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.
Both parent and grandparent are saying something important here. Mineral availability from the microbiome via root interactions is critical. But throw nitrogen at a plant and it will rapidly grow utilizing CO2, O2 and water, leaving a mineral deficient plant. And that is true in any soil. Also, modern plants have been selected to be large and tender, which tends to be inversely coorelated to mineral density. So it's been a perfect storm against.
That's right! They throw on Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium, but they do not add the other 14 elements, which yes, carbon, hydrogen and oxygen come from CO2 and H2O. But they also need iron, cobalt, selenium and others:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_nutrition
Are nutritional supplements a sufficient solution for the full 17(?) in the meantime?
I've heard many people say they get their nutrients from eating enough vegetables where the don't need any pills or vitamins. I'm curious how true this is as the internet doesn't offer much clarity.
Not to mention the always vague scientific literature about multivitamins and other supplementations. Or the extremes like Ray Kurizwel who take hundreds of supplements "just in case".
If agriculture doesn't provide us with any realistic solutions in the near term this may still be a worthy area for future innovation to deliver legitimately useful supplementation, minus the snake oil. But I fear that is too optimistic of a goal vs the current state of things, where there's already an over supply of people offering 'solutions' merely exploiting the never ending pool of shame hyped up over mass consumption, not only in western culture but even more so in the new eastern entrants to middle classdom.
The funny thing is that current advice is that nutrition supplements aren’t necessary. I finally got around to taking a “one a day” pill every day, but stopped when I read in the “American College of Sports Medicine’s Complete Guide to Fitness and Health (2nd Ed)”:
“If you are thinking about taking a multivitamin–mineral supplement, you should analyze your diet first to assess if a supplement is required. The best way to obtain nutrients is through whole foods (e.g., fruits, vegetables, whole grains; foods that are not processed). ... If you do decide to take a multivitamin–mineral supplement, consider taking it every other day to enhance your ability to digest and absorb it and to save money” (chapter 3).
The supplements-aren't-necessary-advice is often the lawerly "you don't need supplements if you're not malnourished" or "if you're getting a balanced diet."
Left unsaid is my takeaway: modern agriculture has damaged our food supply to the point where a nourishing and balanced diet isn't readily available in the produce section of your local supermarket. If you're eating stunted frankenfood, you need to supplement, because you're malnourished from eating an unbalanced diet.
I did a blind trial on myself by getting liquid multivitamin (bargain large European superstore brand, powdered), and creating a sequence of vitamin or placebo based on a pseudorandom hash function to take every day with breakfast in drink. The sequence is prepared a month ahead so I don't know on any specific day what I'm getting.
I also record my mood and excercise at some time most days with a survey.
After 2 years, I saw a significant decrease in general happiness on days I took the multivitamin, and a lesser (not p<0.01) effect the following day. I was less likely to leave the house, and less likely to plan a social activity on those days.
I've now stopped taking the multivitamin for that reason.
I'd still like to know if I have stumbled on a p<0.01 fluke, or if I'm unique somehow, if the multivitamins have a negative short term but positive long term effect, if these particular multivitamins are harming me somehow, or if all multivitamins have this issue.
Life isn't long enough for me to find out, but if anyone else is happy to take on a bigger trial, results could be interesting.
I am also worried they put toxic doses of vitamins and minerals. My hair supplement used to contain 10000 micrograms of biotin and caused acne. Other supplements put 100 micrograms. Melatonin doses also vary too wildly, like 4x. They seem to be concerned about bragging rights at our expense.
Agreed the standard dose is probably 300mcg, but there’s a reason it doesn’t get sold at that amount. There’s communities that track what the right amount is for them and take that, see https://trackmystack.com
my own experience is that I have to eat a sickening amount of meat to get enough minerals so I started to get some supplements. apparently vegs that I can buy are little more than starch and sugar.
produce rich in nutrients are typically also tastier. However, modern groceries (such as massive chain stores) require huge logistics and scale, and thus expect farmers to produce a steady, homogenous and sturdy crop that also happen to lack nutrients. It's unfortunate that for the produce to be cheap, it has to be done the way it is today.
Not everybody can afford to have "organically grown" heirloom tomatoes, because it's too expensive, and labour intensive. May be genetically modifying foods to also take in minerals properly is the answer...
heirloom crops are not as productive. I grew many different varieties and some of the plants engineered for greenhouses would produce 5x as many tomatoes per plant than heirlooms in the same greenhouse, getting the same amount of water and fertilizer -- and they still tasted good. Much better than typical grocery store tomatoes. More modern varieties are also more resilient to disease and pests.
What's been incentivized in most countries farming-wise has had the scales significantly tipped in certain directions where it's not simply the most valuable plants/animals at the maximum weights.
Glomalin was only discovered in 1996 and it contains up to 30% of soil carbon! Fungal cell walls degrade into a sticky product that makes the soil more loamy. Glomalin levels are strongly correlated with soil fertility.
I think artificial supplementation can be greatly improved, as you suggest. However, it increasingly looking like the soil biome is directly responsible for plant productivity, rather than only indirectly assisting in nutrient transport.
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.
Where I live, I can buy tiny fruits and vegetables from local farmers, or I can buy imported ones that are 3x as large and get twice as much for half the price.
The difference in fruit flavor is unbelievable. Tiny strawberries grown on a couple acres of land versus mega farm strawberries aren’t even in the same flavor category. The tiny ones taste almost identical to strawberry candies, but large ones that draw people in with the wow factor are like firm lumps of sour water.
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.
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.
It's really weird to me that people are generalizing this by nationality. Sure, a lot of supermarket strawberries are terrible. They also frequently (but not always) come from outside the US. Some are ok, and some people get flavorful ones somehow, because I've had excellent quality ones with dessert in a restaurant. Also, there are farmer's markets and stands, even though I'm not in the habit of going to them.
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.
I too have had this experience. Now I always sample one from a pack before I buy. I used to feel guilty doing that, but the quality varies so much and I got sick of wasting fruit purchases when they turn out to be sour or gross. Same with grapes and blueberries from Costco.
I noticed the striking difference between strawberries grown in Thailand (yes, it's true, during the cool season in the mountainous regions) which are small, non-uniform in shape and intensely flavored, compared to the huge, beautiful and watery tasteless hothouse grown strawberries imported from Korea.
There were people arguing how great increased crop yield was in the last few weeks. [0] Some comments were made about how the exponential factor of crop yields outweighed the loss of output nutrients. Glad to see the counterargument on the table.
Tomatoes can particuralry well so for the out of season times I've come to preffer using canned and avoiding the unripe tomatoes, which are often ripened (turned red) by truckloads using nitrogen. America's Test Kitchen has lot's of reviews on canned tomatoes[0].
Store-bought tomatoes are just a pale reminder of what a real tomato tastes like. It's no wonder that people who never ate a ripe tomato fresh from the garden don't like tomatoes; there is nothing good about them but the memory of something incomparably better.
Maybe my gardens faulty, but within the same variety, superstore and my-personal-garden tomatoes are near indistinguishable.
The only difference I see is my garden tomatoes seem to have a thin layer of city dirt on the skin that's hard to wipe off... (That black dusting of tyre rubber and brake dust that makes a tissue dirty if you wipe it over the surface)
When you want to " pull minerals from the underlying bedrock and transport it to the top layer", trees do that. Composting with tree leaves would seem to be beneficial, although perhaps a rather slow process. And of course you need lots of trees around. Incompatible with large scale monoculture farming.
