Not all high-satiety foods are created equal. Just because a food is difficult to overeat doesn’t automatically mean it delivers the essential nutrients to empower you to thrive.
Our last article explored how our food addiction-satiety algorithm helps you feel satisfied with fewer calories. Satiety per calorie is a critical part of the puzzle, but to truly thrive, we also need to consider the nutrient density of our food.
That’s where our Diet Quality Score (DQS) comes in. In this article, we’ll delve into how it ensures your diet provides all the essential nutrients you need to thrive.
Recap: Food Addiction Satiety Index
Imagine your appetite is a subconscious nutrient-seeking missile constantly seeking the nutrients you need to stay alive and thrive.
Our data-driven food addiction-satiety index algorithm uses the top seven nutrients that align with eating more vs eating less, calibrated using 872,925 days of food logs from people worldwide.
Our satiety algorithm will boost your nutrient density, but only to a limited extent. Increasing your intake of protein, calcium, potassium, and vitamin B2 per calorie will improve your nutrient density; however, there will still be gaps.
Moving beyond macronutrients (protein, fat and carbs), our Diet Quality Score considers all 34 essential nutrients (i.e. minerals, vitamins, amino acids and essential fatty acids).
In our 20/20 Macros class, we show Optimisers how to increase satiety. But once they’ve laid that foundation, Optimisers who want to thrive and live their best life move on to 20/20 Micros, where we show them how to fill all their remaining nutritional gaps.
The Diet Quality Score Revealed
The best way to explain how our Diet Quality Score is calculated is to show you how it works in practice.
The micronutrient fingerprint chart below is from one of our Optimisers in 20/20 Micros. Because 88% of the area to the left of the red 100% Optimal Nutrient Intake line is filled, Sarah’s Diet Quality Score is 88%.
Towards the bottom, you can see that Sarah is exceeding 100% of the Optimal Nutrient Intake (ONI) for many nutrients, including K1, magnesium, potassium, vitamin A, and omega-3.
However, towards the top of the chart, we can also see that she is falling short of the Optimal Nutrient Intake target for many nutrients.
As part of 20/20 Micros, we create a personalised Perfect Day report that shows Optimisers how to shuffle the quantities of the foods they already eat to fill their nutrient gaps.
Most people who take our courses already have a better diet than average. So, instead of radically overhauling, they need to adjust the quantities of the foods they are already consuming to improve their Diet Quality Score—a little more of this, a little less of that, and don’t eat those.
Most people can create a near-perfect day from the foods they already eat; they just need to know what to tweak.
The optimised micronutrient fingerprint chart below demonstrates that Sarah can reach a 100% Diet Quality Score without adding new foods!
If we reach the ONIs for all 34 essential nutrients, we get a 100% diet quality score.
Importantly, we don’t get extra points for exceeding the 100% ONIs. The goal is dietary balance, not excess.
Although excessive nutrient intake from whole foods is rarely an issue, focusing on our priority nutrients automatically rebalances our diet at the micronutrient level.
Importantly, the Diet Quality Score is a measure of food quality, regardless of the quantity of food consumed. Rather than eating more to get the nutrients you need to thrive, the Diet Quality Score helps you eat better.
By packing in more of ALL the essential nutrients per calorie, we can crush our cravings with less energy. Then, when we eat less because we’re so satisfied, we’ll still get all the nutrients we need to thrive.
How We Determine the Optimal Nutrient Intakes
Now that you understand that we achieve a 100% Diet Quality Score when we meet the ONIs, let’s examine the Optimal Nutrient Intakes and how they were determined.
The chart below shows the bliss point-satiety curve for calcium, calibrated using 872,925 days of food logs.
The data reveals that we eat the most when our daily food intake has a calcium concentration of 650 mg/2000. We refer to this as the nutrient bliss point. The data also shows that as we increase the calcium concentration in our diet, we tend to be satisfied with less energy.
The bliss point is the minimum amount we need to survive while maximising energy intake and, hence, fat gain. The Dietary Reference Intakes and Adequate Intakes are often close to the bliss point nutrient intakes. So, if you’re merely targeting the officially recommended minimum nutrient intakes, you’re likely setting yourself up for overeating and obesity.
If we consume less than the bliss point for calcium, we’ll crave high-calcium foods, such as those listed below. Is it any wonder that so many people feel addicted to cheese when most don’t get enough calcium from their diet?
But the data also shows that we eat a LOT less as we pack in more calcium PER CALORIE.
Can you imagine overeating the calcium-rich foods shown below?
The average calcium intake in our dataset is 875 mg per 2000 calories, just below the Dietary Reference Intake of 1000 mg per day. However, our Optimal Nutrient Intakes step this up a notch, setting a stretch target of 1,650 mg per 2,000 calories.
I’ll spare you the details, but we’ve repeated this process for all 34 essential nutrients and set the Optimal Nutrient Intake as the lesser of:
- Three times the bliss point,
- Where the satiety benefit of more starts to taper off based on the bliss-point satiety chart,
- Less than the upper limit from supplements (where applicable) and
- The 85th percentile intake across our dataset.
