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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

#111

Post by myshpa »

giantg2 wrote: post #100
unglaublich wrote: post #97

Intensive agriculture has been focusing too much on short-term yields, and too little on long-term soil performance. Plants need nutrients which they normally retrieve from the soil. Natural soil is rich in organic matter and minerals, a product of microorganisms consuming biomass and excrement. Note that it forms a cycle! Nutritious soil -> Growth -> Death -> Decomposition -> Soil enhancement. Plants are just the vi…

"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 production of beef, mutton & dairy, which needs 75% of our agricultural lands, instead of focusing on less resource-intensive sources of protein & fats [2].

If enough people switched (and there are some positive indicators that it's already happening), maybe we could save the earth before it's too late [3].

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets [2] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/land-use-kcal-poore [3] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding...

The destruction of Earth & wildlife is horrendous. [4] [5] We

[4] https://xkcd.com/1338/ (compulsory) [5] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/21/human-ra...

"Humans and Big Ag Livestock Now Account for 96 Percent of Mammal Biomass ... a study ... found that, while humans account for 0.01 percent of the planet’s biomass, our activity has reduced the biomass of wild marine and terrestrial mammals by six times and the biomass of plant matter by half." [6]

100 years ago humans&cattle was just 2% of the biomass. Now it's 98%.

If all people on earth eat as much meat as an average american, we would need 5+ earths. If as much as average european, then 4+ earths would be needed. There is not enough space to support this lifestyle any longer, people. [6]

http://personal.psu.edu/afr3/blogs/siowfa12/2012/10/if-every...

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By learning to switch to plant-based diet we would be healthier, leaner, and we would be guardians of our blue not, not its destroyers.

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

#112

Post by throw0101a »

orlp wrote: post #79
saiya-jin wrote: post #71

Earlier 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…

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…

> Commercial mass-produced tomatoes, bananas and other climacteric fruit are picked heavily unripe […]

I've heard it said that frozen vegetables are often "fresher" than non-frozen: they're picked when they're actually ripe, and flash frozen a short distance from the farm. They can then be moved about and stored with much less fuss as long as they're kept cold.

Some trade-offs:

> Certain nutrients are also lost during the blanching process. In fact, the greatest loss of nutrients occurs at this time.

> Blanching takes place prior to freezing, and involves placing the produce in boiling water for a short time — usually a few minutes.

> This kills any harmful bacteria and prevents the loss of flavor, color and texture. Yet it also results in the loss of water-soluble nutrients, such as B-vitamins and vitamin C.

* https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/fresh-vs-frozen-fruit-a...

Seems to be an area of active research.

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

#113

Post by chopin »

davebranton wrote: post #82
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…

Here in Germany even local bakeries put stuff in their bread which doesn't belong there. A good chunk of population (including me) has switched to make their own bread. With a bit of routine (and patience) it's pretty easy (I am not talking about these machines which make your bread). I just finished two loaves where I even didn't add any yeast besides what's contained in the sourdough.

We have some high-end bakeries who sell real bread but you have to know them. Sourcing proper food in Germany is pretty difficult if you don't live in a big city.

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

#114

Post by giantg2 »

antris wrote: post #110
giantg2 wrote: post #100

Earlier 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.

This is an ecofascist adjacent argument, and is not based on reality. Not much land is needed to feed people, most of it is being used to produce meat and dairy, which is a waste. https://ourworldindata.org/agricultural-land-by-global-diets

Well, you'd have to resort to fascism to force all people to become vegan.

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

#115

Post by CuriouslyC »

antris wrote: post #110
giantg2 wrote: post #100

Earlier 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.

This is an ecofascist adjacent argument, and is not based on reality. Not much land is needed to feed people, most of it is being used to produce meat and dairy, which is a waste. https://ourworldindata.org/agricultural-land-by-global-diets

You're right. Also, not much space is needed to house people. Everyone can just start living in coffins with breathing tubes. It's so efficient, that when you die they can just wheel you into a hole in the ground and be done with it.

