A reader comments on the increase in carbohydrates in crops:
This is what I’ve been saying for years. I had a gut feeling based on many suggestive facts. We’re now starting to see outlines of the smoking gun, so to speak. As you allude, we’ve already bred corn and wheat to be far more carbohydrate-full and sweet than it ever was naturally (to say nothing of much larger and easier to harvest causing perhaps both good and bad knock-on effects) — and in the process, almost certainly made them less nutritious. How true is that of other crops? How many plant-based foods have followed the goldenrod’s path since the industrial revolution? And how has that affected the ruminants, grazers and browsers we so love to eat? For that matter, what’s going on in the sea? Mankind is literally killing itself. It’s a race of Elon Musk versus the Great Filter.
It’s not clear to me that cross-breeding or direct genetic engineering caused the greater carbohydrate loading, and I don’t think that what this article is saying. So far as I can see, it’s pointing out a strong correlation between higher CO2 atmospheric concentrations and higher carbohydrate densities in our food crops.
That said, I agree with the general sentiment. I’ll also say that I doubt this is a unique situation, as cycles of the populations of many critters are well known to be tied to their overuse of local food sources, resulting in occasional mass deaths – or, for that matter, bacteria drowning in their own wastes.
But perhaps we’re the only species with the capacity to realize what’s going on – and still deny it.
Another reader remarks:
This is what gets vitamin companies profits.
And, ironically, they are not well-absorbed, as this ten year old Scientific American article notes:
The best way to get vitamins is through food, not vitamin pills, according to Susan Taylor Mayne, a professor at the Yale School of Public Health’s Division of Chronic Disease Epidemiology. A major problem with supplements is that they deliver vitamins out of context, she says. The vitamins found in fruit, vegetables and other foods come with thousands of other phytochemicals, or plant nutrients that are not essential for life but may protect against cancer, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer’s disease and other chronic ailments. Carotenoids in carrots and tomatoes, isothiocyanates in broccoli and cabbage, and flavonoids in soy, cocoa and red wine are just a few examples.
