Nutrient-dense eating refers to the nutritional quality of a food, and to the highly concentrated, vitally important foods eaten on the plan. They are the opposite of empty-calorie foods that eventually degrade health and lead to debilitating diseases, says the author, Douglas Margel. He believes the dominant eating disorder of this culture is the ambivalent, adversarial relationship people have with food and we should reconnect to ancestral wisdom and eat as if it really mattered.