Estimates that mineral levels in vegetables have dropped by up to 90% since 1914 • Hacker News Board

Re: Estimates that mineral levels in vegetables have dropped by up to 90% since 1914

#141

Post by lucb1e » Fri, Sep 13, 2019, 10:38 PM UTC

late2part wrote: post #22

nategri wrote: post #8

Can we not have LinkedIn links on HN

Why do you not want to have LinkedIn links on HN?

Not GP, but I also didn't click the link because it goes to linkedin. My motivation is that they are very similar to Facebook in tracking, walled-gardenness, and I can't imagine it being a good source for anything that is not about my personal contacts' achievements. Elsewhere in the thread I read that the linkedin post is just 2 lines and that person linked the paper instead, so I guess it might be updated by mods soon.

Re: Estimates that mineral levels in vegetables have dropped by up to 90% since 1914

#142

Post by jessriedel » Fri, Sep 13, 2019, 10:38 PM UTC

wil421 wrote: post #33

mshroyer wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Healthy foods and organics are more readily available now. There doesn't seem to be any evidence that "organic" foods are more nutritious than conventionally farmed foods: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19640946

I’d like to see a study where they actually take crops and determine the mineral content. The one you reference is a paper where they combed other papers until they found data they wanted. They went through 50k+ studies, found 167 they liked, and only 55 of 167 were of quality. >No evidence of a difference was detected for the remaining 8 of 11 crop nutrient categories analyzed. Not sure how to interpret this.

> They went through 50k+ studies, found 167 they liked, and only 55 of 167 were of quality.

That is how meta analyses are meant to be performed. This is a heck of a lot better than listening to one study that you like.

Re: Estimates that mineral levels in vegetables have dropped by up to 90% since 1914

#143

Post by defterGoose » Fri, Sep 13, 2019, 10:39 PM UTC

fbonetti wrote: post #109

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #6

Growing food has turned into an engineering problem where people think you solve it by investing the least possible resources into it. Whatever the consumer will buy and you can produce as cheaply as possible wins the day. Our tasteless vegetables are like cheap Bose (no highs, no lows, must be Bose) speakers or pressed paper furniture at Walmart. On the surface they look like a vegetable should look, but the taste,…

> Growing food has turned into an engineering problem where people think you solve it by investing the least possible resources into it. This is not a bad thing. Food is so abundant that globally, more people are obese than underweight. This is pretty remarkable considering that for all of human history, up until recently, periods of mass starvation was the norm.

It's not a bad thing if your only criteria is the immediate ability to fill one's belly. It's a bad thing in a lot of other ways, including many measures of "wellness".

Don't get me wrong; I'm thankful that we possess this technology from the perspectives of advancement of knowledge and having more tools to avert food crises. But these technologies were all developed recently enough that while our understanding of the directly attributable outcomes is fairly good, our understanding of long-term and systemic effects on society is anything but complete.

Re: Estimates that mineral levels in vegetables have dropped by up to 90% since 1914

#144

Post by earljwagner » Fri, Sep 13, 2019, 10:39 PM UTC

jkeuhlen wrote: post #69

carry_bit wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The explanation I've heard is that the total mineral content is about the same, but plants are producing more carbohydrates now due to an increase in atmospheric CO2, diluting the minerals. Consequently, if humans eat according the amount of minerals in the food, the increase in carbohydrates could also explain the increase in obesity.

I don't think the lack of minerals in food explains obesity issues. In fact, I'm pretty sure we know what causes obesity. Significantly lower levels of activity and increased sugar consumption are two of the main culprits.

Obesity is increasing for animals - pets and even wildlife: https://psmag.com/social-justice/just-people-getting-fatter-...

Re: Estimates that mineral levels in vegetables have dropped by up to 90% since 1914

#145

Post by lucb1e » Fri, Sep 13, 2019, 10:41 PM UTC

chrisco255 wrote: post #7

testfoobar wrote: post #3

Soil depletion: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/soil-depletion-an... I have a friend who refers to vitamins as "expensive pee". He means taking vitamin pills when you eat a good diet containing fruits and veg is unnecessary because your body will excrete out the excess. I like to point out to him that fruits and veg are not what they used to be.

Don't forget meat has absolutely tons of essential nutrients and vitamins, some of which can't be found in fruits and vegetables.

