I wonder if this necessitates taking multivitamins regularly?
Fruits and vegetables are less nutritious than they used to be
131–140 of 173 posts
Re: Fruits and vegetables are less nutritious than they used to be
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Intensive agriculture has been focusing too much on short-term yields, and too little on long-term soil performance." I think a lot of this pressure is from there being too many people. I have seen the estimates of how many people earth can support, yet I have never seen numbers for how many people the earth can sustainably support, especially in our modern lifestyle of excess.
The pressure is here from us doing bad things. We're killing the soil, bugs, forests, wildlife, sea, mainly by purchasing the wrong things in the supermarket. [1] We could use just 25% of our current agriculture land and still feed the population. There is nothing in the beef & dairy, which we could not get from other sources (preferably plant-based). The problem are agriculture subsidies. We're heavily subsidizing p…
> ...mainly by purchasing the wrong things in the supermarket.
I doubt that blaming the consumer is helpful. Stuff like fat shaming usually backfires. And leads to us-vs-them polarization.
Plus, are consumers really to blame when choices are constrained by others?
Plus, it absolves the actual villains. No different than the industry funded rhetoric around plastic recycling and carbon footprint. As though Big Ag is only responding to consumer demand, and is other wise powerless to effect change.
We need to find more effective strategies for constructive policymaking. Blame and shame isn't working.
Our current food pyramid is the result of industrial policy choices. Perhaps we can make other choices. Perhaps by demanding a seat at the table.
Re: Fruits and vegetables are less nutritious than they used to be
#133This 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…
My anecdote from my garden is that my smaller cucumbers have way more taste, my smaller red bellpebbers are way more pebbery, potatoes have a richer taste, if this is just freshnes i dont know, but there for sure is a huge difference.
Same goes for zucchini and eggplant. People often bring their excess zucchini’s into the office as a trophy, and potentially prize to some lucky staff member, but they’re tasteless.
Re: Fruits and vegetables are less nutritious than they used to be
#134This 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…
My anecdote from my garden is that my smaller cucumbers have way more taste, my smaller red bellpebbers are way more pebbery, potatoes have a richer taste, if this is just freshnes i dont know, but there for sure is a huge difference.
I've noticed this too with tomatoes. My parents grow tomatoes in their backyard during the summer. The amount of "meat" in the backyard grown tomatoes is noticeably a lot more than store-bought tomatoes. Stock-bought tomatoes are a lot more watery. and have less "meat" in them.
Similarly, I've started buying a lot more organic fruits and vegetables. The organic strawberries have way more taste than non-organic strawberries.
Re: Fruits and vegetables are less nutritious than they used to be
#135This 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?
top notch stuff here:
https://www.highmowingseeds.com/
Re: Fruits and vegetables are less nutritious than they used to be
#136I recently read a great book that dug into this issue, explaining a lot of the history behind it and exploring potential future solutions. The Dorito Effect. Would recommend.
Re: Fruits and vegetables are less nutritious than they used to be
#137They also look better but taste blander.
Re: Fruits and vegetables are less nutritious than they used to be
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
Commercial mass-produced tomatoes, bananas and other climacteric fruit are picked heavily unripe, shipped in this more durable state, and in the destination country are rapidly artificially ripened in ethylene gas chambers. The same commercial mass-produced fruits and vegetables also have been cultivated for decades for resistance against disease, size, and shelf life. Taste is often only secondary to those. On one h…
> There are only two kinds of product left: the small-scale artisanal extremely pricy product (e.g. farmer's market), and the mass-produced MBA-optimized to death commercial product. I discovered this phenomenon myself over the past decade, seeing the race to the bottom in automation, while at the same watching artisinal cottage industries sprout in East Austin in response. Whether it was nitrogenated cold-brew coffe…
That or that people can discern quality and have an appreciation for quality.
The problem with quality is it doesn’t scale well which is at odds with VC funding model (ie the backbone to SV business model)
Re: Fruits and vegetables are less nutritious than they used to be
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think that's you. When I come home and eat stuff from my parents garden, the differences in some cases are massive. Carrots for example taste 10x more intense, even one that was taken from soil weeks ago. And I am comparing to bio carrots we buy in Switzerland, so can't go much higher than that when shopping (apart from farmers markets maybe but that depends what kind of farm). Maybe its about transport and p…
As you mention Switzerland, this newspaper article might be interesting: https://web.archive.org/web/20190601232951/https://www.tages... I.e. apart from the general trade-off problem between maximum yield and maximum taste, things are also exacerbated by the big supermarket chains demanding varieties that are delivering a "consistent taste year-round". As even the best tomatoes are only mediocre-tasting during winter…
Oh yah supermarket tomatoes are crap - literally all of them. They shouldn't be called tomatoes as they are more like soulless, tasteless, poor textured trash.
Re: Fruits and vegetables are less nutritious than they used to be
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
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'?
Sugar even in the form of fructose isn't particularly healthy. Fruit counters through higher fiber for the most part. Ie grapes and watermelon have pretty high sugar content. Still compared to processed food fine but wouldnt want to eat them nonstop