When an article conflates things like this without calling it out, I become suspicious of the rest of the claims.
> The high rate of magnesium deficiency now postulated [5–8] can be attributed in part to a steady decline in general magnesium content in cultivated fruits and vegetables, a reflection of the observed depletion of magnesium in soil over the past 100 years
> Increasing demand for food has caused modern farming modern farming techniques to impact the soil’s ability to restore natural minerals such as magnesium. techniques to impact the soil’s ability to restore natural minerals such as magnesium. In addition, the use of phosphate-based fertilizers has resulted in the production of aqueously insoluble use of phosphate-based fertilizers has resulted in the production of aqueously insoluble magnesium phosphate complexes, for example, further depriving the soil of both components
Now I don't know what to think..
You read the article, and by the end you have actionable items, that you can execute today, literally.
Many piece published on the topic go on and on about how agricultural methods should do this and that. Sure, and in the meantime what do we do?
whoops you're right, I somehow skipped that part.
I guess it is kind of weird article with contradicting points of view and the author could have communicated that improving soil quality and pairing it with speed to consumption is the best combination.
The way I read it was that there are some minerals that are no longer there to begin with because they're simply not in the soil. For nutrients (like vitamin C) created as part of the growing process, speed is the only factor that matters.
So yes, it does matter but unless you have a way of knowing which farm(s) the produce came from and what their soil mineral content is, that's not something you can factor into your purchasing decision.
That's exactly the problem, fertilisers don't necessarily fully replenish the soil in every single micro nutrient so if you cultivate corn on the same parcel for 60 years you might very well have completely depleted the soil of some of them
You can grow very nice fruits and veggies on NPK fertilisers alone without caring for any of the other nutrients, nobody buys tomatoes because they're nutritious, we buy them because they're big and red. And that's why most taste like water and have no nutritional values today
Yes, blue light disrupts melatonin and makes it harder to get to bed. But magnesium disrupts sleep quality and deregulates melatonin production in the first place and makes one particularly sensitive to blue light.
To be fair, some of these, like iodine and selenium, have always been problematic in some regions, like Switzerland (lots of goiters). But I find it less than ideal that only some minerals are fortified in bread and milk etc, because their deficiency is very obvious. While all the other minerals are not fortified because their deficiencies are less obvious or less well understood.
A healthy human body contains quite a few minerals in greater abundance than iodine: copper, bromine, strontium, rubidium, gallium, silicon, zinc, iron, and the electrolytes. Some of them don’t even have lab tests (not that blood tests work well for minerals, which is another issue - blood is short term transport for most minerals, not storage).
Atoms constantly react to the environment, they can bond with other atoms, form new compounds. Oxidation time varies, in the case of potassium it is very fast, the claims in the articles would stand. For vitamins, it also depends.
I got into a rabbit hole a few years back, digging into numbers from multiple academic sources on the subject. They concur that fruits and vegetables have "lost" the majority of their nutrient density. The low end figure is (rather was) 70% loss, the high end 90%.
The reasons are multiple like the article said. I recall reading a thorough and most backed paper explaining the main cause is the soil. We are over exploiting, not allowing the time needed for soils to recoup their content, in minerals in particular. We use fertilisers but these are to enable growth, not so that what end up in your dish is rich in nutrient.
We could quite easily reverse the trend, even getting back to normal levels, but that implies a massive hit in production for several years, in a row. Some would call it greed, but can we even produce for the world's population if we did that...
Atoms constantly react to the environment, they can bond with other atoms, form new compounds. Oxidation time varies, in the case of potassium it is very fast, the claims in the articles would stand.
Potassium, calcium, and magnesium are always fully oxidized in foods. These elements are very reactive with water and oxygen; on Earth they are not naturally found in less oxidized forms.
> "The chart has unverified information "The average mineral content of calcium, magnesium, and iron in cabbage, lettuce, tomatoes, and spinach has dropped 80-90% between 1914 and 2018 30,34,35,36,371. Asterisks indicate numbers could not be independently verified."
What is this chart and data? It's meaningless and nonsensical. And so the rest of the article is suspect when based on unverifiable nothing.
It made me wonder about the rest of it.
The vitamin C thing was about nutrient loss due to blanching (a processing step) I believe
Doesn't matter if you grow old variety organic seeds the slow way in small batches on virgin soil if it takes 11 months for the food to get to your mouth.
