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From the source: "The high rate of magnesium deficiency now postulated [5,6,7,8] can be attributed in part to a steady decline in general magnesium content in c
by esquivalience 5y ago
From the source:
"The high rate of magnesium deficiency now postulated [5,6,7,8] can be attributed in part to a steady decline in general magnesium content in cultivated fruits and vegetables, a reflection of the observed depletion of magnesium in soil over the past 100 years [11,12,13]. A report to Congress was already sounding the alarm as far back as the 1930s, pointing out the paucity of magnesium, and other minerals, in certain produce [14]."
The easiest of those references to link to is https://journals.ashs.org/hortsci/view/journals/hortsci/44/1/article-p15.xml https://journals.ashs.org/hortsci/view/journals/hortsci/44/1... :
"Three kinds of evidence point toward declines of some nutrients in fruits and vegetables available in the United States and the United Kingdom: 1) early studies of fertilization found inverse relationships between crop yield and mineral concentrations—the widely cited “dilution effect”; 2) three recent studies of historical food composition data found apparent median declines of 5% to 40% or more in some minerals in groups of vegetables and perhaps fruits; one study also evaluated vitamins and protein with similar results; and 3) 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, a newly recognized genetic dilution effect. "
- xyzzyz 5y agoCan it be solved by simply adding more magnesium to the fertilizer?
- DistressedDrone 5y agoI suspect it can be solved in many different ways, but when you sell food by the pound, it's much more advantageous to distribute your limited quantity of nutrients in as much produce as possible. This seems really, really hard to regulate.
- xyzzyz 5y agoFrankly, it seems to me like it's rather relatively simple thing to regulate. We already mandate things like adding vitamins to milk or flour. Extending this to vegetables really doesn't seem like big problem: farmers would just have to buy magnesium-enriched fertilizer.
- alisonkisk 5y agoWhy pour it in your diet when you can put it in a pill to eat directly along with 30 other vitamins?
- xyzzyz 5y agoThen the issue is to remember to take the pill. Much easier to forget than to forget to eat.
- cutemonster 5y agoAlso, can be hard to reach out to everyone and let them know that they need these pills. Many might not know what "magnesium" is? It's simpler to add iodine to salt -- and maybe magnesium to the soil
- thaumasiotes 5y agoAnother issue is that the effect of a nutrient can sometimes differ based on what it is consumed alongside. Pills are not necessarily as effective as supplemented food.
- slipframe 5y agoBecause anybody with sense prefers eating food to popping pills.
- krastanov 5y agoCome on, this is a bit too aggressive of a statement. On the other hand, there is some anecdotal evidence that nutrients in pills are not absorbed by our gut as well as more "naturally" delivered nutrients.
- slipframe 5y ago"Why do we need to drink water anyway? Why can't we all get our fluids from an IV?"
- ullevaal 5y agoWhen reading comments like this, which are good-natured, and a natural response, do you ever think “wouldn’t be great if we as humans had more trust built into our systems, and people actually making a best-effort attempt at honouring that trust”? Instead of everything being a scam until proven otherwise, and even then the scam is probably just one level deeper in what triggered the interest in that product in the first place.
- ullevaal 5y agoThis comment was triggered by the essay “The Story of a Generation in Seven Scams” by Jia Tolentino in the book Trick Mirror, the essay also being available in audio form online. So the scam here was to get you to google that book, I wonder if my scam will convert anyone?
- gotoeleven 5y agoSadly human nature is what it is. It seems like it would take a long time for evolution to make humans not naturally lazy, greedy, jealous and xenophobic. It's also not clear that, even in a world where resources are abundant, there would be any evolutionary pressure to not be this way.
- Nasrudith 5y agoTerrible as it sounds trust is in computer terms a gaping security vulnerability. If anothet clever actor can take advantage of it they can gain all sorts of things at cost to you. Distrust is like an immune system - it has costs and can occasionally hurt you but it developed and is ubiquitous for a reason.
- adrianN 5y agoRelated to your question, I found the ideas in this long and winding essay to be quite interesting: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/TxcRbCYHaeL59aY7E/meditations-on-moloch https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/TxcRbCYHaeL59aY7E/meditation...
