The Invisible Force Making Food Less Nutritious (washingtonpost.com)
- Reference: 0183088560
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/05/01/0123239/the-invisible-force-making-food-less-nutritious
- Source link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/interactive/2026/carbon-pollution-diluting-key-nutrients-food/
> Surging concentrations of carbon in the atmosphere, caused largely by burning fossil fuels, have [2]produced potent changes in the way plants grow -- from increasing their sugar content to depleting essential nutrients like zinc. Experts fear the degradation of Earth's food supply will cause an epidemic of hidden hunger, in which even people who consume enough calories won't get the nutrients they need to thrive. "The diets we eat today have less nutritional density than what our grandparents ate, even if we eat exactly the same thing," said Kristie Ebi, a professor at the University of Washington's Center for Health and the Global Environment.
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> People in wealthy countries with strong health care systems will have many tools to cope with the change, experts said. But for the world's poorest and most vulnerable, the consequences could be devastating. [3]One study concluded that by the middle of the century the phenomenon could put more than a billion additional women and children at risk of iron-deficiency anemia -- a condition that can cause pregnancy complications, developmental problems and even death. Meanwhile, some 2 billion people across the globe who already suffer from some form of nutrient shortage could see their health problems grow even worse. "The scale of the problem is huge," Ebi said.
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> Plants depend on carbon dioxide to perform photosynthesis -- but that doesn't mean they grow better when there's more carbon in the air, scientists say. A sweeping survey of changes among 32 compounds in 43 crops found that nearly every plant that humans eat is harmed by rising CO2 levels. [...] For the past several years, [Sterre F. ter Haar, an environmental scientist at Leiden University in the Netherlands and lead author of the survey] and her colleagues have worked to compile a database of all existing research on nutrient changes linked to rising CO2. They tracked down hundreds of studies, ranging from tightly controlled lab experiments to sprawling global analyses of real-world crops.
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> Next the team used their dataset to calculate the nutritional densities of each crop under different carbon dioxide levels -- and to predict how their composition could continue to shift in the future. On average, they found, nutrients have already decreased by an average 3.2 percent across all plants since the late 1980s, when the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was about 350 parts per million. That figure may seem small, ter Haar said, but with so much of the world already living on the brink of nutrient insufficiency, a drop of just a few percentage points has the potential to push millions of additional people into a health crisis.
Researchers are still trying to understand the exact causes of this change. Extra CO2 can make plants grow faster and produce more carbohydrates, but without a matching increase in mineral uptake, nutrients like zinc, iron, and protein become diluted. Higher CO2 also causes plants to open their leaf pores less often, reducing the amount of water -- and dissolved minerals -- they absorb through their roots. At the same time, higher temperatures can further disrupt soil chemistry, affecting how plants take up nutrients and, in some cases, increasing their absorption of harmful substances like arsenic.
[1] https://slashdot.org/~fjo3
[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/interactive/2026/carbon-pollution-diluting-key-nutrients-food/
[3] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0253-3?itid=lk_inline_enhanced-template
Of all the possible reasons why some are starving (Score:3, Insightful)
... this will remain among the least relevant, even if found to be true. People are starving because of wars, because of corrupt politics and, much less often, because of natural disasters. And if we want to know why nutrients appear somewhat "diluted" in foods marketed today... there is obviously a commercial incentive to grow the largest mass of of food in the shortest time with the least resources, and you only have to taste a strawberry or tomato from your own garden in comparison to the output-optimized versions you can buy at the supermarket to know where "dilution" primarily comes from.
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What about "but with so much of the world already living on the brink of nutrient insufficiency, a drop of just a few percentage points has the potential to push millions of additional people into a health crisis. "
can you fail to understand? Your tomato and strawberry anecdote is just that, an anecdote. Only an American would think your example was telling: after all, if it happens in America, it must be happening everywhere with the same proportionate consequences. And how do you know that taste indicates
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These people are much more likely going to starve because of drought, or because excessive heat brings crops to their limits. In other words: less food is going to be produced, if large areas around the equator become infertile. Compared to this the almost nonsensical "research" of nutrient free tomatoes feels like rearranging deck chairs on an already sinking Titanic.
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The interventions are worse than the supposed 'problem'.
