This is The Telegraph, so apologies for the weird choice on percent and other style quirks.
The nutritional value of fruit and vegetables has fallen by up to 50pc since the Sixties because of declining soil quality, according to a new study.
The report, from researchers at Deep Science Ventures, found that humans needed to consume twice the number of vegetables to get the same level of minerals such as potassium, magnesium or copper as would have been present in their food 60 years ago.
The study found that many crops had lost 20pc to 50pc of several key nutrients.
Will Summers, a senior associate at the firm, said: "For 60 years we’ve measured food security in calories and tonnes per hectare.
“On those measures we’ve done remarkably well. But we’ve been quietly hollowing out what’s inside our food.”
The decrease in nutrient and vitamin value is thought to be down to declining soil quality and crops being selectively bred for their ability to grow quickly, rather than there being any focus on their health benefits.
The effect will be particularly acute for the 14pc of Britons who identify as vegetarian or vegan.
A yahoo News copy of a UK tabloid citing a venture capital firm.
Read or don’t read. You’re not adding anything to the conversation by demanding a different source. If you want to dig one up and share it, by all means!
Here is the original report:
The source is a company investing in, among others, sustainable agriculture, so some bias. I’ve also not read the actual report yet. That said, their summary raises an interesting point about the relationship with being overweight.
A carrot with half the potassium means eating twice as many carrots to get the same benefit. In countries like the UK, this decline is partly masked by eating more
Could soil degradation be a factor in the obesity epidemic? Interesting thought.
but that buffer is shrinking. GLP-1 weight-loss drugs are projected to reach over 100 million users in higher-income countries by 2030 and reduce food intake by 16 to 39%, while rising CO2 and degraded soils threaten to push nutrient levels down further.
Together, these pressures could leave around 5 million UK working-age adults below safe levels of essential vitamins and minerals.
Not sure why they’re only reporting numbers for working age adults. Anyway, 5m is approx. 11% of the population aged 15-64 (thanks Wikipedia).
Does this mean people should brace for a dust bowl at a global scale?
I hate to be that person, but…yes. Yes you should. Hubris got us on the precipice again. Loosing nutrients is a massive problem. As the article lays it out, our food is basically turning to useless shit. That’s a big issue. But it’s one issue on top of another one that’s looming just over the horizon. Tipping points. Mainly around fungus, disease, and insects. If you want to get a picture of what that looks like, you need to look at two crops. Oranges in Florida. Coffee (Arabica specifically) almost anywhere. I’ll use coffee because it’s what I know.
Coffee is a gentle plant. It likes a bit of sun, but not too much. Decent soil, not too acidic not to alkaline. A good temperature and humidity range. It does not like disruptions and does not fair well in events that push past it’s tolerances. At the moment, every tolerance is being pushed back. As climate changes raise ambient temperatures, does weird stuff to humidity, and we fail to take care of the soil, coffee is getting hit hard. What’s interesting is that it’s normal enemies, coffee borer beetle and coffee leaf rust, are climbing to higher and higher altitudes. New diseases and insects are getting to it when they never did before. And the specialty coffee industry is talking about loosing Arabica as a viable commercial product within 50 years.
That’s what we are looking at.
With Oranges in Florida, the state literally paved over their orange groves to put in gated communities, shopping plazas anchored by a Publix, and a sprawling entertainment ecosystem on citrus land. The growth in Florida since WDW went in is mind boggling and absolutely devoid of anything than be called “sustainable growth” let alone sane growth. Anyways, I digress. Early 2000s and things are getting wonky with weather already. Florida Citrus is not what it used to be as land gets sold and younger generations show no interest in carrying on the family tradition. So it’s already in trouble. Then a nasty disease Huanglongbing (yes, a disease bacteria associated with the presence of a proteobacteria, see my response below) wrecked it into oblivion. 95% decrease in yields since it showed up in the early 2000s. The story is incredible. Here’s a podcast from NPR about it. https://www.npr.org/2026/05/10/nx-s1-5771748/florida-farmers-struggle-to-adapt-as-disease-and-climate-take-toll-on-citrus-industry
But that’s what I think we’re going to see happen across agriculture. One tipping point too many and poof. A whole crop gone. It’ll be a slower burn than the dustbowl. But it’s coming.
HLB is a virus, not a bacterium.
You’re incorrect. It was thought to be a virus. It is not. You can reference studies as early as 2021 referring to the change in understanding.
“The disease is associated with the presence of the phloem-limited α-proteobacteria ‘Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus’, ‘africanus’, and ‘americanus’. The Asian Citrus Psyllid (ACP)”
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/plant-science/articles/10.3389/fpls.2022.1009350/full
https://cisr.ucr.edu/invasive-species/huanglongbing-hlb-or-citrus-greening
There was also Brazil dumping oranges, then buying up all the processing equipment. So now so much Florida orange juice is 80% Brazilian, people don’t realize how fucked the ecosystem is.
