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Is This One Reason Why We're Getting Fatter (and Undernourished)?
Charles Hugh Smith
oftwominds.com
Sept 17, 2017


Every once in a while you run across a story that's based on common-sense science that pretty much any high school graduate can understand that has languished because it doesn't fit existing narratives or silos in the scientific community.

This is one such story:

The great nutrient collapse: The atmosphere is literally changing the food we eat, for the worse. And almost nobody is paying attention.

The basic idea here is straightforward: fossil fuels are increasing the amount of CO2 in the Earth's atmosphere; CO2 boosts plant growth, specifically the production of complex sugars(carbohydrates). As a result of higher CO2 levels, there are now measurably higher levels of complex sugars in our food.

So where a 100 gram serving of plant-based food contained X (quantity of) complex sugars 40 years ago, now the same 100 gram serving contains X+10 complex sugars. These might be small additions of complex sugars when viewed in isolation, but over time they may well add up to an extra pound or two of weight gain per person in a year's time, an incremental increase that adds 10 to 20 pounds per decade. An additional 20 pounds has significantly negative impacts on human health.

At the same time, levels of nutrients and micro-nutrients are significantly lower than they were a few decades ago.

There are a number of hypotheses about why this is so, one obvious one being that crops are selected (or engineered) for traits such as increasing yield, rapid maturity, ability to withstand being packed and shipped without bruising, etc.--in other words, all the traits that increase profitability.

As a generality, few crops are selected for better flavor and higher nutritive density at the expense of profit-maximizing traits.

I think a major factor in the decline of nutrients in our food that also gets little notice or research is the exhaustion of soil. Soil is a complex ecosystem, and it's effectively disrupted by plowing, over-watering, herbicides and the constant use of chemical fertilizers.

If you garden or tend fruit trees, you have probably observed the dramatic effects of NPK (nitrogen-phosphorus-potassium) fertilizers on nitrogen-deprived struggling rose bushes, shrubs and fruit trees.

My own experience is that fruit trees and other large plants are often nitrogen-phosphorus deficient, even when you've applied compost and occasional manure-based fertilizers. No wonder for-profit agriculture applies so much NPK fertilizer.

But NPK fertilizers don't provide any micro-nutrients, nor do they provide a full spectrum of nutrients for the soil itself--all the micro-organisms that make up productive soil.

For this reason, I apply compost and organic fertilizer that includes complex natural fertilizers such as bird guano and composted materials, and sparingly apply NPK with compost only when severe deficiencies need to be addressed.

In other words, if you want healthy food, you need healthy plants, and if you want healthy plants, you need healthy soil. Slamming soil with NPK gets results in terms of yields (and therefore profits), but it doesn't restore soils depleted of nutrients or nurture healthy soil.

Unfortunately, an "organic" or "bio" label doesn't tell us much about the soil or micro-nutrient content of the food; all these labels tell us is that no pesticide or herbicide or chemical fertilizer was used. As a result, even organic/bio plant-based foods might well be deficient in nutrients and micro-nutrients.

The take-away for me is two-fold: if our food contains increasing quantities of complex sugars, it behooves us to identify foods/grains that are packed with enough other nutrients that a modest increase in complex sugars won't make much of a difference in our over-all diet or health.

The second take-away is the only way to really know about the quality and health of the soil your food was grown in is to have your own garden or farm, and/or become well-acquainted with the people and land that are producing your food.

I realize this isn't entirely practical for most of us, but it can be a goal and principle we try to follow whenever possible.