The ANDI Scale: Thrive vs. Burger King

via Thrive

Treats at Thrive.

​A friend and I recently lunched at Thrive (1239 Alton Rd., Miami Beach). We split two entrées and a fresh juice. Our bill came to about $32. For $16, we each had half a portobello mushroom "pizza" topped with cashew nut cheese, a half portion of sweet potato and black bean stew with brown rice, a small side salad that comes with each entrée, and half a beet, carrot, and spirulina juice. Each of our meals totaled somewhere around 600 calories. That's a generous estimate. So if you do the math, that amounts to about 2.7 cents per calorie.

Compare that to a meal at Burger King (110 Fifth St., Miami Beach). A small Whopper Value Meal, consisting of the sandwich, a Coke, and fries, costs about $5.50 in Miami Beach and contains about 1,200 calories. That's .46 cents per calorie, which means that a calorie at Thrive costs about six times the price of a calorie at the Burger King seven blocks down the street.

Better deal? Maybe. But Whole Foods and many authorities on nutrition have recently looked to the Aggregate Nutrient Density Index (ANDI) to calculate the value of a calorie.

scrapetv.com

Stack 'em high as you want--- they still won't rank well on the ANDI

​It considers food from the "nutritarian" perspective. Basically, it measures the amount of nutrients a food packs per calorie -- nutrients that do things such as prevent disease, boost energy levels, improve organ function, prevent bone loss, and contribute to healthy skin, nails, and teeth. According to the ANDI scores website, nutrients considered include:

Calcium, Carotenoids: Beta Carotene, Alpha Carotene, Lutein & Zeaxanthin, Lycopene, Fiber, Folate, Glucosinolates, Iron, Magnesium, Niacin, Selenium, Vitamin B1 (Thiamin), Vitamin B2 (Riboflavin), Vitamin B6, Vitamin B12, Vitamin C, Vitamin E, Zinc, plus ORAC score X 2 (Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity is a method of measuring the antioxidant or radical scavenging capacity of foods).

Foods can score anywhere from less than 1 (nutritionally bankrupt items, such as most sodas, score in this range) to 1,000 (cooked kale scores that number on the index). So let's look back at those two meals, considering the ANDI scores of the foods in each.