
Estimates that mineral levels in vegetables have dropped by up to 90% since 1914 - hispanic
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6163803/
======
tastyfreeze
This happened due to extermination of soil life through modern farming
practices of heavy tilling, fertilizing and monoculture crops. Dead soil is
more susceptible to erosion and requires ever increasing amounts of synthetic
fertilizer to grow anything. More soil has been lost from the US than the
amount of food that has been produced. Soil fertility can be returned to
historical levels by changing farming practices to make living soil. The
benefits of treating the soil as a living organism include increased
fertility, water infiltration, moisture retention, and nutrient availability
as well as decreasing or eliminating synthetic fertilizer requirements.

[https://theweek.com/articles/554677/america-running-
soil](https://theweek.com/articles/554677/america-running-soil)

This is a long video but it has completely changed my home gardening
practices.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUmIdq0D6-A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUmIdq0D6-A)

~~~
01100011
Not exactly disagreeing with you, but it seems like increasing yields and
inadequate fertilization focusing on macronutrients would also explain the
drop. If I grow crops that preferentially absorb certain minerals and then
take away most of the vegetable matter from the plot, the soil content of the
absorbed minerals is going to drop without something to replenish it. Now, I'm
not saying soil bacteria and mychorrhizal networks can't pull minerals from
the underlying bedrock and transport it to the top layer, but even assuming
they did, I would think high-yield farming would tax their ability to keep up
with mineral outflows.

~~~
Scoundreller
Not even focusing on macronutrients. We’re just focussing in mass.

I’m not looking forward to the end of tomato season and the inevitable
disappointment when I buy them from the grocery store.

~~~
philipov
The worst is strawberries. The huge strawberries you can buy in the store have
the same flavor content as the tiny ones you can grow in your yard, but it's
completely diluted with water. They're disgusting.

~~~
powersnail
Is it just because they are giant? I’ve had relatively big strawberries that
are sweet and flavorful in China. But in the US, they taste like cucumber plus
citrus, no sweetness, no aroma, just incredibly sour and watery.

~~~
philipov
I don't know what Chinese strawberries are like, but I always figured that
American strawberries are watery and sour because they're not only big, but
they're also grown too quickly for flavor to develop. I think they're
engineered to artificially mature early and are basically still unripe.

~~~
Trav5
I have had amazing and bland Strawberries from Safeway in the US. Not sure how
to pick the good ones. Time of year?

~~~
lotsofpulp
Yes, local in season fruit is always tastier. I suspect because out of season
fruit has to come from further away, meaning it has to be picked before it
normally would be if it didn’t have to travel so far.

------
wil421
The link got that actual paper is much better than a sentence or two on
LinkedIn. The paper’s title isn’t as catchy to put in nicely.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6163803/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6163803/)

From my link:

>It is important to note that the USDA mineral content of vegetables and
fruits has not been updated since 2000, and perhaps even longer, given that
the data for 1992 was not able to be definitively confirmed for this review.

I’d like to see if it’s improved recently. Healthy foods and organics are more
readily available now.

~~~
opportune
If organic food actually had a noticeably higher mineral count than
nonorganic, I would start eating it. But I don’t see why organic food would
actually have more minerals. Organic doesn’t mean healthier it just means that
it uses different kinds of pesticides, to my knowledge

~~~
all_usernames
Organic farming includes crop rotation, fertilizer, soil quality, and erosion
control standards that would hypothetically affect mineral contents.

Monoculture (conventional corn or soybean for example) uses huge amounts of
synthetic fertilizer to increase yields per acre far beyond what the soil can
naturally sustain. Wide swaths of American farmland has lost literally feet of
topsoil over the past 50 years. The soil is largely sterile, and depleted of
minerals. Monoculture also means the ecosystem that can replenish the soil is
absent.

~~~
wil421
Corn and soybeans are most definitely rotated. Peanuts are a common nitrogen
fixer and Alfalfa is great too.

