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Nutrient levels in retail grocery stores

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Re: Nutrient levels in retail grocery stores

#91

Post by adrian_b »

hirako2000 wrote: post #23
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?

A human needs only around 50 chemical substances to stay alive in good health, which are composed of around 20 chemical elements.

These approximately 50 include a little more than 10 amino-acids for providing both the essential amino-acids and the additional bound ammonia that is needed, 2 or 3 amino-acid derivatives, vitamin C, around 7 or 8 essential fatty acids and liposoluble vitamins, 8 B-complex vitamins, water, salt and about a dozen minerals.

Besides these, there are a few additional chemical elements that might be needed, but if they are needed they are needed in quantities so small in comparison with their normal abundance as impurities in food that there have never been observed any cases where any harm could be attributed to their absence (e.g. silicon and bromine).

There are also various substances from plants that may be beneficial for health, but which are not known to be strictly necessary for anything.

Re: Nutrient levels in retail grocery stores

#92

Post by adrian_b »

krunck wrote: post #37

"It's a well-documented phenomenon that nutrient levels in produce have been declining for decades. ... There are several reasons for this, but most of them are due to modern agricultural practices. These reasons include: ... higher CO2 levels in atmosphere diluting nutrient content in plants, ... " The author then links to an X post with a chart that shows relative carbon and nitrient levels and that says that "expo…

The amount of carbon per kilogram of spinach is determined by its content of water.

This is unlikely to change much.

More CO2 that is captured is likely to stimulate the synthesis of more cellulose, i.e. of more cell walls, so the plants should grow faster, possibly also bigger.

Even when grown in soil with the same amount of minerals, the plants that grow faster and/or bigger may be more depleted in anything else besides carbohydrates.

Re: Nutrient levels in retail grocery stores

#93

Post by smileysteve »

lacrosse_tannin wrote: post #26

Reminder to get back into hydroponics or some home scale growing of at least leafy greens.

Hydroponics, being mostly based on water and sunlight, are unlikely to boost the nutrient profile as much as healthy soil, depending on what feed you add to the water.

My understanding is

Water < industrial fertilized, quickly grown / plowed soil < healthy topsoil

Re: Nutrient levels in retail grocery stores

#94

Post by tomcar288 »

mapt wrote: post #88

Vitamin C sufficiency is very important to humanity, and freshly picked produce very expensive. Vitamin C seems to be largely unique among nutrients in how fragile it is, being destroyed with any significant storage or cooking. Supplementation with ascorbic acid in shelf-stable tablet form seems like a reasonable compromise.

Vitamin C is also one of the most abundant vitamins. there's a ton of vegetables and fruit that are very high in vit C (you can check my nutrient finder: https://kale.world/c ) . Rather than jumping straight to supplements, I prefer eating leafy greens. they're loaded with so much stuff: antioxidants, vitamins, minerals, fiber, etc. and, i've read so many times that often supplements don't provide the same benefits as the original foods.

besides, growing greens isn't that hard.

Re: Nutrient levels in retail grocery stores

#95

Post by tomcar288 »

if you're concerned about getting enough micronutrients, I did create a tool that helps me discover the foods that are highest in any particular vitamin or mineral or combination thereof and normalizes the data to 200 calorie servings for ease of comparison. it uses a weighted formula that you define with sliders on the left: https://kale.world/c

Re: Nutrient levels in retail grocery stores

#96

Post by ec109685 »

TheMagicHorsey wrote: post #58
ec109685 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bac…

they did the testing, but those lab tests didn't conclude walmart was the best. That conclusion was based on supply chain speed.

It said this: “Walmart tended to come out on top”

Re: Nutrient levels in retail grocery stores

#97

Post by abbefaria27 »

jiggawatts wrote: post #66
hammock wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frozen vegetables are often blanched and flash frozen at the peak of freshness. In many cases they are “fresher” than what you find in the produce section

Rory Sutherland makes this point, that because some products are cheaper to manufacture and keep in stock (like frozen veggies), they're perceived to be less healthy than "fresh".

I discovered Rory Sutherland this year and he’s awesome. I recommend to anyone checking out his TED talk or book.

Re: Nutrient levels in retail grocery stores

#98

Post by abbefaria27 »

Many negative comments here, but the notion that food might be less nutritious is certainly interesting and worth exploring, even if this article isn’t the end all be all. As mentioned in there, apples are sold up to a year old, and I know the same is done with potatoes. We have global issues with soil quality and depth, produce is selected for transport instead of taste (which is why grocery store tomatoes are gross but garden tomatoes are amazing) and other practices like breeding chicken that grow twice as fast as they used to.

Re: Nutrient levels in retail grocery stores

#100

Post by this_steve_j »

It’s unfortunate that the company (teakorigin) raised so much capital ($5mil?) without publishing a peer reviewed paper, scientific report or data set available for download by the public.

It is an interesting research idea, but there are major methodological challenges that would be better be addressed by a scientific inquiry than an entrepreneurial startup-y approach. For example, time of year, sampling, seasonality, handling, selection, etc.

My guess is that this is a retailer-oriented venture in search of a host, but the margins on this stuff are razor thin and grocers are more interested in optimizing the reduction of shrink.

Why would Target or Whole Foods buy into an app that tells shoppers to throw away more produce that looks and tastes totally fine or buy it across the street?

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