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Have Fruits and Vegetables Become Less Nutritious? (2011)

scientificamerican.com

31–40 of 239 posts

Re: Have Fruits and Vegetables Become Less Nutritious? (2011)

#31
post #23
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but when formerly tasty you would eat for pleasure of it tomatos turn into paper, you wont eat them at all.

That's kinda true. Alternative, if you personal life style allows for it, you may start growing your own tomatoes -- you might not get them all year around that way, but the taste difference is so worth it. And in the end, you gotta eat something . I suppose instead of not eating anything healthy at all, the more prominent strategy seems to have been to accompany healthy produce with super-unhealthy condiments (basic…

I don't believe table salt added to cucumber, tomato, or anything else is bad for most people. Likewise certain fats in reasonable quantities is probably quite good for you. It's also delicious. I would say that dousing anything in syrup, ketchup, or any standard salad dressing with sugar is a bad idea. Even honey is questionable.

Re: Have Fruits and Vegetables Become Less Nutritious? (2011)

#32
post #24

Do pesticides and herbicides reduce soil quality? The article says avoiding them is beneficial but it's not clear why that is.

Soil is alive, and plants have various direct and indirect symbiotic relationships with things in the soil.

Application and especially misapplication of various treatments (add fertilizer and fungicides to your list) can easily do significant harm to the soil ecology, which in turn causes get need for more or more intense treatments.

The easy answer is “never” the better answer is “smarter”.

Re: Have Fruits and Vegetables Become Less Nutritious? (2011)

#33
Well, colour me shocked!!

Modern farming doesn't produce as nutritious fruit and vegetables as that of the past. (Where everything was organic, and the land was managed sensibly.)

Maybe we need to 'fortify' our veg, by adding calcium (chalk), and iron (fine iron filings) to it!

Re: Have Fruits and Vegetables Become Less Nutritious? (2011)

#34

Well, who here buys their vegetables based on nutrition? Who even knows how nutritious their particular vegetables are (probably not if you have a lab)? Companies optimize for what customers will pay for, and everything else falls by the wayside.

>Well, who here buys their vegetables based on nutrition?

I would never buy vegetables if they weren’t important for nutrition.

Re: Have Fruits and Vegetables Become Less Nutritious? (2011)

#35
post #5

Blueberries that taste the same but are transparent in the middle. Tomatoes that tase water. Cucumber that look great and almost tasteless. You don't know what you are missing if you have never tasted the "real" deal.

It's saddening how fruits have lost its flavour. I'm thrilled to eat fruits/vegetables every time I go back to my grandfather town.

I don't know what it is... mass production? Tomatoes bought in the city do not even taste good in season (like now). We now have bigger and tasteless fruits. Why? I want to enjoy eating, I don't care if it's 25% smaller. Now they try to fool us with more colourful pulp or exterior... but taste the same.

I guess it takes more time to grow them if we want them to have taste. Orchards in my grandfather's town are not even irrigated (or much less, because it's dry weather) and they taste amazing.

This only helps hyperpalatable and unhealthy foods to gain strength between young people.

Re: Have Fruits and Vegetables Become Less Nutritious? (2011)

#37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am certain that a vast majority of people have never tasted a "real" tomato. Here in the UK (though I'm sure this applies globally), tomatoes sold in supermarkets taste like plastic. Reason being is that they are picked when they are green and they "ripen" by the time they get to the store shelf. This is done because tomatoes are almost impossible to transfer safely in large quantities, because when they are ripe t…

I think there's also a genetic component. I planted Roma seeds from a store bought tomato, grew the plant, and they still didn't have much flavour compared to any other garden tomato I've tried.

Yup. Store varieties are bread for exactly this: transportation. I read somewhere that unfortunately the taste and transportability are mutually exclusive when you go through traditional selective breeding.

Re: Have Fruits and Vegetables Become Less Nutritious? (2011)

#38
post #5

Blueberries that taste the same but are transparent in the middle. Tomatoes that tase water. Cucumber that look great and almost tasteless. You don't know what you are missing if you have never tasted the "real" deal.

I am certain that a vast majority of people have never tasted a "real" tomato. Here in the UK (though I'm sure this applies globally), tomatoes sold in supermarkets taste like plastic. Reason being is that they are picked when they are green and they "ripen" by the time they get to the store shelf. This is done because tomatoes are almost impossible to transfer safely in large quantities, because when they are ripe t…

It might be difficult if you live in block of flats. And pollution in a city could be a problem.

Re: Have Fruits and Vegetables Become Less Nutritious? (2011)

#39
post #23
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but when formerly tasty you would eat for pleasure of it tomatos turn into paper, you wont eat them at all.

That's kinda true. Alternative, if you personal life style allows for it, you may start growing your own tomatoes -- you might not get them all year around that way, but the taste difference is so worth it. And in the end, you gotta eat something . I suppose instead of not eating anything healthy at all, the more prominent strategy seems to have been to accompany healthy produce with super-unhealthy condiments (basic…

I think salt and fat are not as unhealthy as people have made them out to be over recent decades. Especially considering what foods people choose to eat to replace the lost calories that usually come from fats.

Sugar, though, yeah. Sugar is the devil.

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