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I'm not sure the article supports what the headline says. There are not half as many carbs in wheat and potatoes as there were. I don't understand nutritional
by jimnotgym 3y ago
I'm not sure the article supports what the headline says.
There are not half as many carbs in wheat and potatoes as there were. I don't understand nutritional value to mean 'amount of trace vitamins', and neither does wikipedia. Is this a fair definition
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutritional_value https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutritional_value
- modzu 3y agothere are seven major classes of nutrients in food: carbohydrates, fats, fiber, minerals, proteins, vitamins, and water
- firebot 3y agoOh, oh, which ones are macro and which micro?
- marcus0x62 3y agoOh, I get it! That must mean the macros are more important. That’s why you’ll die without adequate carbohydrate intake, but you don’t really need any, say, vitamin a, right? Right?
- graphe 3y agoNobody is sustaining their iron copper and magnesium through carrots. Not eating carrots won't kill anyone. None of your points matter unless you're a vegan that only eats carrots.
- marcus0x62 3y agoI only made one point: it is silly to pretend that macro nutrients are somehow more important than the micronutrients, when, in fact, you can do without one of the macronutrients entirely and without any ill effect whatsoever but there are many micronutrients that you will die or suffer life-threatening disease without an adequate supply of. You may not like that fact, but it is a fact and your straw man about vegans eating carrots that you hallucinated into my post doesn’t change that.
- graphe 3y agoIt would be, if it had a bearing on reality. Your fantastical scenario is only relevant for sailors before they ate limes.
- marcus0x62 3y agoYour scenario is the one with no bearing in reality. In the western world, we do not suffer from a lack of calories from macro-nutrient deficiency. There are, however, people who suffer from micro-nutrient deficiency along with a mountain of research that micro-nutrient supplementation is inferior to consuming adequate micro-nutrients in diet. Research about declining micro-nutrient levels in staple crops is both important and more applicable to daily life than whatever non-sense you are imagining with vegans and carrots.
- BytesAndGears 3y agoThe first sentence lists it as including > carbohydrates, fat, protein, minerals, and vitamins So, it seems accurate to include minerals, which are essential for health
- jimnotgym 3y agoBut when you say something has half the nutritional value it had, then shouldn't there be less of everything, not just the smallest group?
- jefftk 3y agoIf there was a 10% increase in one area and an 80% decrease in two others I would still be okay saying half as much. And then there is some wiggle room in how you weight the categories. (But that's not what's going on here)
- hansvm 3y agoImagine reducing the fiber, sugar, water, minerals, and "everything" else in some apple slices by half. You haven't made it less nutrient-dense; you've eliminated everything that makes it up; i.e., you've just made it smaller. The researchers aren't arguing that we eat less. They've defined some things as important "nutrients" in some sense and noted that the relative (not absolute) concentrations of those have decreased. Whether that matters for a particular application is up for debate. Certainly macronutrients matter. It's really not hard to understand what they mean though.
- jcutrell 3y agoFor the average person, this pushes the incorrect narrative that somehow our food is becoming drastically less useful. The primary use of these crops has always been the carbohydrate content, followed by micronutrients; all this really says is that we should still have a diverse intake of food to reach RDA’s of said micros.
- hansvm 3y ago
- qup 3y agoAs a counterpoint, that's kinda my personal definition. I don't think of calories, carbs, fats when I think about "nutritional value." A related phrase is "empty calories," which I define as foods with no vitamins or minerals, but plenty of carbs. I don't think it means you're wrong, you're just ignoring a common use.
- jacknews 3y agoExactly, this is just clickbait. Certain minerals may have become less prevalent, but that's not at all the same as a reduction in 'nutritional content'.
- orev 3y agoThe minerals are the nutritional content, so yes, that’s exactly what it means.
- graphe 3y agoNobody eats carrots for sodium and copper. That's like saying you only use your computer for the floppy disk.
- mharig 3y agoAnd what would you have done in say 1993 with a computer without floppy disk?
- jacknews 3y agoThat's ludicrous. The "nutritional content" is the part of the food that your body can make use of. Mostly carbs, proteins, etc. The trace minerals are essential, but hardly central. Even if the definition of 'nutrition' is just those trace minerals (because somehow all the carbs, proteins, and everything else are 'free'), the article grossly exaggerates. And given the whole shtick of this blog is 'using science to make sense of society', it's a poor show.
- TheCoelacanth 3y agoCarbs and proteins are macronutrients. Minerals are micronutrients. Both are central parts of nutrition.
- ponector 3y agoIf there are less minerals than there are more substitutes. Which are also nutrition content with some value. Therefore we can say that nutrition value increased as well!
