August
11, 2011--- Ah, the good old days. When men were men, women
were women, and vegetables were vegetables. Although they
may be bigger than they were 60 years ago, research has
found that vegetables are significantly less nutritious than
they used to be.
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Little
research has been done on the matter, but the studies that
have concentrated on the issue of diminishing nutrition in
vegetables have found that since 1950 there have been
notable changes, reports
The Grist. One of the studies, conducted by Donald
Davis, a now-retired scientist from the University of Texas
at Austin, found that over the years vegetables have lost
significant amounts of key nutrients. For example, according
to Grist's infographic, which depicts how different
vegetables have depleted in nutritional value from
1950-1999, tomatoes have decreased 55% in calcium, 25% in
iron, and 17% in ascorbic acid (a type of vitamin C).
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Although
there is no definitive explanation, Davis believes that
selective breeding is to blame. Over the last 50 years,
researchers and growers have successfully developed crops
that yield a high amount of produce. When studies compared
these high-yield varieties to non-high-yield varieties grown
in the same soil, researchers found that the low-yield
samples contained higher nutrient contents. That's because
plants extract nutrients from the stalk to create produce.
The bigger and more plentiful the vegetable, the less
nutrients there are to go around.
