Micronutrients are good, a balanced diet is better
Chronic illnesses, heart disease, obesity ― we know how eating too much of the wrong foods can be unhealthy. But what do we do now
Chronic illnesses, heart disease, obesity ― we know how eating too much of the wrong foods can be unhealthy. But what do we do now we know some modern farming has "diluted" micronutrients in fruit and vegetables? If you want to know what makes a healthy diet, it is easy to get the information these days. Most of us know the basics, anyway: Say no to chips and soda; eat fresh fruit and vegetables instead. It's just a question of putting it into action in our day-to-day lives. But do the items we have saved in our minds as "good for you," like fresh fruit, vegetables, or whole-grains and pulses, still live up to their reputation? The short answer is "not necessarily." "The mineral content has declined in a wide range of food," said David Montgomery, a geologist in the Earth and Space Sciences department at the University of Washington in the northwestern US. The question is: why? Dilution effect lowers nutrient levels in some foods Montgomery has researched different farming practices and how they affect soil and thus our food. For his book, "What your food ate," he looked at roughly 1,000 peer-reviewed studies into nutrient-levels in foods, including fruits, vegetables and grains. He found that there had been no consistent change over the past few decades in the level of macronutrients in food. That included carbohydrates, proteins and fats. Why how we chew our food matters for our health To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video But the same cannot be said for micronutrients, like vitamins and minerals, such as iron and zinc. "We don't need a lot of them, but they are central to our health," Montgomery told DW.
"Mineral-levels in particular are affected by farming practices." For example, when grains are bred to yield double the amount of wheat, it can lead to lower nutrient levels per ear of wheat. This can happen with grain varieties that do not alter the amount of minerals and nutrients they absorb from the soil, but which are bred to grow twice as much wheat — that same amount of goodness is then spread over more resulting crop. That's the so-called dilution effect. And it's one reason, says Montgomery, why some healthy foods today are not quite as healthy as what our grandparents used to eat. 'Minimizing disturbance of the soil' leads to more nutritious food The soil in which our food grows also plays an important role in how nutritious food is on our plates. Modern farming techniques, like tilling and the use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, disturb the balance of fungi and microbes present in the soil. And if this balance gets thrown off, plants may be less able to absorb nutrients as well as phytochemicals, which have anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties. That's why Montgomery calls for "regenerative farming practices, which involve minimizing physical and chemical disturbance of the soil, keeping living plant roots in the soil at all times and growing a diversity of crops." If you do that, it enhances the so-called nutrient cycle and production of phytochemicals. And that "leads to more of these compounds that we want in our food actually being in our food," said Montgomery. And why do we want them in our food? While phytochemicals aren't essential to our health and are not classified as nutrients, they protect our cells against damage from environmental toxins and help neutralize free radicals that could damage our DNA.
The BriefWire