Is Our Food Losing Its Nutrition?

Some people on various social media platforms have been speaking about the food we are eating nowadays, stating that it is less nutritious than the same food eaten 100 years ago. The reasoning is often speculation around the use of GMO plants, pesticides, or depleted soil. Then there are others who claim that there is no change, the speculation is all wrong, and in fact plants are growing faster and bigger than ever before so that there is an abundance of food for people to consume. For me, it seems they are speaking across each other and not connecting, so I decided to take a look at this is some detail.

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Being Full but Malnourished

Let us start with an agreement that worldwide there are millions of people who are either starving, or are eating but not getting the correct nutrients (carbs, protein, vitamins, minerals, etc.) needed for good health.

There are many studies and articles on this topic, so many in fact, that this is now accepted fact: the vast majority of people are in a state of food and nourishment insecurity. In summary, all the statistics show us we live in a world of hunger, malnutrition, and yet also obesity.

• There are 7.753 billion people in the world (2020).
• The UN reports 6.9 billion lack consistent access to food (aka food insecurity).
• Over 820M people are actually, truly starving according to WHO.
• At the same time, it is reported over 690M in 2020 who are eating but undernourished.

While in nearly every country there are people, adults and children, that fall into this situation, it is acute in areas of Asia and Africa, where there are issues of access to a well balanced, nutritious, and variety of fresh foods. But again, it is also true in Canada and the USA. Because, for the most part, while there is enough food to fill bellies, the concern is more on WHAT people are eating. In America it is possible to gain weight towards obesity, but also get sick due to malnutrition by eating the processed and junky food that is so prevalent in certain communities (1, 2, 3).

Because we already have people not getting enough nutrients from their food, any loss of nutrients from existing plants could become an even worse worldwide catastrophe. Here are currently a list of nutrients missing for millions of people:

• Iodine in 21 countries (2021, 4)
• Vitamin A for nearly half of all countries (2009, 5)
• Iron for developing countries (2002, 6 and 2020, 7)
• WHO estimates that 42% of children <5 years of age and 40% of pregnant women worldwide are anemic. 
• Karger: Iron, iodine, folate, vitamin A, and zinc deficiencies are the most widespread micronutrient deficiencies.
• BioStation: Nutrient deficiencies exist extensively among many in the USA. Rich, poor, well, or sick ~92% of the population is suffering from at least one mineral or vitamin deficiency based on the Dietary Reference Intakes.  The entire country is overfed and undernourished.

Of course I have not even mentioned the people starving in the world who are not getting enough food period.

Changes Came with Industrialization

Let us turn now, to the topic at hand and assume that currently plants are losing their historical levels of nutrition. What could be causing this nutritional decline? For more information see this Facebook post.

I am going to start this section with this question: In this day and age, is it possible to be adequately full, that is having plenty to eat, and yet be sick from malnourishment? Many people have postulated, and research supports, that this is indeed the case and will only get worse unless we take steps now to prevent this from happening.

Breeding Effects

Some claim the reasons for this change in nutrition is the result of GMO or selective breeding that essentially breeds the nutrition out of plants, in favor of business and industrial needs.

• Centuries long focus on modifying plants directly, or through selective breeding, to increase crop yields as a way to feed the growing human population and to bring the farmer profits, or “yield over nutrition.“
• Produce has also been bred for increased disease-resistance, so more crops can make it from seed to harvest by better fighting disease or not reacting to strong pesticides. Again, “yield over nutrition.”
• Plants have also been bred for longer shelf life, ease of transport, and overall general consumer appeal.

The point of the concerns was that while food was being grown faster and larger, it did not contain the amount of nutrition that our bodies actually needed, so one could be well fed and malnourished at the same time. Some people called it modifying healthy nutritious food into “junk food” (high caloric but low nourishment).

One study (2009) supports this view, writing:

• High-yielding cereals and other staples have produced adequate calories to ward off starvation for much of the world over several decades. However, deficiencies in certain amino acids, minerals, vitamins and fatty acids in staple crops, and animal diets derived from them, have aggravated the problem of malnutrition and the increasing incidence of certain chronic diseases in nominally well-nourished people (the so-called diseases of civilization).
• Enhanced global nutrition has great potential to reduce acute and chronic disease, the need for health care, the cost of health care, and to increase educational attainment, economic productivity and the quality of life. However, nutrition is currently not an important driver of most plant breeding efforts, and there are only a few well-known efforts to breed crops that are adapted to the needs of optimal human nutrition.

Soil Depletion

Some people on the internet have picked up ideas from bloggers that there is a loss of nutrition in plants because farmers have ruined overall soil health with pesticides that kill everything in and on top of the soil. Farmers certainly have known for a very long time that over-used soil leads to mineral loss.

