The great nutrient collapse
politico.com
The great nutrient collapse
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Re: The great nutrient collapse
#2I'd be interested in knowing how much the decrease in food nutrients can be offset by taking supplements.
Re: The great nutrient collapse
#3This is a fascinating article in terms of the effect of CO2 on plants... but I have a tremendously hard time believing it's affected diets in the first world.
The level of carbs and nutrients in your diet would seem to determined by your dietary choices by an overwhelmingly larger degree. Are you eating french fries or kale?
Does it really matter if my zucchini is slightly less nutritious when I could just eat broccoli rabe instead? Or that my green beans have a trace of carbs when I'm eating a potato on the side? In supermarkets today we've never had greater choice or variety, especially in winter, at least if you're willing to pay for it -- but even in terms of paying for it, food today is the cheapest it's ever been.
Re: The great nutrient collapse
#4This is a good article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15253127
Re: The great nutrient collapse
#5This article seems like much Ado about nothing. My guess is that human selective breeding of plants has far more impact than the effect the article discusses.
Re: The great nutrient collapse
#6This article seems like much Ado about nothing. My guess is that human selective breeding of plants has far more impact than the effect the article discusses.
Did you read the article before saying that?
Re: The great nutrient collapse
#7This article seems like much Ado about nothing. My guess is that human selective breeding of plants has far more impact than the effect the article discusses.
Surely selective breading may bring harm. For example, tinkering with wheat to make it easy to process with machines resulted in kinds where gluten is less tolerant by humans [1].
What is important is speed and scale. I.e. making most plants less nutritional by 5-10% within 50 years is something very new.
Re: The great nutrient collapse
#8This is a good article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15253127
Sorry, I did not seen that.
Re: The great nutrient collapse
#9This article seems like much Ado about nothing. My guess is that human selective breeding of plants has far more impact than the effect the article discusses.
How would selective breeding affect the relative concentration / dilution of nutrients due to increased CO2?
It seems to be that the CO2 issue directly affects the inputs, making one input far more abundant than it used to be. To the degree that plants were constrained by CO2 as input, it logically leads to dilution of nutrients - unless you specifically bred plants that grew slower and produced lower yields, which seems unlikely.
(The actual mechanism, around plant's self-regulating water management affecting how much it retains vs needs to take in via the ground, is unlikely to be bred for one way or another.)
Re: The great nutrient collapse
#10This is a good article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15253127
Well, I missed this, and now that it's marked dupe, I'm sure even more people will miss it.