>This crop rotation benefits both alfalfa and wheat/barley/corn. On the one
hand, cereals tend to decrease the development of weeds, leaving the field
free for the alfalfa cultivation. On the other hand, there are findings
suggesting that corn following alfalfa yields approximately 10% more than corn
following corn.[1]

[1][https://wikifarmer.com/alfalfa-crop-
rotation/](https://wikifarmer.com/alfalfa-crop-rotation/)

~~~
01100011
Peanuts increase nitrogen and probably no nothing for micronutrients. They may
allow time for the underlying rock to transfer minerals to the soil which are
consumed more heavily by the opposing crops, but they probably won't do
anything for the issue reported in TFA.

Having more corn doesn't mean that the corn or soil has more micronutrients.
Corn is nitrogen heavy, so rotation makes sense if yields are all you care
about.

------
igammarays
I’ve been living in Ukraine for the past few months, trying to figure out why
the food here, especially the vegetables, simply taste _so good_. The very
same dishes (e.g. steak and veggies) from popular mid-range restaurants are
far more enjoyable to me over here in Kiev than I ever ate in Canada. When I
went back to Canada for a brief visit, my body was craving Ukrainian food. Now
this study on vegetable mineral content may explain why. I’m very keen to see
a comparison study on Eastern European agriculture and produce versus North
American. Ukraine was once the “breadbasket” of the Soviet Union, so there
must be an explanation. Ukrainians who migrate to other countries are often
said to complain about a loss in food taste - previously I assumed that was
just some form of homesickness, but this study lends some potential scientific
ground to their complaints.

~~~
nathan_f77
Wow, I wonder if this is why I thought the food was so bad in San Francisco
after I moved there from New Zealand. We went to a lot great restaurants, but
I remember thinking that the restaurants in New Zealand was 100x better. We
have an amazing cafe/restaurant scene in NZ, and I never found anything in San
Francisco that could come close to a nice brunch in Auckland. (I was trying
almost every place that had a good Yelp review over a period of ~2 years.)
Maybe this was mostly a subconscious thing related to the mineral content of
the ingredients.

~~~
warbird
This is close to what I was looking for in this thread. Don't want to clutter
with anecdotal chat, but:

I worked in Australia some years ago (2015) and I was amazed by the taste of
vegetables (and meat, as well, just less so). The experience sounds banal I
suppose, but I really felt that my quality of life had improved. In the U.S. I
feel totally unexcited by vegetable shopping, and I sometimes feel that I am
simulating cooking. In Australia two vegetables and a small piece of lamb or
beef completely satisfied me.

This article led me to the same thought found in your conclusion, but I'm
hoping someone on HN has expertise in Aussie/Kiwi farming and can offer some
perspective.

------
JohnJamesRambo
Growing food has turned into an engineering problem where people think you
solve it by investing the least possible resources into it. Whatever the
consumer will buy and you can produce as cheaply as possible wins the day. Our
tasteless vegetables are like cheap Bose (no highs, no lows, must be Bose)
speakers or pressed paper furniture at Walmart. On the surface they look like
a vegetable should look, but the taste, what’s inside, is completely
deficient.

~~~
fucking_tragedy
> _Growing food has turned into an engineering problem where people think you
> solve it by investing the least possible resources into it._

Our economic system optimizes for exactly this.

~~~
mikelyons
What if we had one world religion where everyone's goal in life was to become
infinitely loving and utterly selfless?

Would we grow food for eachother differently? Would we be compensated
differently for doing so?

~~~
fucking_tragedy
No, it turns out that the adherents of the religion of "love thy neighbor" and
"it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man
to enter the kingdom of God" have no problem with our economic system.

~~~
mikelyons
I'm talking about psychedelic induced direct experiences of the point of life
as utter selflessness and infinite love.

~~~
zepto
Weird that it requires a special compound to give you a direct experience of
this.

You’d think that if the point of life was selflessness and love, this would be
more obvious.

Also, what do you think of the people whose medicine comes from the coca
plant, who have direct experience that the point of life is greed and self-
satisfaction?

~~~
mikelyons
It sounds like you have no experience with cocaine, and no experience with
psychedelics ... I can understand this position coming from ignorance, so I
don't blame you.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TazyFTavMyA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TazyFTavMyA)

~~~
zepto
Firstly you are just wrong.

