The Invisible Force Making Food Less Nutritious (washingtonpost.com) 153
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, Troll)
Re:This is misdirection (Score:4, Informative)
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 than plants in CO2 poorer atmosphere. They also absorb and retain fewer nutrients in the process, and you end up with plants with less micronutrients per unit of mass (and per joule of energy in starches and whatnot, which form fine).
Please, read about things you wanna talk about, or shut, the fuck, up!
Re:This is misdirection (Score:4, Interesting)
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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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The OP's claim is that soil depletion is "the real reason", not "a reason".
Re:This is misdirection (Score:4, Insightful)
The OP's claim is that soil depletion is "the real reason", not "a reason".
I find your comment a difference without distinction. One does not address a problem with a monovariant. If we wish food to return to previous levels of nutrition, we address all of the reasons. If you are going to debunk, you debunk - not declare soil depletion as irrelevant. Now the next question becomes, will vegetables return to previous levels if we only return CO2 levels to 1750 ( the beginning of industrial era radiative forcing via increased CO2 in the atmosphere?
If you were to make a presentation on decreased levels of nutrients in food crops, and only use CO2 levels, there's your monovariant, and you will be taken to task for it. Don't like it? Use thoughts and prayers.
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So you're using motivated reasoning to support a climate change denier ally.
The original moron sinij claimed it wasn't CO2. You just proved it was. But you are claiming to agree with him anyway...
Serioiu8sly, WTH is the matter with you. The energy retention characteristics of an atmosphere are directly affected by the composition of that atmosphere.
If you do not believe that, you deny physics. It is a fact, demonstrated every year in 5th grade science fairs. People who deny that fact might as well believe in a flat earth.
You have a most fascinating idea of any science denier being my ally.
Soil degradation affects the nutrition of the comestibles grown in it. If you wish to deny that come up
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pretty sure if you posted about this on WUWT you'd get a ton of rebuttals.
not saying i'd agree with them
Re:This is misdirection (Score:4, Insightful)
Why this person is confident is really simple: "The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt." (Bertrand Russel, ca. 1880)
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Why this person is confident is really simple: "The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt." (Bertrand Russel, ca. 1880)
So we should apply this maxim whenever we see someone parroting "The science is settled" declaration about climate change?
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Obvious answer: Dunning-Kruger Effect (Score:2)
See Subject. Then checked to see if the answer appeared anywhere in the "ripe" discussion. Nada.
Now to check for Funny. Expecting another nada.
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Did you come home from work and find Iran banging your wife or something?
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Iran isn't causing "global famine" hasbara dumbfuck, the stupid war of your boss nazinyahu is.
Did you say "Thank you"? I didn't hear you.
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Why wasn't Iran enriching uranium before your government started murdering people there back in 2020?
Iran never stopped enriching uranium. You need to look up some facts before you reply again.
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they still aren't getting the nukes they so desperately want
If they've been persuasive enough, then Pakistan has already given them a nuke.
Remember, the things that are persuasive to you are not persuasive to Pakistan, because Iran and Pakistan are the same religion.
Re:This is misdirection (Score:5, Informative)
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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Good news, they are. Not most, all. Pretty much all of the minor ones too. People just like to get uptight over the method used to do it. Precise engineering bad. Generations of irradiation and culling the monsters, good.
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That statement is not only abysmally stupid, it is _uneducated_. Because iron-deficiency anemia is not "hypothetical" at all and it is a severe problem on the level of not having enough to eat.
Re:This is misdirection (Score:5, Insightful)
Yet another example of whataboutism. [britannica.com]" Saying "X may be a problem" does not imply "no other problems exist, we should look at X and nothing but X".
There's another whataboutism fallacy here, accusing the person posting as having a particular opinion on a completely different issue ("And the ban of golden rice people like you supported.") What does the phrase "people like you" even mean? People posting about agriculture on slashdot that include links to NIH?
Re:This is misdirection (Score:5, Informative)
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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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Re:This is misdirection (Score:4, Informative)
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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Re:This is misdirection (Score:4, Insightful)
Because he's right. Per the study you cited, increased CO2 levels seemed to cause 5-6% nutrient reduction in crops versus a measured 12% due to soil depletion.
In theory, proper soil enrichment could negate both soil depletion and the effects of increased atmospheric CO2.
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The tactic of calling something, without providing any evidence to support your claim
He literally posted a peer review link. Don't injure yourself, if you end up at the doctors they may just declare you braindead and write out your death certificate.
