Is dried okra a superfood? What this 2026 study found.

When I shared a finding from a new peer-reviewed study on LinkedIn a few weeks ago, the messages came quickly.

One person said they’ve been throwing dried okra away and had no idea what they were discarding. Another forwarded the post to their network asking how to cook it.

All of this, over a vegetable most people overlook.

A 2026 study published in The Journal of Nutrition introduced a new tool for rating foods by nutritional value.

Out of 289 foods tested across five countries, dried okra came out on top with a score of 100 out of 100.

The scoring tool behind the perfect score

The study was published by researchers Ty Beal and Flaminia Ortenzi from the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition, a nonprofit research organization.

Their tool, the Nutritional Value Score (NVS), rates foods from 1 to 100 based on two things:

1. how densely a food packs essential nutrients and
2. how well it protects against noncommunicable diseases like type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

This NVS was designed to account for both undernutrition (not enough of the right nutrients) and overnutrition (too much of the wrong ones).

The study tested 289 foods across Indonesia, Bangladesh, Kenya, Nigeria, and the United States using local food composition data where available.

What the NVS scores

The NVS combines 7 components, each weighted based on how serious its global deficiency burden is:

• Vitamins (20%):

folate, choline, riboflavin, thiamin, niacin, and vitamins A, B6, B12, C, D, and E

• Minerals (20%):

iron, zinc, calcium, potassium, and magnesium

• Nutrient ratios (22.5%):

sodium-to-potassium, saturated-to-unsaturated fat, and carbohydrate-to-fiber

• Protein (12.5%):

both quantity and quality, adjusted for digestibility

• Omega-3 fatty acids (10%)
• Fiber (7.5%)
• Calories (7.5%)

Ultraprocessed foods, as classified by the NOVA system, received a 25% penalty before the final score is calculated. This shows that they're consistently association with chronic diseases.

The NVS was specifically designed as a policy tool. This might seem really far away from you. But it’s tools like these governments use to decide

• foods to subsidize
• foods to be promoted as healthy
• school feeding programs to prioritize
• how companies should label their food products

You may never think about food policy. But the decisions at this level shape what's available, affordable and even what could be considered ok to eat.

Why dried okra specifically scored 100

Fresh okra is already a great source of folate, vitamin C, vitamin K, calcium, magnesium, iron and fiber. When you dry it, the water leaves and those nutrients stay. Per gram and per calorie, you’re now getting a much more concentrated dose of everything that was already in the fresh vegetable.

The NVS scores foods both per unit of mass and per unit of energy, which means it accounts for this concentration effect without unfairly penalizing either calorie-dense or calorie-light foods. Dried okra scores particularly high on minerals and fiber, two components that the scoring system weighs most heavily.

This same reason explains why dried small fish (score: 95) and dried leafy greens also rank near the top of the dataset.

Drying is one of the oldest food preservation methods humans have used, and it turns out to also produce some of the most nutrient-dense foods available by weight.

Other foods with high nutrition

Dried okra was not the only high scorer. These foods also ranked in the top tier, with NVS scores above 75:

• Dried small fish: 95
• Spinach: 93
• Chicken organs: 86
• Sardines: 82
• Fatty fish (salmon, mackerel): 74

As food groups, dark green leafy vegetables and organ meats had the highest average NVS scores overall.

Fish and seafood, eggs, legumes, and unprocessed red meat scored in the moderately high range of 50 to 75.

It's needful to say that no food scores perfectly across all 7 components. Spinach, ranked third overall, it has strong scores across almost every category but an omega-3 score of just 10. The NVS rewards density and balance across multiple nutrients and not a perfect score in one area.

Surprisingly, coconut scored 19

Coconut scored around 19, placing it in the same low-scoring group as soft drinks.

This is surprising because coconut has real nutritional value. It’s a reasonable source of fiber, manganese and copper. So why this result?

The NVS tracks 11 vitamins. Coconut, however, is very low in vitamins. Additionally, its fat is mainly saturated, which the nutrient ratios component of the NVS penalizes.

In effect, coconut doesn’t perform well on these particular criteria. It’s like coconut was tested on the wrong exam.

This is a limitation you should understand about food or nutrient scoring systems. Every tool measures what it was designed to measure.

The NVS was designed around specific priority nutrients for global public health, with defined criteria for what counts as "priority." And therefore foods that get much of their value from nutrients outside those criteria will score lower, even if they have good nutritional merit.

Omega-3

Across all 289 foods, only fatty fish and shellfish scored high on omega-3s. A rather narrow group.

Omega-3 fatty acids, particularly DHA and EPA, are critical for brain function, heart health and managing inflammation. And they become especially important during pregnancy and breastfeeding.

Plant foods like walnuts and flaxseed contain a form of omega-3 called ALA, but the body converts ALA to DHA and EPA less efficiently than when those fatty acids come directly from fish sources. This is not an argument against plant-based eating.

If you eat mostly plant-based foods, especially during pregnancy, it’s worthwhile to have a dietitian assess whether your intake is adequate and whether supplementation makes sense for your situation.

If you have dried okra

One to two tablespoons of dried okra powder stirred into a soup or stew base is enough to benefit from its nutritional density.

It thickens the dish slightly and absorbs into the background flavor. If you are working with whole dried pods, rehydrate them in warm water for about 15 minutes, then slice and add to your stew the same way you would use fresh okra.

If you can't get dried okra

The same concentrating principle applies to other dried vegetables and small dried fish. So if dried okra is not available where you are, here are some options by region:

• West and East Africa: dried moringa leaves
• East Asia: dried seaweed (wakame, nori)
• Latin America: dried nopal (cactus leaves)
• Europe and North America: dried spinach, dried kale
• South and Southeast Asia: dried moringa leaves or dried curry leaves

These do not have the exact nutrient profile of dried okra, but they are nutrient-dense by the same logic: drying concentrates what is already there.

And if still you can’t get any of these where you are, your best and proven way is to eat a variety of nutritious foods consistently available to you. No single food fills all nutritional gaps. A steady variety of whole foods, eaten across different categories, covers most of them.

Eat dried okra

If dried okra is already part of how you cook, you now have evidence to treat it with more intention. If it's not, this is a good moment to look at what nutrient-dense vegetables are accessible to you and make sure they show up consistently across your meals.