I have experience of both, especially psychedelics, and I am familiar with and
have been involved in research on the topic.

Secondly, your reasoning is clearly impaired because you drew a conclusion for
which you obviously don’t have any facts to support.

Thirdly, you lept to defend an ungrounded claim that a particular drug
experience gives access to spiritual truth. Temporary distortions of
experience can be valuable but to quote from a famous drug culture movie, “why
trust one drug and not another?”.

This is an extraordinary claim that requires serious examination.

Your reflexive defense suggests that you have lost sight of this.

These kinds of failures of reasoning are attributed to psychedelics by even
the most optimistic of researchers.

See this article by one of the world’s leading researcher in the field:
[http://pharmrev.aspetjournals.org/content/71/3/316?fbclid=Iw...](http://pharmrev.aspetjournals.org/content/71/3/316?fbclid=IwAR36UzFla5Lfx7-4LTr6R8N0XdUSOnbg3gnRPXn806cPKO7Zsas2EsJJhDs)

The section ‘what about the woo’ in particular talks about the problem.

I think psychedelics can be very positive, but they can also damage your
ability to reason.

As a temporary tradeoff this may well be a reasonable price to pay for relief
from trauma.

It’s a red flag when you start proclaiming that psychedelics are the door to
experienced of fundamental truth and you are unable to reason about it.

This kind of thinking is a symptom that you haven’t addressed the side effects
the psychedelics have had on you.

~~~
mikelyons
Like I said, this also appears to be the result of you not validating things
in your direct experience and instead relying on dogma. This is an example of
false skepticism, rather than True skepticism. More info if you're open-
minded:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kzZdps9PG4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kzZdps9PG4)

~~~
zepto
Are you familiar with the research on psychedelics?

Here is another extremely respected commentator who expresses skepticism:
[https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/09/10/ssc-journal-club-
relax...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/09/10/ssc-journal-club-relaxed-
beliefs-under-psychedelics-and-the-anarchic-brain/)

Do you dismiss Scott Alexander as a false skeptic also?

Also - that dude in your video is presenting a false dichotomy and no true
Scotsman fallacy in order to market himself an authority on personal
development. I’d be careful with that stuff because it’s classic cult leader
behavior. Having a ready dismissal for threatening ideas generally does not
make us smarter.

Having looked at your bio I feel compassion for you, since I think you are
sincere, and it seems like your desire for enlightenment and healing are being
exploited.

~~~
mikelyons
You're obviously ignorant to the material, there are 2 videos that expound on
what cults are and how cults work. You wont have a proper understanding until
you can try on the content for more than just a few hours, with the attitude
of open mindedness. Yes, I will dismiss any arguments that are obviously false
skepticism. You have to validate psychedelics in your direct experience. I
appreciate your compassion, but I implore you to examine the implicit
metaphysics and default position you are coming from.

~~~
zepto
“You have to validate psychedelics in your direct experience”

Can you not consider the possibility that I have done so, and I have examined
the implicit metaphysics and have come to the conclusion that the experience
offers a valuable perspective but not one which is privileged in its truth?

You seem unable to consider this possibility, instead only being able to
imagine that because my view is not what you think it should be, I must be
ignorant.

------
dwg
Has it really? I thought it would be useful to share a paper from the opposing
viewpoint, which argues the opposite of the conclusions you might first arrive
at from looking at this chart...

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S088915751...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0889157516302113#tbl0005)
(Mineral nutrient composition of vegetables, fruits and grains: The context of
reports of apparent historical declines, published in the Journal of Food
Composition and Analysis March 2017).

As a non-expert I have no opinion as to which viewpoint is correct. However,
as usual the issue is more complex than that...

