Guest Columnist
I recently stumbled across an internet article regarding vegetable nutritional values and decided to surf for more information. The results were shocking to say the least.
For 20 years or more, we’ve been told that vegetable and fruit nutritional values were going down. Historical reasoning for the decline was thought to be due to the unending new varieties of vegetables. In fact, compared to the 1950s, vegetables and fruits are found to have considerably less nutrients in many areas such as proteins, calcium, iron and zinc.
Today, in some instances, this is true, such as with a basic, unchanged purple potato in Peru that has nearly 30 times more chemicals to fight or protect against cancer than our modern russet potato. Ancient corn had no more than 12 kernels that were difficult to extract and didn’t taste all that great. But, those 12 kernels had more protein that today’s corn. We’ve rejected black, red, green and blue corn for the sweeter but less nutritional yellow corn. Plant breeders may spend ten or more years developing newer, sweeter vegetable cultivars without a single thought regarding their nutritional value.
Today, however, we’ve learned that rising CO2 values speed up photosynthesis. As fruits and vegetables grow faster, nutritional values drop while carbohydrates increase. Increased growth increases carbohydrates, such as simple sugars (glucose). The result, regrettably, is a sweeter taste, along with a marked decrease in nutrients such as calcium, vitamin A, proteins, iron, and zinc. In other word, we get more sugar and less protein.
As global warming, climate change, or whatever one calls it continue to increase, the lessening nutritional value and increasing sugars will cause increasing health problems in countries with a largely plant diet. Lack of adequate protein, iron, vitamin A, and zinc means poorer health for mothers and infants.
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