A friend emailed me recently asking me what I thought about the ANDI scoring for foods and was surprised I hadn't heard of it. "I would have thought you'd be into," she said. "I think kale is close to the top of the list." I did a little research and I'm unimpressed. Let me explain.

ANDI scoring is a method for evaluating the nutrient density of foods. Here is a sample. It was invented by Dr. Joel Fuhrman in the late '90s and is neatly summarized by the equation Health = Nutrients/Calories. Take the number of nutrients in a food and divide it by the number of calories and you have a numeric value. That numeric value can be compared to other numeric values assigned to other foods and then you have a ranking system of "the best" foods. Even if you've never heard of it before, you may start hearing about ANDI scores a lot more in the future as the high end retail grocery chain Whole Foods has adopted the scoring system and will be posting scores with its foods.

So why do I have a problem with this? To me the ANDI system seems like just another example of North America's obsession with attaching a number to the foods we eat - counting calories, counting grams of macronutrients, counting points and now comparing numbers for nutrient density. Numbers have their place, but I would argue that it isn't on your dinner table.

The main problem with this system is that, all in all, it's simply another calorie counting system. It's slightly hidden here because the numeric value attached to each food goes through an equation, but essentially low calorie foods are being valued here. The highest scores are given to the foods that have the most nutrients for the least calories. For one thing, this means that any foods that have fat in them are going to be low on the scale because fat contains more calories than carbohydrates or proteins. This means flax oil, olive oil or chia oil, despite the fact that these foods are extremely health promoting, get very low scores. Low calorie does not mean healthy, it means they give you less energy.

The fact that the ANDI system brings to fore information on phytonutrients, vitamins and minerals is a good thing. But any system that is using calories as its basis is a flawed one. The only time one needs to worry about calories is when they are eating empty processed foods that are likely to lead to overeating. With real, high nutrient, natural foods, calories become a non-issue. Counting calories inevitably leads to "cheating" with zero-calorie sweeteners and chemical additives which destroy health despite being low calorie. Calorie counting doesn't work, it warps food perception, and is downright unhealthy.

And whenever you're reducing food to a number you're losing the idea of variety. Instead of choosing a variety of vegetables and fruits, the ANDI system encourages cherry picking of the foods with the highest scores. Walnuts receive a lower score than almonds on this scale. Numeric value is automatically going to lead to valuation; in other words almonds are "better" than walnuts. The consequence of this could only be that walnuts start showing up less and less in the shopping carts of North Americans. Nevermind that almonds and walnuts have different nutritional profiles and that both should be consumed to get a variety of micronutrients.

The ANDI scores may have some use in evaluating vegetables and fruits, but they are so deficient in evaluating other sorts of foods one wonders why anyone would bother with the scoring in the first place. what about omega-3 fats, vitamin D or B vitamins? What's to stop food processors from abusing the ANDI scoring system by adding phytonutrients to otherwise empty over-processed foods?

Dr. Fuhrman recognizes some of the shortcomings of the system on his website, saying: "Keep in mind that nutrient density scoring is not the only factor that determines good health. For example, if we only ate foods with a high nutrient density score our diet would be too low in fat. So we have to pick some foods with lower nutrient density scores (but preferably the ones with the healthier fats) to include in our high nutrient diet."

So when do you use the ANDI system and when do you ignore it?

In my opinion, any evaluation of food that gives olive oil a lower score than white pasta, white bread, low fat yogurt, potato chips and American cheese is a flawed system. I can see what Dr. Fuhrman was trying to get at here and it was a valiant attempt at reducing all the nutrients found in our foods to an easily accessed number. But as an overall valuative system for letting us know which foods are healthy, I think it really falls short. And even though Dr. Fuhrman addresses these shortcomings, I think all the adoption of this system is going to accomplish is confusion for Whole Foods customers.

The Healthy Foodie is Doug DiPasquale, Holistic Nutritionist and trained chef, living in Toronto. Doug specializes in private in-home holistic cooking lessons. You can email him with inquiries or questions for the blog at dougthehealthyfoodie@gmail.com.