Whats on your plate?

Food… for the first 20 years of my life I took it for granted and my relationship with it was very simple;

Hungry. Eat. Digest (usually noisily), Hungry. Eat. Digest.…

and so forth, with little thought to what was going in my mouth and how it manifested in my body. Luckily I grew up in a household that aspired to a healthy diet but as soon as I flew the nest and gained nutritional independence I was in trouble. Given the short passage of many essential nutrients in our body, the fact I didn’t get the beginnings of scurvy (turns out its incredibly hard to get) or something similar while on a junk food diet has always perplexed me. I do remember however around that time often being sick, my hair starting to fall out, my eyesight deteriorating, cuts getting easily infected, etc. all of which stopped once I took a little more care on what I grazed on.

My fiancee is breastfeeding our son and as I witness how draining this is I think of my grandmother. She survived a Japanese concentration camp in WWII while giving birth and breastfeeding on a daily diet of 500 calories of potato starch and perhaps the occasional insect or rat. Her story always impressed on me our bodies incredible ability, if the mind is strong, to adapt and endure.

Much like clean water or forests, our bodies endurance is a largely unreckoned resource that has allowed the free market to increase volume while lowering costs at the expense of quality. As we better understand the value and finite nature of these externalities, the true cost of the diminishing integrity of our food is only beginning to be calculated. In any audit of what is intrinsically valuable, namely our bodies and our environment, we are short changing ourselves.

These and other blindspots can be found in the criticisms levelled at the metric, gross domestic product (GDP). There is an ongoing heated debate over how volume is an incomplete measure of our economies performance. The food industry is a compelling example of this. Organic was an attempt to focus on quality, not quantity. Its time to go further.

We’ve been in a nutrient recession for a long time

Times changed and as I followed various lines of interest, nutrition came to have enduring appeal for me. As I became better informed and tried to make healthier choices, it struck me how difficult that was. Shopping in a supermarket is essentially a packaging beauty pageant, with rustic images and meaningless buzz words, natural, wild, etc., applied liberally. What lies beneath all that noise?

One of my first insights came while on a course on nutrition and supplementing in 2011. The speaker described how in decades of testing he’d only ever found a couple of men with optimal zinc levels. He attributed that partly to low levels in the soil or the ‘dilution effect’ of modern intensive agriculture. As zinc is a key requirement for testosterone, he connected its low levels in soil with falling levels in men. He described how sport coaches with decade long careers had observed how young men, despite advances in training and diet, were less ‘manly’ (higher voices, less injury resistant, proportionally weaker). It turns out there’s plenty of evidence corroborating this fall in zinc (and other minerals), for e.g. a 1995 National Food Survey that showed that nine out ten people were ‘grossly deficient’ in zinc. Ever since his course I’ve supplemented extensively and periodically tested my nutrient levels. To the exasperation of family and friends, I also became a bit of a supplementing evangelist.

After a decade of sermonising, the penny finally dropped. Despite being a good idea (interesting article on this), extensive supplementing is simply not an option for the majority of people nor should it need to be! Its complex, expensive and a poor substitute for what should mostly be in our food.

So what is happening with our farming? There is a mountain of evidence that points to modern agriculture’s poor husbandry of the land. One aspect of this is we’re selfish bedfellows, we take and don’t give back. A perfect case in point would be commercial fertilisers, which typically add a maximum of 6 elements even though most crops can utilise up to 40. A quick wiki at the birth of modern fertiliser and the inventors reaction was telling and surprisingly poignant. Born in 1803, Justus von Liebig, a German chemist, discovered that nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium could dramatically increase crop yields. After witnessing the damage caused to the soil by his invention of modern fertiliser he was quoted as writing ‘in my blindness, I believed that in his (God) wonderful chain of laws, there might be a link missing that had to replaced by me…’.

So what would happen to food if farmers strove to increase the number of links in the food chain rather then reduce? What would happen to food if soil composition was optimal? On a permaculture course, I attended the teacher, Richard Higgins, described how his arthritis disappeared after using volcanic ash as fertiliser. He claimed other sufferers of chronic conditions — heart disease, Alzheimer’s, etc. had similar health reversals. His explanation was that the ash was perfect plant food as it contained up to 72 elements.