- dr_dshiv 5y agoWhy regulate when you can market? If I knew that a brand of zucchini had high mineral content and flavor, I'd buy it at a premium
- tbihl 5y agoSounds like a good way to have every milk container say "rBST free, from cows raised without hormones!" Which could also be stated "farmed in accordance with California law."
- dr_dshiv 5y agoYeah, in this case, I'd rather have the former... Since I'd assume the latter? Maybe that's me. And, to be clear— I don't want to be dismissive of the importance of govt regulation! It's just that working out the marketing opportunities can happen much faster than effective regulation.
- rdedev 5y agoVeritasium did a video on this topic of vegetables becoming less nutritious https://youtu.be/Yl_K2Ata6XY https://youtu.be/Yl_K2Ata6XY He argues that the increased CO2 in the atmosphere is making the plants grow faster. This is making the plants produce more carbs wet to other nutrients, making the plant less nutritious compared to the past
- throwawaaarrgh 5y agoFertilizer is actually the problem. The soil is losing magnesium because we don't practice crop rotation anymore, so we load up the soil with fertilizer, 90% of which runs off into our watersheds, wreaking havoc. It can be solved by using less efficient / more complex farming practices which aren't amenable to mass production of monocultures. But that makes a lot less money, so it will never happen. A different solution would be to pass legislation specifically to protect the nutritional value of our food. But that would just prompt the ag sector to pump the soil full of so much crap to meet the law's requirements that it'll speed up the collapse of ecological systems (in addition to possibly poisoning us).
- Moru 5y agoA couple of years ago where was a very long draught in northern europe. The only fields that weren't burned brown was the new ecological farms that reinvented farming the old way. Their soil is kept alive deeper into the ground and can hold water much longer. So while their neighbours had to buy feed for their cows, the eco farmers could keep using their grass for feeding.
- xyzzyz 5y ago> It can be solved by using less efficient / more complex farming practices which aren't amenable to mass production of monocultures. But that makes a lot less money, so it will never happen. “Makes less money” is certainly one point of view. Another is “makes the food too expensive to afford for many, and shifts more land usage to farming, to make up for the reduced productivity per acre”. It is not even clear that it would reduce the profits of food producers: it depends on the shapes on supply curves. If every food producer is forced to produce food using expensive methods, and people are forced to buy food anyway (as they ultimately must eat), it is very well possible that the profits could actually increase: if demand for food is inelastic, people will just pay higher prices to get the same amount of food, which would only increase the total profits of agricultural industry.
- kaitai 5y agoAgricultural policy in the US shapes a lot of this, though, via subsidies. The financial system also shapes this through its lending policies. The implements of industrialized farming are what the ag lending sector is designed around; try to step out of that mainstream and you will have trouble accessing capital. Wheat, corn, and soybeans are heavily subsidized by the US gov't and vegetables are not at all. Every little tiny program to subsidize vegetable growers is picked at every year (happening right now in my state legislature) -- it's always a fight to preserve. The agricultural lending system in the US is fascinating. Look up Farm Credit Administration. We have a weird and unique system of paragovernmental financial institutions in the US that do farm lending, and even though it's not technically government-backed lending, everyone sees it as such, and so there are some interesting distortions in the market (compared to a more "free-market" system). It does seem quite centered around US gov't subsidies and farm/ag policies.
- wincy 5y agoInteresting. I recently started using Magnesium Glycinate as a supplement and I feel it truly changed my life, not exaggerating. I’ve suffered from chronic general anxiety for most of my teens and adult life. Magnesium has completely cleared this up, things I thought were just part of my personality (being anxious and other associated things) were actually due to a chronic magnesium deficiency. I just have to make sure I get a decent amount of calcium in my diet (via canned mackerel mostly) to avoid muscle twitches from the magnesium.
- TrevorFancher 5y agoHow much and which brand do you take?
