The Invisible Force Making Food Less Nutritious (washingtonpost.com) 44
fjo3 shares a report from the Washington Post: Surging concentrations of carbon in the atmosphere, caused largely by burning fossil fuels, have produced potent changes in the way plants grow -- from increasing their sugar content to depleting essential nutrients like zinc. Experts fear the degradation of Earth's food supply will cause an epidemic of hidden hunger, in which even people who consume enough calories won't get the nutrients they need to thrive. "The diets we eat today have less nutritional density than what our grandparents ate, even if we eat exactly the same thing," said Kristie Ebi, a professor at the University of Washington's Center for Health and the Global Environment.
People in wealthy countries with strong health care systems will have many tools to cope with the change, experts said. But for the world's poorest and most vulnerable, the consequences could be devastating. One study concluded that by the middle of the century the phenomenon could put more than a billion additional women and children at risk of iron-deficiency anemia -- a condition that can cause pregnancy complications, developmental problems and even death. Meanwhile, some 2 billion people across the globe who already suffer from some form of nutrient shortage could see their health problems grow even worse. "The scale of the problem is huge," Ebi said.
Plants depend on carbon dioxide to perform photosynthesis -- but that doesn't mean they grow better when there's more carbon in the air, scientists say. A sweeping survey of changes among 32 compounds in 43 crops found that nearly every plant that humans eat is harmed by rising CO2 levels. [...] For the past several years, [Sterre F. ter Haar, an environmental scientist at Leiden University in the Netherlands and lead author of the survey] and her colleagues have worked to compile a database of all existing research on nutrient changes linked to rising CO2. They tracked down hundreds of studies, ranging from tightly controlled lab experiments to sprawling global analyses of real-world crops.
Next the team used their dataset to calculate the nutritional densities of each crop under different carbon dioxide levels -- and to predict how their composition could continue to shift in the future. On average, they found, nutrients have already decreased by an average 3.2 percent across all plants since the late 1980s, when the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was about 350 parts per million. That figure may seem small, ter Haar said, but with so much of the world already living on the brink of nutrient insufficiency, a drop of just a few percentage points has the potential to push millions of additional people into a health crisis. Researchers are still trying to understand the exact causes of this change. Extra CO2 can make plants grow faster and produce more carbohydrates, but without a matching increase in mineral uptake, nutrients like zinc, iron, and protein become diluted. Higher CO2 also causes plants to open their leaf pores less often, reducing the amount of water -- and dissolved minerals -- they absorb through their roots. At the same time, higher temperatures can further disrupt soil chemistry, affecting how plants take up nutrients and, in some cases, increasing their absorption of harmful substances like arsenic.
People in wealthy countries with strong health care systems will have many tools to cope with the change, experts said. But for the world's poorest and most vulnerable, the consequences could be devastating. One study concluded that by the middle of the century the phenomenon could put more than a billion additional women and children at risk of iron-deficiency anemia -- a condition that can cause pregnancy complications, developmental problems and even death. Meanwhile, some 2 billion people across the globe who already suffer from some form of nutrient shortage could see their health problems grow even worse. "The scale of the problem is huge," Ebi said.
Plants depend on carbon dioxide to perform photosynthesis -- but that doesn't mean they grow better when there's more carbon in the air, scientists say. A sweeping survey of changes among 32 compounds in 43 crops found that nearly every plant that humans eat is harmed by rising CO2 levels. [...] For the past several years, [Sterre F. ter Haar, an environmental scientist at Leiden University in the Netherlands and lead author of the survey] and her colleagues have worked to compile a database of all existing research on nutrient changes linked to rising CO2. They tracked down hundreds of studies, ranging from tightly controlled lab experiments to sprawling global analyses of real-world crops.
Next the team used their dataset to calculate the nutritional densities of each crop under different carbon dioxide levels -- and to predict how their composition could continue to shift in the future. On average, they found, nutrients have already decreased by an average 3.2 percent across all plants since the late 1980s, when the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was about 350 parts per million. That figure may seem small, ter Haar said, but with so much of the world already living on the brink of nutrient insufficiency, a drop of just a few percentage points has the potential to push millions of additional people into a health crisis. Researchers are still trying to understand the exact causes of this change. Extra CO2 can make plants grow faster and produce more carbohydrates, but without a matching increase in mineral uptake, nutrients like zinc, iron, and protein become diluted. Higher CO2 also causes plants to open their leaf pores less often, reducing the amount of water -- and dissolved minerals -- they absorb through their roots. At the same time, higher temperatures can further disrupt soil chemistry, affecting how plants take up nutrients and, in some cases, increasing their absorption of harmful substances like arsenic.
This is misdirection (Score:1, Informative)
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I'd like to ask what gives you the potent confidence to just go and voice easily debunakble falsehoods with literally nothing to back them up with?
You think that in the dozens of research articles done in last 30 years https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/a... [nih.gov] literally nobody thought of controlling for this, with like, I don't fucking know, fertilized substrate to test it on, which would entirely eliminate any effect of soil?
