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Have Fruits and Vegetables Become Less Nutritious? (2011)

scientificamerican.com

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

#181

Post by jimbokun »

bttrfl wrote: post #135

There's no scientific basis for my choice, but I have almost entirely stopped eating seasonal produce out of a season. I eat tomatoes in the summer and early autumn and then I patiently wait months to eat them again. When the winter comes I switch to vegetables that I haven't eaten at all or in limited amount for past half a year - beetroot, cabbage, carrot and more. I also eat all kinds of quality fermented, process…

When I went to Italy on vacation, all of the produce had massive quantities of the same two fruits, prominently displayed. (Was June, I think it was apricots and cherries.) And that is what most customers were buying.

So we bought those, too, and they were delicious.

Then tried buying some things that were out of season, and they were terrible.

Which is just to say, some cultures are still super in tune with the seasonality of foods.

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

#182

Post by 8fGTBjZxBcHq »

chrisandchips wrote: post #178
Cytobit wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anybody have a good suggestion for figuring out which produce is seasonal? Do you just buy stuff grown in/around your home country? It seems like I can usually buy any vegetable I want, regardless of the time of year, so I have no sense of when anything is in season.

You can get a chart and hang it up in your kitchen. Moving to europe really opened my eyes up to following the seasons. The vegetables taste better, and you feel better knowing they didnt have to be imported from extremely far away

I live in the US and had some family visit from france a few years ago. They came back from the supermarket absolutely giddy about buying a melon and these huge beautiful strawberries in january.

Then they ate some and were completely let down at how bland they were and I was just like, yeah, you can but that's why I don't.

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

#184

Post by dejv »

part1of2 wrote: post #147
dejv wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Unfortunately lots of them were lost back in 50s and 60s with advent of seed companies. Also in Europe selling seeds of non approved varietals is not possible. Legislation is changing slowly, but a lot of diversity is lost forever.

What you can see a lot on current market are "heirloom" varietals made by entrepreneurs that take industrial variatel, cross them to create new completely new varietals. But just because something doesn't look like modern tomato it doesn't mean it taste good.

You can still find old varietals in seed banks and around seed savers, but hip breeders are much more noisy in the market. I am not saying those new breeds are worthless, but they are kinda hit and miss and I would not consider them heirloom.

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

#185

Post by rbecker »

TaupeRanger wrote: post #148

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 su…

> 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".

If only there was some kind of study linking vitamin [1] and protein intake [2] to health [3]...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin#Deficient_intake

[2] https://www.nutrition.org.uk/nutritionscience/nutrients-food...

[3] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/high-intake-of-vit...

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

#186

Post by x87678r »

TaupeRanger wrote: post #148

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 su…

Its crazy because fruit and veg are so heterogeneous. If you look at apples there are dozens of different varieties, different sizes and different orchards but all one set of nutritional information. I'm pretty sure many modern varieties have more in common with candy than the small, sour apples of 50 years ago.

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

#187

Post by crazcarl »

Cytobit wrote: post #155
bttrfl wrote: post #135

There's no scientific basis for my choice, but I have almost entirely stopped eating seasonal produce out of a season. I eat tomatoes in the summer and early autumn and then I patiently wait months to eat them again. When the winter comes I switch to vegetables that I haven't eaten at all or in limited amount for past half a year - beetroot, cabbage, carrot and more. I also eat all kinds of quality fermented, process…

Does anybody have a good suggestion for figuring out which produce is seasonal? Do you just buy stuff grown in/around your home country? It seems like I can usually buy any vegetable I want, regardless of the time of year, so I have no sense of when anything is in season.

Someone here on HN made this some time ago, but it still emails me weekly: https://harvestsignal.com/

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

#188

Post by hervature »

ashtonkem wrote: post #163
smichel17 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't need a scientific basis -- in-season produce just tastes better. For some it's not such a big difference but for others (tomatoes!) you might as well be eating a different plant.

Tomatoes strike me as something that more people should grow at home, where space permits. There seems to be a bigger delta in quality for tomatoes than most other produce when picked fresh, and they’re not the kind of vegetable that most of us go through a huge amount of[0]. Also, they don’t consume a huge amount of space; even a planter on the porch can produce a decent yearly crop. 0: Except for soups, but for tha…

What culture are you from that doesn’t use many tomatoes? My girlfriend and I go through 4 tomatoes when we make hogao which is a Colombian staple. That is, we make it every other day.

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

#189

Post by grawprog »

x87678r wrote: post #186
TaupeRanger wrote: post #148

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 su…

Its crazy because fruit and veg are so heterogeneous. If you look at apples there are dozens of different varieties, different sizes and different orchards but all one set of nutritional information. I'm pretty sure many modern varieties have more in common with candy than the small, sour apples of 50 years ago.

To be fair, I would imagine, each apple on the tree has a slightly different nutritional make up then every other apple on the tree. Plants don't spread nutrients evenly throughout themselves. They push more nutrients to areas with more light or the areas that grow better.

I've always assumed nutritional guides on fruits are more like averages or something. There's no way each individual piece of fruit is exactly the same. Plants just don't grow that way.

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

#190

Post by JohnJamesRambo »

TaupeRanger wrote: post #148

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 su…

I'd worry less about the lower vitamin C and more about the lower secondary metabolites that likely come with that. Anyone that has ever eaten a garden grown anything can tell you that there is a lot missing in store produce. These secondary metabolites are likely the missing link in my opinion. We aren't malnourished (with respect to most vitamins and minerals) in the western world but we do likely have drastically less of all the terpenoid, phenol, and alkaloid compounds that make vegetables "healthy", to use a word you hate. To add insult to injury, vegetables and fruits low in secondary metabolites taste worse to us, so we eat even less of them than we should.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_metabolite#Plant_sec...

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