Mary Purdy @ Nutrient Density Alliance
Regen’s Nutrition Advantage: What We Know & Where We’re Headed
On this episode, we have Mary Purdy who is the Managing Director of the Nutrient Density Alliance (NDA). The NDA’s purpose is to ignite awareness and mobilize action around the nutritional benefits and improved food quality of regenerative agriculture to drive demand for a more sustainable food system and improve human health outcomes. The Alliance is a program of the Soil & Climate Initiative. The NDA brings together stakeholders from the food industry, farmers, health professionals, food service professionals, and the food as medicine world. Find out more about the members and how you can get involved.
Mary Purdy’s Unlikely Path to Food & Nutrition
Mary’s career started on stage. With a background in theater and performance, she eventually found herself wanting to make a deeper impact. Having always been fascinated by food and health, she made the leap into clinical nutrition, bringing her flair for storytelling into the world of “performing” nutrition education. During many years of one-on-one counseling, she focused on how food could prevent and reverse disease. Then her lens started to widen, and she began to see how food wasn’t just affecting personal health — it was also harming the planet. A growing urgency to address environmental destruction, combined with frustration about the limits of individualized care, pushed her to think bigger. She made the shift to systems-level work, weaving together nutrition, sustainability, and regenerative agriculture to drive broader change.
Why Soil Health is Human Health
The link between soil health and human health is, according to Mary, “just science.” When soil is alive with microbes and rich in nutrients, plants grown in that soil are more capable of absorbing and producing the compounds that support human health. The Nutrient Density Alliance (NDA) defines nutrient-dense foods as those rich in compounds that optimize physiological function—think vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals, and fiber—and low in harmful residues like agrochemicals. While there’s no universal agreement on a single definition, the connection between how food is grown and how it nourishes us is crystal clear. USDA data shows we’ve lost 25–50% of key nutrients in many fruits and vegetables over the past decades, largely due to depleted soils. Regenerative agriculture isn’t about a checklist of practices—it’s about restoring soil health, which in turn restores nutrient quality in our food. The challenge now? Translating that science into something people can feel—more energy, better digestion, stronger immunity—and delivering it in a sound bite that actually sticks.
“The nutritional quality of our food is absolutely dependent on the health of the soil. That’s just fact.” – Mary
How the Nutrient Density Alliance is Leading the Charge
The NDA was created to elevate the conversation around the link between how our food is grown and how it impacts human health. Originally focused on bringing together CPG brands to explore and communicate this connection, NDA has since expanded to include farmers, dietitians, healthcare professionals, and leaders in the food-as-medicine space. Their mission is to build bridges across these sectors and equip stakeholders with the research, messaging, and collaborative tools needed to advance the soil-to-health narrative.
NDA’s work centers around four core initiatives:
Research Repository - Where NDA aggregates and publishes research and case studies on the nutrient density of regeneratively-produced products
Communications - NDA crafts talking points and messaging guides that help brands and farms explain the soil-health-nutrient connection with clarity and credibility
Roots to Wellness - NDA connects healthcare professionals with food brands and farms, helping to integrate soil-based nutrition into clinical and wellness settings
Learning Lab - NDA creates collaborative workspaces where actors across the supply chain co-create solutions and share insights.
Also, through a partnership with Edacious, they lead the Regen Protein Project, a comparative data set that shows regenerative meat products contain less fat and more omega-3 fatty acids than their conventional counterparts. These kinds of studies, along with a growing library of case examples, build momentum and confidence for CPG brands to invest in regenerative sourcing. The end goal? To make nutrient-dense food from healthy soil a central part of healthcare, consumer choice, and everyday eating.
Opportunities and Challenges for Regenerative Brands
"Don’t make claims—make statements." – Mary
Mary clarifies that for regenerative brands, communicating about nutrient density isn’t about making claims—it’s a narrative opportunity. As consumer demand grows for healthier, more nutrient-dense foods, brands have a chance to take people on a journey of education and discovery, connecting the dots between how food is grown and how it supports human health. Additionally, with more research, brands can make grounded, compelling statements backed by science. She also recommends using words that consumers are familiar with, illustrating how regenerative products can improve gut health because they contain more nutrients like fiber and antioxidants. Taste and flavor cannot be forgotten either. Nutrient-rich food grown in healthy soil tastes better and supports the gut microbiome – and that’s a story consumers can understand.
Mary and Anthony also recognize the challenges brands face in gathering and communicating nutrient density information. Nutrient density testing, while incredibly valuable for building the case (like Diestel’s recent study on nutrients of their turkeys), can be prohibitively expensive for many brands. Anthony adds that brands need guidance on how to test, what data to collect, and how to translate findings into meaningful marketing strategies.
How We Get Regen Brands to 50% Market Share by 2050
Mary believes getting regenerative brands to 50% market share will take a coordinated effort across sectors. It starts with mobilizing influential gatekeepers—dietitians, healthcare professionals, and foodservice leaders—who shape purchasing and public opinion. From there, brands need to build and share strong data to back up their impact, especially around nutrition and human health. Integrating regenerative food into healthcare systems and food-as-medicine programs is critical, as is getting institutions, like hospitals and schools, to source regenerative products. She believes scaling will require smart partnerships across farming, CPG, and wellness sectors, along with policy advocacy to expose the hidden costs of conventional food and make the true value of regenerative alternatives clear.
"We need to mobilize influential gatekeepers—dietitians, healthcare professionals, foodservice leaders—who shape purchasing and public opinion." – Mary
This ReGen Recap was written by Katey Finnegan
You can check out the full episode with Will & Jenni Harris at White Oak Pastures HERE
Subscribe to future episodes of the ReGen Brands Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. You can help support our mission of growing regenerative CPG brands with a 5-star rating!
Stay engaged in the conversation by subscribing to our weekly newsletter, The ReGen Brands Weekly, and connecting with us on LinkedIn: ReGen Brands, Kyle, and AC