Be sure to drink your ovaltine.
Fruits and vegetables are only half as nutritious as they were 60 years ago, a new study revealed.
US produce harvested today is lacking in crucial nutrients, including vitamin C, calcium and iron due to drastically declining soil quality, researchers at the UK-based Deep Science Ventures found.
Consumers need to eat twice the number of many fruits and veggies just to get the same level of minerals — like copper, magnesium or potassium — as in the 1960s. Bread, cereals, apples, peas and carrots also lost between 20-50% of several key nutrients.
“For sixty years we’ve measured food security in calories … and on those measures we’ve done remarkably well,” wrote Will Summers, one of the authors of the damning report.
“But we’ve been quietly hollowing out what’s inside our food.”
Since the Green Revolution of the 1960s, agricultural systems were able to successfully increase the global food supply and cereal yields.
But the movement neglected nutritional quality, causing “hidden hunger” — micronutrient deficiencies despite consuming adequate calories — for 2 billion globally, according to researchers.
With the rise of ultra-processed foods masking a drop in critical nutrients over the last 60 years, per-capita calorie intake has increased worldwide — but it’s led to what researchers call “triple burden,” where obesity coexists with hidden hunger.
Researchers were able to show a systematic 20-50% mineral and protein density decline in many key foods by using historical food datasets and long-term crop archives, including wheat samples spanning 160 years.
Those micronutrient deficiencies run countries up to 3% of GDP annually in lost productivity and healthcare burdens — while increasing risks for chronic disease, poor maternal health and child development, according to the study.
And higher atmospheric carbon dioxide, widespread soil degradation, and yield-focused agricultural policies threaten to worsen the nutrition crisis in the decades to come.
To resolve the crisis, researchers suggest reframing talk of food security around nutritional security and creating nationwide nutrient-monitoring networks. They also propose scaling farming practices such as soil organic matter enhancement to improve farm profitability and crop quality.
