The concept of nutrient dense diets, in my opinion, was developed by the trout industry and was primarily driven by regulations that limited the quantity of feed that could be used by a given operation with the idea that this would limit pollution loading. As feed inputs were limited, there was a move to increase nutrient digestibility and evaluate the effects of increased nutrient density (e.g. protein and energy) on performance and economic returns. In general, this resulted in both improved economic returns but also reduced pollution loading. In cage and flow through systems there is good control over inventory, and they also do not typically have contributions of natural foods. Hence, the decision on nutrient density of a diet is straight forward favoring highly digestible and nutrient dense feeds. However, in systems where natural foods are present and utilized by the culture animal, and inventory control is less controlled, the decisions on nutrient density are less clear. From a nutritional perspective, using a highly digestible and nutrient dense diet clearly results in reduced FCR and lower levels of nutrients entering the culture system. However, production systems which rely on phototropic and autotrophic organisms (e.g. ponds and biofloc type systems) to process nutrients which are in turn used as a secondary food source may actually benefit from a lower level of nutrient density. Furthermore, in many of these systems inventory control (survival of the animals) is not well controlled or known, which can lead to over or under feeding. In the case of over feeding, using a nutrient dense diet contributes more to water quality issues and increased cost. Whereas, in the case of underfeeding the animals will perform better as more nutrients will be available for growth. Furthermore, there are numerous management decisions which contribute to the interpretation of what type of feed results in the best performance. This presentation will discuss the concepts of nutrient density regarding production and pollution loading. We will also provide examples of previous work and recent data on performance of shrimp offered diets containing different levels of nutrients in both semi-intensive pond production systems as well as intensive biofloc type systems.