------
NickM
Something that has puzzled me recently: how is anyone supposed to get the
daily recommended amount of potassium? If you look at foods like bananas that
are supposed to be good sources of it, you still need to eat something like
eleven bananas a day to get enough (according to US recommended daily intakes,
anyway). At least with the minerals mentioned in this posting, you can fall
back on supplements if you need to...but if you try to buy potassium
supplements, the max dosage you can get over the counter is 99mg, which is
only about 3% of the daily recommended intake. WTF?

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
I eat potassium chloride (usually sold as salt substitute for people on low
sodium diets) on occasion, like when fasting or working out. It has this
awful, stingy metallic taste, but I’ve noticed I tend to have less fatigue and
soreness from strength training afterwards. Might be placebo but YMMV.

~~~
01100011
I have leftover potassium bicarbonate from when I was making wine. I use it as
an antacid, mixing it with water. It tastes like absolute shit, a little less
so if mixed with some baking soda, and does a pretty good job of helping my
heartburn.

------
bt848
These are normalized mass rates, ie grams per gram of plant mass. However, the
mass yield per acre of cabbage has radically increased over that time period.
Is it possible that a cabbage plant is capable of absorbing an absolute amount
of minerals, and this is simply being diluted by ever-larger cabbages?

~~~
carry_bit
The explanation I've heard is that the total mineral content is about the
same, but plants are producing more carbohydrates now due to an increase in
atmospheric CO2, diluting the minerals.

Consequently, if humans eat according the amount of minerals in the food, the
increase in carbohydrates could also explain the increase in obesity.

~~~
jkeuhlen
I don't think the lack of minerals in food explains obesity issues. In fact,
I'm pretty sure we know what causes obesity. Significantly lower levels of
activity and increased sugar consumption are two of the main culprits.

~~~
earljwagner
Obesity is increasing for animals - pets and even wildlife:
[https://psmag.com/social-justice/just-people-getting-
fatter-...](https://psmag.com/social-justice/just-people-getting-fatter-65342)

------
testfoobar
Soil depletion: [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/soil-depletion-
an...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/soil-depletion-and-
nutrition-loss/)

I have a friend who refers to vitamins as "expensive pee". He means taking
vitamin pills when you eat a good diet containing fruits and veg is
unnecessary because your body will excrete out the excess. I like to point out
to him that fruits and veg are not what they used to be.

~~~
behringer
It's not only expensive pee, but also potentially damages your kidneys.

[https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-
preventi...](https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-
prevention/is-there-really-any-benefit-to-multivitamins)

You shouldn't take supplements unless your doctor advises you to due to some
(actual and not perceived) deficiency.

~~~
graeme
Did you mean to link something else? That page doesn't appear to mention
kidneys.

~~~
behringer
It was more supplemental than citation. Maybe they won't affect your kidneys.
That's just something I heard when the NIH study broke in the news. Consult
your doctor, etc.

~~~
citiguy
The last time I saw my doctor she mentioned Calcium supplements can cause
kidney stones(1). They can also be bad for your heart(2). Also, it often is
not clear how pure supplements are. She advised me to get as many nutrients as
I could from my regular food.

1 - [https://www.webmd.com/kidney-stones/news/20151013/calcium-
su...](https://www.webmd.com/kidney-stones/news/20151013/calcium-supplements-
tied-to-kidney-stone-risk-in-study#1) 2 -
[https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/heart-
attack/...](https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/heart-
attack/expert-answers/calcium-supplements/faq-20058352)

------
AngryData
I don't think this is new or that unexpected, but it should be talked about.
We use to breed plants based on both taste and size, taste being altered
significantly by mineral contents. Currently, we mostly only breed plants
based on weight, taste doesn't factor into it, and increasing sugars and
starches increases weight far better than any mineral count. Heirloom plants
are generally considered luxury products and since they don't have as large of
yields, aren't a good competition against commercial plants, despite the fact
that most people agree heirloom plants taste better and usually have higher
mineral counts.