You're thinking is too one-dimensional (Score:2)
Problems with nutrition cause wars. What can happen is people don't have enough nutrition growing Up so their brains don't develop properly and they become weirdly aggressive, unable to think critically and more prone to be manipulated by demagogues that start wars.
I'm not saying that you're wrong that wars are the more immediate problem but you don't get rid of wars without feeding children while they're growing up and making sure they're not exposed to chemicals that fuck them up as they become adults
And yet suburbs continue to expand (Score:1)
People are addicted to their single family detached housing, big houses, big yards, big streets, big heating and cooling demands, big suvs with big fuel tanks driving big miles to big stores and emitting big levels of co2 making bigger vegetables but smaller nutrition. God bless America, who leads the way.
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But they're easily contained and controlled
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Japan?
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Yeah you're not going to convince people to care about addressing global warming by telling them they have to be poor (ie, give up their house, car etc).
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Sound like a bitter poor person. I'm going to continue to enjoy my spacious home on a few acres in an area with excellent schools and low crime.
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> People are addicted to their single family detached housing, big houses, big yards, big streets, big heating and cooling demands, big suvs with big fuel tanks driving big miles to big stores and emitting big levels of co2 making bigger vegetables but smaller nutrition. God bless America, who leads the way.
If American addiction is now leading CO2 emissions, then perhaps you can explain what Chinese addiction is doing to challenge that claim. By a considerable margin.
[1]https://www.worldometers.info/... [worldometers.info]
One country out of 195 recognized countries on the planet is now responsible for one third of global CO2 emissions. If America became the green utopia progressives dream about, it would amount to pissing in the pool in the big picture.
And remember, kids. It's ONE atmosphere. Per capita arguments are as poi
[1] https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-by-country/
Why trends matter more than history. (Score:2)
> [1]America is the all time leader when it comes to CO2 emissions. [ourworldindata.org]
> More than the 30 countries in Europe added together.
> More than China. Even with less than a quarter of the people.
I understand that most find it "relevant" to bring forth the non-existent arguments requiring the climbing boys (a.k.a chimney sweeps) of yesteryear into this discussion, but those of us paying attention to the today and future impact of trends, know the actual truth of the matter:
[2]https://ourworldindata.org/gra... [ourworldindata.org]
If you wish to start charging for climate reparations, understand China was the country that started coal mining over 5,000 years ago. So they've got one hell of a tab at this point. And thei
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-co-emissions?country=EU-28~EU~EU~EU~EU~EU~EU~EU~EU~EU~EU~USA~CHN~IND~European+Union+(28)
[2] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-co-emissions?time=1974..latest&country=EU-28~EU~USA~CHN~IND~European+Union+(28)
No problem. (Score:3)
If we figure out we're missing something important, we can just get our government to put it in our toothpaste. That shouldn't bother anybody..
Serious question (Score:2)
Are underfed people primarily short of calories, trace elements, vitamins, protein, fiber or what? Whatever the answer is, concentrate on that. This study ignores the actual issue and waah waahs on about dilution.
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> Whatever the answer is, concentrate on that.
We have more than enough people to address multiple issues at once, if only people like you didn't need everything so simplified for them that they argue against addressing them because it's confusing.
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Obviously. But we also have a large number of people that cannot deal with any level of complexity beyond "simple problem" -> "simple fix!".
The reality is there are no simple problems with simple fixes left. They have been solved. Everything we are dealing with now is complex. And that means that of 1000 ways to deal with something, 990 will only make things worse. But that is already a complex idea, and hence not accessible to those people.
Incidentally, that is why populist assholes are on the raise glo
Invisible Force, eh? (Score:2)
> The Invisible Force Making Food Less Nutritious
If anyone mentioned midi-chlorians, I'm going to vomit.
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Midi-chlorians! It's got what plants crave.
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Don't you mean Bwandi-chlorians? Stardiocrawars !
A long time ago in a galaxy dumbed down for television...
Invisible Force? (Score:2)
All forces are invisible.
(There are 4 of them. The Strong, The Weak, The Electromagnetic and Gravity)
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You forgot the recognized strongest of them all: Stupidity.
So Easy to Solve, What's the Big Deal? (Score:2)
This is so easy to solve, so no need to panic. We just need to water them with Brawndo. Afterall, Brawndo's got what plants crave.
