Crop Nutrient Decline

Below is an approximation of this video’s audio content. To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, and quotes to which Dr. Greger may be referring, watch the above video.

But sellers of supplements like to argue that we have to take vitamin pills, because the nutrient content of our crops has declined over the last 50 years due to soil depletion.

Is that true? The nutrient content of our food is in decline: fact or fiction? It’s a fact. But by how much, though?

On average, over the last 50 years, have the nutrients declined just a little? 1-20%? 20-40%? Have we lost half the nutrition? Do we have to eat like twice as many carrots these days as we would have in the 1950s to get the same amount of nutrition? Or, is it even worse, and the majority of the nutrients have disappeared?

We’ve only lost about 15%, on average, across 43 different crops. So, instead of eating six florets of broccoli, eat seven.

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• Bailey SW, Ayling JE. The extremely slow and variable activity of dihydrofolate reductase in human liver and its implications for high folic acid intake. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2009 Sep 8;106(36):15424-9. Epub 2009 Aug 24.
• Is the nutrient content of our food falling? Arbor Clinical Nutrition Updates. 2007;270:1-3. doi:10.1017/S1446545000000841

• broccoli
• carrots
• multivitamins
• nutrition myths
• supplements