From article “Side note on frozen produce: The post above is about fresh produce only. A potentially appealing alternative may be buying frozen produce, which on average has equal or higher nutritional content than fresh. This is because frozen produce is picked at peak ripeness then frozen shortly after, locking in most of the nutrients at the expense of appearance/texture/flavor.”
Presumably, cooking/heat causes (or accelerates) some chemical reactions (like with enzymes) which turns those nutrients into something else, or the heat destroys the more complicated molecules, or allows the water to leech away dissolved stuff.
Freezing generally means lowered rate of chemical reactions, water no longer flows, etc. So it makes logical sense that freezing keeps the nutrients intact.
> That means it had been a year since the apples he bought were actually picked
I've been saying for a while that instead of focusing on "best by" dates, food suppliers should be forced to put on the harvest or manufactured date.
"Fresh" Apples being sold after a year is nothing compared to how old some of the food you by in the freezer, or boxed section.
Manufacturers and store owners are the ones that benefit the most from keeping food on the shelves longer.
> If you walk into a booth and that vendor is selling over 5 types of produce, there's no way they all ripened at the same time. They may not even all be grown by them.
I noticed this also when i was buying a "farmers box" that promised to deliver fresh produce from a local farm. Upon closer inspection almost all of the organic farmers market type produce delivery services buy from other suppliers and sell as if they grew them themselves.
Frozen vegetables are often blanched and flash frozen at the peak of freshness. In many cases they are “fresher” than what you find in the produce section
Rory Sutherland makes this point, that because some products are cheaper to manufacture and keep in stock (like frozen veggies), they're perceived to be less healthy than "fresh".
If you want a real 'farmers box', look into Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). I've never seen those programs not be local seasonally-appropriate food. The change in produce over the year is part if the fun.
I wouldn't expect a logistics company to actually own farms. They are promising to buy some standard of produce (organic , local, fresh, whatever they promised...) and get it to me.
> vendor is selling over 5 types of produce, there's no way they all ripened at the same time. They may not even all be grown by them.
I’d like to know how authors make this conclusion. For my weak but real experience in the field:
1. Plants don’t fruits everything at once. Some pumpkins fruits spans during months
2. Wise farmers grow several time separated batches, precisely to space the harvests. Especially useful for not-fruits plants like leek and salads
3. Plant several species that don’t grow at the same time. Fresh tomatoes 8 month a year is real
4. Outdoor growing is not a lab and there’s chance a side of you field receive more/less sun, wind, moisture… so won’t grow at the same rate. Some farmers don’t harvest all at the same time but just what’s ripe at the time.
5. Probably even easier in a greenhouse, the most environment you control, the most precise can be the harvest date/range of your controlled batches.
This article could use an awful lot more links to the cited research. Reading this as a skeptic, I don't know whether the claims are accurate or not, but the fact that (nearly) none of his claims are supported by citations to authoritative sources is not promising.
Literally the author states it's unverifiable data:
The chart has unverified information "The average mineral content of calcium, magnesium, and iron in cabbage, lettuce, tomatoes, and spinach has dropped 80-90%
between 1914 and 2018 30,34,35,36,371. Asterisks indicate numbers could not be independently verified."
> If you walk into a booth and that vendor is selling over 5 types of produce, there's no way they all ripened at the same time. They may not even all be grown by them. Once, he actually saw a vendor at Boston farmers’ market selling carrots from Target! He could tell from the packaging because he used to work for them.
I don't think this is true. In California and New York City, vendors at farmers markets can only sell what they grew themselves, unless they get an exemption for a specific product and prominently label the product as grown by a third party, specifying the third party (usually things like cranberries grown by one vendor in the fall). Very occasionally you'll see foods like apples in plastic bags with supermarket labeling, but that's because the farmer packages and sells the produce directly to the supermarket.
My wife ran a farmer's market for years, it can definitely be true.
Vendors tried to sneak stuff in constantly, and unless you have a market manager who really cares and is constantly vigilant, vendors will resell stuff they have bought in bulk and are reselling at a markup.
Not all vendors of course, but like anything else there's always a handful of bad actors.
Yeah I have seen a farm do this! They bought from other local farms at least, not Target. But the claim "vendors at farmers markets can only sell what they grew themselves" is only true to the extent that there is enforcement and sufficient oversight to find violators.
My one addition to this is that I wonder if this is part of the obesity crisis.
If food is less nutritious, then logically we should eat more of it to get the nutrition we need.
Excess calorie consumption could at least partially be a byproduct of our biological drive to acquire the lacking raw vitamins and minerals we need from the foods that we eat.