- colsandurz 5y agoNot sure what he’s doing but this should help: http://fellrnr.com/wiki/Magnesium http://fellrnr.com/wiki/Magnesium
- wincy 5y agoI use this[0] not every day because I’ll get muscle spasms unless I eat a lot of calcium, but a few times a week seems to make a big difference. [0] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07ZD7R4RF/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_fabc_4CF5GYMJ73C25WMTSVPF https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07ZD7R4RF/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_...
- jonplackett 5y agoIt’s not just vegetables either - chickens are a lot less nutritious than they used to be. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2005/may/15/foodanddrink.shopping3 https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2005/may/15/foodand...
- changoplatanero 5y agoWhen my grandparents told me that chicken tastes less good nowadays I thought they were just old and had lost their sense of taste. Actually they were right though.
- stavros 5y agoEverything tastes less good nowadays. When I was a kid, we used to eat tomatoes like apples, just biting into them, maybe with some salt. Nowadays supermarket tomatoes taste like water.
- C-x_C-f 5y agoAnecdotally (though studies like [1] seem to confirm this), I've found that tomatoes are quite sensitive to transportation and storage. To me, garden tomatoes taste fantastic; the ones at the local farmers' market taste pretty good too; supermarket tomatoes are only good for making tomato sauce. I wonder whether the tomatoes you ate as a kid had been transported over long distances. Also anecdotally, I haven't found any other fruit or vegetable that exhibits such a drastic contrast. Maybe persimmons, but I haven't had that many supermarket persimmons. For most fruits and veggies, I've found the supermarket ones tend to taste roughly the same as garden grown ones. Indeed, sometimes I prefer the supermarket version, e.g. for apples. [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1658077X2100059X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1658077X2...
- stavros 5y agoYou may be right, I recently (a few years ago) ate garden tomatoes that my mom had planted and they also tasted amazing, so that tracks.
- dr_dshiv 5y agoI love magnesium pills! I take two in the morning. It relieves brain fog, reduces lower back pain and makes you shit. (Those three are totally related, btw)
- dr_dshiv 5y agoSounds like a soil engineering problem!
- noodlenotes 5y agoI wonder if there's a relationship to the obesity epidemic, especially since it's not just humans that are getting larger but also lab animals, pets, and wild animals living close to humans [1]. What if we're compelled to eat more calories when we're not getting enough nutrients in our diets? This would impact any animals consuming lower quality fruits and vegetables. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/news.2010.628 https://www.nature.com/articles/news.2010.628
- nerdponx 5y agoAnecdotally, this has been my personal experience. I have gone through phases of my life where I ate a lot of junk food. I would feel constantly hungry during those phases, until I ate something nutritious, green and easily-digestible, like steamed broccoli or green peas.
- pembrook 5y agoThis doesn’t make any scientific sense. Study after study has shown that protein and complex carbs are what reduces feelings of hunger, not vegetables. This makes sense when you consider most green vegetables like broccoli are 90% water. A meat like chicken, after cooking is only about 60% water. So if you eat 400g of broccoli vs 400g of chicken, the one that will make you feel more full is obviously the protein. What’s more likely, is due to marketing we’ve associated anything that is green in color with being “real, nutritious food” and have convinced ourselves that is what makes us feel full. It’s like people who claim they “feel better” after eating a salad. The average iceberg lettuce has near zero nutritional value and is 96%+ water. The only way you’d feel better after eating one is if you were dehydrated. -- *edit - people seem to be misunderstanding. I'm not saying fast food is healthy. I'm simply refuting the idea that green vegetables are the key to feeling full. If you wanted to feel satiated, green vegetables would be one of the most inefficient ways to do so--due to their 90%+ water content.
- shakabrah 5y agoOr…you know…vegetables have fiber and meat doesn’t?
- Zenst 5y agoI was wondering what foods would have high levels of magnisium and https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/15650-magnesium-rich-food https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/15650-magnesi... Looking at those foods and daily intake, I'm wondering how many people are not hitting their daily intake.
- dheera 5y agoI wonder if that's specific to the US and other western nations. One thing I've noticed is that vegetables are rather tasteless in the US. Vegetables in Asia are packed with flavor, and maybe they are also packed with nutrients as well?