Meanwhile the sugarcane plantations are happily dumping endless fertilizer into the canals.
I haven’t been to South Florida in awhile, how are the estuaries? Way back when I was sensing something bad happening as tarpon and snook were getting caught at beaches instead of tidal pools and canals, my theory being there was so much crap being dumped by the farms upstream, or the tidal marshes got so hypoxic they didn’t have any food.
Sadly, I do not know about the estuaries current state. There’s a link below, but I’d have to ask someone in the know to comment. I surmise the state of ecological and environmental research in Florida is less than ideal, putting it mildly, at the moment.
sounds like that movie “Interstellar “.
Incompetent farming policy has consequences
Farmers: “I make $100/unit of these really nice apples.”
Farmer: “If I [enshittifiy] my apples I can grow and sell twice as many!”
Farmer: “I’m now only making $50/unit, consumers are ripping me off”
Who was that guy who used to post hella soil memes? I hope he’s doing well…
Considering this is posted in science, doesn’t it seem like some key information is missing from the article?
Is there anything suggesting that there os a public health issue of people in developed nations not getting enough magnesium, copper, and potassium? The vegetables have less, but is that resulting in a problem?
Soil. Find out about soil.
Soil & fertilizers contribute a lot, but the new vegetable & fruit varieties are also having a huge impact.
You might want to check out David Montgomery’s Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations.
I find it so annoying, too, how you can’t really sidestep that as a consumer.
I do make the assumption that if it doesn’t taste like a water balloon, it’s probably at least somewhat nutritious. But even if I go to the weekly town market, it just feels like I’m opening premium lootboxes.
The veggies are more likely to not be water balloons, but market stalls will often sell produce from multiple farmers and partially even import it, so you still end up with water balloons quite frequently…
Take a multivitamin for the nutrients. The main point in eating fruits and vegetables is for fiber, anyway.
Edit: I don’t mean to downplay the situation, I’m just pointing out a solution.
Vitamin supplements aren’t an optimal way of getting micronutrients. Many of them don’t come in a particularly bioavailable form. And some of them interfere with the absorption of others, making a multivitamin in particular not an ideal solution.
Yep , its mostly a billion dollar scam for supplements. Health and Beauty is very scammy virually no science at all.
I don’t disagree, but there’s absolutely no way I can afford to get all my micronutrients from food. Multivitamins are a viable solution to this issue. The ones I take are Kirkland whole food vitamins, which are supposed to have higher bioavailability. And Kirkland is one of the only brands I actually trust.
I don’t know you, so I can’t know your life situation, but in the places where I’ve lived, you can absolutely get the vitamins and minerals that you need from a proper balanced diet. And multivitamins in particular, especially ones containing iron and calcium, which interfere with the absorption of other micronutrients, are not a viable solution to a deficient diet.
https://www.costco.com/p/-/kirkland-signature-usda-organic-multivitamin-80-coated-tablets/100458954
Looks like the calcium and iron are about one percent of your daily needs, so maybe they’re aware of this issue. I stick to whole food vitamins because they’re supposed to be easier for the body to utilize. You could be right about multivitamins, but these are affordable enough so that I can keep taking them just in case my body is able to utilize the micronutrients.
I usually buy a few bottles when they’re on sale. $20 for 80 pills is an amazing deal.
Edit: 1% daily needs of calcium and 8% iron. It doesn’t matter that there’s no magnesium because I eat a lot of chia seeds.
Agreed. Also, multivitamin production is not regulated. I believe there is quite a lot of evidence showing that the product quantities are often very different to what is stated on the label.
The first time I started tracking my calories I also started having a better idea what has what nutrients and how much. Aside from dark leafy greens having SOME nutrients, all other vegetables you would have to eat 10x of what one usually would to get any significant amount of nutrients from them.
The only one that you could reasonably get from veggies/fruits alone is Vitamin C (which is easy to get anxways), and partially Vitamin A.
I enjoy vegetables, it’s just a shame they’re mostly water and fiber with not much else.
I agree, and find the downvotes on my comment amusing. Fresh produce is vital to being healthy, but not because of micronutrients. It’s the fiber, which most people don’t get enough of. Also, getting all your magnesium from dark leafy greens is incredibly expensive if you’re buying fresh greens. It’s not exactly a viable method for most people.
I wonder if people were able to get all their micronutrients from produce in the past, before we did this to the soil.
I would guess people would live with the deficiencies and just cope however they could.
