How Our Vegetables Became Less Nutritious than Our Parents’?

Nisarg Joshi

Agriculture, Dharma, Food, Gau

World Hunger is real but solution for it, is not only faulty but disastrous.

Certain nutrients only exist in complex forms. If bacteria are missing in soil, we will never get them in crops. Chemical fertilizers, pesticides devastates microbial activity and so we never get them.

Never ending greed of more yield
Never ending greed of more yield

World Hunger has only one solution. Gau mata. Her Prasad is so powerful that it can turn desert into fertile land.

Are the fruits and veggies we eat today less nutritious than they were years ago? The answer is yes, and the reasons why lie in how we farm.

The next question you might have is how bad is it? Well, it depends. Some studies have found median declines in mineral composition between 5 percent to 40 percent in vegetables.

The difference is in the methods we use to farm, Davis reported: “Efforts to breed new varieties of crops that provide greater yield, pest resistance, and climate adaptability have allowed crops to grow bigger and more rapidly, but their ability to manufacture or uptake nutrients has not kept pace with their rapid growth.”

Farms that use high-yield plants may get more crops, but all that energy going toward a bigger bounty results in a shallower root system, which means less mineral absorption.

If you want quality fruits and veggies, you may have to look to local markets where the price per piece of food may be higher, but the quality of food may also be better. If these markets aren’t available to you the solution is simple: Eat more fruits and vegetables.

In Indian parlance, there is only one way : Promote Cow-based farming.

Read more here: http://bigthink.com/ideafeed/vegetables-today-are-less-nutritious

 


Research


Declining Fruit and Vegetable Nutrient Composition: What Is the Evidence?

Three kinds of evidence point toward declines of some nutrients in fruits and vegetables available in the United States and the United Kingdom: 1) early studies of fertilization found inverse relationships between crop yield and mineral concentrations—the widely cited “dilution effect”; 2) three recent studies of historical food composition data found apparent median declines of 5% to 40% or more in some minerals in groups of vegetables and perhaps fruits; one study also evaluated vitamins and protein with similar results; and 3) recent side-by-side plantings of low- and high-yield cultivars of broccoli and grains found consistently negative correlations between yield and concentrations of minerals and protein, a newly recognized genetic dilution effect. Studies of historical food composition data are inherently limited, but the other methods can focus on single crops of any kind, can include any nutrient of interest, and can be carefully controlled. They can also test proposed methods to minimize or overcome the diluting effects of yield whether by environmental means or by plant breeding.

http://hortsci.ashspublications.org/content/44/1/15.full

Changes in USDA Food Composition Data for 43 Garden Crops, 1950 to 1999

http://saveoursoils.com/userfiles/downloads/1351255687-Changes%20in%20USDA%20food%20composition%20data%20for%2043%20garden%20crops,%201950-1999.pdf

Declining Nutrition
Declining Nutrition

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