- farmers markets are hit or miss (anyone should know this by now)
- walmart came ahead of whole foods for produce quality (whoah)
alas we cannot go back to 1914 so we have to make due with what is out there now or grow our own
keep this in context...declining-quality produce in 2024 is still better for you than pizza
I've been saying for a while that instead of focusing on "best by" dates, food suppliers should be forced to put on the harvest or manufactured date.
"Fresh" Apples being sold after a year is nothing compared to how old some of the food you by in the freezer, or boxed section.
Manufacturers and store owners are the ones that benefit the most from keeping food on the shelves longer.
> If you walk into a booth and that vendor is selling over 5 types of produce, there's no way they all ripened at the same time. They may not even all be grown by them.
I noticed this also when i was buying a "farmers box" that promised to deliver fresh produce from a local farm. Upon closer inspection almost all of the organic farmers market type produce delivery services buy from other suppliers and sell as if they grew them themselves.
freezing meanwhile can preserve them on the spot and ensure the less transportable types can make it to consumers.
It's one of these things that would be good to know as a consumer but as a society it would be detrimental, imho
"Safe to eat" i think it's the best metric, you can do a 1+1 for certain products if you want (like olive oil has a 18m shelf life, etc)
On the same note i think "best by" dates should be illegal imho.
twenty to thirty would be exhaustive.
5 minerals and 5 vitamins would be a good start
These approximately 50 include a little more than 10 amino-acids for providing both the essential amino-acids and the additional bound ammonia that is needed, 2 or 3 amino-acid derivatives, vitamin C, around 7 or 8 essential fatty acids and liposoluble vitamins, 8 B-complex vitamins, water, salt and about a dozen minerals.
Besides these, there are a few additional chemical elements that might be needed, but if they are needed they are needed in quantities so small in comparison with their normal abundance as impurities in food that there have never been observed any cases where any harm could be attributed to their absence (e.g. silicon and bromine).
There are also various substances from plants that may be beneficial for health, but which are not known to be strictly necessary for anything.
Why is the author nominating Walmart as the winner based just on their speed to market? What about the other factors like soil degradation etc., which reflect the amount of iron and other minerals?
“I learned this from talking to Brent Overcash, co-founder of a startup called TeakOrigin, which specialized in testing nutrient content in groceries from retail grocery stores. For years, every week, his team would walk into grocery stores, buy thousands of produce items the way normal consumers would, and bring them back to the lab to assess nutrient content.“
I've been growing most of my own produce for several years and I make sure all trace elements are present and available. It's a ton of work and makes no financial sense (it's not really cheaper when all is said and done) but at age 53 I feel a lot better than I did at age 38.
I wish I could share this more widely but I think a lot of the worlds problems might be from lack of trace elements. Just a theory but eating produce picked the same day with proper mineral balances as a regular diet is astounding.
It's hard to sell most people on this because nutrition is historically such a terrible science, but the western diet over the past 50 years has gradually set the bar so low, that it's incredibly easy to make substantial improvements for little effort by focusing on the basics of simply getting back onto natural foods for the core part of your diet. The bioscience of nutrition is complex, and the statistics of nutrition is fraught with misinterpretation and flat out bullshit, but it's bizarrely simple when you figure out the actual changes to make... meat, veg, eggs, dairy, all the things that have been villainized by the food industry. That people still think eating egg yolks is bad for you just reflects how poor public education is on this stuff, and how damaging all of the ancient missinformed and massively outdated WHO recommendations have been to public health.
It's become a pet topic of mine and there is a lot more I could say about this (I have a bunch of theories) but will cut it short for now with this: I feel very healthy and I feel very happy. I wish others could experience the same type of things and I'd like to optimize it further.
Something close to 50% of Americans are deficient in Magnesium for instance. But there are a lot of trace minerals and nutrients and they interact to some extent.
Is it possible people are trying to get enough of "something" when they overeat and this leads to consuming too many calories? Maybe it's not a self control issue so much as you have to eat a lot of Domino's pizza to get what your body is lacking?
To be more concrete, the single correct part about "calories" is that the quantity matters, but the only practical road to keeping that under control is being naturally satiated, which is entirely about what you eat, everything else is a side effect of what. I know there are more complications when we are talking about people who grew up on very bad diets and have been obese all their entire lives - there's the psychological aspect and what the gut is used to that can take a long time to change - but putting that aside, the simplified extremes are:
1. You eat predominantly processed food based on carbs and sugar all day (90% of the isles in supermarkets, that also happen to be nutritionally empty but that's a another topic). You will always be hungry, because your body has been exposed to so much sugar that it never gets close to entering ketosis during the day, so as soon as you run out you immediately feel hungry. The only way to prevent overeating is pure will power, which is not sustainable for anyone, and extremely unpleasant.
