If you ever felt your fruit & veggies were not as good as they used to be, you were right - and that's official. Hidden away in the statistics released by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) last month was the alarming news that since 1963 there has been a dramatic reduction in the vitamin and mineral content in almost all our fruit and vegetables. Just to give you a small sample, there's been a 50% drop in the amount of calcium in broccoli; watercress down 88% in iron content; cauliflower down 40% in vitamin C content - and all since 1975. The full list is a long one and makes mournful reading.
It is hard enough as it is to get the RDA servings of nutrients from our food. The minimum requirement is 9 cups of fruit & vegetables daily. That's a lot of lettuce. The bio-availability of nutrients from our food is very variable and often compromised, especially by cooking. Most people aren't too fond of raw veggies so an awful lot of people don't even meet the minimum RDA requirements. That's not good considering that RDAs are already too low to keep most people in optimal health to begin with.
So if there's less nutrition in our fruit & veg we are going to have to eat even more than we already do to get anywhere near the recommended minimum. Are people about to do this? Hardly, according to the NPDGroup, who monitor American eating habits. According to them, the preferred American meal is one-dish, already prepared. Unless a vegetable can be squirted out of a bottle, it won't happen. Vegetables are considered side dishes and as such, inessential. The decline is relentless. Within the past last 15 years, the percentage of meals including any vegetable other than salad or potatoes has dropped to 41%.
Charged with maintaining the integrity of food on behalf of the public the USDA is deeply concerned by this precipitous drop in the nutrient value, right? Not a bit of it! When asked by the media about this, the USDA first declined to comment, then spokesperson Phyllis Johnson fatuously declared that the "the 78% decrease of calcium in corn is not significant because no one eats corn because of calcium". Ms Johnson went on to say that "the problem might not even exist at all because the public's perception of what the edible portion is may determine what parts are analysed". Oh, yeah - right! Before 1975 we always ate the cob right along with the corn! As if it were possible to add anything more absurd on the subject, Ms Johnson managed, going on to say, "nutritional content of produce is not as important as things like appearance and big yield". God help us all if that is the level of 'intelligent' response from our regulatory bodies.
And if you thought for one minute your fruit & veggies were OK because you don't live in the US and it's different here - I suggest you think again. In the first place you probably would never know about it because no one is going to test and tell you anyway. Secondly, why do you think this is happening? Since the USDA doesn't want to tell us or be bothered to find out I suppose we'll just have to guess. Could it just be, do you suppose, that it might have something to do with degradation of the soil, over-cropping & specialisation, the fertilisers & pesticides we use, not to mention a fouled water table? For want of any other suggestion I would say there might be a connection, wouldn't you? If you believe this is only happening in the US, then all I can say is - Good Luck! Fertilisers & pesticides, some banned or discouraged in the US & Europe, are routinely exported by the agro-chemical giants to other countries in the world where their governments encourage or even require them to be used. We are already seeing beef & animal meal, banned in Europe, being exported to Asia and showing up in tests. It is thus only a matter of time before the first cases of Mad Cow's Disease show up in Asia also.
Let's go back to those USDA figures and see exactly what else has been lost in the period 1963 - 2000, just a little over 40 years. It makes for grim reading.
Corn: Vitamin C (-41.66%); Vitamin A (-29.75%); Potassium (-3.57%); Magnesium (-22.91%). Spinach: Vitamin C (-45.09%); Vitamin A (-17.1); Magnesium (10.22%). Beets: Vitamin C (-50%); Potassium (-10%); Magnesium (-8%). Collards: Vitamin C (-61.95%); Vitamin A (-41.16%); Calcium (-28.57%); Potassium (-56%); Magnesium (-84.21%); Watercress: Iron (-88%); Cauliflower: Vitamin C (-40%): Sweet Peppers: Vitamin C (-30%); Apples: Vitamin A (-41%); Broccoli: Vitamin C (-49%), Vitamin A (-50%); Cauliflower: Vitamin C (-48%), thiamin & riboflavin (-50%); Pineapple: Calcium (-60%).