• One study (2017) countered this claim by showing that soil depletion is not behind any nutritional declines in our food.
• Although they did prove lower mineral concentrations when bred for high yields, and concluded: The benefits of increased yield to supply food for expanding populations outweigh small nutrient dilution effects addressed by eating the recommended daily servings of vegetables, fruits and whole grains.

My research shows that the USA certainly does have a topsoil problem (1, 2, 3). But the problem is topsoil reduction and that is currently being caused by erosion, long term plowing, and too intensive farming, with not enough attention given to soil retention and enhancement. Nothing in this very real concern appears related to a plant’s production of nutrients; without topsoil plants just will not grow. Additionally, when researchers (2008) looked at the healthy soil they indicate:

• The concentrations of these nutrients in soil have either increased or remained stable over the last 160 years. 

Infertile soils also lead to other issues, for when farmers’ fields have infertile soils, they are more than likely to move from those spent fields to new areas of land, which then gobbles up more arable land without taking the time to regenerate existing land.

CO2 Effects

Then some academicians and researchers started to see some connections between an overall increase of CO2 in the atmosphere and changes in plankton and plants. They grew in abundance, yet were struggling with not having enough nutrition. This led some to postulate that:

• Politico (2017): Rising CO₂ revs up photosynthesis, the process that helps plants transform sunlight to food. This makes plants grow, but it also leads them to pack in more carbohydrates like glucose at the expense of other nutrients that we depend on, like protein, iron and zinc.

While not confirmed in the early days of this idea, the potential harm (if true) would be significant, as a recent study (2017) and Harvard (2017) showed, for over 76M people rely on plants for their daily nutrition.

The same study showed there has been a decline in plant-available protein:

• Rice protein decreased 7.6%
• Wheat by 7.8%
• Barley by 14.1%
• Potato by 6.4%

Thus, the study concluded, 18+ countries may lose greater than 5% of their consumed dietary protein. Further, by 2050, an additional 148.4M of the world’s population may be placed at risk of protein deficiency, even though there will be enough food to eat.

Then a study (2019) published: dietary deficiencies of zinc and iron are a major global public health problem. An estimated two billion people suffer these deficiencies ¹ causing a loss of 63 million life years annually ^2,3. Most of these people depend upon C₃ grains and legumes as their primary dietary source of zinc and iron. We report that C₃ grains and legumes have lower concentrations of zinc and iron when grown under field conditions at the elevated atmospheric CO₂ concentration anticipated for the middle of this century. C₃ crops other than legumes also have lower concentrations of protein, whereas C₄ crops appear to be less affected.

A study (2021) indicates that zinc and iron deficiency is happening with rice and wheat and concern is raised about malnutrition in populations in India that rely on these for base nutrients.

Nutrient Decline Confirmation?

Are there any studies or research indicating that since the industrialization age there has been a decline in the nutrients a plant contains, when compared to the same plant of a hundred years ago?

Back in 1984 a Canadian study showed that too much CO2 then a plant can lose ~25% of its minerals. Unfortunately, a Silo Problem occurred, which means that people from different disciplines did not talk to each other or share data. This prevented them from seeing a trend occurring right under their nose. Then in 1998 a study discussed that elevated CO2 seemed to affect nectar production, amino acids, and sugar in plants important to butterflies and hummingbirds.

So, people from different disciplines had parts of the picture, but no one had put it all together. That is until 2002 when Mathematician Irakli Loladze proposed that as atmospheric CO2 grew, plants like algae grew fast too but lost nutrients, which in turn both fed and nutritionally starved zooplankton reliant on algae.

Then a landmark 2004 synopsis of studies that compared current produce to produce from 1850. They found declines of 5% to 40% in certain nutrients among 43 types of produce.

• Researchers found a loss of zinc, essential for maternal and infant health, that could put 138M million people at risk.
• 150M people could be put at risk of protein deficiency.
• > 1B mothers and 354M children live in countries where dietary iron is projected to drop significantly, exacerbating an already widespread public health anemia problem.

AHSH Journal (2009) wrote: The evidence for nutrient declines began to accumulate in the 1940s with observations of (environmental) dilution effects on minerals in many foods and diverse other plants. Recent studies of historical nutrient content data for fruits and vegetables spanning 50 to 70 years show apparent median declines of 5% to 40% or more in minerals, vitamins, and protein in groups of foods, especially in vegetables. Although these apparent declines in individual nutrients may be confounded by systematic errors in historical data, the broad evidence is consistent with more definitive studies and seems difficult to dismiss.

