Food, nutrition and an early grave.

Along with lots of other people, I recently bought James Wong’s book, Grow for Flavour. I read it from cover to...  well about half way through.

One of the things that gets mentioned early on is the relationship between flavour and nutritional value, and there is a passage entitled “Is the nutritional value of our food declining?”, which cites research that showed declines in a range of minerals and vitamins in food produced today as compared to a number of decades ago.

Concerning maybe, but since he doesn’t go on to say anything about the consequences of deficiencies of these nutrients in our diets, I didn’t lose any sleep over it.

Then I watched a clip on YouTube of Dr Bruce Ames, Professor of Bochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of California, Berkeley and senior scientist at Children’s hospital Oakland Research Institute.  He has a great deal to say about vitamin and mineral inadequacies in diets and the mechanisms by which they accelerate aging. He seems to be talking about the same minerals and vitamins as James Wong.

Along the way he takes a pop at people’s obsession with carcinogens, pointing out that many compounds found in plants that we eat are carcinogenic. He also points out that the risks posed by agrochemicals are absolutely trivial compared to those posed by micronutrient deficiencies.

He flags up the possibility that obesity may be in part due to people craving food because they are nutrient deficient and their body tells them to eat because that should be how it gets those nutrients. A study group supplied with all the necessary nutrients found their appetites significantly reduced.

I’m not seeing these issues being raised anywhere. I’m not seeing much chance of the situation improving if the issues are not raised and addressed. It’s hard enough to get people to eat the right things, but if even the right things are not providing the nutrition we need, we have a situation that needs to be addressed.