carrots, or carrot pulp, or spinach, or soil), while some of it is absorbed (turned into other forms of energy like heat) by the object, and then a light sensor in the device reads how much light bounces back (for each wavelength, multiple times, very quickly).
Why this matters (light bouncing off) is because this is actually a characteristic of objects that is directly correlated to the chemical compounds that the object is made of. So in the case of food, there are known correlations between light reflectance, at specific wavelengths, and the amount of different nutrients found in that food (vitamins, antioxidants, and aromatic compounds [things that smell, and also usually contribute to taste and health-giving attributes of food], to name a few). What makes this extra complicated though, is that these light-bouncing characteristics and compounds “overlap” with each other – so we need to look at lots of data to try to parse out what is causing the response we’re seeing.
Not all wires and lights in a box
In addition to developing the device and running the lab, with the help of supporters and donors, we’re working to build out a larger community to ensure that we can continue to push the technology forward and unlock new capabilities at competitive prices to further drive our ability to understand quality.
What is quality in food?
There are numerous answers depending on who you talk to. For the purposes of our conversation, we are defining quality based upon relative nutritional value, which we expect correlates with flavor and aroma. In food science, the term nutrient density refers to the relative level of nutrients per unit calorie. In this conversation we are referring to that type of quality. For example, a big juicy gala apple might have 10 nutrients per calorie, and a smaller denser gala apple might have 20 nutrients per calorie. The smaller apple would then be twice as “nutrient dense” as the larger apple.
Of course, it is not that simple because there are numerous different nutrients, and they come in different levels and ratios depending on the dynamics of how the crop was produced. Food quality then, from this nutrient density perspective, is a difficult metric to assess. It isn’t just one characteristic, but is the combination of a number of metrics. The Bionutrient Meter, combined with our other research projects and our lab testing, is delving into this question of quality.
And you can help.
The type of analysis we’re doing to determine food quality is one that requires lots of data points. As handheld devices are used in fields and kitchens, and the resulting data is correlated with laboratory measurements, a basic definition of nutrient density is now emerging. And it is also sparking further questions and study.
We expect this to be an iterative process that will evolve over time, and one that helps to define the continuum of variation in nutrient density in food. By 2020, our basic definition of the variation in carrots will likely be able to define one carrot as 42 out of 100, and another carrot as 83 out of 100. And we expect that as more data is collected over time, and as production practices evolve, our understanding will deepen.
Our goal is to make sure this process takes place transparently. History has demonstrated if it’s not open data and open technology, then this kind of information will inevitably get hidden behind the proprietary, copyrighted veil of industry players, or squelched altogether in the interest of serving bottom lines instead of our families and the planet. If we want to know what we’re eating, and drive the revolution in food, crop, and environmental quality and health, then we need to be involved and support citizen science.
Thus we welcome your support in answering this basic question: What is quality in food?
What can I do with it?
While we have some answers for you, much of what we can do with it is actually still unknown. We cannot yet provide nutritional estimates using the tool today – that requires a lot of data we are still gathering and from which we are building the necessary algorthms. But we can better understand variation in the spectra so we can calibrate these and future tools faster and cheaper. If that doesn’t excite you, then maybe you should wait a year or so to buy one when we have a “consumer-ready” device. But if you ARE excited to explore with us, then we would propose the following short list of experiments to start off with:
- How much spectral variation is there in foods from different sources?
- How does that spectral variation relate to taste?
- How does that spectral variation relate to variety, soil type, fertility program, epigenetics, microbiome, climatic conditions, age, post harvest conditions, time of year, etc?
These are the basic questions we are focused on answering, and where we hope to start with those who received this first generation version.
Got other ideas? Great! The possibilities are wide open. We’ve set up forums for the community to discuss their thoughts, discoveries, challenges, and insights.
Together as farmers and consumers, we can take control of our shared nutritional destiny!
Will the meter tell me what food is better for me, or if my growing practices are good?
Not yet, but with your help we expect that soon it will.
Getting these tools into the hands of farm and community partners is helping us understand food variation. Initially, this data will be used for device calibrations, and correlations with our in-lab data. Once those calibrations are complete, it’s likely some, or maybe even all, of the data we’re gathering now will be able to be “back-calibrated” to derive meaningful statistics, but we won’t know for sure until we get there.