Mountain out of a molehill (Score:2)
This is a case of spreading FUD by presenting true facts in a sensationalist light.
we have been breeding agricultural plants for higher carbon concentrations, at the expense of everything else in the plant, since the dawn of human domestication of plants. This. Is. Not. New. And as such, should not be scary or cause for alarm.
to the extent that global CO2 levels are adding to the normal trend of breeding pants for higher yields, itâ(TM)s is likely to be the least significant way in which global CO
another thing to consider (Score:2)
GMOed plants designed to make vegetables bigger and prettier so they look attractive in the produce aisle could be a factor too
AKSUALLY, (Score:2)
It's demonic forces corrupting your cheerios. News at 11.
Where at least I'm gluten free (Score:2)
What's all this about plants? I thought this article was supposed to be about FOOD!
ignore (Score:2)
mod reversal
Something I have wondered for years (Score:2)
How the hell am I supposed to hit the USDA recommended daily vitamin allotments without supplements?
Keep in mind I've never had a doctor tell me I need to hit them but it seems basically impossible based on the nutrition information available for anything except vitamin c. Like I would have to eat eight bananas a Day to get to the USDA potassium recommendation.
I guess the argument is that you don't just eat bananas but go try to find a wide variety of foods that have a lot of potassium and can get y
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More like 10 bananas!
Watermelons are a good source, and yummy. Radishes and spinach as well, and they make for a good salad. Also, potatoes. If you like Avocados, those are a great source.
Besides bananas are radioactive and produce antimatter. They're yellow bombs just waiting to go off!
Good Omens (Score:1)
...in which even people who consume enough calories won't get the nutrients they need to thrive
Good Omens (the book, not the TV series) had a subplot about this. Yet again, Pratchett & Gaiman predicted the future.
If only we had a way to fix this (Score:2)
If only we had technology that would allow us to breed crops that could eradicate micronutrient deficiency and prevent its resultant illnesses and deaths.
Oh, wait, we do, but neo-Luddies who want everyone to live in a state of impoverishment and suffering don't want us to use it.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_rice
This is misdirection (Score:2, Insightful)
The real reason food is less nutritious is soil exhaustion from commercial farming, not CO2.
Re:This is misdirection (Score:5, Informative)
I'd like to ask what gives you the potent confidence to just go and voice easily debunakble falsehoods with literally nothing to back them up with?
You think that in the dozens of research articles done in last 30 years [1]https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/a... [nih.gov] literally nobody thought of controlling for this, with like, I don't fucking know, fertilized substrate to test it on, which would entirely eliminate any effect of soil?
This has been reproduced in lab many times. CO2 richer atmosphere makes plants grow faster than plants in CO2 poorer atmosphere. They also absorb and retain fewer nutrients in the process, and you end up with plants with less micronutrients per unit of mass (and per joule of energy in starches and whatnot, which form fine).
Please, read about things you wanna talk about, or shut, the fuck, up!
[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6104417/
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We will get here shortly due to war with Iran. There are credible predictions of famine in Asia/Africa in 2027.
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no, hasbara dimwit, he's one of the magats that your boss nazinyahu relies on for support.
you should be more polite to him, put on a suit and say "thank you", just in case.
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> Researchers report that the CO2 levels expected in the second half of the 21st century will likely reduce the levels of zinc, iron, and protein in wheat, rice, peas, and soybeans. Some two billion people live in countries where citizens receive more than 60 per cent of their zinc or iron from these types of crops. Deficiencies of these nutrients already cause an estimated loss of 63 million life-years annually.
Also fuck you, I'm 100% pro GMO rice. I think at this point most major crops should be GMO.
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That statement is not only abysmally stupid, it is _uneducated_. Because iron-deficiency anemia is not "hypothetical" at all and it is a severe problem on the level of not having enough to eat.
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Oh, are you like an LLM agent that's making me do homework for some schoolchild or something? Cute. Sure, whatever.
[1]https://www.sciencedirect.com/... [sciencedirect.com]
Specifically ran experiments with three specific, noted mixes of soil in containers, with the same soil used for both increased and baseline CO2 content.
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0048969718340531
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From your study: "the concentrations of N, P and Zn decreased by 6%, 5% and 10% " without accounting for increased yield. Soil studies show about 12% decrease in nutritional quality and are controlled for yield.