This has been reproduced in lab many times. CO2 richer atmosphere makes plants grow faster
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Researchers report that the CO2 levels expected in the second half of the 21st century will likely reduce the levels of zinc, iron, and protein in wheat, rice, peas, and soybeans. Some two billion people live in countries where citizens receive more than 60 per cent of their zinc or iron from these types of crops. Deficiencies of these nutrients already cause an estimated loss of 63 million life-years annually.
Also fuck you, I'm 100% pro GMO rice. I think at this point most major crops should be GMO.
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Oh, are you like an LLM agent that's making me do homework for some schoolchild or something? Cute. Sure, whatever.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/... [sciencedirect.com]
Specifically ran experiments with three specific, noted mixes of soil in containers, with the same soil used for both increased and baseline CO2 content.
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Oh, are you like an LLM agent that's making me do homework for some schoolchild or something? Cute. Sure, whatever.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/... [sciencedirect.com]
Specifically ran experiments with three specific, noted mixes of soil in containers, with the same soil used for both increased and baseline CO2 content.
Yes CO2 is definitely an issue in nutrient uptake. (I haven't finished the paper yet) So is soil depletion. This is not an either or situation as posters seem to be arguing.
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It's more likely that 'both' are relevant
Both are exactly relevant.
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I'd like to ask what gives you the potent confidence to just go and voice easily debunakble falsehoods with literally nothing to back them up with?
Papers:
https://www.jacn.org/are-food-... [jacn.org]
https://www.tandfonline.com/do... [tandfonline.com]
General articles:
https://climate.sustainability... [sustainabi...ectory.com] https://www.scientificamerican... [scientificamerican.com]
I take it you have the scientific papers debunking this? It is interesting the claim that no nutrients are removed from soils by growing things in them. Even if fertilizers are used, fertilizers do not have the identical characteristics of the entire soil composition in any area, they are there to provide for rapid growth, replacing some of t
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[citation required]
Here you go:
Soil Health and Nutrient Density [frontiersin.org]
Improvement of nutritional quality of food crops with fertilizer: a global meta-analysis [springer.com]
Re: This is misdirection (Score:3)
Why not both?
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The real reason food is less nutritious is soil exhaustion from commercial farming, not CO2.
One cannot use the term misdirection, without including Monstanto.
Let's stop pretending this is a 'simple' problem. If it were, the Amish would have solved it for us long ago. And we would have fucking learned.
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Oh look, another denialist trying to sidetrack a pretty verifiable statement of fact.
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People have been working on identifying this problem for 3 decades.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m... [nih.gov]
https://elifesciences.org/arti... [elifesciences.org]
https://www.politico.com/agend... [politico.com]
Yes, our fields are basically growing hydroponics now, but even when grown in healthy soils, you'll grow junkier food than a century ago. Both are a problem, it compounds into mass silent malnutrition.
Re: This is misdirection (Score:3)
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Of all the possible reasons why some are starving (Score:4, Insightful)
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What about "but with so much of the world already living on the brink of nutrient insufficiency, a drop of just a few percentage points has the potential to push millions of additional people into a health crisis. "
can you fail to understand? Your tomato and strawberry anecdote is just that, an anecdote. Only an American would think your example was telling: after all, if it happens in America, it must be happening everywhere with the same proportionate consequences. And how do you know that taste indicates
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These people are much more likely going to starve because of drought, or because excessive heat brings crops to their limits. In other words: less food is going to be produced, if large areas around the equator become infertile. Compared to this the almost nonsensical "research" of nutrient free tomatoes feels like rearranging deck chairs on an already sinking Titanic.
And yet suburbs continue to expand (Score:1)
People are addicted to their single family detached housing, big houses, big yards, big streets, big heating and cooling demands, big suvs with big fuel tanks driving big miles to big stores and emitting big levels of co2 making bigger vegetables but smaller nutrition. God bless America, who leads the way.
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Japan?
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No problem. (Score:2)
If we figure out we're missing something important, we can just get our government to put it in our toothpaste. That shouldn't bother anybody..
Serious question (Score:2)
Are underfed people primarily short of calories, trace elements, vitamins, protein, fiber or what? Whatever the answer is, concentrate on that. This study ignores the actual issue and waah waahs on about dilution.
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Whatever the answer is, concentrate on that.
We have more than enough people to address multiple issues at once, if only people like you didn't need everything so simplified for them that they argue against addressing them because it's confusing.
Invisible Force, eh? (Score:2)
The Invisible Force Making Food Less Nutritious
If anyone mentioned midi-chlorians, I'm going to vomit.
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Don't you mean Bwandi-chlorians? Stardiocrawars !
A long time ago in a galaxy dumbed down for television...
Invisible Force? (Score:2)
All forces are invisible.
(There are 4 of them. The Strong, The Weak, The Electromagnetic and Gravity)
So Easy to Solve, What's the Big Deal? (Score:2)