Vegetables are a major source of nutrition. Without them humans miss out on important vitamins, minerals and phytonutrients. It is, as we've noted, an effort for most people to obtain the minimum RDA servings of fruit & vegetables and even this is largely too little. Research on the subject published in the "American Journal of Clinical Nutrition" and other leading medical publications shows conclusively the results: 90% of women & 71% of men get less than the RDA for vitamin B6; men with the lowest amount of vitamin C have a 62% greater risk of cancer and a 57% risk of dying from any cause; Lutein & Zeaxanthin from vegetables reduce the incidence of cataract by 22%; people with low levels of retinol, beta-carotene & selenium are more likely to get cancer; supplemental vitamin D reduces the risk of colon cancer by 50% compared to dietary vitamin D, which reduces it by 12%; the area of China with the lowest micronutrient intake has the highest rate of cancer. And so it goes on.
It is ironic that given the low standard of the US diet most Americans would not come anywhere near the RDA minimums were it not for the fortified cereals they eat. Here the removed nutrients are to some extent put back into the packaged end product - and then covered in sugar. The way things are going it would seem inevitable that the majority will only get anything like the bare minimum nutritional requirement once all packaged food is fortified or made with genetically modified (GM) foods with the basic nutrients added. Not a very appealing or logical way of doing things, unless of course you're selling the stuff. It certainly does not lend itself to optimum health.
The only effective alternatives, if we are to look after ourselves, are nutritional supplementation and eating organically grown produce wherever possible. Curiously, it is through the debasement of the food we buy in our shops and markets that any long term hope for the future comes. As the wealthier and more informed sectors of the population become aware of the problem so the economic viability of extensive organic farming becomes more widespread. In turn this gradually filters down the socio-economic scale until both the major growers and suppliers of food, processed or otherwise, are forced to respond to market forces. Since this is likely to take quite a few years I would suggest the need to supplement is obvious and immediate. Certainly, anyone who today claims that you get all the nutrition you need from the food you buy is clearly not living on this planet.
Effective dietary supplementation works, as has been proven conclusively in countless scientific studies. Cancer, heart attacks, bone loss, stroke, diabetes and macular degeneration - almost any degenerative disease you can think of can either be prevented by, or ameliorated by, the right nutrients given in supplemental form. Over the long term, the benefits can really mount up. For example nurses who took multi vitamins over a 15-year period containing folic acid slashed their risk of colon cancer by 75%. Folate from food didn't work as well. No one knows why, although bio-availability is the likely cause. In the same study, nurses who took multi vitamins containing vitamin B6 reduced their risk of heart disease by 30%. The more B6 they took, the lower the risk.
There are other compelling reasons to supplement. The bio-availability of the nutrients in supplements (assuming of course you buy high quality) is 100% compared to food, which is very unpredictable when in comes to bio-availability. Nutrient content is also unpredictable, as we now see. Given the degree of vitamin drain, we can no longer count on vegetables and fruit being the packages of concentrated nutrients they're supposed to be. At a time when most people aren't coming close to getting 5, let alone 9, cups of fruits and vegetables it seems pointless to expect them to eat more to get the same amount of nutrients.
Putting this in some perspective for us all, American or Hottentot, however good or bad our diet, and wherever we may live, it is clear that the nutritional value of our food is declining. As goes America, so goes the world - at least to some degree, good and bad. Witness the new drive-in MacDonalds on the bye-pass in Sanur. Old ways give way to new that are neither better & usually a lot less charming, but are seemingly irresistible because they are convenient & well marketed. The progressive & worldwide nutritional downgrading of the food we eat is a trend that is unlikely to change any time soon, until the short-term exploitative nature of the agri-food majors is forced to change in response to market forces, led presumably by the US market reversing itself.
Meantime, I strongly suggest you don't wait for that day and do nothing. Eat healthy & well, and organically where you can. If you already do supplement, take a fresh look at what you need. If you don't take anything at all, I seriously suggest you look into it. Nutritionally, the world is not going your way.........
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Our fruit & veg are no longer the concentrated packages of nutrients they once were. Take broccoli for example, it now contains 49% less calcium & 50% less vitamin C than it did in 1975. Anyone who seriously claims we can still get all the nutrition we need from our food is clearly not living on this planet".
