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Estimates that mineral levels in vegetables have dropped by up to 90% since 1914

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

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Re: Estimates that mineral levels in vegetables have dropped by up to 90% since 1914

#191

Post by chrisco255 »

lucb1e wrote: post #145
chrisco255 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget meat has absolutely tons of essential nutrients and vitamins, some of which can't be found in fruits and vegetables.

Shouldn't all vegetarians or vegans fall ill sooner or later then? It seems like a weird statement given how many people do it successfully. Of course, as a vegan/vegetarian you have to look at replacements for what you are missing, but saying that "don't forget that you need your meat!" in this modern world with no source or mention of any specific nutrient is a little weird.

Vitamins B12, K2, DHA based Omega-3 (the kind your brain runs on) are all animal-based nutrients not found in plants.

Furthermore, some plants like Spinach for example, have oxalates that bind to nutrients and prevent your body from absorbing them. It binds to calcium and prevents your body from absorbing it. Animal foods have a lot of calcium. Plants not so much, and you couple that with the antinutrient effect of some plants and you end up with deficiencies. That's not even getting into lectins and phytic acid.

Re: Estimates that mineral levels in vegetables have dropped by up to 90% since 1914

#192

Post by samstave »

tastyfreeze wrote: post #82

This happened due to extermination of soil life through modern farming practices of heavy tilling, fertilizing and monoculture crops. Dead soil is more susceptible to erosion and requires ever increasing amounts of synthetic fertilizer to grow anything. More soil has been lost from the US than the amount of food that has been produced. Soil fertility can be returned to historical levels by changing farming practices…

Exactly.

Rock dust, nitrogen etc...

I work in cannabis tech, and there is a really interesting farm i work with.

They have been using / revitalizing the same soil for a decade.

Here is what is really interesting, they grow their cannabis on top of an 18” thick mycelium fungus bed. They mulch out their detritus and then keep growing their cannabis in that same soil - and their quality levels are top fucking notch.

Big ag is like FB of agra: trying way to hard to scale and quality is near zero.

Re: Estimates that mineral levels in vegetables have dropped by up to 90% since 1914

#193

Post by windexh8er »

Scoundreller wrote: post #136
01100011 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not exactly disagreeing with you, but it seems like increasing yields and inadequate fertilization focusing on macronutrients would also explain the drop. If I grow crops that preferentially absorb certain minerals and then take away most of the vegetable matter from the plot, the soil content of the absorbed minerals is going to drop without something to replenish it. Now, I'm not saying soil bacteria and mychorrhiz…

Not even focusing on macronutrients. We’re just focussing in mass. I’m not looking forward to the end of tomato season and the inevitable disappointment when I buy them from the grocery store.

There were people arguing how great increased crop yield was in the last few weeks. [0] Some comments were made about how the exponential factor of crop yields outweighed the loss of output nutrients. Glad to see the counterargument on the table.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20667031

Re: Estimates that mineral levels in vegetables have dropped by up to 90% since 1914

#194

Post by tmp190914pn2 »

01100011 wrote: post #113
tastyfreeze wrote: post #82

This happened due to extermination of soil life through modern farming practices of heavy tilling, fertilizing and monoculture crops. Dead soil is more susceptible to erosion and requires ever increasing amounts of synthetic fertilizer to grow anything. More soil has been lost from the US than the amount of food that has been produced. Soil fertility can be returned to historical levels by changing farming practices…

Not exactly disagreeing with you, but it seems like increasing yields and inadequate fertilization focusing on macronutrients would also explain the drop. If I grow crops that preferentially absorb certain minerals and then take away most of the vegetable matter from the plot, the soil content of the absorbed minerals is going to drop without something to replenish it. Now, I'm not saying soil bacteria and mychorrhiz…

Both parent and grandparent are saying something important here. Mineral availability from the microbiome via root interactions is critical. But throw nitrogen at a plant and it will rapidly grow utilizing CO2, O2 and water, leaving a mineral deficient plant. And that is true in any soil. Also, modern plants have been selected to be large and tender, which tends to be inversely coorelated to mineral density. So it's been a perfect storm against.

Re: Estimates that mineral levels in vegetables have dropped by up to 90% since 1914

#195

Post by deepnotderp »

jacobwilliamroy wrote: post #156
buckthundaz wrote: post #62

Wait until everyone learns about bioavailability of nutrients with respect to type of food -- ie. Animal-based nutrition is more bioavailable than plant-based nutrients. [1] [1] - https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/78/3/633S/4690005#1098...