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

#116

Post by MichaelZuo »

giantg2 wrote: post #114
antris wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an ecofascist adjacent argument, and is not based on reality. Not much land is needed to feed people, most of it is being used to produce meat and dairy, which is a waste. https://ourworldindata.org/agricultural-land-by-global-diets

Well, you'd have to resort to fascism to force all people to become vegan.

This is one of the strangest thing I come across on HN. Often you see a poster in some other thread railing against all forms of ‘oppression’ but then casually suggests a future with an effective world dictatorship to regulate meat consumption…

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

#117

Post by giantg2 »

PretzelPirate wrote: post #108
giantg2 wrote: post #100

Earlier 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.

> I think a lot of this pressure is from there being too many people. Would this still be a problem if we didn’t use most of our agricultural land to grow crops to feed to the animals we eat? It’s very inefficient to feed plants to cows and then eat the cow.

"Would this still be a problem if we didn’t use most of our agricultural land to grow crops to feed to the animals we eat?"

It depends on the lifestyle. If everyone agreed to go vegan and eat unprocessed food, and we stopped using crops for many industrial uses (ethanol, plant based plastics, etc), then just maybe. However, people want their plastics and there is pressure to move away from petroleum in the long term. My guess would be that plant based industrial products will readily take the place of any reduction in agricultural feed over the next 30 years. And of course this doesn't address convincing the majority of the population to go vegan, which would be the bigger challenge.

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

#118

Post by CuriouslyC »

PretzelPirate wrote: post #108
giantg2 wrote: post #100

Earlier 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.

> I think a lot of this pressure is from there being too many people. Would this still be a problem if we didn’t use most of our agricultural land to grow crops to feed to the animals we eat? It’s very inefficient to feed plants to cows and then eat the cow.

Animals are part of ecosystems, and play a role in their health and sustainability. The great plains are fertile farmland in large part because of Bison.

The problem we have is that animal products are more profitable in general than vegetables, so people overproduce them. It's the same thing behind the housing crises we see everywhere - luxury apartments are more profitable than low income housing, so that's the vast majority of what gets produced even though it's not what is needed, and it just fuels speculative buying.

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

#119

Post by yesenadam »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #98
orlp wrote: post #79

Earlier 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…

Random: ethylene is psychoactive. Haven’t tried it. But, some evidence that it was the abiogenic gas at the temple of Apollo at Delphi: Foster, J., & Lehoux, D. (2007). The Delphic oracle and the ethylene-intoxication hypothesis. Clinical Toxicology, 45(1), 85-89.

> The Delphic oracle and the ethylene-intoxication hypothesis

Thanks, interesting read. The paper seems rather against the hypothesis, to say the least - it's a demolition.

"this hypothesis is implausible since it is based on problematic scientific and textual evidence, as well as a fallacious argument. ...the evidence did not support the conclusion. ... if it was not the positivist bent of the argument that made it so widely attractive, then how did such an implausible argument get such wide press?"

I don't want to give long quotes, but it says "developing the explanatory hypothesis required the combined efforts of an archeologist, a geologist, a chemist, and a toxicologist", but they offered a pathetically flimsy argument, which only seemed convincing due to the appearance of its scientific trappings, appeals to the glamour of the "interdisciplinary" and of explaining ancient mysteries with Science. It mostly looks at why it convinced anyone, and became widely known, although extremely low quality work.

paper PDF: https://sci-hub.se/10.1080/15563650601120800

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

#120

Post by andrew_ »

I'm trying to find the source, however I read a while back that arugula (rocket) and green onion (chives/scallions) are two examples of plants that have not been selected for traits and are essentially the same as they were 1000 years ago. I recall the article (or maybe it was Nova?) going on to say that there were many more varieties of food plants in the same category, as an exception to so many which have been.
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