In Nature (2014) a study was done in Japan, Australia and the USA looking at protein, zinc and iron. They found that raising atmospheric CO₂ lowered the nutritional value of C3 crops and legumes.

• ByJus: Approximately 95% of the shrubs, trees, and plants are C3 plants.
• ScienceDirect: C3 plants are plants in which the initial product of the assimilation of carbon dioxide through photosynthesis is 3-phosphoglycerate, which contains 3 carbon atoms.

In 2014 Loladze wrote a paper confirming his 2002 hypothesis: Across nearly 130 varieties of plants and more than 15,000 samples collected from experiments over the past three decades, the overall concentration of minerals like calcium, magnesium, potassium, zinc and iron had dropped by 8 percent on average.

Another study (2016), by Lewis Ziska (2020 interview), looked at the Goldenrod plant. We do not eat this plant but bee’s rely on it for their protein. Because it is not human food, it has not been modified over the last 100 years. Luckily, the Smithsonian had Goldenrod samples from 1842, so researchers were able to compare todays plant with its older version. What they found was that since the industrial revolution, bringing an increase in CO2, these plants have experienced a decline in protein production by a third.

ScientificAmerican (2018) indicated that in addition to protein, zinc, and iron, plants are showing a decline in calcium, magnesium, and potassium.

ScienceAdvances (2018) focused on 18 genetically differing strains of rice, and detailed how CO₂ levels (this century) will alter the protein, micronutrients, and vitamin content of all those rice grains with potential and serious health consequences for the poorest rice-dependent countries. They also noted that the nutrient losses included vitamins B1, B2, B5, and B9 and, conversely, an increase in vitamin E (go figure). The study showed that B vitamins (riboflavin – helps break down food to energy), and folate (important to fetal development) dropped ~30%.

My Summary

I think we are at the point of concern. Since we already have nutrient deficiencies in major parts of the world, and studies are pointing toward plants undergoing changes in response to changes in climate, farming standard techniques, soil depletion, and seed or plant ownership; I think it is time to focus farming on nutritional values not yields, enrichment of staple crops though selective breeding, and anticipating and meeting future food and nutritional needs.

So here is my take on this issue.

Science can be a quivering mess of competing ideas about complex and intricate relationships, it creates passionate arguments for and against, and the scientists can have very strong feelings about their beliefs. That continues for a while until a consensus is formed, which itself can be as wrong as it can be right. Eventually it all settles down as scientific proof becomes replicated and stronger, and eventually too hard to ignore. Then there is another explosion somewhere else and it plays out all over again.

Right now we are in a changing field with people on both sides. But there seems to be good studies pointing to a relationship between atmospheric CO2 and declining nutrients in C3 plants. At the same time, the decline in nutrition in plants can seem dramatic when looking at the charts, yet be considered by mathematicians as insignificant when looking at the actual decline figures.

While it is feasible that a supplement could fix a small imbalance or reduction in vitamins or minerals in a plant. This would only be a short term fix as there are broader economic, public health, and agricultural issues at hand. Here is a post (2021) on what we do know:

• Rice, maize (corn), and wheat provide 60% of the world’s food-energy intake.
• Plants require CO₂, water, nitrogen, and soil micronutrients to grow.
• Since 1850 CO₂ concentrations have increased ~50%, mostly since 1950.
• Higher CO₂ = higher photosynthesis = higher plant biomass, but does appear to alter nutritional quality of C3 plants.

In Western societies, where access to plant diversity is easily at hand, and animal or animal-based proteins are readily available, we need not experience any nutritional deficiencies provided we eat a well balanced and varied diet. If we eat nothing but junk food however, we can become obese from the carbs and sugars, but malnourished from the lack of nutrients.

Other countries are more susceptible to small changes in nutrition. Overall, on a global playing field, we should be concerned whenever there is a drop in nutrition in the foods we eat. We have countries where their soil is deplete of certain minerals and they are often eating only one cereal or grain which has already introduced a level of malnourishment. In short, we already have a malnourishment problem and as the population grows and climate change affects the weather, land and ocean, we may see this problem grow. So here is what we need to do:

• Research the extent to which nutrient density is reduced in staple crops and other terrestrial and aquatic food sources due to CO2.
• Identify and remove hinderances to global dietary diversity and food fortification to mitigate nutrient loss.
• Collect and maintain diversity with our seeds and plants as we become more monoculture, for diversity may save us.
• Focus on breeding and farming plants for nutritional density, not to fix a logistics problem. 

We need to take care of our plants and animals, our oceans and forests, our air and soil; for they all sustain us.

—Patty

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