Nutritional value of fruits, veggies is dwindling

[wildeyed]

Yet another reason to keep gardening!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37396355/ns/health-diet_and_nutrition/

Chemicals that speed growth may impair ability to absorb soil's nutrients

While we've been dutifully eating our fruits and vegetables all these years, a strange thing has been happening to our produce. It's losing its nutrients. That's right: Today's conventionally grown produce isn't as healthful as it was 30 years ago — and it's only getting worse. The decline in fruits and vegetables was first reported more than 10 years ago by English researcher Anne-Marie Mayer, PhD, who looked at the dwindling mineral concentrations of 20 UK-based crops from the 1930s to the 1980s.

It's happening to crops in the United States, too. In 2004, Donald Davis, PhD, a former researcher with the Biochemical Institute at the University of Texas, Austin, led a team that analyzed 43 fruits and vegetables from 1950 to 1999 and reported reductions in vitamins, minerals, and protein. Using USDA data, he found that broccoli, for example, had 130 mg of calcium in 1950. Today, that number is only 48 mg. What's going on? Davis believes it's due to the farming industry's desire to grow bigger vegetables faster. The very things that speed growth — selective breeding and synthetic fertilizers — decrease produce's ability to synthesize nutrients or absorb them from the soil.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

1. Compost can save us

just as eating 'dead' (processed) food is bad for us, dead fertilizer (synthetics) are bad things to feed your vegies.

[wildeyed]

2. People are funny about composting.

I will compost anything that doesn't actually run away from me. It is funny how grossed out people get about it. I have a cold pile of leaves in the backyard, and the neighbor, who sprays copious amounts of toxic nastiness on their yard all the time, nagged me until I moved it away from the property line. First they wanted me to check and see if it was leaking water that was running off onto their foundation. It is a dry pile of leaves. How? Then they claimed it was killing their shrubs. I finally moved it, just so I didn't have to listen to the nagging anymore, but sheesh! The reaction I get to the worm bin is even more extreme, but it is a very efficient, smell and pest-free way to compost small amounts of kitchen scraps. Oh well, guess I am just ahead of the times. And my garden looks great and won't poison my kids or pets :)

[Viva_La_Revolution]

5. they would hate me!

I currently have 4 different compost piles going, all lined up neatly along my fence line. Not surprising that the weeds/grass/wild blackberries on that side of the yard grow amazingly fast! :lol:

[hippywife]

3. Michael Pollan suggested

just such a thing in one of his books. That the fact that we use fertilizers keeps the plants from developing their natural defenses, many of which may be the very nutrients we need from them.

[hippywife]

4. I meant pesticides.

Been a long, long day. :blush: