Breeding the Nutrition Out of Our Food
June 11, 2013
Story at-a-glance
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Ancient wild plants provided an astounding level of
phytonutrients that are largely absent from our modern
cultivated fruits and veggies
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Ancient farmers’ preference for sweeter, starchier foods led to
many of the less nutritious staples common today, such as sweet
corn
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Bitter and brighter colored plants that were packed with
nutrition have been largely replaced with sweeter, more muted
varieties
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Genetic modification is also altering the nutrition content of
the food supply; a new analysis showed GM corn to be far less
nutritious than non-GM corn
y Dr. Mercola
This is an area that has absolutely captured my passion and
attention. The last six months I have been devouring as much
information as I can about high-performance agriculture using
natural methods.
As you know, I have been one of the leaders in warning of the
dangers of GMOs but I am now convinced that we need to offer the
world a safe and superior alternative to GMOs. I am convinced that
this is not only possible, but also less expensive both in the short
and long term.
Part of the reason for this is that the nutritional content of
the conventional food supply has been rapidly declining for the last
50 years as a natural consequence of increasingly poor soil
conditions on modern farms, and it is getting worse.
But food has actually been getting gradually less
nutritious for far longer than that, as a direct result of humans’
preferences for sweeter, starchier and less colorful fruits and
vegetables.
As written in the New York Times:1
“Unwittingly, we have been stripping phytonutrients from
our diet since we stopped foraging for wild plants some 10,000
years ago and became farmers.”
I believe that natural high-performance agriculture techniques
such as optimizing soil microbiology through composting, and mineral
balancing and the use of sea solids in the soil are exciting
alternatives, and I plan on updating you soon on this project.
Sweeter Plants Were More Appealing to Ancient Farmers…
Ancient wild plants provided an astounding level of
phytonutrients that are largely absent from our modern cultivated
fruits and veggies. For instance, wild dandelions contain seven
times more phytonutrients than spinach, and purple potatoes native
to Peru contain 28 times more anthocyanins than commonly consumed
russet potatoes.2
In general, you can identify the healthiest superfoods simply by
looks and taste: the more bitter and the more colorful a natural
food is, the more potent antioxidants and other phytochemicals it’s
likely to contain.
But disease-fighting bitter or astringent foods, such as arugula,
mustard greens and Brussels sprouts, are often avoided by consumers
today,3
and they were similarly avoided by our ancient ancestors as access
to sweeter foods increased. So, too, was the case with colorful
foods, which have slowly fallen out of favor in many cases.
The evolution of corn provides one of the most telling examples.
The richly colored “Indian corn” now mostly used for holiday
decorating was once widely consumed, and contained far more
disease-fighting antioxidants and less sugar than today’s popular
pale yellow sweet corn.
The New York Times explains it well:
“Throughout the ages, our farming ancestors have chosen
the least bitter plants to grow in their gardens. It is now
known that many of the most beneficial phytonutrients have a
bitter, sour or astringent taste. Second, early farmers favored
plants that were relatively low in fiber and high in sugar,
starch and oil.
These energy-dense plants were pleasurable to eat and
provided the calories needed to fuel a strenuous lifestyle. The
more palatable our fruits and vegetables became, however, the
less advantageous they were for our health.”
Even Fruits Are Sweeter and Less Nutritious Than They Used to Be
The wild fruits consumed by our ancestors were smaller and
resembled most closely what a blueberry is today. Modern cultivated
fruits are much larger, which means they have a lot more sweet pulp
inside and less skin. The sweet "pulp" or "flesh" of the fruit is
where most of the fructose is, whereas the skin holds the
antioxidants.
Since wild fruits were much smaller than today's fruits and thus
had a much larger proportion of their volume as skin and seeds, they
provided a healthy source of powerful
antioxidants with limited amounts of
fructose. According to
Dr. Boyd Eaton, our antioxidant intake would be nearly seven
times higher simply if we ate wild fruits…
Stunning Corn Comparison: Genetically Modified (GM) Vs. Non-GM
Genetic modification is also making our modern food less
nutritious than it used to be, according to a report given to
MomsAcrossAmerica4
by an employee of De Dell Seed Company (Canada's only non-GMO corn
seed company). It offers a stunning picture of the nutritional
differences between genetically modified (GM) and non-GM corn.
Clearly, the former is NOT equivalent to the latter, which is the
very premise by which genetically modified crops were approved in
the first place. Here’s a small sampling of the nutritional
differences found in this 2012 nutritional analysis:
- Calcium: GMO corn = 14 ppm / Non-GMO corn = 6,130 ppm (437
times more)
- Magnesium: GMO corn = 2 ppm / Non-GMO corn = 113 ppm (56
times more)
- Manganese: GMO corn = 2 ppm / Non-GMO corn = 14 ppm (7 times
more)
GMO corn was also found to contain 13 ppm of glyphosate (the
active ingredient in Roundup Ready herbicide) compared to zero in
non-GMO corn, along with extremely high levels of formaldehyde,
which is a well-known carcinogenic byproduct of glyphosate
metabolism. Perhaps it’s no wonder that animals, when given a
choice, avoid genetically modified food. Yet, in the US upwards of
85 percent of all corn grown is now genetically modified.
