4 ms·

I did some work in maize and other plants while I was in grad school and for a while afterwards. So I speak from intimate experience at a big school, with some

I did some work in maize and other plants while I was in grad school and for a while afterwards. So I speak from intimate experience at a big school, with someone who had just left Monsanto and moved to academia. There was a lot less careful balancing like you're talking about and a lot more "hey this could increase yields!" because in academia it's publish-or-perish. Things might have been better at Monsanto from a balancing perspective, but it may also have been just as yield-focused. I'm not saying that NOBODY is trying to balance. But your statement that scientists know this and work on it was completely unqualified, making it sound like they ALL do. Anecdotally I'm not sure that's true.

JoeAltmaier 11y ago
Of course yield increases are important and exciting. But they have to be delivered in a seed that will resist drought, insects, wind, heat and fungus. No farmer will plant a hybrid twice that fails them once.
- jacobolus 11y ago
  In food crops, there are obviously many things being optimized for: yield, color, size, flavor, hardiness, ease/convenience to prepare and eat, pest resistance, toxicity, ability to be picked unripe and keep for a long time, etc. But as far as I can tell, nutrition is seldom tracked or optimized for, and as a result most of the cheap and widely available foods end up being nutritionally weak compared to wild variants. Even what flavor optimizations there are tend to favor predictability and wide appeal (that is, not alienating anyone) over complexity or bitterness. We end up with foods which are large, bland, starchy, watery, seedless and easy to peel, highly uniform. From a few days ago: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/14/books/review/the-dorito-effect-by-mark-schatzker.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/14/books/review/the-dorito-ef... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9715561 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9715561 > Except that in pursuit of flavor, it does. “In nature,” Schatzker writes, “flavor never appears without nutrition.” Flavor means nutrition. Omega-3 fatty acids have flavor. Phenylethanol, a chemical compound humans love and often describe as a “rose note” in tomatoes, is made by an essential amino acid, which its presence signifies. Flavor’s purpose is to help us become like ingestive homing pigeons. Our bodies learn to draw connections between flavors and the physiological responses they signal. Through this post-ingestive feedback, latent intelligence in our digestive systems is animated. We can seek out and find what we need, nutritionally, and stop eating once we get it. > A perfect case is illustrated in an old study, begun in 1926, conducted by a Chicago pediatrician named Clara Davis. She foster-parented 15 babies “who’d never been exposed to ‘the ordinary foods of adult life’ ” and for six years let them eat whatever they wanted, in any order, from a list of 34 foods including “water, potatoes, corn meal, barley, beef, lamb, bone jelly, carrots, turnips, haddock, peaches, apples, fish, orange juice, bananas, brains, milk and cabbage.” They chose balanced diets — sometimes strange ones: One child ate liver and drank a pint of orange juice for breakfast. Their preferences changed often. Another child, who had started off with rickets, was early on given a glass of cod liver oil as medicine. Over the course of his illness, never encouraged, he drank it “ ‘irregularly and in varying amounts’ of his own free will until he was better,” Schatzker writes. This unconscious wisdom has been subsequently studied in goats and calves, showing repeatedly that if the body can make nutritional connections via physical feedback from flavor, it will be a good nutritionist. > But for the body to develop credible associations — including feeling satiated — between dark greens and iron, or eggs from free-ranging chickens and carotenoids, or tomatoes and phenylethanol, it needs to be communicated with honestly. Otherwise it can’t learn. “All over nature, animals . . . limit their meal size not because they’re stuffed and couldn’t possibly eat another bite, but because they’ve hit a secondary compound wall,” i.e. met nutritional needs beyond calories. Synthetic-flavor technology makes bland ingredients attractive without supplying the myriad benefits of the real thing. The twin forces of flavor dilution and fake flavor have short-circuited the biological basis for mutable appetite.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > But as far as I can tell, nutrition is seldom tracked or optimized for Nutrition optimizations are a harder sell than lots of other optimizations (most of the other optimizations don't rely on end-consumer awareness to pay off -- in many cases, consumer ignorance is beneficial for them.) But there are definitely firms working on nutrition-related optimizations. [0] [0] e.g., for a couple examples from one firm, http://www.arcadiabio.com/technologies/nutritional-oils http://www.arcadiabio.com/technologies/nutritional-oils and http://www.arcadiabio.com/technologies/enhanced-quality-grains http://www.arcadiabio.com/technologies/enhanced-quality-grai...

