CHELMSFORD — He’s not about to slap that McDonald’s Quarter Pounder out of your hand, but you might want to listen to what Philip Jones has to say about nutrition. The Chelmsford farmer, who runs Jones Farm on Acton Road with his wife, is a nutrition guru. He’s not a burger-hater. All he wants is to debunk the myths about nutrition. Jones is no quack — he’s got the data and research to prove it. On the wall at his store, there’s a quote from the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates: “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.”

Q: What natural food can serve as medicine?

A: Drop a teaspoonful of apple cider vinegar into a glass of water. If you’ve got acid-reflux problems, give it a shot. Apple-cider vinegar is packed with enzymes, the same things that helps us digest our food. The food we typically eat is stripped of its enzymes, especially in the winter when our fruits and vegetables come from California.

Q: Are fruits and vegetables from there bad for us?

A: No, but they are typically stripped of their enzymes because they need to be shipped to us. They irradiate it, or microwave it. That kills the digestive enzymes. We don’t have the digestive enzymes that you would normally get. One of the reasons you want to buy local is you don’t have irradiated food.

Q: What got you into studying this?

A: I only started researching nutrition about four and a half years ago. I wanted to find a nutritious way to grow wheat grass. It increases blood-cell counts. It mimics hemoglobin. The only difference is, one has a magnesium center and the other has an iron center.

Q: How do you know the nutritional differences in wheat grass?

A: It’s how they’re grown. You can grow lousy food organically. There might not be pesticides or herbicides but it’s lousy in terms of quality. We think our food will be nutritious but in reality when you look with a refractometer it’s not.

Q: Is genetically-modified corn a health scare?

A: Genetic engineering is a health scare. Obama said he’d put labeling through. He hasn’t. Unfortunately the head of the Department of Agriculture was the number-one genetic-engineering supporting governor in the country when he was running Iowa. I just wish politicians would pay attention to this.

Q: Have you met with politicians who support labeling genetically modified food?

A: I was supporting the Republicans last year because (Charlie) Baker was talking to me about genetically modified labeling. Jon Golnik’s been in the field to do tests on crops with me. He’s aware of it. Niki (Tsongas) is not really interested in it.

Q: What are you doing to help change the way people think about their food?

A: Someday everyone will have access to a hand-held device that can tell you how nutritious one batch of vegetables are from the next. You’ll be able to bring it with you to the grocery store. We’re close to making that tool. This tool will tell you Brix levels and micro-nutrients.

Q: What are Brix levels and who are “we”?

A: Brix level is the amount of sugar. A higher Brix means the plant was grown in better soil. There’s a developer in the state who is working with farmers like me to help come up with a device that will measure Brix levels for consumers. I won’t say who it is.

Q: Who inspires you?

A: John Kempf is an Amish guy from Ohio. Kempf is a brilliant farmer. He told me about chemical farming on his Amish farm. They raised 15,000 pounds of green beans and filled boxes at 10 pounds each. The same amount of green beans after switching to organic-nutrient farming now weighs 13 pounds and the boxes aren’t even full. This means the nutritional amount is doubling.

Q: When can I use that device to find out how healthy vegetables are?

A: One word — money. If enough people are interested in the cause, the money can be raised to perform the studies and the device will be produced. For now you just have to do your own research — and support locally-grown food.

Follow Evan Lips on Twitter at twitter.com/evanmlips