Now I don't know how much the the growing medium effects this, our topsoil is
getting thinner and is fed primarily on 'purified' artificial fertilizers, and
heirloom plants are far more likely to be home garden or 'organically' grown,
but im willing to bet plant genetics play a much bigger role in mineral
contents than anyone wants to admit. It would be another hit to the idea that
current farming practices are sustainable long term and nobody wants to admit
that.

~~~
Merrill
Plants are also bred so that they can be picked before they are fully ripe and
survive a multi-day trip to the grocery shelves of a supermarket.

This may be less important for vegetables that go from field to cannery or
freezers, so canned or frozen might be a better choice than fresh vegetables.

------
dcolkitt
This isn't necessarily a bad thing. High iron consumption appears to be at the
nexus of a vast array of diseases from colon cancer to Alzheimer's. As for
Calcium there's really no evidence of it strengthening bones. And high
consumption is probably causally increases CVD mortality.

[1] [http://nautil.us/issue/67/reboot/iron-is-the-new-
cholesterol](http://nautil.us/issue/67/reboot/iron-is-the-new-cholesterol) [2]
[https://www.bmj.com/content/351/bmj.h4580](https://www.bmj.com/content/351/bmj.h4580)
[3]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3336363/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3336363/)

------
opwieurposiu
Another reason to roll out Enhanced Olivine Weathering, get some minerals back
into the dirt.

[http://www.innovationconcepts.eu/res/literatuurSchuiling/oli...](http://www.innovationconcepts.eu/res/literatuurSchuiling/olivineagainstclimatechange23.pdf)

------
dghughes
Derek from Vertasium on YouTbe has a nice explanation. Even showing how the
nutrient levels in weed specimens are also falling. The weeds were collected
by researchers over the last 100 or more years. The weeds were vital because
it showed it wasn't limited to farming practices it's all plants.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yl_K2Ata6XY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yl_K2Ata6XY)

------
buckthundaz
Wait until everyone learns about bioavailability of nutrients with respect to
type of food -- ie. Animal-based nutrition is more bioavailable than plant-
based nutrients. [1]

[1] -
[https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/78/3/633S/4690005#1098...](https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/78/3/633S/4690005#109811045)

~~~
jacobwilliamroy
I think it's important to consider the inputs. Carnivorism is just herbivorism
with more overhead. Perhaps I do need to eat ~3 times the non-heme iron to get
the same level of absorption, but plant crops usually win out over cattle when
it comes to scalability.