JoeAltmaier 11y ago

Of course yield increases are important and exciting. But they have to be delivered in a seed that will resist drought, insects, wind, heat and fungus. No farmer will plant a hybrid twice that fails them once.

jacobolus 11y ago
In food crops, there are obviously many things being optimized for: yield, color, size, flavor, hardiness, ease/convenience to prepare and eat, pest resistance, toxicity, ability to be picked unripe and keep for a long time, etc. But as far as I can tell, nutrition is seldom tracked or optimized for, and as a result most of the cheap and widely available foods end up being nutritionally weak compared to wild variants. Even what flavor optimizations there are tend to favor predictability and wide appeal (that is, not alienating anyone) over complexity or bitterness. We end up with foods which are large, bland, starchy, watery, seedless and easy to peel, highly uniform. From a few days ago: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/14/books/review/the-dorito-effect-by-mark-schatzker.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/14/books/review/the-dorito-ef... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9715561 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9715561 > Except that in pursuit of flavor, it does. “In nature,” Schatzker writes, “flavor never appears without nutrition.” Flavor means nutrition. Omega-3 fatty acids have flavor. Phenylethanol, a chemical compound humans love and often describe as a “rose note” in tomatoes, is made by an essential amino acid, which its presence signifies. Flavor’s purpose is to help us become like ingestive homing pigeons. Our bodies learn to draw connections between flavors and the physiological responses they signal. Through this post-ingestive feedback, latent intelligence in our digestive systems is animated. We can seek out and find what we need, nutritionally, and stop eating once we get it. > A perfect case is illustrated in an old study, begun in 1926, conducted by a Chicago pediatrician named Clara Davis. She foster-parented 15 babies “who’d never been exposed to ‘the ordinary foods of adult life’ ” and for six years let them eat whatever they wanted, in any order, from a list of 34 foods including “water, potatoes, corn meal, barley, beef, lamb, bone jelly, carrots, turnips, haddock, peaches, apples, fish, orange juice, bananas, brains, milk and cabbage.” They chose balanced diets — sometimes strange ones: One child ate liver and drank a pint of orange juice for breakfast. Their preferences changed often. Another child, who had started off with rickets, was early on given a glass of cod liver oil as medicine. Over the course of his illness, never encouraged, he drank it “ ‘irregularly and in varying amounts’ of his own free will until he was better,” Schatzker writes. This unconscious wisdom has been subsequently studied in goats and calves, showing repeatedly that if the body can make nutritional connections via physical feedback from flavor, it will be a good nutritionist. > But for the body to develop credible associations — including feeling satiated — between dark greens and iron, or eggs from free-ranging chickens and carotenoids, or tomatoes and phenylethanol, it needs to be communicated with honestly. Otherwise it can’t learn. “All over nature, animals . . . limit their meal size not because they’re stuffed and couldn’t possibly eat another bite, but because they’ve hit a secondary compound wall,” i.e. met nutritional needs beyond calories. Synthetic-flavor technology makes bland ingredients attractive without supplying the myriad benefits of the real thing. The twin forces of flavor dilution and fake flavor have short-circuited the biological basis for mutable appetite.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > But as far as I can tell, nutrition is seldom tracked or optimized for Nutrition optimizations are a harder sell than lots of other optimizations (most of the other optimizations don't rely on end-consumer awareness to pay off -- in many cases, consumer ignorance is beneficial for them.) But there are definitely firms working on nutrition-related optimizations. [0] [0] e.g., for a couple examples from one firm, http://www.arcadiabio.com/technologies/nutritional-oils http://www.arcadiabio.com/technologies/nutritional-oils and http://www.arcadiabio.com/technologies/enhanced-quality-grains http://www.arcadiabio.com/technologies/enhanced-quality-grai...