I think it's important to consider the inputs. Carnivorism is just herbivorism with more overhead. Perhaps I do need to eat ~3 times the non-heme iron to get the same level of absorption, but plant crops usually win out over cattle when it comes to scalability. Is plant iron more bioavailable to cattle animals than humans? That might tip things slightly in favor of carnivorism, however cattle does a lot more than jus…

I don't see why genetic engineering like the Impossible Burger can't let us have our cake and eat it too.

Re: Estimates that mineral levels in vegetables have dropped by up to 90% since 1914

#196

Post by bwb »

jacobwilliamroy wrote: post #165
bwb wrote: post #63

Does anyone know how much we can absorb? Like if we can only take in 1 out of the 50, then I don't care if its down to 10. Anyone know the science on mineral absorption?

Someone posted a study which specifically compared bioavailability of heme iron from animals to non-heme iron from plants: https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/78/3/633S/4690005#1098... Why would low bioavailability convince you to care less about the declining minerals? Surely declining mineral content would be exacerbated by low bioavailability? How does that make things better? An 80% loss still means you have to…

Well, but maybe an 80% loss doesn't matter as we only absorb x mg of minerals. You know?

This might not matter for humans if we don't know how much we can absorb, it might not be a percentile but rather than a cap and we pee or poop the rest out.

Re: Estimates that mineral levels in vegetables have dropped by up to 90% since 1914

#197

Post by tmp190914pn2 »

jjoonathan wrote: post #50
all_usernames wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ten thousand years of agriculture is an assumption?

People have put up with a lot of shit -- literal and metaphorical -- over the last ten thousand years. I don't understand the assumption that it simply must be better than anything chemistry has to offer, and I find the aversion to measurement and control inherently suspicious.

The problem is one of underestimating the vastness of what we don't yet understand. We know extensively (nearly completely) about physics and basic chemistry at the unit level. As we increase the complexity, we know less and less. Protein folding, hormone interactions, DNA, getting there but lots of unknowns. Go up another few levels and you get to entire organisms like yeasts, which we can model reasonably well. Plants and their soil environment is several levels of magnitude more complex yet.

Using shit will get you an outcome you can count on. Trying to formulate things otherwise is sure to get whatever you are testing for, but likely to miss something important that we won't understand for years to come. That's happened more times than I'd care to count.

Re: Estimates that mineral levels in vegetables have dropped by up to 90% since 1914

#198

Post by salawat »

jjoonathan wrote: post #50
all_usernames wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ten thousand years of agriculture is an assumption?

People have put up with a lot of shit -- literal and metaphorical -- over the last ten thousand years. I don't understand the assumption that it simply must be better than anything chemistry has to offer, and I find the aversion to measurement and control inherently suspicious.

The idea being that Nature (more specifically evolution/natural selection) has demonstrated a remarkable tendency to converge on closed-cycle ecosystems when left to her/their own devices.

An idiom about never taking down a fence one knows not the provenance or reason for comes to mind.

Not that I'm saying I entirely agree with the viewpoint myself, but the rate of catastrophic unintended consequences we facilitate (I.e biodiversity crisis, creation of superbugs, introduction of invasive species) through artificial selection pressures tends to elicit pause at the suggestion we just "toss some minerals in and be done with it".

Re: Estimates that mineral levels in vegetables have dropped by up to 90% since 1914

#199

Post by ip26 »

buckthundaz wrote: post #62

Wait until everyone learns about bioavailability of nutrients with respect to type of food -- ie. Animal-based nutrition is more bioavailable than plant-based nutrients. [1] [1] - https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/78/3/633S/4690005#1098...

The iron and zinc from vegetarian diets are generally less bioavailable than from nonvegetarian diets because of reduced meat intake as well as the tendency to consume more phytic acid and other plant-based inhibitors of iron and zinc absorption. However, in Western countries with varied and abundant food supplies, it is not clear that this reduced bioavailability has any functional consequences. Although vegetarians tend to have lower iron stores than omnivores, they appear to have no greater incidence of iron deficiency anemia.

-- Your Link

Re: Estimates that mineral levels in vegetables have dropped by up to 90% since 1914

#200

Post by Trav5 »

philipov wrote: post #185
powersnail wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it just because they are giant? I’ve had relatively big strawberries that are sweet and flavorful in China. But in the US, they taste like cucumber plus citrus, no sweetness, no aroma, just incredibly sour and watery.

I don't know what Chinese strawberries are like, but I always figured that American strawberries are watery and sour because they're not only big, but they're also grown too quickly for flavor to develop. I think they're engineered to artificially mature early and are basically still unripe.

I have had amazing and bland Strawberries from Safeway in the US. Not sure how to pick the good ones. Time of year?
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