Ever pigged out on some junk food and felt full-to-bursting only to be starving an hour later? Junk food is great for filling you up in volume but not so great with nutrition. Usually the nutrition-density is so low that your body realises it hasn’t received the macro and micronutrients it needs and you end up feeling hungry soon after.
What’s concerning is that it’s not just the nutritional value of junk food we need to worry about, but also the declining nutritional value of our wholefoods. This is a controversial topic, but there is an increasing body of research that points to a decline.
We know that eating more vegetables is healthy, but how has the nutrition in our vegetables changed over time?
While we were doing our own research on the macronutrients in broccoli to compare with our Pereskia Powder, we found some interestingly stark differences in 2 samples of raw broccoli grown 35 years apart. Food Standards Australia and New Zealand (FSANZ) reported the macronutrients of broccoli samples from 1982 while the US Food and Nutrient Database for Dietary Studies (FNDDS) used broccoli in more recent studies conducted between 2017-2018. You can see in the table below that the protein, carbohydrate and sugar levels are quite different between the 2 samples. Could it just be the difference in soil and growing conditions between North America and Australia, or could this point to deeper issues with our current food supply?
We were surprised to find that broccoli samples from 1982 appeared significantly more nutritious than from this century.
One of the most cited papers on the potential decline in nutrition of foods is from Donald R. Davis, who studied the US Department of Agriculture’s data for 43 crops of fruit and vegetables from 1950 to 1999. From this research he concludes that
“any real declines are generally most easily explained by changes in cultivated varieties between 1950 and 1999, in which there may be trade-offs between yield and nutrient content.”
Davis found from analysing the data that there were statistically reliable declines in protein, calcium, potassium, iron and vitamins B and C, and that there is an inverse relationship between crop yield and mineral concentrations. In further studies by Davis, looking at vegetables not just in the US but also in the UK, the decline is as low as 5% and as high as 40%. In fact, “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". So perhaps our own broccoli findings are a reflection of changes in broccoli cultivars grown over the decades.
How do we feed our growing population?
We’ve mentioned in a previous article the growing concern, also one of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, on how to feed our forecasted population of 10 billion people by 2050. These studies indicate that maintaining agriculture systems which today rely on plant cultivars bred specifically for higher yield may provide the volume but with diluted nutrition - sounds a bit like junk food?
There has been increasing consumer concerns with GMO crops, which have been modified for productivity but not necessarily for nutrition.
Professors Peter Shewry, Botanist, and Steve McGrath, Soil and Plant Scientist and Head of Sustainable Agriculture Sciences at Rothamsted Research, are convinced that it is the new plant cultivars, bred for their high yield, which has in fact resulted in what is known as “yield dilution”. New cultivars of wheat, for example, that produce bigger and more grain also have more starch which in turn dilutes the other nutrients, such as minerals in the grain.
“What we need is a system where farmers should be paid for nutrient yield rather than just mass.” — Steve McGrath”
This yield dilution has prompted some concerns that we need to eat double or larger quantities to obtain the recommended dietary intake of minerals and vitamins, also known as micronutrients. However, recent studies have shown this is not necessarily the case. In fact in many developed countries food portion sizes have grown large enough to compensate for whatever reduction in micronutrients has occurred over the decades.
The impact of modern agriculture on food
Our modern food-agriculture system has been set up for quantity rather than quality, where farmers are paid for yield and the visual aesthetics of produce, rather than nutritional value. This somewhat forces the choice to use high yield cultivars and liberal application of pesticides. Unfortunately, the resulting loss in minerals and other nutrients has simultaneously reduced the flavour and taste of vegetables and fruit.
What is the true taste of really nutrient dense foods?
Humans have long preferred the taste of something sweet over sour or bitter. Some of this is evolutionary where many poisonous plant compounds are bitter in taste and we developed our taste systems to avoid them. So it’s not surprising that when our ancestors first started planting seeds and crops they would have naturally selected seeds from the sweeter tasting and juicer plants.
However, this also meant that they were unwittingly selecting out the astringent tasting, but nutritionally beneficial phytonutrients found in the wild cultivars. Nutritionist and Naturopath, Stacey Curcio calls these phytonutrients, also known as phytochemicals, “nutritional rock stars”, because they can aid in preventing a variety of diseases from reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis to neurodegenerative diseases.