A fantastic claim some might say, but it made me think of that quote from Hippocrates “Let food be they medicine and medicine by thy food.” Given how long modern farming has put such limited inputs into the land, how empty has our food become? What are the chances that, even if they eat well, we know anyone who is getting optimal nutrition from their diet? As in my previous post I believe that although modern insights like medicine sustain us longer, in many other qualitative measures, such as health and vitality, we are shadows of what we were and might be again.

Depleted soil and empty food

Researching this revealed a largely unseen battle for integrity in our food stretching back to the 1940’s and the birth of modern agriculture.

In 1936 Rex Beach presented Dr. Charles Northern’s (an Alabaman physician) research to the US Senate, alleging great nutritional differences in crops, for e.g. noting variations of between 20 up to 1100 parts per billion of iodine. “The alarming fact is that foods — fruits and vegetables and grains — now being raised on millions of acres of land that no longer contains enough needed minerals, are starving us — no matter how much of them we eat.” Rex Beach. Rex put his theories into action and through scientific soil feeding quadrupled the mineral content of his vegetables and fruit. However, there is a wealth of evidence that as modern agriculture’s efficiency improved during the “Green Revolution” (1930’s-60’s) , nutrient depletion accelerated in tandem.

Donald Davis completed a study at the University of Texas that showed that between 1950 and 1999 there were consistent declines in 43 different vegetables and fruits in such nutrients as protein, calcium, phosphorus, iron, riboflavin and Vitamin C. Bear in mind the nutrients are limited to what the US Department of Agriculture tracked back in 1950, i.e. not magnesium, zinc and vitamins B and E. However this seems conservative alongside many other studies which estimate up to 75% fewer micronutrients in farm produce (“Not On The Label“, p213.) The typical explanation was the prevailing focus in modern agriculture on size, growth and pest resistance over nutrition. Of course, these plant deficiencies are accentuated in animals that are fed on them. This great article highlighted a study on profound differences between grass and grain fed meat. Grass fed meat was found to be three times higher in Omega 3, contained more antioxidants, fatty acids, minerals, vitamins and other micronutrients.

An example of the regulatory authorities attitude to the problem of falling nutrients is not reassuring. Phyllis Johnson (head of the Beltsville USDA office), commented that “the 78% decrease in calcium content in corn is not important because no one eats corn for calcium.” Jo Robinson, in her book ‘Could “Eating Wild” Be The Missing Link to Optimal Health’’, described how she interviewed plant breeders working for the USDA, who spent years developing a new vegetable strain without ever once measuring its nutrient content. Instead in satisfying the key requisites of sweet taste, appearance, size, etc., nutrients were bred out of many commercial crops. Its worth pointing out that some of the most nutritious wild foods have a bitter and astringent flavour. A good case in point is ancient corn (teosinte), which consists of 2% sugar and 30% protein, compared to modern corn, which is far sweeter, containing 4% protein and up to 45% sugar. Wild apples, like the Sikkum variety from Nepal, can have up to 100 times more phytonutrients then the famous Golden Delicious.

Regardless of how perfect a heritage or environment, food loses nutrients when we transport it. Jo Robinson also points out that a lot of the healthiest vegetables, such as broccoli and kale, lose half or more of their antioxidants within two or three days of being harvested. The fact that the average transit time for them to reach a supermarket is seven weeks makes you wonder how much goodness is left by the time it reaches our plate. The average apple can spend up to 14 months in storage by which point most of the antioxidants are gone and its essentially, as one Ted speaker commentated, ‘a ball of sugar’. Another reason to buy local.

We are what we eat

Unsurprisingly we reflect the state of our food.

The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2003–2006 showed that of the 16,110 people surveyed;

- 25% do not get enough Vitamin C

- 34% do not get enough Vitamin A

- 38% do not get enough Calcium

- 45% do not get enough Magnesium

- 60% do not get enough Vitamin E

- 70% do not get enough Vitamin D

Bear in mind these minimums reflect the amount necessary not to get seriously ill and are a long, long way from optimal levels. The survey concluded that those that met even these paltry minimum intakes of vitamin B-6 & 12, folate, zinc, thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, iron, copper and selenium did so through nutrient enriched food or supplementation. The implication was it wasn’t available in their food.

Obviously, this study does not differentiate the most decisive factor in peoples nutritional status, the food choices they make in the first place. Furthermore, its hard to isolate with processed food to what extent the loss of nutrients were due to how they were farmed or how they were assembled. Nonetheless, soil depletion is a key contributor, and most worryingly it undermines the efforts of those who are consciously trying to make healthy food choices. In 2002, the Journal of the American Medical Association published an article that counselled that supplementing was necessary for all adults due to the inability of diet to provide requisite vitamins. In 2006, the UN conceded that malnutrition might not only be caused by an inadequate quantity of food but rather that foods lack of quality.