- JumpCrisscross 3y agoThey're talking about "the amount of sodium (Na), iron (Fe), copper (Cu), and magnesium (Mg) found in [crops] ha[ving] significantly declined." The significant ones are iron and magnesium. "Almost half (48%) of the US population consumed less than the required amount of magnesium from food in 2005-2006" [1]. Iron deficiency is less prevalent, peaking among pregnant women around 25% [2]. I couldn't find data from 1940 for either. My iron is indirectly tested for (hemoglobin), but I couldn't find any recent bloodwork for magnesium. Agree, broadly, that the article is a nothingburger. The real story might be the lack of testing for magnesium deficiency. [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22364157/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22364157/ [2] https://lpi.oregonstate.edu/mic/micronutrient-inadequacies/overview#iron https://lpi.oregonstate.edu/mic/micronutrient-inadequacies/o...
- CydeWeys 3y agoFortunately these are really easy to supplement/fortify back into foods. Plus it's not like meat has any less of them these days, so it'll mostly affect vegans.
- aantix 3y agoA steak has 58mg of Magnesium. The rda for a male is 400+mg. Unless you’re eating tons of pumpkin seeds everyday, everyone is missing the mark. And magnesium deficiency is implicated in depression, anxiety, etc.
- CydeWeys 3y agoThis might make a good case for supplementing/fortifying magnesium into foods broadly, like we did with iodine in salt.
- hash872 3y agoIn a previous similar discussion on HN a few years ago, someone made the same point- and lots of people said that supplementing magnesium permanently changed their mental state for the better. So I started supplementing with magnesium-threonate, and it low-key changed my life. Less anxiety and depression, and I swear that my long distance vision sharpened up a bit. Anyways, seeing as reading the HN comments changed my life for the better a little bit, I always try to give back and tell people my experience with supplementing magnesium
- orev 3y agoI do not recall “carbs” ever being used to mean “nutritional value”. In fact it’s almost always the opposite, with “empty carbs” (i.e. foods that contain carbs and almost no other vitamins, etc.) being the primary target of campaigns telling people to avoid them. If anything, carb-heavy foods would benefit from having lower carbs, since it would increase the relative amounts of actually healthy stuff in them. Focusing on carbs leads to situations where people may be overweight, but also malnourished, which is increasingly common in poor areas.
- tyrfing 3y agoWould straw or rock have excellent nutritional value, then?
- jefftk 3y agoIf you can't get anything out of it then it doesn't have nutritional value.
- thaumasiotes 3y agoIn other words, when we say "nutritional value", what we mean is carbohydrates. This is something that everyone understands when we're talking about bears, but somehow forgets when we're talking about people. Those "empty" carbs are 99% of the reason you eat anything. "Nutritional value" and "energy content" are the same thing.
- orev 3y agoIf you’re not trolling, I think you need to learn more about the difference between carbs, other nutrients, and indigestible material. “Carbs” does not mean “anything you can digest” (which seems to be how you’re using it). For all animals, of course ensuring that you have enough energy to function is a primary concern, but health studies in modern contexts always assumes that the supply of carbs is a solved problem (modern foods generally have far more carbs than most people need), but at the expense of reducing other nutrients.
- NelsonMinar 3y agoYes, the Substack author and this post have greatly exaggerated the article. The actual data is that some fruits and vegetables have 50% less Sodium, Iron, and Copper in them than before. (Also a 10% decrease in Magnesium). That's interesting but a far cry from "nutritional value has dropped by 50%".
- CydeWeys 3y agoThe drop in sodium is funny because if anything that's a good thing as most people eat way too much of it, and it's super easy to supplement on the rare occasion it proves necessary. (Every one of us has a shaker of 100% bioavailable sodium sitting on our table.)
- ooterness 3y agoI agree. Their one relevant chart has seven items, probably cherry-picked to suppprt their narrative. One is sodium (Na), which is overabundant in modern diets.
- thaumasiotes 3y ago> One is sodium (Na), which is overabundant in modern diets. Sodium consumption per capita has remained rock-steady in the face of an intense demonization campaign. It doesn't really go up (as you might expect, if people develop food to satisfy cravings for it) or down (as you might expect if people pay attention to public messaging). (See e.g. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7042a4.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7042a4.htm : > Mean usual energy intake–adjusted sodium intake among U.S. adults aged ≥19 years was lowest (3,333 mg/day) during 2003–2004, and was 3,464 mg/day during 2015–2016. ) This tends to suggest that it is not in fact overabundant in modern diets.
- jcutrell 3y agoWas just going to say, the correct title might be “the micronutrient variety has reduced”, but that is misleading on its own. Unless the crops are becoming impossible to digest / akin to cardboard, nutrition is just changing. Micronutrients are still important but there are relatively abundant sources still available, for example in leafy greens.
- trenchgun 3y agoThe article is talking about micronutrients, minerals. Per wikipedia: >Nutritional value or nutritive value as part of food quality is the measure of a well-balanced ratio of the essential nutrients carbohydrates, fat, protein, minerals, and vitamins in items of food or diet concerning the nutrient requirements of their consumer.