Is Agribusiness Making Food Less Nutritious?
(Page 5 of 6)
June/July 2004
By Cheryl Long and Lynn Keiley
• Meat and dairy products from animals raised in feedlots or cages on high-grain diets contain lower levels of nutrients than meat from animals that are raised on their natural diet of grass, or, in the case of poultry, grass and grain.
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• According to the USDA’s Nutrient Database, factory-farm eggs contain 20 percent less iron and 59 percent less vitamin A than they did in 1975. The USDA data also show that today’s eggs contain 3 percent more water than in 1975. (See “USDA Nutrient Data for Eggs” table, Image Gallery.)
• These factory-farm eggs contain significantly less health-enhancing carotenes than eggs from pasture-raised chickens. This difference is easy to see because the more carotenes, the more orange in color the yolks are. (See photo, above.) Factory-farm eggs also are lower in vitamin E, vitamin B-12, vitamin A, folic acid and omega-3 fatty acids, according to a remarkable collection of studies assembled by journalist Jo Robinson on her Web site. Robinson also documents that not only do factory-farm eggs contain less vitamins, they have more fat and cholesterol than eggs from pastured poultry.
• And last but certainly not least, there is this: Because of the last few centuries of human industrialization across the globe, today’s atmosphere contains 30 percent more carbon dioxide than it did during the millions of years that plants, animals and humans have been evolving together. And the CO2 levels are predicted to increase even more unless/until we reduce our CO2 emissions. CO2 is the basic building block for photosynthesis; when plants are exposed to higher levels of CO2, they produce a higher proportion of carbohydrates than normal and this may lead to reduced levels of other nutrients, per calorie. A startling literature review published in Trends in Ecology and Evolution (2002, Vol 17, No. 10), reported initial studies have found that the concentration of every measured element except potassium declined when wheat was grown at high levels of CO2 , and four out of five elements in brown rice declined. Global CO2 levels are predicted to continue to increase, and this could be yet another factor that is damaging the quality of our food.
Why Organic Food is the Winner
Little doubt remains that when we choose organic food, we are helping to protect the environment. It’s also clear that organic food contains much lower levels of pesticide residues than non-organic crops. Scientists have been slow to fully study claims that organic food is richer in nutrients, since research agendas and funding are so often driven by dominant non-organic commercial interests. Here’s what we know so far, though, thanks to a comprehensive review of more than 400 scientific papers that compared the quality of organic and non-organic foods. The review, published in 2001 by the nonprofit Soil Association of Great Britain, is titled “Organic Farming, Food Quality and Human Health: A Review of the Evidence" (see the last report on the page).
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