Is plant iron more bioavailable to cattle animals than humans? That might tip
things slightly in favor of carnivorism, however cattle does a lot more than
just convert non-heme iron to heme iron and facilitating that excess resource
usage may be more trouble than the heme iron is worth.

~~~
ssijak
Heme iron is implicated with some cancers, main reason being bioavailability
where our body cant regulate it as easy as non heme iron

------
atulatul
In India, Subhash Palekar is a name you often hear these days. He was awarded
fourth highest civilian award the Padma Shri in 2016. He is a proponent of
Zero Budget Natural Farming- (which some agri bodies have claimed does not
work as the claims would indicate).

A few links, if interested.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subhash_Palekar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subhash_Palekar)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masanobu_Fukuoka](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masanobu_Fukuoka)

[http://www.palekarzerobudgetspiritualfarming.org/home.aspx](http://www.palekarzerobudgetspiritualfarming.org/home.aspx)

------
newsreview1
I want to see the study. If we are saying that average mineral content of
calcium, magnesium, and iron in cabbage, lettuce, tomatoes, and spinach has
dropped 80–90% between 1914 and 2018, where were the subject vegetables taken
from? Are we needing to look at farming methods, large agriculture process
such as early harvest, soil depletion, delivery method, sun exposure, etc?

And, if we are looking at findings from the USDA, Agricultural Research
Service and USDA National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference, they
really need to update their research. As stated by the study's author, " the
USDA mineral content of vegetables and fruits has not been updated since 2000"

------
Touche
Article seems suspicious. How were these measured 100 years ago? Same
techniques as today? Can we verify the 100 year old data?

------
dimitar
In many countries in Eastern Europe the soil is poor in iodine, which
historically meant a lot of thyroid problems. Good news is that governments
mostly solved the issue by requiring table salt to contain iodine. In some
countries you can still buy table salt that doesn't contain iodine
("Himalayan" and so on) but people still use the mandated kind indirectly by
buying bread and cheeses made with iodine.

My point is the same can be done with magnesium and other minerals, which can
solve the public health aspect while the soil is restored.

------
DoctorOetker
Isn't a big part of the problem that for nearly all of duration of life, all
animals had their own excretion patterns? If a monkey eats a banana, and 2
days later excretes nutrients in forms it cannot use... then typically the
distance between plant and and dropping is not _that_ far. Plants also spread
throughout the landscape.

Birds may perform a larger diffusion work part of the time (random droppings
while flying), yet a large part of the time it would eat some fruits from one
type of tree, then fly to another type of tree, and leave droppings that
represent a mixture of the nutrients the different types of trees had access
to, but for a large part what came from trees returns to trees even if it's
different types of trees. So by producing one type of fruit the tree can trade
it's nutrients through birds-as-traders with other trees. Humans ban birds
from trees because we want to keep the fruits to ourselves.

Perhaps we are simply wasting too much of our faeces into rivers and the sea?
and generally disturbing the natural transport patterns (hidden labour)
performed by different types of animals.

Migratory birds might trade nutrients over huge distances, which may sound
ridiculous since they can't hold their droppings that long, but their bodies
in general also contain nutrients, and the bird could die at either end of the
migratory path.

------
hcarvalhoalves
Our increase in food production comes at the expense of fertilisers,
pesticides, soil depletion and water poisoning. We are feeding the world
alright, but on empty calories.

Was Malthus right after all?

------
dash2
This is a side issue in the paper linked. The paper itself cites a more
useful-seeming source: "Declining Fruit and Vegetable Nutrient Composition:
What Is the Evidence?"

[https://journals.ashs.org/hortsci/view/journals/hortsci/44/1...](https://journals.ashs.org/hortsci/view/journals/hortsci/44/1/article-p15.xml)

Freely available too, nice one.

------
jnbiche
The graph of male testosterone levels looks very similar to this one. I'm not
suggesting there's necessarily a correlation between the two, but modern life
is taking its toll on our health.

Life expectancy may be longer in present times, but quality of life is in some
ways lower (a notable exception to that is the status of even relatively minor
infections, which were frequently fatal in pre-modern life).

------
bborud
I grew up on a farm in Norway. I love how people who have never even driven a
tractor suddenly know how to save the planet because they have a garden. Oh
please.

It's really simple: we consume more resources than the planet can reasonably
sustain. And because we do not intend to stop procreating and consuming we're
fucked. (No, really, we are)

------
scythe
Isn’t this at least easy to fix? Required amounts of dietary minerals are
minuscule: 50 mg iron, 15 mg zinc and less than 2 mg of the other transition
metals and P. Presumably fertilizer could include trace amounts of these
elements without substantial cost increases? (Ca/K/Mg are already in
fertilizer.)

~~~
cwkoss
I think plants may require symbiotic microbes to efficiently process some of
these dietary minerals, and modern agroindustrial farming has damaged soil
biodiversity and carrying capacity.

------
Merrill
When crops are removed from the land, more complex fertilizers must be used to
replace the minerals. A good example is sulfur. The sulfur removed had been
replenished by acid rain. Once scrubbers were applied to remove sulfur from
coal plant emissions, farmers needed to monitor and replenish sulfur levels by
sulfur fertilizer.

"Seeking high yields, the reduction of acid rain and the need for sulfur" \-
[https://www.farmprogress.com/management/seeking-high-
yields-...](https://www.farmprogress.com/management/seeking-high-yields-
reduction-acid-rain-and-need-sulfur)

The bottom line is that agriculture is mining, and any elements that are
removed in crops must be replaced. Adequate sulfur levels are particularly
important to cruciferous vegetables.

------
viburnum
The is the flip side of the green revolution, which basically bred plants to
grow big and fast if you dump a lot of fertilizer made from fossil fuels on
them. More carbs and less of everything else. I know people love Norman
Borlaug but not everything is as nice as you’d like it to be.