What about organic?

Clearly many people have long suspected modern food lacks substance, hence the growth in popularity of the food standard organic, with sales surging from $1 to $28 billion, over a twenty year period. The growth appears to be accelerating according to the chart below. As someone whose always opted organic where possible, it was fascinating to learn the story behind it.

The start of ‘organic’ farming came about in the 1940’s in response to the industrialisation of farming. Books like The Living Soil in the 40’s and Silent Spring in the 70’s spurred greater interest in organic farming practices. Most Western countries that use the organic standard follow a similar format to the US, with self-regulating national bodies overseeing accreditation with some limited government oversight. The US government has the National Organic Program, which defines several ‘levels’, the lowest of which requires 70% of the ingredients to be organic.

Broadly speaking organic means the food wasn’t exposed to pesticides, genetically modified organisms (GMO) synthetic fertilisers or ionising radiation. It is also supposed to be more sustainable through preservation of soil and water. In addition to great purity and care for its environment, I always assumed it meant more nutrients but does it?

Peter Laufer exposes many issues with the accreditation in his book, Organic: A Journalist’s Quest to Discover the Truth Behind Food Labeling. Inaccuracies in food labelling and origin are key problems. The fact that companies pay for the certification also creates the potential for a conflict of interest. The global nature of our food chain compound these issues as different national standards exist and third party certifiers are often used. Despite Peter’s best efforts to gain insight, the whole accreditation process remained opaque. Given the meteoric rise in trading of organic food, and the lack of proportional scaling by the overseeing authority, the National Organic Plan (part of the USDA and currently 28 employees), one has to question how rigorous the standard actually is. Peter’s great advice was to buy local and if buying from overseas be skeptical of products for (e.g. apple juice) sourced from multiple countries.

A 2012 New York Times article did an expose on how agribusiness is industrialising the organic label through growing influence on the National Organics board. Kellogg, PepsiCo and Heinz are examples of corporations that own organic labels. Records show the corporate board members voting in lockstep on issues that allow them to lower costs. Examples include expanding the list of non-organic ingredients allowed in organic food from 77 in 2002 to 250 in 2012 or reducing the required space allowance per chicken from 5 sq ft to 2 sq ft, for poultry farms aspiring to the organic standard. Of course, the lower costs and growing volume the market are demanding are their primary defence, but increasingly farms such as Joel Salatin’s Polyface Farm (more on him later) show nutritional quality does not need to be sacrificed for volume. His refusal to use the standard, describing his food as ‘beyond organic’, and his commentary on a recent controversy over the boards decision to include the binding agent, carrageenan, highlight a lot of the above problems.

Is organic a con?

Given the dilution of values behind the label organic, its unsurprising it has come under criticism by scientists. A major analysis of 233 studies in 2012 by Tom Sanders, a professor of nutrition at Kings College, London, found “that the published literature lacked strong evidence that organic foods are significantly more nutritious than conventional foods”. At first, this and many other anti-organic commentaries on the web made me angry. I initially perceived it as an endorsement of industrial farming produce. When you crack a factory egg and the shell crumples, instead of cracks, to reveal a yolk that instantly falls apart and has a sickly yellow hue, you don’t need a Ph.D. and a clinical, double-blind study to tell you something ain’t right! Surely the burden of proof should be on that side which feels intuitively wrong not the other way round?

Then I realised that some organic naysayers were making an excellent point. Rather then an endorsement of normal food they were showing there is something wrong with the label organic. When it comes to looking for nutritional evidence to justify the higher price point organic commands, some studies show organic food can be on par with normal factory farmed food. It became clear two farmers that adhere to organic farming regulations can grow food with wildly different nutritional compositions. As someone who has spent a huge amount of cash on organic, it was upsetting to see how the label seemed to encompass products which ranged from nutritionally excellent to poor.

For all these criticisms lets be grateful that the certification even exists. In 2015, the latest macro analysis, of 343 studies, this time, showed significant differences in anti-oxidant levels (19–69% higher in organic food). Certainly the study points, for the most part, to cleaner, more nutritious food produced in a more sustainable way. However when you realise how low the standards are for the vast majority of food production (99% nonorganic), this still means there is probably a tremendous amount of work to do before the food lives up to the idealistic images shown on its packaging.

