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Have Fruits and Vegetables Become Less Nutritious? (2011)

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Have Fruits and Vegetables Become Less Nutritious? (2011)

#221

Post by alach11 »

newen wrote: post #220
notJim wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyone that has ever eaten a garden grown anything > can tell you that there is a lot missing in store produce I also enjoy gardening, but from a scientific perspective, I cannot support a statement like this. There is enormous room for bias in assessment of produce grown yourself, because of the physical and emotional investment made in said produce.

You don’t need a study published in a peer reviewed journal to know that vegetables bought in typical US grocery stores taste much worse than home grown ones.

I do need that. I’ve had plenty of home grown produce that I doubt could be distinguished from store bought in a blind taste test.

Re: Have Fruits and Vegetables Become Less Nutritious? (2011)

#222

Post by bch »

notJim wrote: post #219
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd worry less about the lower vitamin C and more about the lower secondary metabolites that likely come with that. Anyone that has ever eaten a garden grown anything can tell you that there is a lot missing in store produce. These secondary metabolites are likely the missing link in my opinion. We aren't malnourished (with respect to most vitamins and minerals) in the western world but we do likely have drastically…

> Anyone that has ever eaten a garden grown anything > can tell you that there is a lot missing in store produce I also enjoy gardening, but from a scientific perspective, I cannot support a statement like this. There is enormous room for bias in assessment of produce grown yourself, because of the physical and emotional investment made in said produce.

Watch food scientist Harold McGee[0][1] and see if you’re as impressed as I was, and that there’s potentially something in the GP claim.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_McGee

[1] https://youtu.be/lQvfKNMybWY?t=1230

Re: Have Fruits and Vegetables Become Less Nutritious? (2011)

#223

Post by nobodyandproud »

yesenadam wrote: post #68
camhart wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strawberries in the USA are huge. Sometimes they remind me of an Apple. Go to Denmark--they're small but packed full of flavor. I would much rather have the smaller ones. I wonder if the large, crisp, apple-esc strawberries really sell better. They're certainly bigger.

In Paris in 1985 (only time I've been there) you could buy massive strawberries from street stalls by the kilo, the size of a small apple, cheap, and super-delicious. I don't know where they came from or why I've never seen them here in Australia. Apart from that, I had delicious small homegrown ones as a kid, and the occasional almost or totally tasteless medium-sized ones from shops ever since. I always wonder how…

> I always wonder how it feels to be a farmer growing totally tasteless strawberries for a living.

I imagine it’s a bland but fruitful experience.

Re: Have Fruits and Vegetables Become Less Nutritious? (2011)

#224

Post by notJim »

newen wrote: post #220
notJim wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyone that has ever eaten a garden grown anything > can tell you that there is a lot missing in store produce I also enjoy gardening, but from a scientific perspective, I cannot support a statement like this. There is enormous room for bias in assessment of produce grown yourself, because of the physical and emotional investment made in said produce.

You don’t need a study published in a peer reviewed journal to know that vegetables bought in typical US grocery stores taste much worse than home grown ones.

Depends on your skills as a gardener and your grocery store, I suppose. Some of my tomatoes were better than the best grocery store tomatoes and some were worse. In any case, the claim was not about flavor, but about nutrition profile, and a lot being "missing" from grocery store produce.

Re: Have Fruits and Vegetables Become Less Nutritious? (2011)

#225

Post by refurb »

g8oz wrote: post #215
TaupeRanger wrote: post #148

This kind of tripe is why nutrition epidemiology is basically the laughing stock of modern science. First of all, the article is almost 10 years old and references data from 1999 at the latest. But most importantly, it uses common nutrition weasel words like "healthy" and "good for you", which are not supported (in fact, CAN'T be supported) by the study. It is a huge leap to go from "there's less Vitamin C in this su…

From the article: "They studied U.S. Department of Agriculture nutritional data from both 1950 and 1999 for 43 different vegetables and fruits, finding “reliable declines” in the amount of protein, calcium, phosphorus, iron, riboflavin (vitamin B2) and vitamin C over the past half century." Is that something worth dismissing out of hand?

The point is (and it's a good one), does it matter?

A good example are the statin drugs. Drug companies did a lot of marketing around "well, our drug lowers LDL by 10% more than our competitor", which could be very well be true, but again, does that matter?

Unless you run studies that measure an outcome that matters, it's all conjecture. Vitamin C levels might be declining, but we don't have a issue with scurvy in developed nations, the impact of any decline might be insignificant.

Re: Have Fruits and Vegetables Become Less Nutritious? (2011)

#226

Post by refurb »

jimbokun wrote: post #181
bttrfl wrote: post #135

There's no scientific basis for my choice, but I have almost entirely stopped eating seasonal produce out of a season. I eat tomatoes in the summer and early autumn and then I patiently wait months to eat them again. When the winter comes I switch to vegetables that I haven't eaten at all or in limited amount for past half a year - beetroot, cabbage, carrot and more. I also eat all kinds of quality fermented, process…

When I went to Italy on vacation, all of the produce had massive quantities of the same two fruits, prominently displayed. (Was June, I think it was apricots and cherries.) And that is what most customers were buying. So we bought those, too, and they were delicious. Then tried buying some things that were out of season, and they were terrible. Which is just to say, some cultures are still super in tune with the seas…

Are there cultures that aren't "super in tune with seasonality"?