How to get involved
All who are interested in getting involved in the Real Food Campaign are invited to purchase the Bionutrient Meter Development Kit. Cost of the Development Kit is $377.
But there are still many ways to get involved in this exciting project! If you care about nutrition, food, soil and human health, there’s a way to plug in.
Join the Real Food Campaign as a Grower Partner!
Every farm is a research farm.
Grower Partners are collaborators who provide the foundational information needed to understand the 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
The 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. 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.
Or, join us as a Citizen Scientist Partner!
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 are looking for community leaders, movement builders, foodies and anyone else who sees food as an opportunity to make the world a healthier place. Are you curious about what’s in your food?
Donate
Support the campaign through a level of donation you are comfortable with. Any amount is welcome. Or “sponsor” an in-lab sample assessment ($100 donation allows us to perform 1 full suite of tests on a sample, getting us closer to our goal of building out the calibrations necessary to discern quality metrics from the data our devices gather in the field). Or, contact us directly for larger levels of support.
We are fairly lean and mean, but your support helps us get more done more quickly!
View and contribute to the hardware and software
Visit the gitlab repository for Our Sci. It’s open-source, of course, because this is for all of us!
Spread the word
We need scientists, farmers, educators, donors, etc. Evangelize the food quality revolution!
For a more in-depth look, you can read our detailed project description: Real Food Campaign: Tools for Transparency
Be sure to stay in the loop on our lab happenings: https://lab.realfoodcampaign.org/updates/
Year 1 Report
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Frequently Asked Questions
A Refractometer, or Brix Meter, has been the best tool available for assessing the relative quality of fruits and vegetables for many generations. Refractometers measure the dissolved solids in liquids, including sugars, vitamins, minerals, proteins, hormones, etc., and offer a general measurement of how much nutrient activity is present in the plant leaf or harvested fruit.
In order to use a refractometer the crop must be squished or juiced to get a reading – which is problematic for two reasons: 1) some veggies are hard to get juice out of, physically speaking (think about using a garlic press to squeeze a single drop of liquid out of a winter squash!) and 2) ideally, we still want to be able eat our food after measuring the nutrients.
The Bionutrient Meter, a handheld spectrometer, is a non-invasive tool that works through the principle of spectroscopy. Every element or compound in chemistry vibrates as a certain frequency in physics. A spectrometer, by flashing a light at a crop and then reading the light that bounces back, can assess levels and ratios of a broad spectrum of elements and compounds in that crop. Inherently then, it has the ability to assess much more than a refractometer, and give a much more sophisticated analysis of what it is assessing.
Right now, all it tells us is the spectrum of light that bounces back to the sensor from the photo-diodes. Our hope is that by building a large enough data set this coming year with the early-adopters who purchase and use this version, along with our lab data, and meta-data sets we will be able to to have a second version of this tool available in December 2020 that will provide a relevant reading of how nutritious a variety of different crops are with a flash of light. As in, take out the tool, flash it at a carrot or apple or rice or meat etc in the grocery store, and be able to discern beyond the label relatively how nutritious it is in real time.
Our nutrient testing tool operates along the same principle as the SCiO, except that the SCiO looks only at the NIR (near-infrared), while the Bionutrient Meter looks at UV/VIS/NIR (ultraviolet, visual, and near-infrared). With every chemical element or compound vibrating at a different frequency, the Bionutrient Meter provides a view into a broader spectrum of information.
Also, SCiO is a closed-source, proprietary model, whereas the Bionutrient Meter is patently open.
The Bionutrient Meter works on leaves, roots, fruits, soil, liquids etc. Both leaves of a growing plant and those found in the supermarket can be assessed. We don’t only want to be able to help consumers identify relative quality, we deeply want to support growers in their understanding of what’s going on with the plant as it grows, and which actions they can take to be the most supportive to it.
Getting Started Tutorial
If you have received your Bionutrient Meter, and are not sure how to begin, or just like to see it done first, check out our getting started videos covering setting up the Real Food Campaign app on your Android phone, and then connecting to bluetooth and managing bluetooth devices.
Visit https://www.youtube.com/user/RealFoodCampaign for these and other tutorial videos as we add them. We will be releasing additional tutorial videos regards the Bionutrient Meter as we can, so check back regularly, or even easier just subscribe to the Real Food Campaign channel to be notified automatically when we post additional videos.