YHK - yet another hacker news clone

Fruits and Vegetables 50% Less Nutritious Than in the 1960s

37 points karakoram 1 day ago 15 comments

akagusu 23 hours ago | parent

This is not a bug, it's a feature.

To get the same nutrition, you need to buy twice.

You lose, the industry wins.

I people accept that is beyond my level.

yrjrjjrjjtjjr 23 hours ago | parent

Supplements are cheap

sellmesoap 20 hours ago | parent

Tell that to the $50 bottle of vitamin C I just bought, ouch!

beAbU 8 hours ago | parent

Supplements are cheap. You just wasted your money on a $50 bottle of urine colouring agent.

You can buy like a kilo of ascorbic acid on amazon for that money, which will last you multiple lifetimes probably.

nezi 23 hours ago | parent

I don’t think people will buy and eat twice as much because of this. How would they feel the nutrition deficiency and then eat more? People feel full by amount they eat not by how much nutrients are in the food.

Though it’s probably true that the industry is optimizing for raw yield at the expense of nutrient density.

mft_ 21 hours ago | parent

Agree this is just the result of factory farming.

Calling it “a feature” assumes too much intelligence in the process, and smacks of some sort of dark room, leather armchair, cigar-smoking conspiracy on the part of big vegetable.

SideQuark 15 hours ago | parent

US share of disposable income spent on food has cut in half since 1960.

PeterStuer 23 hours ago | parent

I predict GLP-1 infused foods with even more addictive sugar/salt/fat bliss points and other substances. Keep your junkies less aware for longer.

7734128 23 hours ago | parent

Is this garbage actually using a broken Google Drive link as their source?

Could we please ban this tabloid, and the user who posted this?

fractallyte 21 hours ago | parent

Nutritionist Adelle Davis warned about this way back in the 1950s, in her book Let's Eat Right To Keep Fit. Along with a proper diet, she championed soil health, regenerative farming, and sensible food preparation.

Sad to see how little progress the world has made in the last 70 years.

mythrwy 20 hours ago | parent

I fully believe this.

I'm an agronomist by training (turned software dev 16 years ago) and worked on a number of kinds of farms early in my career.

I've always gardened but during COVID really ramped it up and grow about 1/3 of my own food.

I grow organically with a full spectrum of minerals in primarily rich diverse compost I make (and buy as needed).

I feel and look better than I did 10 years ago and will be 56 this coming spring. Seriously, I get looks from much younger women when I'm out and it always surprises me because I'm an old man. My skin glows. I have a lot of energy. That didn't happen as much before I started eating like this.

This has caused me to take soil depletion and "growing stuff too fast" very seriously and think it may be the root cause of a lot of problems we see around us.

prewett 18 hours ago | parent

Cereal yields are 200+% and nutrition is 50%? That sounds almost like it could be expected. (I mean, I'm not sure I would have expected it, but it seems like a natural result.)

t0mpr1c3 14 hours ago | parent

When it comes to micronutrients, more is not necessarily better. 2 Brazil nuts per day can cause Selenium toxicity.

tancop 6 hours ago | parent

We should be looking for ways to get the nutrients back in, not going back to organic farming. Start a government program for soil improvement with added minerals. Fund genetic engineering research to make plants that create more vitamins as they grow and don't need as much fertilizer or pesticide. We already have the basics with golden rice.

Don't slow down production to match nature. Help nature keep up with us.