2. You eat predominantly natural food, it has far higher fat and protein content, far less sugar, far less carbs. We are talking red meat, eggs, fish, milk, veg, nuts (lots of good fat). It's really hard to even intentionally over eat on these natural foods, and to eat too frequently, because it's so high in fat and protein and so low on carbs (relatively, it doesn't mean you can't have bread in your sandwich). Your body very easily enters ketosis between meals so you don't tend to get hungry easily outside of excessive exercise.
I'm a human being, I don't adhere to #2 strictly, but I try to make that my core diet, and the effects are really obvious. On the days I have some naughty cake or croissant or whatever, I notice how much hungrier I am all day, I just accept that, it's ok, I don't do it every day. Trying to control that hunger is futile and I get a taste of what it's like for all those poor obese people who unfortunately don't know this is the reason, I don't blame them, they are a product of their environment (food industry) and a lack of education.
Another theory I have (again, no idea if it's true) is that when people consume carbohydrates as the bulk of their diet for length of time the gut microflora changes to species that prefer those. And they signal to the person "hey, you need some dinner rolls right now!".
This is fairly well supported by studies, it even affects oral health. Although the idea of "good" vs "bad" bacteria is more to do with displacing bacteria that processes food into undesirable compounds with something more inert, e.g in the mouth the bacteria that causes tooth decay processes sugar into acid, but in some people this is naturally displaced by another bacteria that when dominant will produce a compound that kills the acid producing bacteria while producing no acid or enamel eroding compounds itself - maybe the natural dominance of that bacteria is affected by absence of excessive sugar intake over ones lifetime, or maybe it's just luck, or a bit of both... but much like gut bacteria, to actively change the dominant bacteria seems to either require a persistent and gradual change in diet, or a shorter and much harsher measure to eliminate the existing population.
I also remove all minerals from irrigation water with RO and use an engineered growing medium rather than growing in native soil. But it's organic (and alive with microbes), not hydroponic or anything like that.
What about frozen? I’m happy to know most of the nutrients handle it, is there known exceptions?
Freezing generally means lowered rate of chemical reactions, water no longer flows, etc. So it makes logical sense that freezing keeps the nutrients intact.
My understanding is
Water < industrial fertilized, quickly grown / plowed soil < healthy topsoil
I don't think this is true. In California and New York City, vendors at farmers markets can only sell what they grew themselves, unless they get an exemption for a specific product and prominently label the product as grown by a third party, specifying the third party (usually things like cranberries grown by one vendor in the fall). Very occasionally you'll see foods like apples in plastic bags with supermarket labeling, but that's because the farmer packages and sells the produce directly to the supermarket.
Vendors tried to sneak stuff in constantly, and unless you have a market manager who really cares and is constantly vigilant, vendors will resell stuff they have bought in bulk and are reselling at a markup.
Not all vendors of course, but like anything else there's always a handful of bad actors.
Oh, the US. Do you really think Americans aren't (capable of being) corrupt? As in if it is not allowed, no one does it?
However, the diagram has these nice annotation: "Asterisks indicate numbers could not be independently verified". And there are asterisks on all the historic data except for 1948.
The only reliable reference is from "35. Firman, B. Ash and Mineral Cation Content of Vegetables. Soil Sci. Soc. Am. Proc. 1948,13, 380–384."
The chart has unverified information "The average mineral content of calcium, magnesium, and iron in cabbage, lettuce, tomatoes, and spinach has dropped 80-90% between 1914 and 2018 30,34,35,36,371. Asterisks indicate numbers could not be independently verified."
It could possibly vary in fruits, so the tomatoes get a pass. But leaves need a pretty constant amount.
The author then links to an X post with a chart that shows relative carbon and nitrient levels and that says that "exposure to high levels of CO2 reduces the nutritional value of plants". It's not clear to me from the chart that spinach raised in high CO2 levels would contain less nutrients per kilogram than regular spinach. The chart only show proportions of the nutrients to carbon. Does the amount of carbon per kilogram of edible spinach stay the same or go down as CO2 increases? It's not clear.
This is unlikely to change much.
More CO2 that is captured is likely to stimulate the synthesis of more cellulose, i.e. of more cell walls, so the plants should grow faster, possibly also bigger.
Even when grown in soil with the same amount of minerals, the plants that grow faster and/or bigger may be more depleted in anything else besides carbohydrates.
