Up to 40 Percent Decrease of Nutrients in Our Food

• Generations of farming reliant on the use of chemicals has rendered American farm ground sterile and literally lifeless, unable to hold nutrients or water, a problem the U.N. says is a grave threat to human health. • Soil experts are realizing that bare ground between rows of crops increases not just topsoil erosion, but fertilizer and other chemical runoff into water supplies, while others are examining the implications of C02’s role in declining nutrition. • Three recent historical food composition data studies found that as much as 40 percent and even more of minerals in plant-based foods have been depleted by substandard soil. The Problem With 'Modern' Farming Generations of reliance on and insistence on the use of chemicals has rendered farm ground across the U.S. dry and literally lifeless, unable to hold either nutrients or water. The problem negatively impacts not only farmers but our food supply and, ultimately, your health in many ways many have never considered or realized. Drifting topsoil laden with chemical residue is even causing respiratory illnesses in rural areas. Pesticides leaching into drinking water have exposed thousands to levels the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) deems troubling. In fact, the water that 210 million Americans drink is contaminated with nitrate, a routinely used fertilizer chemical linked to cancer and serious developmental problems in children. As if those problems weren't bad enough, instead of retaining it, soil depletion is releasing carbon, which morphs into the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, which is considered by the United Nations (U.N.) to be a grave threat to human health, especially in the next few decades. Another incident is of a group of scientists in a lab at Arizona State University in 1998. Amid luminous glass containers of bright green algae, a biologist told Ph.D. candidate Irakli Loladze they'd discovered something odd about zooplankton, the microscopic critters floating in the world's oceans and lakes that eat tiny algae. The scientists found the algae grew faster when more light was shined on them; it increased their food supply. The zooplankton should have flourished, but as the scientists focused more light on the algae, even though it grew faster and supplied more food, the tiny organisms were beginning to decline. It turns out that the algae, while plentiful, were greatly diminished in nutrition, essentially becoming a junk food. Loladze couldn't help wondering, "Could the same problem affect grass and cows? What about rice and people?" In terms of human nutrition, the similarities and parallels were sobering. The problem wasn't more light — it was more exposure to carbon dioxide over years. "If shining more light results in faster-growing, less nutritious algae — junk-food algae whose ratio of sugar to nutrients was out of whack — then it seemed logical to assume that ramping up carbon dioxide might do the same. And it could also be playing out in plants all over the planet. What might that mean for the plants that people eat?" Not Just More CO2, but Sterile and Depleted Soil Not just the scientific community but an increasing percentage of the general population are beginning to understand that many of the foods we've counted on for the highest nutrition are becoming as depleted as the soil they're grown in. Many have assumed it's been due to the farm industry's mass departure from nutrition based food growing methods toward higher yields through hybridization. A 2004 University of Texas study found in an evaluation between 1950 and 1999 that protein, calcium, iron, vitamin C and other vitamins and minerals in garden crops have been becoming increasingly depleted; in fact, by as much as 40 percent. Just as sobering, Politico states: "Before the industrial revolution, the earth's atmosphere had about 280 parts per million of carbon dioxide. Last year, the planet crossed over the 400 parts per million threshold; scientists predict we will likely reach 550 parts per million within the next half-century — essentially twice the scarcity that was in the air when Americans started farming with tractors." Some scientists believe that as rising CO2 increases photosynthesis, plants grow more, but at the same time, they load up with more carbohydrates like glucose, which shuts out other more valuable nutrients such as iron, protein and zinc. One thing that bothers Loladze is the scarcity of data in the way CO2 affects crops like rice, which billions of people count on for nutritional sustenance. Further, he notes that the way studies are conducted and funded hasn't made it easy for anyone tracking how CO2 is impacting human health. "It is simply not discussed in the agriculture, public health or nutrition communities." Soil Health and What It Means for Sustainable Agriculture One study noted that nearly 3 billion of the world's population is malnourished due to diminished nutritive elements and vitamins in plant-based food. It showed three areas pointing to the sharp decrease in the nutrients of plant-based foods grown in the U.S. and the U.K.: 1. Early studies on fertilization found a link between crop yield and mineral concentrations, known as the "dilution effect." 2. Three recent studies of historical food composition data reported decreases amounting to 5 percent to 40 percent or more in some minerals in certain vegetables and possibly fruits; one study examined vitamins and protein with similar results. 3. Side-by-side plantings of low- and high-yield broccoli and grain cultivars revealed consistently negative links between yield and concentrations of minerals and protein — genetic dilution effect. Seemingly unable to pull away from the practices put in place to increase yield ostensibly for the sake of "global food security," one study called fertilizers and pesticides a "necessary evil" for industrial agriculture, but noted, too, that soil health is crucial for it to be sustainable and maintain biodiversity. At the same time, the damage done to soil microflora is something that can't be denied. The study noted it as a key component of agricultural ecosystems in regard to soil being optimally fertile in its ability to produce crops. The study stresses the impact microbial activity has on "pursuing eco-friendly practices like bioremediation and biocontrol of phytopathogens in agricultural soils." Their presence is an indication of soil health. While such studies cryptically mention how fertilizers and pesticides "influence" nutrients, organic carbon, pH, enzymes and rhizodeposition (the exchange between plants and soil, which plays a role in soil carbon turnover) in plants, one of the biggest problems with the use of chemicals in farming is that the effects linger and cause a "shift" in the number of crucial microflora which, in essence, means "destroy." *Ask one of our doctors if a multi vitamin mineral supplement would be beneficial for your health. Source: mercola.com, 9/27/17.