Shouldn't all vegetarians or vegans fall ill sooner or later then? It seems like a weird statement given how many people do it successfully. Of course, as a vegan/vegetarian you have to look at replacements for what you are missing, but saying that "don't forget that you need your meat!" in this modern world with no source or mention of any specific nutrient is a little weird.

Re: Estimates that mineral levels in vegetables have dropped by up to 90% since 1914

#146

Post by thomas11 » Fri, Sep 13, 2019, 10:41 PM UTC

exhilaration wrote: post #66

chrisco255 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cows are still fed grass. Over 90% of their diet even in grain-finished beef is grass. Chicken and pork I can't speak to as much.

In American feed lots? That's not what I read in the Omnivore's Dilemma. It was the opposite actually.

In feed lots they're fed grain, but that's only the last few months of their life. That's why it's called grain-finished rather than grain-fed.

Re: Estimates that mineral levels in vegetables have dropped by up to 90% since 1914

#147

Post by abakker » Fri, Sep 13, 2019, 10:48 PM UTC

dv_dt wrote: post #96

tastyfreeze wrote: post #82

This happened due to extermination of soil life through modern farming practices of heavy tilling, fertilizing and monoculture crops. Dead soil is more susceptible to erosion and requires ever increasing amounts of synthetic fertilizer to grow anything. More soil has been lost from the US than the amount of food that has been produced. Soil fertility can be returned to historical levels by changing farming practices…

Healthier soil may also capture carbon. There are many reasons to look at optimization of farming and food production for a whole range of concerns beyond profits. The question is how to broadly incentivize and fund those concerns - reinvigorating agricultural dept programs with a wider focus at a federal and state level is one way to do that; others would likely come up under a Green New Deal type framework too. htt…

the free carbon soil test is used by many farmers to evaluate the amount of microbial life in their soils. Several I have spoken to have expressed interest for a more reliable field test for microbial health in their soils. One side effect is that microbes in soil tend to help soils hold more water.

OP is right, though. Net mass lost is still a major problem.

Re: Estimates that mineral levels in vegetables have dropped by up to 90% since 1914

#148

Post by defterGoose » Fri, Sep 13, 2019, 10:50 PM UTC

jjoonathan wrote: post #50

all_usernames wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ten thousand years of agriculture is an assumption?

People have put up with a lot of shit -- literal and metaphorical -- over the last ten thousand years. I don't understand the assumption that it simply must be better than anything chemistry has to offer, and I find the aversion to measurement and control inherently suspicious.

The problem with how you're framing this is that the scientific methods that go into such developments don't take into account certain "externalities". Measurement and control can only be exercised inasmuch as you can understand the totality of the system. In this case: broader effects on human health and ecosystems. As someone with a strong scientific background, it sometimes seems to me that the science and engineering of the past couple centuries has been so focused on the intricacies of specific problems that they haven't left their practitioners enough leeway to consider their place in the constellation of human activity. I'm not saying that there would have been another way to accomplish these feats, but that the problems are so difficult that it's left to other (sometimes non-scientific) people to evaluate their value to society.

Re: Estimates that mineral levels in vegetables have dropped by up to 90% since 1914

#149

Post by blondie9x » Fri, Sep 13, 2019, 10:51 PM UTC

Almost impossible to eat healthy these days. Even if you think you’re eating healthy you might not be. We aren’t getting as many probiotics, minerals, and vitamins from fruits and vegetables. This is terribly unfortunate. We need to find a way to use land more effectively and give our soil and plants enough time to establish themselves so the nutrition content is sufficient and normalized.

A solution might be less land for herding cattle and more land for planting vegetables and fruits that might take more time to cultivate.

Re: Estimates that mineral levels in vegetables have dropped by up to 90% since 1914

#150

Post by cheald » Fri, Sep 13, 2019, 10:53 PM UTC

nokcha wrote: post #140

NickM wrote: post #55

Something that has puzzled me recently: how is anyone supposed to get the daily recommended amount of potassium? If you look at foods like bananas that are supposed to be good sources of it, you still need to eat something like eleven bananas a day to get enough (according to US recommended daily intakes, anyway). At least with the minerals mentioned in this posting, you can fall back on supplements if you need to...…

You can buy potassium citrate in bulk and measure out your own dose.

You gotta be careful with it, though. Excessively high concentrations of potassium can cause hyperkalemia, which can be lethal. That's why potassium supplements aren't sold in large doses; potassium bound up with fiber and whatnot slows digestion and absorption rates, minimizing the chances of an adverse buildup.