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

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

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

#161

Post by kraig911 »

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…

There is also evidence due to higher concentrations of CO2.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6104417/

Essentially there's around the same mineral content it's just the vegetables are also on average larger in size and mass - yet yield the same mineral content.

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

#162

Post by driverdan »

all_usernames wrote: post #40
opportune wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If organic food actually had a noticeably higher mineral count than nonorganic, I would start eating it. But I don’t see why organic food would actually have more minerals. Organic doesn’t mean healthier it just means that it uses different kinds of pesticides, to my knowledge

Organic farming includes crop rotation, fertilizer, soil quality, and erosion control standards that would hypothetically affect mineral contents. Monoculture (conventional corn or soybean for example) uses huge amounts of synthetic fertilizer to increase yields per acre far beyond what the soil can naturally sustain. Wide swaths of American farmland has lost literally feet of topsoil over the past 50 years. The soil…

> Organic farming includes crop rotation, fertilizer, soil quality

No, that's not what it means. Farmers producing food that meets the "organic" label may follow those practices but it's not a requirement.

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

#163

Post by philipov »

Scoundreller wrote: post #136
01100011 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not exactly disagreeing with you, but it seems like increasing yields and inadequate fertilization focusing on macronutrients would also explain the drop. If I grow crops that preferentially absorb certain minerals and then take away most of the vegetable matter from the plot, the soil content of the absorbed minerals is going to drop without something to replenish it. Now, I'm not saying soil bacteria and mychorrhiz…

Not even focusing on macronutrients. We’re just focussing in mass. I’m not looking forward to the end of tomato season and the inevitable disappointment when I buy them from the grocery store.

The worst is strawberries. The huge strawberries you can buy in the store have the same flavor content as the tiny ones you can grow in your yard, but it's completely diluted with water. They're disgusting.

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

#164

Post by wffurr »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #135
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…

> The benefits of treating the soil as a living organism include increased fertility This is a pretty interesting (and correct) point, and there's a lot to say about it from a few different perspectives. You get much higher all-inclusive yields from a unit of land by growing several different crops in the same space. They (can) complement each other, using different resources from the ground and providing resources t…

That's quite the argument to extremes. Surely there are points in between the single rich farmer and the five million poor farmers.

Could the balance be shifted somewhat to slightly more labor intensive farming practices without causing us all to become starving peasants? I suspect so.

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

#165

Post by jacobwilliamroy »

bwb wrote: post #63

Does anyone know how much we can absorb? Like if we can only take in 1 out of the 50, then I don't care if its down to 10. Anyone know the science on mineral absorption?

Someone posted a study which specifically compared bioavailability of heme iron from animals to non-heme iron from plants:

https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/78/3/633S/4690005#1098...

Why would low bioavailability convince you to care less about the declining minerals? Surely declining mineral content would be exacerbated by low bioavailability? How does that make things better?

An 80% loss still means you have to quintuple consumption to maintain the same level of nutrients, and your agricultural resources have to scale beyond that to account for crop losses to pests and pathogens. Meat production becomes even more expensive and unsustainable. How does low bioavailability reduce the significance of this trend?

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

#166

Post by samvher »

tastyfreeze wrote: post #104
dv_dt wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Aside from a few farmers that are motivated by ideology, profit is the only motivation that will change practices. I have recently been researching biochar(biologically charged charcoal). Use of biochar is a form of carbon sequestration that reduces nutrient leaching and provides immense surface area for bacterial and fungal life to thrive in soil.

Yeah biochar is very interesting. We definitely shouldn't massively start using it in the short term though - its effects are not so well understood. Most "knowledge" is based on terra preta, Amazonian dark soil which is hundreds of years old and man-made with charcoal, pottery shards, bones and other organic matter. There have been field trials but many of them by biochar organizations/companies who might not be completely objective and once we put it in the soil we can't really take it out anymore.

I think the evidence suggests that turning waste into biochar and applying it to fields at a local scale has a lot of potential. Growing trees for the purpose of biochar might be a different story (this has many of the downsides of biofuel production).

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

#167

Post by jacobwilliamroy »

elmar wrote: post #132
dean177 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is nonsense. Perhaps you mean something like “less bio-available compared to...”

I phrased it incorrectly, you are spot on "much less bio-available when compared with animal products"

We feed plant products to our animal products. If the plants are not nutritious, animal products become more expensive. I don't think animal products will prevent wealthier people from being priced out of their necessary nutrition.

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

#168

Post by fiblye »

philipov wrote: post #163
Scoundreller wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not even focusing on macronutrients. We’re just focussing in mass. I’m not looking forward to the end of tomato season and the inevitable disappointment when I buy them from the grocery store.

The worst is strawberries. The huge strawberries you can buy in the store have the same flavor content as the tiny ones you can grow in your yard, but it's completely diluted with water. They're disgusting.

Where I live, I can buy tiny fruits and vegetables from local farmers, or I can buy imported ones that are 3x as large and get twice as much for half the price.

The difference in fruit flavor is unbelievable. Tiny strawberries grown on a couple acres of land versus mega farm strawberries aren’t even in the same flavor category. The tiny ones taste almost identical to strawberry candies, but large ones that draw people in with the wow factor are like firm lumps of sour water.

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

#169

Post by TillE »

philipov wrote: post #163
Scoundreller wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not even focusing on macronutrients. We’re just focussing in mass. I’m not looking forward to the end of tomato season and the inevitable disappointment when I buy them from the grocery store.

The worst is strawberries. The huge strawberries you can buy in the store have the same flavor content as the tiny ones you can grow in your yard, but it's completely diluted with water. They're disgusting.

Same thing with carrots. Or tomatoes. It's amazing how vegetables can taste good when they haven't been bred into giant lumps of blandness.

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

#170

Post by viburnum »

The is the flip side of the green revolution, which basically bred plants to grow big and fast if you dump a lot of fertilizer made from fossil fuels on them. More carbs and less of everything else. I know people love Norman Borlaug but not everything is as nice as you’d like it to be.
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