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[citation required]
I know you (based on your past comments) really don't want there to be any anthropogenic climate change, but just wishing it away won't wash.
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From Improvement of nutritional quality of food crops with fertilizer: a global meta-analysis [springer.com]
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In my opinion if we didn't have commercial farming, more people would already be starving.
Please start using citations that actually proved your point, thanks.
Re: This is misdirection (Score:3)
Why not both?
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Obviously, it will be both. But that idea exceeds the complexity some people can handle.
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Re: This is misdirection (Score:2)
Is it? What if the person committed suicide because they have cancer? Not so black and white, they wouldn't have committed suicide had they not got cancer.
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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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Basically no real problem is simple these days, because basically all things that are simple to fix have been fixed. But there is a ton of people that cannot deal with complexity and uncertainty. Hence these idiots push that anything is simple because otherwise they would be found shivering in the corner, completely locked up. Obviously, these people have no place in any discussion of actual problems.
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Oh look, another denialist trying to sidetrack a pretty verifiable statement of fact.
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Textbook example of projection.
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CO2 has the properties it has, and trying to shift or deny that is a sign of either a liar or an idiot.
I'll let others decide what you are.
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My money is on both. The common idiot (and we seem to be dealing with one of those here) thinks that lying about things changes reality. And hence these people try to use lies as a tool to solve problems. Obviously, all that does is make the problems worse.
Re:This is misdirection (Score:5, Informative)
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:4, Interesting)
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Minerals mostly. Plants make their own vitamins.
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Easily tested hypothesis --->. Objectively, much more food is grown and consumed today relative to 1980. Soil element are probably distributed about the same. More CO2 and more H2O leads to more carbohydrate which is the structure of the plant. The amount of soil elements (Ca++, Fe++ etc.) stay about the same, so one see a "dilution" in the resulting crop when looking at amount of nutrient vs. mass of crop.
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The real reason food is less nutritious is soil exhaustion from commercial farming, not CO2.
It's certainly a plausible hypothesis. I'd have to read the original article to see whether they considered this.
I'm pretty sure part of commercial farming was selectively breeding crops to make them sweeter because that sells better. The last 60 years have also seen tremendous increases in crop intensity so it's entirely plausible there are fewer minerals left in the soil. Or that plans bred to grow more food per acre just have less energy available to incorporate minerals.
These all seem plausible to me an
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And in actual reality, effects and causes are usually multiple ones not one simple (or rather simplistic) thing. I get that your mind cannot deal with that level of complexity. That is probably also why you think you are smarter than a lot of scientists that have looked at problems for decades.
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This.
Growing plants is all about providing a balance of nutrients. Anyone who has ever checked out the N-P-K rating of lawn fertalizer knows this. You can dump as much CO2 on a plant and it will do little good beyond a point.
Shame you got modded down so harshly for a valid point. But this was supposed to be a "CO2 Bad, mkay?" thread.
Of all the possible reasons why some are starving (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Of all the possible reasons why some are starvi (Score:5, Insightful)
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 nourishment potential. What kind of *science* degree do you have that makes you believe such a thing?
And the article precis never claimed it was the primary reason people were undernourished, just the decreasing their nourishment is bad thing.
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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.
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The interventions are worse than the supposed 'problem'.
You're thinking is too one-dimensional (Score:2)
I'm not saying that you're wrong that wars are the more immediate problem but you don't get rid of wars without feeding children while they're growing up and making sure they're not exposed to chemicals that fuck them up as they become adults
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Starvation and famine might lead to a war. My tomato having less nutrients is a hidden affect most people won't notice as log as they are sated. It's a gradual onset of of a problem that no one notices until they are diabetic down the road.
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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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.
If American addiction is now leading CO2 emissions, then perhaps you can explain what Chinese addiction is doing to challenge that claim. By a considerable margin.
https://www.worldometers.info/... [worldometers.info]
One country out of 195 recognized countries on the planet is now responsible for one third of global CO2 emissions. If America became the green utopia progressives dream about, it would amount to pissing in the pool in the big picture.
And remember, kids. It's ONE atmosphere. Per capita arguments are as poi
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The US emits two million times as much CO2 as the Faroe Islands. Arguing that China emits six million times as much and they're the problem is kind of silly.
Unless there's another factor we should consider....
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The US emits two million times as much CO2 as the Faroe Islands. Arguing that China emits six million times as much and they're the problem is kind of silly.
The guy coming at you with a pocket knife is a threat, but you think it's somehow 'silly' to worry less about the one coming at you armed with a sword? Make it make sense.
