Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Nutrient levels in retail grocery stores

altered.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 104 posts

Re: Nutrient levels in retail grocery stores

#21

Post by modeless »

hammock wrote: post #18
modeless wrote: post #2

I thought it was a little weird that they start off talking about "calcium, magnesium, and iron" and then immediately switch to talking about how vitamin C degrades over time in produce. OK sure, vitamin C can enhance iron absorption, but it doesn't do that for calcium or magnesium and, being atomic elements, they assuredly do not disappear from food in storage. When an article conflates things like this without call…

You’re sort of mixing ideas I believe. The nutrient density (minerals etc) is declining because of the soil quality it is grown in, not because it is sitting on shelf. The vitamin C thing was about nutrient loss due to blanching (a processing step) I believe

The article is mixing ideas, is the point. If soil quality matters, that seems to contradict the article's claim that speed is the only thing that matters.

Re: Nutrient levels in retail grocery stores

#22

Post by mythrwy »

This is really important in my opinion.

I've been growing most of my own produce for several years and I make sure all trace elements are present and available. It's a ton of work and makes no financial sense (it's not really cheaper when all is said and done) but at age 53 I feel a lot better than I did at age 38.

I wish I could share this more widely but I think a lot of the worlds problems might be from lack of trace elements. Just a theory but eating produce picked the same day with proper mineral balances as a regular diet is astounding.

Re: Nutrient levels in retail grocery stores

#23

Post by hirako2000 »

robwwilliams wrote: post #11

Nutrients is a very broad term. This article seems to be focused on just three. Is there a good reason to restrict analysis to just three “minerals”?

There is a dozen commonly known vitamins and minerals. There are over a hundreds. Where should an article stop?

Re: Nutrient levels in retail grocery stores

#24

Post by patrickhogan1 »

From article “Side note on frozen produce: The post above is about fresh produce only. A potentially appealing alternative may be buying frozen produce, which on average has equal or higher nutritional content than fresh. This is because frozen produce is picked at peak ripeness then frozen shortly after, locking in most of the nutrients at the expense of appearance/texture/flavor.”

Re: Nutrient levels in retail grocery stores

#25

Post by ec109685 »

TheMagicHorsey wrote: post #16

This article seems to lack common sense. Yes, the amount of Vitamin C will reduce the longer you store a vegetable or fruit in a fridge, but the amount of calcium and iron does not change. Nor does the the density of other minerals. Why is the author nominating Walmart as the winner based just on their speed to market? What about the other factors like soil degradation etc., which reflect the amount of iron and other…

Deep in the text they mention that a study looked at nutrient contents and Walmart was the best:

“I learned this from talking to Brent Overcash, co-founder of a startup called TeakOrigin, which specialized in testing nutrient content in groceries from retail grocery stores. For years, every week, his team would walk into grocery stores, buy thousands of produce items the way normal consumers would, and bring them back to the lab to assess nutrient content.“

Re: Nutrient levels in retail grocery stores

#27

Post by hammock »

modeless wrote: post #21
hammock wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re sort of mixing ideas I believe. The nutrient density (minerals etc) is declining because of the soil quality it is grown in, not because it is sitting on shelf. The vitamin C thing was about nutrient loss due to blanching (a processing step) I believe

The article is mixing ideas, is the point. If soil quality matters, that seems to contradict the article's claim that speed is the only thing that matters.

When it comes to nationwide grocery chains, with limited transparency on their supplies, of what you can control, speed might be an important factor

Re: Nutrient levels in retail grocery stores

#28

Post by eltondegeneres »

> If you walk into a booth and that vendor is selling over 5 types of produce, there's no way they all ripened at the same time. They may not even all be grown by them. Once, he actually saw a vendor at Boston farmers’ market selling carrots from Target! He could tell from the packaging because he used to work for them.

I don't think this is true. In California and New York City, vendors at farmers markets can only sell what they grew themselves, unless they get an exemption for a specific product and prominently label the product as grown by a third party, specifying the third party (usually things like cranberries grown by one vendor in the fall). Very occasionally you'll see foods like apples in plastic bags with supermarket labeling, but that's because the farmer packages and sells the produce directly to the supermarket.

Re: Nutrient levels in retail grocery stores

#29

Post by cyberax »

This article smells like a fine bullshit. It's based on one diagram and a meta-analysis of papers.

However, the diagram has these nice annotation: "Asterisks indicate numbers could not be independently verified". And there are asterisks on all the historic data except for 1948.

The only reliable reference is from "35. Firman, B. Ash and Mineral Cation Content of Vegetables. Soil Sci. Soc. Am. Proc. 1948,13, 380–384."

Re: Nutrient levels in retail grocery stores

#30

Post by tcfunk »

eltondegeneres wrote: post #28

> If you walk into a booth and that vendor is selling over 5 types of produce, there's no way they all ripened at the same time. They may not even all be grown by them. Once, he actually saw a vendor at Boston farmers’ market selling carrots from Target! He could tell from the packaging because he used to work for them. I don't think this is true. In California and New York City, vendors at farmers markets can only s…

My wife ran a farmer's market for years, it can definitely be true.

Vendors tried to sneak stuff in constantly, and unless you have a market manager who really cares and is constantly vigilant, vendors will resell stuff they have bought in bulk and are reselling at a markup.

Not all vendors of course, but like anything else there's always a handful of bad actors.

Post reply on HN