When More Grain Equals Fewer Nutrients

[SoCalDem]

http://www.cornucopia.org/2009/07/when-more-grain-equals-fewer-nutrients/

When More Grain Equals Fewer Nutrients

The Land
By Matt Cawood

Since the Green Revolution of the 1960s, the world has produced a lot more grain–but there may be a lot less in it, a unique experiment in the United Kingdom has revealed. Recent analysis of 160 years of crop samples from Rothamsted Research Station near London discovered that levels of essential micronutrients remained consistent in wheat grain from 1844 to the late 1960s, but then began a decline that continues to this day. The nutrient decline began when traditional long-straw wheat varieties where phased out in favour of higher-yielding semi-dwarf varieties.

As wheat plants have grown smaller since the 1960s, grain nutrient density has continued to decrease. Compared to the old long-straw varieties, Rothamsted’s modern dwarf wheat grain carries on average 20-30 per cent less zinc, iron, copper and magnesium.

For zinc, a critical human nutrient, the decline is even more pronounced if the most recent five years of data are compared, with average nutrient levels in wheat harvested from 1844-1967. The Rothamsted work supports a United States Department of Agriculture study, published in 2006, that compared nutrient levels in hard red winter wheat varieties grown from 1873 to 2000.

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) researchers found that compared to 130 years ago, modern varieties deliver 36 per cent less selenium, 34 per cent less zinc and 28 per cent less iron in their grain. Nutrient decline in food is a driving force behind the organic farming sector, on the assumption that high-tech agricultural methods have depleted the mineral levels in soils and thus made less available for plants to take up.


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However, he understands that micronutrient deficiency, zinc and iron in particular, are implicated in health problems across the developed and developing worlds alike. “People are suffering growth, health and effects on mental development from lack of zinc and iron,” he said.

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[Quantess]

1. I suggest you post this on Science or Health, or both.

But definitely Health forum...

[hlthe2b]

2. sigh......

We're just "test rats" at the mercy of Monsanto and Corporate Farming, INC.