Have we discussed Brix yet?

[pampered_mom]

I tried to search and see if there had been any threads about Brix, but nothing really came up and I'm a little bit surprised. It's the "in" discussion at the nearby and local WAPF chapter meetings. I'm sad to say that ours wasn't really very thorough/informative. I still feel a little bit : about it.

Has anyone heard of Brixing to determine the nutrient density of the food? What do you think - next great thing or just a bunch of hullabaloo?

[toraji]

I tried to start a thread about it a while back and got no reply. Not hot...yet!

I used to be all amped on getting a Brix refractometer, but then my hubby brought up a good point that we instinctively "know" when food is good or bad. Like when you have a really good tomato as opposed to one of the cardboard ones from the supermarket. The good tomato is obviously higher brix and would show the numbers to prove it.

So what we are focusing on is trying to improve our soil to grow the most nutritious food possible and correcting soil deficiencies (we got a soil test done), and we've definitely noticed that our veggies are vastly superior to even the ones we find at the farmer's market. Bet if I tested them they'd be high Brix.

[toraji]

I also wanted to add that another thing that dissuaded me from getting into refractometers is that I was a bit concerned that I was getting too obsessed with "values" and the minutiae of what makes food "good" instead of looking at it from a holistic perspective that everything within the food cycle needs to be healthy in order for our food to be healthy. Hope that makes sense, I'm a bit looped right now.

[gardenmommy]

Enlighten me, please. I find that I am not in the loop, lol! I don't know what brix is.

[AJP]

It used to come up a lot on the nativenutrition yahoo group (which I haven't read in a few years). I think it can be a very useful tool if, like toraji said, one doesn't become fixated on the measurement as being the only way to determine whether a food is good or not (and some people in those discussions seemed truly fixated). I'm generally not into gadgets like that, it's too easy for them to become a crutch. As I move towards growing more food I might get a refractometer to see how things are progressing, but I'm not convinced that a food that doesn't measure high on its particular Brix scale is automatically junk.

[AJP]

gardenmommy, as I understand it, Brix is the name of the scale used to measure the total dissolved solids in the liquid portion of a food or plant. A refractometer is the tool used to obtain the measurement, typically juice is squeezed from the food or sap from a plant and a drop put on the refractometer, and it can be used to measure things like milk as well. The theory says that high-Brix plants will be healthier and hardier, and high-Brix foods will be more nutritious. Some people believe it indicates the total nutrient value, some that it only really measures the sugars.

[Gale Force]

I want one to play with.

[pampered_mom]

Gale Force...of all the people I would have thought might want one to play around with...it was you!

gardenmommy - You can see a little bit of discussion about it here.

Toraji - I would certainly agree that it's easy to get lots in the finer details and the "values" and miss the larger picture.

Part of what intrigues me about Brix, however, is related to the whole "is organic produce more nutritious for you than the conventional stuff". In all of the news reports and such the answer is usually somewhere along the lines of no, but it's better for our environment than dumping all the chemicals on the ground. As I understand it, it is completely possible to be an organic farmer and not necessarily have soil that's any healthier than that of a conventional farmer because you are just replacing chemical inputs with "natural" ones.

So, if comparing industrial organic produce and industrial conventional produce it would seem to stand to reason that there would be no difference nutritionally. My gut reaction was always that if things were done right and soil health became more important than the yield, then healthier soil would grow healthier vegetables. But how does one prove that? And as a consumer if we are wanting to get an idea of where something lies on the spectrum from say our local co-op/hfs it *might* be a good tool to do so w/out more expensive laboratory testing and therefore another way to make information accessible to the "masses" so to speak.

It appears to me that there is a large continuum of folks when it comes to Brix. One the one hand there are those that think it's the newest "it" thing and would never let a low Brix food pass their lips. On the other hand are either the skeptics or those who thinks it's a bunch of hooey.

The whole Brix thing of course brings up all sorts of things one can buy to "improve" their Brix, which could really be and end in and of itself while at the same time meaning that one must be careful of their source when it comes to Brix information.

I think I probably missed the native nutrition discussion on Brix. I'll have to head on over to see if I can find the thread on that one.

[AJP]

I think there are, unfortunately, "organic" farmers who don't pay any more attention to soil fertility than most conventional farmers do, and who just use organic-qualified inputs to prop up their crops, in which case the produce wouldn't necessarily be more nutritious than the conventional version (although still probably less toxic). But I think most smaller-scale organic farmers, especially those who sell locally, are paying attention to soil fertility as the foundation of their farm-as-organism.

High Brix in and of itself seems like a myopic focus to me, and the plant-applied products designed to raise Brix seem to me to fall into that category. High Brix as a result of great soil and nutrient density in the foods grown on that soil is a different matter, and probably a great way to measure.

The Brix conversations I remember on the nativenutrition list were 4 or 5 years ago, I don't know if the messages from that long ago are still archived.

[gardenmommy]

ok, thanks! I feel more enlightened. I think this is more scientific than I have brain cells for at the moment, but interesting, nonetheless!

[saratc]

When I first heard about brix, I really wanted a refractometer too, but besides the fact that I feel there's things farmers could probably do to improve brix without really improving the product, I was worried about the implications. To me, traditional foods symbolize the culture, community, and care behind growing the food and preparing the food. In choosing my sources of food, I prefer to look at a farmer and his farming practices and my feeling on his sense of morals. Somehow, refractometers and analyzing or measuring anything scientifically makes me think of the FDA and industrial approach to food that got us all away from traditional foods in the first place.

Besides the fact that I just can't see myself pinching and taking a sample from every piece of vegetable or fruit that I buy.

I can also console myself with the thought that even if I didn't get the highest brix produce, all my careful NT style preparation will ensure a high level of bioavailability of the nutrients that are in the produce.