Definition of "nutritive"

The juice of the ripe grape is a nutritive and agreeable food, consisting chiefly of sugar and mucilage.

1789, Erasmus Darwin, The Loves of the Plants, J. Johnson, page 110

The percentage of nutritive elements contained in the parsnip is very small; so small, indeed, that one pound of parsnips affords hardly one fifth of an ounce of nitrogenous or muscle-forming material.

1892, Ella Eaton Kellogg, “Vegetables”, in Science in the Kitchen: A Scientific Treatise on Food Substances and Their Dietetic Properties, Together with a Practical Explanation of the Principles of Healthful Cookery, and a Large Number of Original, Palatable, and Wholesome Recipes‎, Revised edition, Michigan: Health Publishing Company, page 243

D'Argenson reckoned that its consumption held up so well in times of high prices because the poor thought that it had nutritive value.

2002, Colin Jones, The Great Nation, Penguin, published 2003, page 355