Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Have Fruits and Vegetables Become Less Nutritious? (2011)

scientificamerican.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 239 posts

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

#141

Post by artisinalbread »

technics256 wrote: post #102
durnygbur wrote: post #83

The large retail chains in Europe sell what I call porn-fruits and porn-vegetables. Especially places like EDEKA, REWE, Kaufland in Germany. Strawberries, berries, raspberries, carrots, tomatoes, cucumbers, salads, apples, pears, eggplants, etc. - shiny (do they wax them?), large, unified size, saturated color. Barely any taste, all watery. Grown in perfectly artificial industrial greenhouses. Not a trace of soil on…

What's your favorite place to buy in Germany?

Not the main commentator, I think farmers market or the weekly markets that happen in few places in cities are good and depending on when they have been imported asian/turkish stores can have fresh veggies(debatable), or if you are in a small town you could actually have a small local market nearby.

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

#142

Post by barrenko »

thdrdt wrote: post #120
colechristensen wrote: post #55

There’s a cognitive bias where if you tell a certain kind of person a negative story about an environmental issue they will believe it, regardless of its content. If you read the article, none of the quoted sources say anything about depleted soil. It says it in the title, that’s it. Bait. What it actually says is plant breeding and other agricultural practices caused the nutritional decline. You breed plants for sto…

In the Netherlands we grow a lot of bell peppers on 'water'. Those sweet pepers are much larger than the ones grown on soal. But the only difference is the taste and the thickness of the skin. They might even be a little more healthy because they were grown in a lab like controlled environment. Imho the taste is a big trade-off, but growing them on water takes way less space and also makes a failed harvest less likel…

I come from a rural "wasteland" in Croatia. The soil is very infertile to say the least. Yet, the same plants that survive there taste much much better locally then the "same" ones from presumably better controlled environment.

The older I get, you could blindfold me, and I could tell you I'm in my home area just by smell alone. It's almost like it's perfumed.

In the plant, you can taste the struggle.

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

#143

Post by bregma »

0-_-0 wrote: post #104
durnygbur wrote: post #83

The large retail chains in Europe sell what I call porn-fruits and porn-vegetables. Especially places like EDEKA, REWE, Kaufland in Germany. Strawberries, berries, raspberries, carrots, tomatoes, cucumbers, salads, apples, pears, eggplants, etc. - shiny (do they wax them?), large, unified size, saturated color. Barely any taste, all watery. Grown in perfectly artificial industrial greenhouses. Not a trace of soil on…

That's likely not due to how they are grown but the genetics of the plant. If you took the seeds for one of them and grew it in your garden with sunshine and birdsong it would still look and taste the same. That's because good looking produce sells better than good tasting one, so that's how commercial plants are bred: for transportation and looks instead of taste.

Unlikely: most hybrid vegetables do not breed true. If you take seed from one of these vegetables and plant it it is most likely to be sterile (like that classic hybrid, the mule) or else revert to form of one of its ancestors, producing small or even inedible fruits.

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

#145

Post by JesseMReeves »

xwdv wrote: post #127

I have a hard time figuring out the point of vegetables. They are so low calorie that I’d have to eat a massive amount of them to have them contribute any significant amount to a meal, more than what is really practical. They are not really an efficient source of protein, carbs or fats the way lean meat, grains and beans and nuts are. So what’s the point? Vitamins and minerals?

I‘d like to see this statement discussed more. It‘s easy to brush it off as some very US-American PoV, point at food culture, feeling full and vitamins / minerals, and imagine some person who doesn’t watch their health at all.

But given above article about declining nutritional values and the availability of more efficient ways to avoid deficits (supplements, soylent variants) it can indeed be questioned why we are wasting so much time, resources and energy globally on what is essentially a pretty bag of water nowadays.

Additionally, cooking at home (which I did for years), including produce shopping, cutting, preparing, cleaning the waste is a huge investment of time, money and energy. If it doesn’t even lead to better health because you are essentially transforming bags of water into other forms it should probably not be considered more essential than other time consuming hobbies.

After including a soylent variant in my diet I somehow started only buying fruits and vegetables that I’m sure have some nutritional value (i.e. garlic or avocado but no more lettuce or oranges). Otherwise I mostly get them im restaurants, but rather for foodie reasons.

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

#146

Post by amelius »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #124
thdrdt wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the Netherlands we grow a lot of bell peppers on 'water'. Those sweet pepers are much larger than the ones grown on soal. But the only difference is the taste and the thickness of the skin. They might even be a little more healthy because they were grown in a lab like controlled environment. Imho the taste is a big trade-off, but growing them on water takes way less space and also makes a failed harvest less likel…

I am often shocked by the tastelessness of food in the Netherlands -- in contrast to anywhere I have ever lived. But the future is promising, as there is so much room for optimization.

Promising? The Netherlands is a large exporter of plant breeding technology.

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

#147

Post by part1of2 »

dejv wrote: post #74
petargyurov wrote: post #13

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…

Well, even growing your own tomatoes might not help that much. Modern hybrid varietals are breeded for color uniformity which removed the taste. Let me tell you it is quite hard to source real heirloom varietals: there are tons of new "heirloom" varietals, but those are basically just modern varietals with some mutations that makes them not look like industrial ones.

Why is it so hard to source seeds for these heirlooms?

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

#148

Post by TaupeRanger »

This kind of tripe is why nutrition epidemiology is basically the laughing stock of modern science. First of all, the article is almost 10 years old and references data from 1999 at the latest. But most importantly, it uses common nutrition weasel words like "healthy" and "good for you", which are not supported (in fact, CAN'T be supported) by the study.

It is a huge leap to go from "there's less Vitamin C in this supermarket carrot" to "you will get fewer diseases and/or live longer or better if you eat carrots from soil 100 years ago". The former is a claim about vitamin content. Easy to measure and write a paper about. It is another thing entirely, and totally outside the scope of a paper about mineral/vitamin content, to claim that eating modern carrots actually results in worse health. That claim is (fortunately for "nutritionists" and "functional nutrition" people) never actually backed up by any science whatsoever. It's the same with grass fed beef and all the other "organic" stuff - they are never actually connected to better health outcomes and they never live up to the wild claims made by journalists and bloggers.

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

#149

Post by dr_dshiv »

amelius wrote: post #146
dr_dshiv wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am often shocked by the tastelessness of food in the Netherlands -- in contrast to anywhere I have ever lived. But the future is promising, as there is so much room for optimization.

Promising? The Netherlands is a large exporter of plant breeding technology.

It's also the #2 agricultural exporter in the world. (Though I believe this figure includes agrotech exports)

https://dutchreview.com/news/innovation/second-largest-agric...

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

#150

Post by bane »

tobias3 wrote: post #118
FrojoS wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can confirm. Does this also apply to canned Tomatos or are those allowed to ripe on soil, because damage didn’t matter? I think they taste better and I’ve Heard- than many top chefs prefer them over “fresh” tomatoes for cooking.

Canned tomatoes are really interesting. They are a different variety of tomatoes (Roma tomatoes) that can be picked via machine. That's also why they taste differently. The automated picking is why they are cheaper (plus the variety is better for quantity). One wouldn't be able to sell the automatically picked tomatoes uncanned since their skin gets damaged.

I buy fresh Roma Tomatoes at Costco all the time. They come in some horrible plastic packaging that keeps them safe and with the vines still on. Not as good as home grown, but not terrible.

I think they're picked right when they start to ripen then finish in the box/transit.

Post reply on HN