The impact of soil health on our food
Curcio, amongst many others, also cite the health of our soils as a significant contributor to the nutrient-density of our wholefoods. Modern large scale agriculture has been well documented to have stripped the soil of its nutrients. So, not only are the high yield cultivars unable to absorb equal amounts of nutrition to match its accelerated growth rate, the ground from which it grows isn’t able to offer as much nutrition as it did 50 years ago.
The trend for organic foods seems to be here to stay.
Enter organic and biodynamic foods which have become popular with health-conscious consumers. For growers, regenerative agriculture is the equivalent for healthy farms, and has become a solution to help regenerate farmlands and soil. Ironically, before the advent of modern agriculture, the methods for farming were in fact organic and regenerative. We didn’t yet have the technology to make synthetic fertilisers and pesticides and could only use naturally made solutions. Similarly, without large scale machinery and genetically modified cultivars, regenerative farming relied on multiple crops that could be cycled and rotated across the seasons to provide sufficient produce throughout the year.
In our next blog we take a look at regenerative farming and what it means for our food and agriculture systems.
Our mission, as The Leaf Protein Company, is to unlock Earth’s most abundant and sustainable source of protein: green leaves. We’re passionate about this because our current agrifood system is responsible for 25% of all human generated greenhouse gas emissions. So we feel the urgency to act now to change our food systems in order to help fight climate change. Find out more about our Pereskia Protein Concentrate and its food applications on our website.
Professors Peter Shewry, Botanist, and Steve McGrath, Soil and Plant Scientist and Head of Sustainable Agriculture Sciences at Rothamsted Research, are convinced that it is the new plant cultivars, bred for their high yield, which has in fact resulted in what is known as “yield dilution”. New cultivars of wheat, for example, that produce bigger and more grain also have more starch which in turn dilutes the other nutrients, such as minerals in the grain.
“What we need is a system where farmers should be paid for nutrient yield rather than just mass.” Steve McGrath
This yield dilution has prompted some concerns that we need to eat double or larger quantities to obtain the recommended dietary intake of minerals and vitamins, also known as micronutrients. However, recent studies have shown this is not necessarily the case. In fact in many developed countries food portion sizes have grown large enough to compensate for whatever reduction in micronutrients has occurred over the decades.
The impact of modern agriculture on food
Our modern food-agriculture system has been set up for quantity rather than quality, where farmers are paid for yield and the visual aesthetics of produce, rather than nutritional value. This somewhat forces the choice to use high yield cultivars and liberal application of pesticides. Unfortunately, the resulting loss in minerals and other nutrients has simultaneously reduced the flavour and taste of vegetables and fruit.
What is the true taste of really nutrient dense foods?
Humans have long preferred the taste of something sweet over sour or bitter. Some of this is evolutionary where many poisonous plant compounds are bitter in taste and we developed our taste systems to avoid them. So it’s not surprising that when our ancestors first started planting seeds and crops they would have naturally selected seeds from the sweeter tasting and juicer plants.
However, this also meant that they were unwittingly selecting out the astringent tasting, but nutritionally beneficial phytonutrients found in the wild cultivars. Nutritionist and Naturopath, Stacey Curcio calls these phytonutrients, also known as phytochemicals, “nutritional rock stars”, because they can aid in preventing a variety of diseases from reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis to neurodegenerative diseases.
The impact of soil health on our food
Curcio, amongst many others, also cite the health of our soils as a significant contributor to the nutrient-density of our wholefoods. Modern large scale agriculture has been well documented to have stripped the soil of its nutrients. So, not only are the high yield cultivars unable to absorb equal amounts of nutrition to match its accelerated growth rate, the ground from which it grows isn’t able to offer as much nutrition as it did 50 years ago.
Enter organic and biodynamic foods which have become popular with health-conscious consumers. For growers, regenerative agriculture is the equivalent for healthy farms, and has become a solution to help regenerate farmlands and soil. Ironically, before the advent of modern agriculture, the methods for farming were in fact organic and regenerative. We didn’t yet have the technology to make synthetic fertilisers and pesticides and could only use naturally made solutions. Similarly, without large scale machinery and genetically modified cultivars, regenerative farming relied on multiple crops that could be cycled and rotated across the seasons to provide sufficient produce throughout the year.
In our next blog we take a look at regenerative farming and what it means for our food and agriculture systems.
Our mission, as The Leaf Protein Company, is to unlock Earth’s most abundant and sustainable source of protein: green leaves. We’re passionate about this because our current agrifood system is responsible for 25% of all human generated greenhouse gas emissions. So we feel the urgency to act now to change our food systems in order to help fight climate change. Find out more about our Pereskia Protein Concentrate and its food applications on our website.