This ensures that the ONIs are achievable through food without the need for supplements.
Achieving a 100% ONI score is challenging but doable with some practice and focus. It’s thrilling to see many Optimisers returning for successive rounds of our classes, levelling up their nutrition a little more each time.
While not necessary for everyone, a handful of our Optimisers manage to maintain a 100% diet quality score all the time, achieving radically transformational results. However, increasing your diet quality score by 10-20% in one round of 20/20 Micros is a significant achievement.
The Optimal Nutrient Intakes
To summarise, for each of the essential micronutrients, the table below shows:
- The bliss point
- Dietary Reference Intake/Adequate Intake, and
- The Optimal Nutrient Intake.
| nutrient | Bliss Point (per 2000 cal) | DRI (per 2000 cal) | ONI (per 2000 cal) | units |
| vitamins | ||||
| thiamine (B1) | 1.8 | 1.2 | 2.3 | mg |
| riboflavin (B2) | 1.5 | 1.3 | 2.1 | mg |
| niacin (B3) | 21 | 16 | 40 | mg |
| vitamin B5 | 3.7 | 5.0 | 9 | mg |
| vitamin B6 | 1.5 | 1.3 | 3.1 | mg |
| vitamin B12 | 2.4 | 2.4 | 7.2 | mcg |
| choline | 450 | 550 | 1000 | mg |
| folate | 400 | 400 | 1200 | mcg |
| vitamin A | 400 | 900 | 1000 | mcg |
| vitamin C | 90 | 90 | 250 | mg |
| vitamin E | 6.2 | 15 | 15 | mg |
| vitamin K1 | 58 | 120 | 120 | mcg |
| minerals | ||||
| calcium | 700 | 1000 | 1650 | mg |
| copper | 0.9 | 0.9 | 2 | mg |
| iron | 11 | 18 | 21 | mg |
| magnesium | 200 | 420 | 420 | mg |
| manganese | 2.7 | 2.3 | 5.0 | mg |
| phosphorus | 1000 | 700 | 1250 | mg |
| potassium | 1700 | 3400 | 4500 | mg |
| selenium | 95 | 55 | 200 | mcg |
| sodium | 2900 | 1500 | 4000 | mg |
| zinc | 8 | 11 | 20 | mg |
| lipids | ||||
| omega 3 | 2.5 | 1.6 | 5.0 | g |
| protein | ||||
| cystine | 0.9 | 0.9 | 2.1 | g |
| histidine | 1.9 | 1.4 | 4.7 | g |
| isoleucine | 3.1 | 7.7 | g | |
| leucine | 4.7 | 13.2 | g | |
| lysine | 4.6 | 13.2 | g | |
| phenylalanine | 2.6 | 1.6 | 6.9 | g |
| methionine | 1.4 | 4.1 | g | |
| threonine | 2.6 | 7 | g | |
| tryptophan | 0.75 | 1.9 | g | |
| tyrosine | 2.1 | 1.6 | 5.7 | g |
| valine | 3.2 | 2.3 | 8.5 | g |
Our 20/20 Micros course includes a spreadsheet to help you tailor these targets to your current energy intake and level of experience or intensity. For example, someone eating only 1000 calories daily would only aim for half the ONI targets shown in the table above.
Satiety vs Nutrient Density
So, should you focus on satiety, nutrient density, or both?
Pros of Our Satiety Algorithm
- Focuses specifically on boosting satiety and helping you eat less.
- Prioritises the nutrients most people struggle to get and, hence, crave.
- Many additional nutrients are also found in these high-satiety foods.
Cons of Our Satiety Algorithm
- Not tailored to an individual’s priority nutrients.
- Some foods that are hard to overeat are not necessarily nutritious (e.g., plain flour, oil, and sugar).
Cons of Diet Quality Score
- More moving parts, making it harder to apply.
Pros of Diet Quality Score
- It can be personalised to balance your diet at the micronutrient level.
- Ensures you fill in all your nutrient gaps.
Summary: Bringing It All Together
Our satiety algorithm helps you eat less by identifying the foods that keep you full. At the same time, the Diet Quality Score guides you to the optimal intake of all 34 essential nutrients per calorie.
Together, these tools empower you to:
- Crush cravings naturally
- Reduce your reliance on supplements
- Eat with intention, not restriction
- Thrive with more energy and vitality
Ready to Take the Next Step?
To find more nutrient-dense foods to incorporate into your diet, you can:
- Explore our simple nutrient-dense infographics and food lists in our community here.
- Explore the most popular foods our Optimisers consume in the interactive chart here.
- Explore the interactive chart comparing the satiety and nutrient density of all 8,535 foods in the USDA database.
Join the Next 20/20 Micros
Join our next 20/20 Micros class to learn how to optimise your diet at the micronutrient level.
Inside our 20/20 Micros course, we’ll show you exactly how to:
- Optimise the foods you already eat
- Personalise your plan based on your energy needs and nutrient gaps
- Boost your Diet Quality Score — without supplements or guesswork