There is no question that one wants to start with the highest
quality seed and GMO seeds are
vastly inferior to most ancient seeds. However, I believe epigenetic
expression is every bit as valid in plants as it is in humans and if
we optimize the plant’s nutrients through soil microbiology, we can
improve the nutrient density of even GMO seeds to near optimal
levels. And if these techniques are used for seeds with good genes
you can far exceed those levels.
USDA Is Developing New Plants Without Regard to Nutritional Content
Unfortunately, the USDA is oblivious to this reality. Author Jo
Robinson writes in the New York Times:5
“I’ve interviewed U.S.D.A. plant breeders who have spent
a decade or more developing a new variety of pear or carrot
without once measuring its nutritional content. We can’t
increase the health benefits of our produce if we don’t know
which nutrients it contains. Ultimately, we need more than an
admonition to eat a greater quantity of fruits and vegetables:
we need more fruits and vegetables that have the nutrients we
require for optimum health.”
Antioxidants are nature's way of defending your cells against
attack by these free radicals, thereby helping you resist aging and
disease. If you don't have adequate antioxidants to step in and
neutralize free radicals, then oxidative stress tends to lead to
accelerated tissue and organ damage. This is what makes antioxidants
so crucial to your health.
Your diet is one of the key ways to make sure you’re getting the
antioxidants, as well as the other critical vitamins and minerals,
your body needs to function optimally. Yet, in developing new plant
varieties, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) is far more
focused on creating disease-resistant plants than they are on
enhancing, or even protecting, their nutritional content.
Is There a Secret to Finding More Nutritious Food?
As I said initially, I firmly believe the solution for more
nutritious food is to optimize the microbiology of the soil so the
microbes can provide the optimal nutrients for the plant and
maximize their genetic expression. Composting, vortexed compost tea
and mineral replacements are far superior to commercial fertilizers
and also improve rather than degrade the quality of the soil.
Ideally, you can grow these yourself or find someone locally that
can do it for you. I will be going into far greater detail in future
articles.
In the meantime, consuming plenty of raw, locally harvested,
organic vegetables is one of the best ways to get the key nutrients
your body needs, in levels that most closely replicate those found
in the wild foods of our ancestors. For starters, this will ensure
that you’re avoiding all GM produce, which now appears to not only
be far less nutritious than non-GM food but also less contaminated
with agrichemicals and their toxic byproducts. Beyond this, there
are several additional measures you can take to make sure you’re
getting the most nutritious food available:
- Choose brightly colored foods: Produce in
shades of blue, red, purple and dark green are among the most
antioxidant-rich foods available.
- Eat more bitter foods: Many of the most
potent, disease-fighting compounds in food (phenols and
polyphenols, flavonoids, isoflavones, terpenes, and
glucosinolates) are bitter, acrid or astringent in flavor.
Expanding your diet to include these bitter-tasting foods is one
of the healthiest moves you can make. Examples include
grapefruit, arugula, collard greens, parsley, dandelion leaves,
radicchio, cranberries, endive and pomegranates.
- Indulge in herbs and spices: Many herbs and
spices remain largely unchanged from ancient times. Along with
containing some of the highest antioxidant levels of all foods,
herbs and spices are also very dense in other nutrients such as
vitamins and minerals, and they also have medicinal properties.
As a general rule, you really can't go wrong when using herbs
and spices and I recommend allowing your taste buds to dictate
your choices when cooking. However, you can also
choose spices based on their medicinal benefits.
- Grow your own foods from heirloom seeds, including
sprouts: This is one of the best ways to access
nutrient-dense food, especially if you use heirloom seeds that
have been carefully cultivated to produce the best plants
possible. You can
plant an organic veggie garden even in small spaces, and
sprouts, which are also among the most nutrient-dense foods
available, can also be
grown easily at home.
- Forage for wild, edible plants: Some of the
“weeds” in your backyard or local environment are incredibly
nutritious and very close to the wild plants consumed by our
ancestors. Dandelion, stinging nettle, prickly lettuce,
chickweed, sow thistle, red clover, burdock, cattails, Japanese
knotweed, and sheep sorrel are examples of wild nutrient-rich
foods. While you should only consume plants you are entirely
sure are not poisonous,
learning to gather safe, wild edible plants is quite simple.
© Copyright 1997-2013 Dr. Joseph Mercola. All Rights Reserved.
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