Re:This is misdirection (Score:4, Informative)
> Oh, are you like an LLM agent that's making me do homework for some schoolchild or something? Cute. Sure, whatever.
> [1]https://www.sciencedirect.com/... [sciencedirect.com]
> Specifically ran experiments with three specific, noted mixes of soil in containers, with the same soil used for both increased and baseline CO2 content.
Yes CO2 is definitely an issue in nutrient uptake. (I haven't finished the paper yet) So is soil depletion. This is not an either or situation as posters seem to be arguing.
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0048969718340531
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It's more likely that 'both' are relevant if you are worried about population level diets or epidemiology; since what people on average are eating is going to depend heavily on what is being grown intensively; but that's quite distinct from the fact that, at lab scales, having multiple test chambers with standardized conditions aside from CO2 concentrations is both relatively obvious and relatively trivial as dealing with potential confounding factors goes.
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> It's more likely that 'both' are relevant
Both are exactly relevant.
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> I'd like to ask what gives you the potent confidence to just go and voice easily debunakble falsehoods with literally nothing to back them up with?
Papers:
[1]https://www.jacn.org/are-food-... [jacn.org]
[2]https://www.tandfonline.com/do... [tandfonline.com]
General articles:
[3]https://climate.sustainability... [sustainabi...ectory.com] [4]https://www.scientificamerican... [scientificamerican.com]
I take it you have the scientific papers debunking this? It is interesting the claim that no nutrients are removed from soils by growing things in them. Even if fertilizers are used, fertilizers do not have the identical characteristics of the entire soil composition in any area, they are there to provide for rapid growth, replacing some of t
[1] https://www.jacn.org/are-food-crops-in-the-usa-becoming-less-nutritious/
[2] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1300/J064v26n01_10
[3] https://climate.sustainability-directory.com/term/nutrient-depletion/
[4] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/soil-depletion-and-nutrition-loss/
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The OP's claim is that soil depletion is "the real reason", not "a reason".
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> The OP's claim is that soil depletion is "the real reason", not "a reason".
I find your comment a difference without distinction. One does not address a problem with a monovariant. If we wish food to return to previous levels of nutrition, we address all of the reasons. If you are going to debunk, you debunk - not declare soil depletion as irrelevant. Now the next question becomes, will vegetables return to previous levels if we only return CO2 levels to 1750 ( the beginning of industrial era radiative forcing via increased CO2 in the atmosphere?
If you were to make a presentation
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Your comment is a refreshing throwback to /. better days.
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The problem with your thinking is that you view everything through the us vs. them lens. This is why you constructing deniers vs. right-thinking people false narratives to justify your derangement. I don't view the world the same way and my comment, complimenting someone for well-reasoned post, is coherent from my perspective.
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pretty sure if you posted about this on WUWT you'd get a ton of rebuttals.
not saying i'd agree with them
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Why this person is confident is really simple: "The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt." (Bertrand Russel, ca. 1880)
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Slashdot is abound with armchair experts and scientists
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[citation required]
I know you (based on your past comments) really don't want there to be any anthropogenic climate change, but just wishing it away won't wash.
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> Providing the world's population with sufficient and nutritious food through sustainable food systems is a major challenge of the twenty-first century. Fertilizer use is a major driver of crop yield, but a comprehensive synthesis of the effect of fertilizer on the nutritional quality of food crops is lacking. Here we performed a comprehensive global meta-analysis using 7859 data pairs from 551 field experiment-based articles published between 1972 and 2022, assessing the contribution of fertilization with a
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Your lack of shame never ceases to maze me. You have to actually read the paper past the abstract. Or, for lazy people like you, ask the AI to summarize.
From [1]Improvement of nutritional quality of food crops with fertilizer: a global meta-analysis [springer.com]
> 3.1 Effects of fertilizers on the nutritional quality of crop products
> 3.2 Individual and combinatorial effects of fertilizers on the nutritional quality of crop products
> 3.3 Effects of site-specific covariates on quality improvement by fertilizer application
> ...
[1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13593-023-00923-7
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Wait, you want anthropogenic climate change?
Re: This is misdirection (Score:3)
Why not both?
