Is Agribusiness Making Food Less Nutritious?
(Page 3 of 6)
June/July 2004
By Cheryl Long and Lynn Keiley
Harvesting and storage. The fact that the average supermarket apple travels 1,500 miles from farm to table only adds to the problem. "Most fruits reach best eating quality and peak nutrition when fully ripened on the tree or plant," explains Julio Loaiza, Ph.D., a research scientist at Texas A&M University's Vegetable and Fruit Improvement Center. "However, fully ripened fruit may not withstand the harsh handling typically involved for travel to distant markets, which leads to a compromise in optimum maturity and nutritional quality."
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Breeding for high yields. Plant breeders could maintain and even increase the nutrient content of most crops, if they were asked to do so. But this goal usually takes a back seat to economic issues: "Large-scale growers want size and fast growth so they can harvest early. These factors feed into sacrifices in nutritional quality," Benbrook says.
WHY BUY ORGANIC
What we need is a more holistic approach to our food systems. We need to be sure that high yields and maximum profits for producers don't come with hidden price tags to consumers in terms of nutritional decline or environmental damage. This approach isn't anything new to organic farmers — they've been working their farms as holistic systems all along, and the result is a production system that is better for us, domestic animals and the environment. The growing evidence that organic foods are more nutritious is summarized in "Why Organic Food is the Winner," below.
Certified organic growers are not allowed to use chemical nitrogen fertilizers, ever. Instead they build soil fertility using cover crops, compost and slow-release natural fertilizers. Because they aren't grown with chemical nitrogen, organic fruits and vegetables tend to be smaller, and yields seem lower compared to non-organic crops. But as mentioned above, studies have shown that organic crops often contain less water, so in terms of actual nutrient value (and flavor) per bite of food, organic often is a better buy than non-organic produce.
The higher dry matter/lower water content of organic produce also impacts the levels of health-promoting antioxidants such as polyphenols and flavonoids. In a review of the scientific literature, Benbrook discovered that smaller fruits had up to five times more of these antioxidants per unit of calories.
There's more research that must be done before we can know to what extent the overall quality of our food is declining, and whether the rapidly expanding organic industry will be able to consistently produce more nutritious food than chemical-based agribusiness.
But Benbrook says the public health implications are considerable: "When you think about the diseases and long-term health problems that are caused by poor nutrition — heart disease, diabetes, cancer — the value to society of producing more nutritious crops is enormous."
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