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Fruits and vegetables are less nutritious than they used to be

nationalgeographic.com

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Re: Fruits and vegetables are less nutritious than they used to be

#81

Post by lebski88 »

foofoo4u wrote: post #8

This sparks an interest of mine. I want to grow my own garden of fruits and vegetables. I can grab seeds from my local hardware store. But are these genetically the best I can buy? Is there not a genetic strain of seeds that I can buy somewhere else, perhaps online, that produce both the most nutritious and delicious?

I grow a large amount of fruit and vegetables.

There isn't really a best seed. There are simply tradeoffs. That probably sounds familiar :-)

Disease resistance, water tolerance, soil conditions, climate, daylight, tolerance to heat and cold, pest resistance, taste, yield, time to grow, harvest period, storage period.

There are usually an incredible number of varieties for any given plant. It takes quite a few years to start to find ones that work the best for you. It's also doubly tricky as your conditions will change each year.

I like to plant a wide variety of seeds as that makes it likely that something delicious will thrive.

I'd also say that typically home grown fresh vegetables are so much tastier than ship bought that you might worry less about iothan you think.

Re: Fruits and vegetables are less nutritious than they used to be

#82

Post by davebranton »

bjcy wrote: post #69

When gluten-free diets began to become popular, I had a similar question as to why a food that had been a staple of multiple civilisations for hundreds of years had suddenly become "bad for you". Dan Barber has a book on this called The Third Plate , which served as a great introduction for me on nutrition, but from a culinary perspective. He's also one of the chefs profiled in the first season of Netflix's Chef's Ta…

The answer to this question is that we don't make bread like we used to. There's a wonderful documentary on Netflix about this, called "Cooked" (the episode entitled "Air" is about bread). Short answer: bread used to be fermented, and consisted of three ingredients. Today's regular supermarket bread is bad for you, unless you take the time to go to your local bakery and buy their sourdough. My wife couldn't eat bread without falling asleep on the couch a couple of hours afterwards. But she can eat sourdough - which costs about the same as the gluten-free variety we used to buy. Also, it's beyond delicious.

Re: Fruits and vegetables are less nutritious than they used to be

#84

Post by pessimizer »

alecco wrote: post #75
gregwebs wrote: post #17

This article mentions that regenerative agriculture as the solution. There is a lot of concern now about the potential for a global food shortage at the end of this year because of rising fertilizer prices (leading to less planting). Regenerative agriculture can help solve this as well by focusing on restoring the biome of the soil, thereby harnessing nitrogen from the air and minerals from the soil.

What would you think about a farmer who doesn't know tech giving opinions on what the Tech sector should do? Farming is extremely hard and competitive, for mostly razor-thin margins and very high risks. One of the biggest problems is weeds. If you use these naive methods you'll end up with weed infections and then you have to either dump a lot of herbicides to recover the land or blunt tumble, basically entombing all…

I'm pretty sure farming is as efficient as it is now because farmers listened to technicians who weren't working in the fields all day, and were helped to break out of local maxima. Also - you don't think farmers' kids go to college and end up studying and writing about regenerative agriculture? Are you yourself a farmer's kid who went to college and became a techie?

Re: Fruits and vegetables are less nutritious than they used to be

#85

Post by 0x262d »

cat_plus_plus wrote: post #15

They are also more abundant than they used to be and that's a valid tradeoff to consider. Would it be worth it to only have access to seasonal produce local to your region for that produce testing better? Make do with pickles and potatoes instead of fresh fruit and vegetables in late fall through early spring? If not, shelf life, productivity and greenhouse feasibility are relevant metrics in addition to taste and vi…

This comment is perfectly alienated from nature. Yes, significant seasonal and regional variation in diet is a worthwhile tradeoff for eating much more nutritious, tastier, cheaper, and more environmentally sustainable food than we have now. No, it does not mean we would have to eat like feudal peasants.

Re: Fruits and vegetables are less nutritious than they used to be

#86

Post by fsflover »

lebski88 wrote: post #81
foofoo4u wrote: post #8

This sparks an interest of mine. I want to grow my own garden of fruits and vegetables. I can grab seeds from my local hardware store. But are these genetically the best I can buy? Is there not a genetic strain of seeds that I can buy somewhere else, perhaps online, that produce both the most nutritious and delicious?

I grow a large amount of fruit and vegetables. There isn't really a best seed. There are simply tradeoffs. That probably sounds familiar :-) Disease resistance, water tolerance, soil conditions, climate, daylight, tolerance to heat and cold, pest resistance, taste, yield, time to grow, harvest period, storage period. There are usually an incredible number of varieties for any given plant. It takes quite a few years t…

> There isn't really a best seed. There are simply tradeoffs.

(Probably a naive question, but I know very little about the topic, sorry)

Why not to make GMO crops without tradeoffs?

Re: Fruits and vegetables are less nutritious than they used to be

#88

Post by InCityDreams »

gnicholas wrote: post #51
pleb_nz wrote: post #50

Not to mention more sugar. I have read zoos have started having to source fruit not raised for human consumption has the sugar levels are now getting too high. In some cases 30% more sugar content if I tember correct.

I believe it. Some of these new apple varieties are delicious. But that's probably because they're bred to be sweeter, and presumably less healthy. Still better than eating processed junk food, but not as healthy as their less-tasty predecessors!

Why would [bred to be] sweeter be 'presumably less healthy'?

Re: Fruits and vegetables are less nutritious than they used to be

#89

Post by pessimizer »

somenameforme wrote: post #57

This is the conclusion of the paper [1] that this article is based upon: "We suggest that any real declines are generally most easily explained by changes in cultivated varieties between 1950 and 1999, in which there may be trade-offs between yield and nutrient content." What National Geographic says scientists say, "Scientists say that the root of the problem lies in modern agricultural processes that increase crop…

There are at least four other papers directly referenced and linked in the article. You picked the first one.

Re: Fruits and vegetables are less nutritious than they used to be

#90

Post by alecco »

pessimizer wrote: post #84
alecco wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would you think about a farmer who doesn't know tech giving opinions on what the Tech sector should do? Farming is extremely hard and competitive, for mostly razor-thin margins and very high risks. One of the biggest problems is weeds. If you use these naive methods you'll end up with weed infections and then you have to either dump a lot of herbicides to recover the land or blunt tumble, basically entombing all…

I'm pretty sure farming is as efficient as it is now because farmers listened to technicians who weren't working in the fields all day, and were helped to break out of local maxima. Also - you don't think farmers' kids go to college and end up studying and writing about regenerative agriculture? Are you yourself a farmer's kid who went to college and became a techie?

This is a simplistic analysis. Farmers have to time things around season, weather events, water availability (e.g. almost dry wells), floods, and many other variables changing all the time. For example, after heavy rains machines can't get into the field because they get stuck. And if you plant right before rains then when the mud dries it becomes too hard for seedlings to break it. Making all this work is very hard.

Of course, many places are out of control blindly dumping fertilizer and herbicides. But that's mostly China and Third World countries. It would be smart to focus first on fixing things there. It's the same as with CO2 emissions. Don't put unrealistic demands in developed countries while leaving the rest to do whatever.

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