This is undoubtedly exacerbated by eating processed foods, sure, but I'm willing to bet this lack of a fundamentally nutritious foodscape almost certainly contributes to the Pavlovian habit of overeating and resultant societal obesity.
I've had the same thought and wonder if this is the likely long-term ticking time-bomb for GLP-1 agonists. Hunger is a check-engine light. Turning it off is a bad idea without a clear understanding of what is triggering it.
If your body is malnourished in a fundamental way, turning off the nutrient-seeking system is going to lead to a wide spectrum of pathological deficiencies over time.
I've been growing most of my own produce for several years and I make sure all trace elements are present and available. It's a ton of work and makes no financial sense (it's not really cheaper when all is said and done) but at age 53 I feel a lot better than I did at age 38.
I wish I could share this more widely but I think a lot of the worlds problems might be from lack of trace elements. Just a theory but eating produce picked the same day with proper mineral balances as a regular diet is astounding.
The older I get the more I appreciate how important good nutrition is for basically everything in your life. I started focusing on it more for climbing where I kept getting injured, injury used to set limit for me, now I hardly ever get injured or it's far more subtle and manageable. I feel way stronger and happier, and noticed other parts of me generally feeling healthier. I've been climbing for a very long time so even though this is anecdotal, it's a very clear relationship to me, and this is supported by some of the leading climbers in the world who really get into the science of it.
It's hard to sell most people on this because nutrition is historically such a terrible science, but the western diet over the past 50 years has gradually set the bar so low, that it's incredibly easy to make substantial improvements for little effort by focusing on the basics of simply getting back onto natural foods for the core part of your diet. The bioscience of nutrition is complex, and the statistics of nutrition is fraught with misinterpretation and flat out bullshit, but it's bizarrely simple when you figure out the actual changes to make... meat, veg, eggs, dairy, all the things that have been villainized by the food industry. That people still think eating egg yolks is bad for you just reflects how poor public education is on this stuff, and how damaging all of the ancient missinformed and massively outdated WHO recommendations have been to public health.
One theory I have (no idea just a theory) is that obesity and overeating are partially the result of missing nutrients.
Something close to 50% of Americans are deficient in Magnesium for instance. But there are a lot of trace minerals and nutrients and they interact to some extent.
Is it possible people are trying to get enough of "something" when they overeat and this leads to consuming too many calories? Maybe it's not a self control issue so much as you have to eat a lot of Domino's pizza to get what your body is lacking?
I don't know about the specifics of the article I see a lot of "well, he doesn't cite sources!" type of comments and this may well be, however, in the general or the abstract this article hits on a number of important points. It's not just missing minerals, phytonutrients in particular often degrade rapidly. Mineral depleted soils are a real phenomenon and a tomato isn't necessarily fungible.
It's become a pet topic of mine and there is a lot more I could say about this (I have a bunch of theories) but will cut it short for now with this: I feel very healthy and I feel very happy. I wish others could experience the same type of things and I'd like to optimize it further.
How do you ensure the trace elements are present and available? I assume there's some testing you can do for both the soil and the produce, but how do you fix any deficiencies that you discover?
I keep the pH within ranges that plants can uptake nutrients and apply both mineral and trace mineral supplements in sufficient quantities. Azomite for instance which I apply to working compost and calcium magnesium supplements. Additionally I apply other supplements like organic acids (fulvic and humic acid) which aid in the transport.
I also remove all minerals from irrigation water with RO and use an engineered growing medium rather than growing in native soil. But it's organic (and alive with microbes), not hydroponic or anything like that.
Readit News
What about frozen? I’m happy to know most of the nutrients handle it, is there known exceptions?
Freezing generally means lowered rate of chemical reactions, water no longer flows, etc. So it makes logical sense that freezing keeps the nutrients intact.
I've been saying for a while that instead of focusing on "best by" dates, food suppliers should be forced to put on the harvest or manufactured date.
"Fresh" Apples being sold after a year is nothing compared to how old some of the food you by in the freezer, or boxed section.
Manufacturers and store owners are the ones that benefit the most from keeping food on the shelves longer.
> If you walk into a booth and that vendor is selling over 5 types of produce, there's no way they all ripened at the same time. They may not even all be grown by them.
I noticed this also when i was buying a "farmers box" that promised to deliver fresh produce from a local farm. Upon closer inspection almost all of the organic farmers market type produce delivery services buy from other suppliers and sell as if they grew them themselves.
freezing meanwhile can preserve them on the spot and ensure the less transportable types can make it to consumers.