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Sure; but the NRA's lobbyists are a bit scarier than the American Chemistry Council's lobbyists; so I think we're going to need to gather more data and teach the controversy in search of Sound Science on this contentious and so far ill-understood issue. I also hear that victim's rights advocates are particularly worried about anything that would further endanger law abiding Americans being menaced by oncology patients brutally doing crimes to afford their next hit of Cisplatin.
Re: This is misdirection (Score:2)
Is it? What if the person committed suicide because they have cancer? Not so black and white, they wouldn't have committed suicide had they not got cancer.
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Obviously, it will be both. But that idea exceeds the complexity some people can handle.
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> The real reason food is less nutritious is soil exhaustion from commercial farming, not CO2.
One cannot use the term misdirection, without including Monstanto.
Let's stop pretending this is a 'simple' problem. If it were, the Amish would have solved it for us long ago. And we would have fucking learned.
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Basically no real problem is simple these days, because basically all things that are simple to fix have been fixed. But there is a ton of people that cannot deal with complexity and uncertainty. Hence these idiots push that anything is simple because otherwise they would be found shivering in the corner, completely locked up. Obviously, these people have no place in any discussion of actual problems.
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Oh look, another denialist trying to sidetrack a pretty verifiable statement of fact.
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Your knee-jerk into smears is indicative of your overall ideologically-induced mental decline.
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Textbook example of projection.
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CO2 has the properties it has, and trying to shift or deny that is a sign of either a liar or an idiot.
I'll let others decide what you are.
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My money is on both. The common idiot (and we seem to be dealing with one of those here) thinks that lying about things changes reality. And hence these people try to use lies as a tool to solve problems. Obviously, all that does is make the problems worse.
Re:This is misdirection (Score:5, Informative)
People have been working on identifying this problem for 3 decades.
[1]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m... [nih.gov]
[2]https://elifesciences.org/arti... [elifesciences.org]
[3]https://www.politico.com/agend... [politico.com]
Yes, our fields are basically growing hydroponics now, but even when grown in healthy soils, you'll grow junkier food than a century ago. Both are a problem, it compounds into mass silent malnutrition.
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/15637215/
[2] https://elifesciences.org/articles/02245
[3] https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/09/13/food-nutrients-carbon-dioxide-000511/
Re: This is misdirection (Score:3)
I think it is a combination of excess C02 in the atmosphere and depleated farmland from overuse, maybe not just fertilizer needs to be added to soil during planting but also vitamins & minerals designed for plants too
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It's more than one single thing. Fertilizer has an effect as well. Things grow bigger, but nutritional content density decreases at the same time. And sugar, at least, isn't necessarily a bad thing. Just walking a few miles every day helps out a lot. Walking a few miles a day (a real walk, not a "step counter" mile) isn't as drastic as of a task as you think. It takes me around 20-25 minutes. It actually lead me to add on some running and now long-distance running.
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you have hit the point, without mass calculation, this argument goes nowhere.
Easily tested hypothesis --->. Objectively, much more food is grown and consumed today relative to 1980. Soil element are probably distributed about the same. More CO2 and more H2O leads to more carbohydrate which is the structure of the plant. The amount of soil elements (Ca++, Fe++ etc.) stay about the same, so one see a "dilution" in the resulting crop when looking at amount of nutrient vs. mass of crop.
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You're on a forum targeted towards highly technical people. Given that, I would contend that you don't need to go into this intimate of detail. My comment already said what was needed.
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> The real reason food is less nutritious is soil exhaustion from commercial farming, not CO2.
It's certainly a plausible hypothesis. I'd have to read the original article to see whether they considered this.
I'm pretty sure part of commercial farming was selectively breeding crops to make them sweeter because that sells better. The last 60 years have also seen tremendous increases in crop intensity so it's entirely plausible there are fewer minerals left in the soil. Or that plans bred to grow more food per acre just have less energy available to incorporate minerals.
These all seem plausible to me an
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And in actual reality, effects and causes are usually multiple ones not one simple (or rather simplistic) thing. I get that your mind cannot deal with that level of complexity. That is probably also why you think you are smarter than a lot of scientists that have looked at problems for decades.
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This.
Growing plants is all about providing a balance of nutrients. Anyone who has ever checked out the N-P-K rating of lawn fertalizer knows this. You can dump as much CO2 on a plant and it will do little good beyond a point.
Shame you got modded down so harshly for a valid point. But this was supposed to be a "CO2 Bad, mkay?" thread.