Is food becoming less nutritious?

‘We’ve noticed that in many kinds of plants, higher CO2 produces bigger crops. That sounds like a good thing. But there’s a problem. Bigger doesn’t necessarily mean better,’ says Lewis Ziska, a plant physiologist with the US Department of Agriculture.

‘We don’t have a simple explanation as to what’s happening, but one possibility is that it’s a dilution effect: as the plants grow more, they become carbon-rich but nutrient-poor.’

Now, regardless of what’s causing this, it’s clear that, without urgent intervention, it will transform our diets and our health for the worse.

‘Every animal on Earth relies on plants to live. If we change their composition – and the evidence is overwhelming that we are – then all life will be affected,’ says Ziska.

 

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Of the ways in which we can help to address this unifying issue, it’s advised that we make a dramatic shift in how we grow our food, support farms and companies that already have, and, of course, eat more seasonally and locally.

On a grander scale, the emergence of a process called biofortification is already underway, which replenishes lost nutrients or those that foods never had in the first place.

Encompassing multiple technologies, one involves genetically modifying a crop to increase its nutritional contents, another utilises nutrient-rich fertilizers or soil amendments to concentrate particular minerals in plants, and the last breeds selectively to produce new varieties.

By 2030, it’s estimated that one billion people will be benefiting from biofortified foods.

‘All of our work is about adapting to climate change in some sense,’ Peter Kelly, CEO of Grow Further, a philanthropic organisation that invests in early-stage, scalable agricultural innovations in developing countries, tells the Guardian.

‘CO2 levels can affect the nutrient levels in plants; we have to do this plant breeding just to keep up. Enhancing fruits, veggies and beans is one approach, but if that’s the only approach from the public policy perspective, it’s kind of idealistic.’