------
algaeontoast
It'd be cool to see a comparison of common top-grade "organic produce"
compared with produce from a farmers market and that grown from someone's own
backyard. Granted, with a measure of time from harvest to measurement of
mineral content.

------
nathan_f77
Would it be wise for most people to take a daily multivitamin or supplement? I
believe we only need trace amounts of these vitamins and minerals, so even
with a 90% decline in mineral levels, it sounds like most people are still
getting plenty of minerals.

> 60% of adults do not achieve the average dietary intake (ADI) and 45% of
> Americans are magnesium deficient.

I'm always a bit skeptical of claims like this, and those percentages are
huge. I'm wondering why I've never heard about it before (although I'm very
ignorant about a lot of things.) Are there any government efforts to make
magnesium supplements widely available, or some other way to solve this
problem?

------
colinmegill
I worked on a bio-intensive organic farm in Washington State via
[https://wwoofinternational.org/](https://wwoofinternational.org/). This was
one of the articles that got passed around:

[https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129629...](https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129629752)

Volunteering there was the first time I realized strawberries were red all the
way through and incredibly dense with flavor, since they were allowed to ripen
naturally and benefit from richly amended soil full of microbes.

------
blondie9x
Almost impossible to eat healthy these days. Even if you think you’re eating
healthy you might not be. We aren’t getting as many probiotics, minerals, and
vitamins from fruits and vegetables. This is terribly unfortunate. We need to
find a way to use land more effectively and give our soil and plants enough
time to establish themselves so the nutrition content is sufficient and
normalized.

A solution might be less land for herding cattle and more land for planting
vegetables and fruits that might take more time to cultivate.

------
bwb
Does anyone know how much we can absorb? Like if we can only take in 1 out of
the 50, then I don't care if its down to 10. Anyone know the science on
mineral absorption?

~~~
jacobwilliamroy
Someone posted a study which specifically compared bioavailability of heme
iron from animals to non-heme iron from plants:

[https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/78/3/633S/4690005#1098...](https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/78/3/633S/4690005#109811045)

Why would low bioavailability convince you to care less about the declining
minerals? Surely declining mineral content would be exacerbated by low
bioavailability? How does that make things better?

An 80% loss still means you have to quintuple consumption to maintain the same
level of nutrients, and your agricultural resources have to scale beyond that
to account for crop losses to pests and pathogens. Meat production becomes
even more expensive and unsustainable. How does low bioavailability reduce the
significance of this trend?

~~~
bwb
Well, but maybe an 80% loss doesn't matter as we only absorb x mg of minerals.
You know?

This might not matter for humans if we don't know how much we can absorb, it
might not be a percentile but rather than a cap and we pee or poop the rest
out.

~~~
jacobwilliamroy
I see what you're saying now, thanks for clarifying. I'm not sure how much
nutrition people need in general. Perhaps we're still getting a surplus of
nutrients at the current volume of food consumption, despite the loss of
minerals. I am fearful of food unsecurity and malnutrition.

~~~
bwb
Ya me too on malnutrition and food desserts. Americans eat so few veggies and
we are still living for a long time. And for rich Americans who match Japanese
longevity, this doesn't seen to be hurting us.

Like if we all had scurvy and were bleeding from the gums by age 19 I'd be
worried more :)

Or maybe it is what is spiking auto immune diseases or something weird.

------
proee
Here is a good resource on growing your own food with maximum nutrition.

[http://janabogs.com/](http://janabogs.com/)

------
jayalpha
Old news?

Dirt Poor: Have Fruits and Vegetables Become Less Nutritious? - Because of
soil depletion, crops grown decades ago were much richer in vitamins and
minerals than the varieties most of us get today

April 27, 2011

[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/soil-depletion-
an...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/soil-depletion-and-
nutrition-loss/)

------
martingoodson
This is a good reason to eat organic food.

The overall strength of evidence is good or moderate that, for many
parameters, organic produce is superior to conventional produce.[1]

[1]
[https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/16546628.2017.1...](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/16546628.2017.1287333)

------
dr_dshiv
Fascinating discussion, just noticed the article is about magnesium
deficiency.