You know what is truly silly? Trying to claim America is somehow the mostest guilty by only measuring CO2 impact since the 1800s when China invented mining and burning coal over five thousand years ago. As I said before, be careful when insisting we march the guilty down some climate reparation road. You start applying those rules and
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That is quite the confusing collection of, uh, text.
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Japan?
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No problem. (Score:3)
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.
Re:Serious question (Score:5, Insightful)
Obviously. But we also have a large number of people that cannot deal with any level of complexity beyond "simple problem" -> "simple fix!".
The reality is there are no simple problems with simple fixes left. They have been solved. Everything we are dealing with now is complex. And that means that of 1000 ways to deal with something, 990 will only make things worse. But that is already a complex idea, and hence not accessible to those people.
Incidentally, that is why populist assholes are on the raise globally. They push the simple ideas with the simple fixes and tell people that all others (that actually try to deal with the complexity) are doing it wrong. And the simple minds find themselves comforted and vote for them. This universally has disastrous consequence. It has not worked one single time in human history because it cannot work. But learning from history is also a complex thing, and hence the cycle of self-inflicted decay continues.
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)
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You forgot the recognized strongest of them all: Stupidity.
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All the other fundamental fields are invisible too, so I guess everything is invisible!
So Easy to Solve, What's the Big Deal? (Score:4, Funny)
Mountain out of a molehill (Score:2)
we have been breeding agricultural plants for higher carbon concentrations, at the expense of everything else in the plant, since the dawn of human domestication of plants. This. Is. Not. New. And as such, should not be scary or cause for alarm.
to the extent that global CO2 levels are adding to the normal trend of breeding pants for higher yields, itâ(TM)s is likely to be the least significant way in which global CO
another thing to consider (Score:2)
AKSUALLY, (Score:2)
It's demonic forces corrupting your cheerios. News at 11.
Where at least I'm gluten free (Score:2)
ignore (Score:2)
mod reversal
Something I have wondered for years (Score:4, Interesting)
Keep in mind I've never had a doctor tell me I need to hit them but it seems basically impossible based on the nutrition information available for anything except vitamin c. Like I would have to eat eight bananas a Day to get to the USDA potassium recommendation.
I guess the argument is that you don't just eat bananas but go try to find a wide variety of foods that have a lot of potassium and can get you to that number. And then try to do that for every single USDA recommended vitamin.
The one thing that annoys me is that literally no one will explain to me why the USDA recommendations are set so high. I mean I suspect it's just the food industry putting their thumb on the scale again to get more sales. But that's not anything I can prove.
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Watermelons are a good source, and yummy. Radishes and spinach as well, and they make for a good salad. Also, potatoes. If you like Avocados, those are a great source.
Besides bananas are radioactive and produce antimatter. They're yellow bombs just waiting to go off!
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Those numbers are supposed to be the minimum you need to not start developing symptoms that show you have a lack of that nutrient while following the standard diet at the time those studies were made. I hear more people complaining that they're too low rather than too high. They don't take into account digestibility. You're not getting 100% of what's listed on food labels, especially if you're eating a lot of fiber or have stomach acid issues (do you burp a lot?).
The general advice is to eat a wide range
If only we had a way to fix this (Score:3, Interesting)
If only we had technology that would allow us to breed crops that could eradicate micronutrient deficiency and prevent its resultant illnesses and deaths.
Oh, wait, we do, but neo-Luddies who want everyone to live in a state of impoverishment and suffering don't want us to use it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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The people who extrapolate from limited data.. (Score:2)
TLDR (Score:2)
I have seen this reported on previously. It is a known issue... but stated really poorly here.
So the TLDR:
More CO2 in the atmosphere causes plants to grow a larger structure. It does not alter the amount of nutrients (vitamins, minerals) per plant. Resulting in more volume of edible material with a lower concentration of nutrients.
More calories with lower nutrient value is an unhealthy diet.
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Not if those more calories are fiber calories.
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all the fiber in the world wont keep you from developing (for example) scurvy.
push (Score:2)
Push, push, push the narrative.
Utter nonsense (Score:2)
Pumpernickel (Score:2)
The answer is simple: Trade all this French bakery nonsense for some good ol' Westphalia Pumpernickel. You don't want fluffy, soft weak bread that dries out in a day, you want the dense, chewy, moist, did I say dense, almost black Pumpernickel bricks made of only coarse ground rye and a 400-year old sourdough culture, baked in a sealed container for 20 hours at 240 degrees. It won't dry out, won't mold and keeps on a shelf for 3-4 months.