Heirloom vegetables grow more slowly and spoil much more quickly than modern crops. This is because modern crops have less nutritional value - https://jeroenvanbaar.substack.com/p/data-dispatch-4-the-falling-nutritional

That article recommends eating a better diet. Sure. Seems a bit idealist. Here's some more actionable advice: everyone should take a multivitamin and magnesium glycinate. If you live somewhere that gets a winter take vitamin D too.

I'm speaking from experience here, I used to get sick every winter and my skin would get so dry it would crack and bleed. Take your vitamins.

  • Melina [they/them, fae/faer]
    ·
    9 months ago

    This simply isn’t true or backed by evidence that is completely biased. Produce especially root vegetables like onions and potatoes still retain most of their nutritional value the only difference being the size of the vegetable in correlation with its total nutritional content which varies dramatically from a potato let’s say was grown fifty years ago.

    A lot of these alleged studies into the nutritional drop off of our food is subsequently more harmful towards consumers because for starters, it reinforces the idea that fresh produce is “very bad” therefore you shouldn’t touch them. Another consequence is forcing people to know focus solely on consuming ready made manufactured products high in preservatives and other additives rather than planning meals consisting of fresh produce. And it goes without saying, anti GMO rhetoric which is akin to antivax conspiracy theories.

    It is advised you consume vitamins anyway as a lot of foods contain small amounts of those that make up our daily intake, but at the same time they are not essential to your diet and are part of a bigger predatory market.

    The more we push the idea that produce is bad the less people are likely to consume them and replace these essentials with more harmful foods or none at all, the reality is produce is starting to become “less profitable” as land becomes less fertile because of the consequences of climate change, if we want healthier produce, we must stop using fossil fuels- that will not happen so produce will stop producing higher yields and the cost will inflate - the rich will always have access to these goods and the rest of us will be eating carcinogenic imitation fruit paste in our pod apartments.

    • BigHaas [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      9 months ago

      If food is less nutritionally dense but equally filling, on a population level malnutrition will become more common. The conclusion is that we should all eat more vegetables, I'm not sure what you're talking about with the "fresh produce is bad" thing. This has nothing to do with GMOs or depleted land, it's the result of markets making our food. Produce from local farmers markets is more good than supermarket produce but it's all good.

      Here's a study showing people that supplement have less deficiencies than people that don't: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5579642/

      Also vitamin D is it's own thing, deficiencies in that are caused by office jobs not diet. It's a hormone. Almost everyone should take it daily.