Nutrient decline in fruits & vegetables

The news just gets more disturbing about our diets, even for those who think they eat plenty of fruits and vegetables. Dr. Donald Davis at University of Texas at Austin (in the Biochemical Institute in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry) studied nutrient values from 50 years of data from 1950 to 1999. Sure enough, nutrient value has declined significantly.

In this news release Dr. Davis said "The declines, which ranged from 6 percent for protein to 38 percent for riboflavin, raise significant questions about how modern agriculture practices are affecting food crops."

He continued.... "emerging evidence suggests that when you select for yield, crops grow bigger and faster, but they don’t necessarily have the ability to make or uptake nutrients at the same, faster rate."

You can read the full report here.

An obvious answer to these declines is to eat organically grown foods. Naturally grown foods don't use methods to increase yield that sap nutrients. And an even better answer is to consume the most nutrient-dense of all foods that are also organically or picked from the wild. This is the magic of nutrient-dense fruits like the Acai berry and Wolfberry which are ONLY found in the Wild. A fruit juice blend that contains fruits harvested from the wild can provide a superior amount of nutrients, so much so that you only need to drink a few ounces to get 100% of the antioxidants your body needs each day. Unfortunately, store bought fruits have become sad cousins to their 1950's cousins, and I don't see that changing any time soon.