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A study found that there is a significant decline of the nutrient content in 43 different crops between 1950 and 1999 (web.archive.org)

submitted 2 months ago by yogthos@lemmy.ml to c/science@lemmy.ml

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[–] kevincox@lemmy.ml 19 points 2 months ago (11 children)

Here is the problem with crop quality:

Most of the purchase decision is what is observable at the store.
- Does it look good.
- What is the price.
- How is the smell, texture, weight...
Some happens at home, and you might remember for next time.
- How does it taste.
- How long does it last.
- Does it make you feel satisfied.
It is basically impossible to know how good food was for you.
- You eat a lot of food and the response is delayed.
- Even if you have a response you probably don't properly understand your body.
- In the end most of the "health" of food is just your believes and marketing.

So there is basically no business pressure to have crops be nutritious.

[–] linkhidalgogato@lemmy.ml 6 points 2 months ago (10 children)

the communist in me yearns to blame capitalism for everything, and its sort of their fault but not directly, the actual reason that nutritional content is going down is because plants are growing faster and bigger while taking a similar amount of nutrients because there is more co2 in the air, its not really about business pressures or anything to do with specific decisions being made by corporations or farmers and the difference is irrelevant anyways (for now).

[–] kevincox@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

But it does boil down to business pressures. The business prefers more and bigger produce to more nutritional produce.

Is that a bad thing? Maybe not. Maybe you can just eat more to get your nutrition since higher yield should reduce cost.

But the point still stands that there is very little business pressure to make a nutritious product.

[–] Jayjader@jlai.lu 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

In my ideal world, the population would be sufficiently educated about nutrition in fruit and vegetables that picture-perfect tomatoes that are picked unripe so that they survive long distance hauling would simply never sell.

[–] kevincox@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 months ago

Even then how you you know? I don't think anyone can reliably look at a vegetable and tell you how nutritious it is. I don't think it is reasonable to have the general population being experts in evaluating vegetables.

I think what could work here is mandated labeling. This is required for most foods but generally not produce. I think there are some reasonable reasons for this, but for farms producing huge volumes it seems that occasional testing that gets reported at the store would make sense.

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