As a member of the site, you can take this Assessment multiple times, and rise up the ranks to
become a Black Belt, so to speak. All it takes is inspiration, education and support, as you build the
mastery needed to make Nutrient Rich® healthy eating your own “new normal.”
The 36 Nutrient Rich® Proficiencies
Here are the basic competencies for becoming a Nutrient Rich® healthy eater at the Black Belt level.
Study each one. All of these standards and their rationales have been discussed already throughout
the book, so they should feel familiar by now. However, here they are reinforced in the context of
skills, competencies, mastery and self-assessment.
REMEMBER: not all of these standards have to be applied 100% every day. For example, you won’t
always eat two pounds of greens; you may eat more raw one day and more cooked another; you
may eat one ounce of nuts and seeds during the period when you are losing weight and then more
once you are living at or near your ideal weight and are more active; you may eat more beans some
days and less nuts; you may some days eat one to two times per day and others eat four or five
times per day.
The potential scenarios are countless, but the basic guidelines are useful in any scenario. They are
written this way because they are the guidelines that ensure comprehensive nutritional adequacy.
You may recognize that these are the Personal Diet Quality (PDQ)
Assessment questions that you take to get your Nutrient Rich® Healthy Eating
Score when you first arrive at NutrientRich.com. They are also the proficiencies
that healthy eaters keep in mind daily. I recommend that you keep these
guidelines in mind as well.Below is a list of 36 proficiencies you were asked to benchmark your current eating style again, in
the PDQ Assessment, which as you now can see are really skills of the Nutrient Rich® healthy
eating style.
I know the difference between a nutrient-rich food, a nutrient-poor food and a nutrient-barren food.
90% or more of my daily caloric intake is from whole foods of plant origin. (Vegetables, beans/legumes,
fruits, nuts and seeds, and whole grains).
When and if I eat animal products, I eat 12 oz. or less on a weekly basis, or 10% or less of my total caloric
intake (meat, eggs, fish, and fowl, and dairy).
I curb my intake of refined and added oil, sugar, and flour to 100 calories (female), 200 calories (male)