I mean, every country that I've lived is well aware of what produce is in season.

Re: Have Fruits and Vegetables Become Less Nutritious? (2011)

#227

Post by JumpCrisscross »

throwaway_pdp09 wrote: post #214
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See [1] for eggs. Relatively simple Google Scholar search if one is curious. [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21673178/

One quite literally can conclude nothing useful from that. They got the same feeding, it says so in sentence 3. It shows the testing laboratories were a great variation in the outcome, not the chickens. The free range had a bit more fat - is that good or bad? "Vitamin A and E levels were not affected..." So what point were you trying to make by posting this? I'm getting fed up with the quality of posts here, you can'…

> The free range had a bit more fat - is that good or bad?

It’s a controlled study isolating the effect of letting the chickens run around. Lower fat ceteris paribus and higher fatty acid is generally considered good, and no, I’m not going to link to every paper that makes that point.

If you let diet vary then yes, you get more pronounced results [2].

> give us data or stop making baseless claims

This is a forum. Not your personal research service. These materials are a simple search away and you are refuting with zero evidence.

[2] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/1475-2891-9-10

Re: Have Fruits and Vegetables Become Less Nutritious? (2011)

#228

Post by highmastdon »

TaupeRanger wrote: post #148

This kind of tripe is why nutrition epidemiology is basically the laughing stock of modern science. First of all, the article is almost 10 years old and references data from 1999 at the latest. But most importantly, it uses common nutrition weasel words like "healthy" and "good for you", which are not supported (in fact, CAN'T be supported) by the study. It is a huge leap to go from "there's less Vitamin C in this su…

Sure there is a huge leap, but there’s enough research on organic food being beneficial to both growing and eating. Researchers have been blackmailed into presenting their studies as irrelevant. One recent issue came up in the Netherlands where a researcher was only allowed to say that “research has not shown clear benefits regarding organic food” by authoritive organisation NTO at risk of declaring their work “useless”. (It’s Dutch, I couldn’t provide translate link because of cookie wall) https://www.volkskrant.nl/nieuws-achtergrond/onderzoeker-na-...

Re: Have Fruits and Vegetables Become Less Nutritious? (2011)

#229

Post by throwaway_pdp09 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #227
throwaway_pdp09 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One quite literally can conclude nothing useful from that. They got the same feeding, it says so in sentence 3. It shows the testing laboratories were a great variation in the outcome, not the chickens. The free range had a bit more fat - is that good or bad? "Vitamin A and E levels were not affected..." So what point were you trying to make by posting this? I'm getting fed up with the quality of posts here, you can'…

> The free range had a bit more fat - is that good or bad? It’s a controlled study isolating the effect of letting the chickens run around. Lower fat ceteris paribus and higher fatty acid is generally considered good, and no, I’m not going to link to every paper that makes that point. If you let diet vary then yes, you get more pronounced results [2]. > give us data or stop making baseless claims This is a forum. Not…

> isolating the effect of letting the chickens run around

true but irrelevant. What you said earlier was about 'pasture raised'...

> factory-farmed meat being less nutritionally dense than pasture-raised meat

but they got the same nutrition because they were fed the same factory diet, free-range or not. So totally irrelevant.

> and you are refuting with zero evidence

No, you are claiming with zero evidence. I am asking for evidence, and then point out your one piece of subsequently cited 'evidence' wasn't.

Your next cite is pretty ambiguous too - you previously: "and poor diet makes most factory-farmed meat less nutritionally dense than the pasture-raised", your cited study:

> It is also noted that grain-fed beef consumers may achieve similar intakes of both n-3 and CLA through the consumption of higher fat grain-fed portions

So in that respect the same.

Looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glutathione for example says "Systemic bioavailability of orally consumed glutathione is poor because..." so that don't help, and I can't see any evidence for or against that glutathione (or the other antioxidant) survives cooking.

Your posting unsubstantiated stuff is no more than an extension of ant-vaxxer's thinking, "this is fluffy and nice so it must be right".

Reality matters. What you want to believe doesn't.

Re: Have Fruits and Vegetables Become Less Nutritious? (2011)

#230

Post by kleiba »

0-_-0 wrote: post #100
kleiba wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, taste is subjective - nutritional value less so.

Taste is subjective only to a very small degree. Most people would dislike the taste of rotten meat or spoiled milk. If taste would be fully subjective it could serve no purpose and there would be no reason for its existence.

I know you cannot be serious. If taste was not subjective there would hardly be the variety in meals we see all over the world.

And yes, if you go to extremes like rotten meat, there is of course little dispute. However, many cultures have developed certain dishes that they consider delicacies while outsiders would find them revolting.

But even from everyday experience, I'm sure even you will reassess your position if you think about it a bit more. Have you never had the experience that some food that you absolutely love and need others to try gets you little more than a shoulder shrug from someone else?

Taste even changes over time which is another intuitive reason why your claim makes little sense. Do you remember the first time you've tried coffee or beer (if you drink those)? Most people are not too fond of these flavors at first, yet they drinks are among the most consumed beverages, at least in Western societies.

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