This makes me think this person simply has no idea how growing food works at all.
If food is less nutritious, then logically we should eat more of it to get the nutrition we need.
Excess calorie consumption could at least partially be a byproduct of our biological drive to acquire the lacking raw vitamins and minerals we need from the foods that we eat.
This is undoubtedly exacerbated by eating processed foods, sure, but I'm willing to bet this lack of a fundamentally nutritious foodscape almost certainly contributes to the Pavlovian habit of overeating and resultant societal obesity.
If your body is malnourished in a fundamental way, turning off the nutrient-seeking system is going to lead to a wide spectrum of pathological deficiencies over time.
I've thought exactly the same thing. To me it makes a lot of sense and bears investigating.
As I said in another comment, close to 50% of Americans are deficient in Magnesium for instance (or so I've read).
I’d like to know how authors make this conclusion. For my weak but real experience in the field:
1. Plants don’t fruits everything at once. Some pumpkins fruits spans during months
2. Wise farmers grow several time separated batches, precisely to space the harvests. Especially useful for not-fruits plants like leek and salads
3. Plant several species that don’t grow at the same time. Fresh tomatoes 8 month a year is real
4. Outdoor growing is not a lab and there’s chance a side of you field receive more/less sun, wind, moisture… so won’t grow at the same rate. Some farmers don’t harvest all at the same time but just what’s ripe at the time.
5. Probably even easier in a greenhouse, the most environment you control, the most precise can be the harvest date/range of your controlled batches.
Maybe there are other health effects like people subconsciously eating more because the body is craving certain micronutrients, leading to getting fat from too many macronutrients.
You could create several cohort with different co-controlled fixes for each: more calories, more protein, more fiber, more nutrients.
Then evaluate the percentage of successfully treated patients in each cohort.
It's of course a difficult study, since someone with a bad diet will lack practically everything, so more things will work than not. I'd also be curious to see how you would design a real food diet high in micronutrients without accidentally adding a bunch of fiber in the process
Then in phase 2 we split into a control group that still buys from any store, a second group that only has access to foods with high nutrition content, and a third group that only has access to foods with low nutrition content. The same types of food should be offered just high and low nutrition options (e.g. zuchinnis, brocolli, tomatoes, apples, ...)
We then check if there's any significant effect on caloric intake (given a certain time for them to adjust).
* The general population does have a bunch of nutrient deficiencies in their diet - https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/7-common-nutrient-defic... as an introduction to the problem
* The article is making claims about a 100 year timespan and I doubt we have comparable data on nutrient deficiencies which is that old
* Daily calorie intake has probably doubled in that time period, so in theory you'd hope daily intake of all essential nutrients would double as well, but here we are with almost half of women and children having iron deficiency, with widespread deficiency in vitamins D and B12, half of the population not getting the recommended calcium intake etc.
So I think as an example to start throwing some numbers out there. About 40% of Americans don't get the recommended amount of calcium. First chart in the article shows calcium in vegetables at retail declining by 90% in the last century.
I think we have evidence establishing that nutrient deficiency leads to cravings - maybe declining nutrient density is a factor encouraging overeating and obesity?
Pretty interesting topic
Malnutrition isn't as visible as obesity though, you can be a fat fuck and still malnourished in some aspects, but if you're already fighting high blood pressure and diabetes these issues are way down your list of problems. It can be very subtle like micro gut health, teeth health, long term bone health, children not growing as tall as they could, &c.
Virtually no metrics are going in the right direction in the US when it comes to nutrition: https://globalnutritionreport.org/resources/nutrition-profil...
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/feb/10/nutriti...
Supplementation with ascorbic acid in shelf-stable tablet form seems like a reasonable compromise.
While one can get enough vitamin C from one red bell pepper per day or from one or two kiwi fruits, depending on size, where I live, in Europe, the equivalent amount of pure powder of ascorbic acid is more than ten times cheaper. It also does not need frequent shopping.
besides, growing greens isn't that hard.
- Signed, a new gardener.
It is an interesting research idea, but there are major methodological challenges that would be better be addressed by a scientific inquiry than an entrepreneurial startup-y approach. For example, time of year, sampling, seasonality, handling, selection, etc.
My guess is that this is a retailer-oriented venture in search of a host, but the margins on this stuff are razor thin and grocers are more interested in optimizing the reduction of shrink.
Why would Target or Whole Foods buy into an app that tells shoppers to throw away more produce that looks and tastes totally fine or buy it across the street?