Magnesium pills! I love those things. The only supplement I take, because it
gives such a direct brain-fog lifting effect and makes me poo good. Real good.
A must before international travel.

~~~
pinkfoot
Magnesium is also essential for peristalsis. :)

------
mathattack
Original article:
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6163803/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6163803/)

------
ecoled_ame
Probably cause there's a TON OF PEOPLE LIVING AND REPRODUCING. You can talk
about soil depletion all you want, but you're ignoring the true problem.

------
legohead
calcium and magnesium? that sounds familiar...the two main minerals that water
softeners remove. could this be related to water filtration/softening that
farmers may be using? (I don't know if they actually use filtration or not). I
imagine they'd want to use softeners, as it would increase the lifespan of
irrigation equipment.

------
enz
If you understand French, you can take a look at Claude and Lydia
Bourguignon’s work about soil health.

------
m0zg
Makes sense: we're getting like 5x the yields per area of land. Something has
to give.

------
amelius
Perhaps a silly question but doesn't a plant require all these minerals to
grow?

------
jonplackett
New health campaign message: remember to eat your 50 portions of fruit and veg
a day.

------
Axsuul
FYI: The iron within meat is much more bioavailable to your body

------
elmar
Well there are some that say that minerals on vegetables are not bio-available
for the human digestive system, so in the end doesn't make a lot of
difference.

~~~
dean177
This is nonsense. Perhaps you mean something like “less bio-available compared
to...”

~~~
elmar
I phrased it incorrectly, you are spot on "much less bio-available when
compared with animal products"

~~~
jacobwilliamroy
We feed plant products to our animal products. If the plants are not
nutritious, animal products become more expensive. I don't think animal
products will prevent wealthier people from being priced out of their
necessary nutrition.

~~~
jeremyw
It's better to think of the long-term cycle. Ruminants in regenerative
management, for instance, increase the richness of the soil over time. Whereas
it's very hard to do that with crops.

------
stefek99
Very interesting.

------
nategri
Can we not have LinkedIn links on HN

~~~
late2part
Why do you not want to have LinkedIn links on HN?

~~~
nategri
Clicking on a LinkedIn link evokes the same "unpredictable behavior"
paranoia/stress reaction as a url for a site that peddles game ROMs or guitar
tabs.

~~~
khawkins
Ever since I realized they will inform users directly of who's looking at
their profile my trust in the platform plummeted.

------
abledon
weak soil makes weak food makes weak humans

------
krumpet
Read The Omnivore's Dilemma. Do it now.

~~~
mnorton
not sure why this would get downvoted

~~~
CrazyStat
It's not very helpful. Why do we need to read it? Why now? How is it related
to this topic?

Those answers may be obvious to someone who's already read the book. To people
not familiar with the book it's a cryptic imperative.

~~~
krumpet
Ahhh, fair point.

The Omnivore's Dilemma zeros in on the diminishing quality of vegetables due
to some (not all) modern farming practices. I realize not everyone agrees with
Michael Pollan's viewpoints, but I believe the book forces the reader to
confront the food they are consuming, the system that helps deliver it to
their table, and the impact on the environment and the food itself.

~~~
CrazyStat
Thanks!

------
cryptopeeper
My chiropractor warned me about this. He said everyone is deficient in
vitamins and minerals because of our food. He suggested an extreme pill
popping routine, which was difficult to do. Does anyone agree with this
approach? I was taking so many vitamins it made me feel sick. I can't remember
the name of the routine, but I researched it online. I think it was used to
treat schizophrenia.

------
patientplatypus
As I said in a previous thread:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20799295](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20799295)

\---

*-4 points by patientplatypus 18 days ago | parent | favorite | on: The Next Recession Will Be About Sovereign Debt

The next recession will be caused by poor crop yields due to environmental
destruction. It will also cause famines and wars globally.

\---

We have maybe one or two years left, up to five maybe if we're lucky, until
the entire social system collapses. It will be dark and sad and scary.

I'm sorry you guys.