It's one of these things that would be good to know as a consumer but as a society it would be detrimental, imho
"Safe to eat" i think it's the best metric, you can do a 1+1 for certain products if you want (like olive oil has a 18m shelf life, etc)
On the same note i think "best by" dates should be illegal imho.
I’d like to know how authors make this conclusion. For my weak but real experience in the field:
1. Plants don’t fruits everything at once. Some pumpkins fruits spans during months
2. Wise farmers grow several time separated batches, precisely to space the harvests. Especially useful for not-fruits plants like leek and salads
3. Plant several species that don’t grow at the same time. Fresh tomatoes 8 month a year is real
4. Outdoor growing is not a lab and there’s chance a side of you field receive more/less sun, wind, moisture… so won’t grow at the same rate. Some farmers don’t harvest all at the same time but just what’s ripe at the time.
5. Probably even easier in a greenhouse, the most environment you control, the most precise can be the harvest date/range of your controlled batches.
The chart has unverified information "The average mineral content of calcium, magnesium, and iron in cabbage, lettuce, tomatoes, and spinach has dropped 80-90% between 1914 and 2018 30,34,35,36,371. Asterisks indicate numbers could not be independently verified."
It could possibly vary in fruits, so the tomatoes get a pass. But leaves need a pretty constant amount.
I don't think this is true. In California and New York City, vendors at farmers markets can only sell what they grew themselves, unless they get an exemption for a specific product and prominently label the product as grown by a third party, specifying the third party (usually things like cranberries grown by one vendor in the fall). Very occasionally you'll see foods like apples in plastic bags with supermarket labeling, but that's because the farmer packages and sells the produce directly to the supermarket.
Vendors tried to sneak stuff in constantly, and unless you have a market manager who really cares and is constantly vigilant, vendors will resell stuff they have bought in bulk and are reselling at a markup.
Not all vendors of course, but like anything else there's always a handful of bad actors.
Oh, the US. Do you really think Americans aren't (capable of being) corrupt? As in if it is not allowed, no one does it?
If food is less nutritious, then logically we should eat more of it to get the nutrition we need.
Excess calorie consumption could at least partially be a byproduct of our biological drive to acquire the lacking raw vitamins and minerals we need from the foods that we eat.
This is undoubtedly exacerbated by eating processed foods, sure, but I'm willing to bet this lack of a fundamentally nutritious foodscape almost certainly contributes to the Pavlovian habit of overeating and resultant societal obesity.
If your body is malnourished in a fundamental way, turning off the nutrient-seeking system is going to lead to a wide spectrum of pathological deficiencies over time.
I've thought exactly the same thing. To me it makes a lot of sense and bears investigating.
As I said in another comment, close to 50% of Americans are deficient in Magnesium for instance (or so I've read).
I've been growing most of my own produce for several years and I make sure all trace elements are present and available. It's a ton of work and makes no financial sense (it's not really cheaper when all is said and done) but at age 53 I feel a lot better than I did at age 38.
I wish I could share this more widely but I think a lot of the worlds problems might be from lack of trace elements. Just a theory but eating produce picked the same day with proper mineral balances as a regular diet is astounding.
It's hard to sell most people on this because nutrition is historically such a terrible science, but the western diet over the past 50 years has gradually set the bar so low, that it's incredibly easy to make substantial improvements for little effort by focusing on the basics of simply getting back onto natural foods for the core part of your diet. The bioscience of nutrition is complex, and the statistics of nutrition is fraught with misinterpretation and flat out bullshit, but it's bizarrely simple when you figure out the actual changes to make... meat, veg, eggs, dairy, all the things that have been villainized by the food industry. That people still think eating egg yolks is bad for you just reflects how poor public education is on this stuff, and how damaging all of the ancient missinformed and massively outdated WHO recommendations have been to public health.
Something close to 50% of Americans are deficient in Magnesium for instance. But there are a lot of trace minerals and nutrients and they interact to some extent.
Is it possible people are trying to get enough of "something" when they overeat and this leads to consuming too many calories? Maybe it's not a self control issue so much as you have to eat a lot of Domino's pizza to get what your body is lacking?
It's become a pet topic of mine and there is a lot more I could say about this (I have a bunch of theories) but will cut it short for now with this: I feel very healthy and I feel very happy. I wish others could experience the same type of things and I'd like to optimize it further.
I also remove all minerals from irrigation water with RO and use an engineered growing medium rather than growing in native soil. But it's organic (and alive with microbes), not hydroponic or anything like that.
This makes me think this person simply has no idea how growing food works at all.