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>Healthy soil can be cultivated at scale, so if quality is the top priority that's not an issue. The larger issue is that consumers have no way of assessing th
by ABCLAW 4y ago
>Healthy soil can be cultivated at scale, so if quality is the top priority that's not an issue.
The larger issue is that consumers have no way of assessing the nutritional value of the items they're purchasing at the point of purchase. Cost is mediated on the basis of weight, which results in water-rich, nutrient poor, taste-poor produce. Saline injection into meat is another similar issue.
How do we make growing nutritional food profitable? Foods that can be sold on the basis of nutrient specific benefits, like Golden Rice or Vitamn D enriched milk can be marketed and sold on that basis, but comparing two beefsteak tomatoes grown in differing soils is not possible at present at the point of sale.
Typical food certification strategies, such as Organic, DOP, AOC, and other regional growth indicators don't seem to fit the bill. It's also unclear whether or not there is a market for inspections on the basis of nutritional value - from an organizational standpoint, it shouldn't be too difficult to have an inspector randomly audit crops and send samples to a lab to be HPLC or Mass Spec'd, but whether or not another certification mark changes buying patterns is unclear.
- dr_dshiv 4y agoTaste generally tracks with nutrition in non processed foods. If that could be validated, then we have a win win— and then needs new ways of marketing/branding higher taste options
- ben_w 4y agoI suspect that “if” will be more difficult than just measuring the vitamin and mineral content of random samples of the produce directly, but even if it isn’t, taste would rapidly be another flawed proxy: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law (I’d argue that taste is already an example of Goodhart’s law, and that this is why fast food is popular despite being objectively bad).
- sdenton4 4y agoSaline-injected tomatoes... Coming soon!
- munk-a 4y agoOr tomatoes with a healthy corn syrup glaze.
- wang_li 4y agoIt's a bit old and maybe they've learned more, but don't inject them with saline, just irrigate them with 10% sea water. https://www.livescience.com/7194-healthier-tomatoes-grown-seawater.html https://www.livescience.com/7194-healthier-tomatoes-grown-se...
- bjelkeman-again 4y agoThat is interesting and relevant for me. A quick search only gave this, mainly about antioxidants. Do you know of more good literature? https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/organic-foods-are-tastier-and-healthier-study-finds https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/organic-f...
- DelightOne 4y agoWhat about a handheld scanner using smell to distinguish good from bad. As long as food isn't bred to smell certain ways that can't be distinguished from good, it should work fine.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- akelly 4y agoIn Japan they have handheld machines that measure sugar content and acidity of fruits,[1] because fruits are used as gifts and you want to make sure it's a good one. How can we get fruit manufacturers to start sorting their fruit by sweetness? They start around $1000 because it's a niche market. They appear to be infrared spectroscopy based which isn't too complicated, I was thinking about making an open source version. Should only be like $30 in parts. Would people buy this to test their produce before they buy? [1] Called non destructive saccharimeters Edit: actually it looks like they measure infrared polarization, not spectral absorption