The blindspot of science

Whats surprised me in researching this is captured by what Helen Browning of the Soil Association said of the 2015 study “The crucially important thing about this research is that it shatters the myth that how we farm does not affect the quality of the food we eat,”. At first, the idea of such a myth existing was mind boggling. It does, however, sum up the issues science has with free market interests directing research. As with pharmaceuticals clearly most funding and career opportunities lie in endorsing how the biggest companies operate, rather then best holistic outcome for consumers and the environment. The result is a large number of studies that provide a legal defence for agribusiness and a lack of ones that answer fundamental questions dictated by common sense or simple curiosity.

Secondly, it highlighted some other innate problems with science, as illustrated by Rupert Sheldrake in The Science Delusion. As Arthur Schopenhauer says ‘Every man takes the limits of his field of vision for the limits of the world.’ I’m a fan of science and thrilled to be studying it, but particularly around this issue of farming and food quality, the ability of its many clever practitioners to say very stupid things is breathtaking. Forget the bear in the woods, if it can’t be verified in a laboratory, it doesn’t exist! I hope to find scientists who, in the face of the physical worlds infinite complexity, have the good sense and humility to stay in the open question.

False economy

Quality aside another issue with organic foods is its high price point, with markups from 1.5 to 2 times more then conventional food. Much as with supplements the notion that proper nutrition is a privilege for the wealthy is rightly controversial. With 795 million people hungry globally, volume and cost are arguably still primary objectives. However as mentioned quality, quantity and cost are not necessarily mutually exclusive, in fact quite the opposite.

As Wasiq Khan, an economist at the Franklin College, Switzerland points out, as we degrade those resources, soil and water, that subsidise the high output of agribusiness, the costs involved escalate. As greater amounts of energy have to be inputted, and more damage is caused to the environment, workers and consumers, the whole system approaches a zero-sum gain. In this era of climate change the report, Organic Agriculture for the 21st-century’ calls for an expansion of organic agriculture, pointing out lower yields are offset by improvements in nutrition and the surrounding environment. Some other reports go further arguing that a lower yield is not a given with organic farming.

Joel Saltine is such a proponent. His Polyface Farm in Virginia is based on polyculture, meaning grains, fruits, fodder, vegetables and livestock production all use the same fields. A breakdown of his system is explained here. It has around four times as many cattle grazing on it as conventional farms, through its use of rotation of pastures. This amazing farmer claims his farming system which lowers costs, particularly energy, ‘can feed the world.’ On 100 acres it produces 40,000 pounds of beef, 30,000 pounds of pork, 1200 turkeys, 10,000 chickens, 1000 rabbits and 35,000 dozen eggs. A professor of agroecology, Miguel A. Altieri, at the University of California, maintains polyculture systems can proportionally produce more than larger mono-culture farms. Crucially his model is highly sustainable with far less environmental impact then conventional livestock farms, due to lower inputs (feed and chemicals) and an exclusively local market for its produce.

Where from here?

The organic standard was a great first step but its time to move on, or perhaps more appropriately, take a step back.

To get perspective, its clear nutrient deficiencies in agriculture didn’t start in 1940. Archeological evidence notes that when we transitioned from hunter-gathers to farming a few major crops we lost a huge spectrum of vitamins and minerals. This is a topic for later, but suffice to say, the farm of the future might be one that that in mimicking natures systems, allowing us to recapture what we lost when we stopped foraging and started planting.

Most scientists would agree our understanding of thriving natural systems is in its infancy. Its already well documented that biodiversity is key for food security, witness the consequences of declining bee populations on agriculture. I would take that further. Definitive scientific evidence is probably a ways off, but I would bet that nothing aggregates digestible nutrients better for humans than a biodiverse ecosystem. Mr Saltine is already wise to this. He describes his farm as ‘ a symbiotic, multi-spectated synergistic relationship-dense production model that yields far more per acre than industrial models.” I couldn’t find any laboratory tests on the nutrient density of his farm, but I wish I was lucky enough to live close and feed my family his produce.

Objective measures of quality

The free markets great strength is in rewarding innovators that find efficiencies. The negative side of this is that over time and without some check these can accumulate to dilute or corrupt the system setup to regulate that market. As with the pharmaceutical industry or US elections, big money has corrupted the integrity of our food chain.

Hence as with political constitutions, or indeed any set of rules governing a complex system, a comprehensive revision is required. Its high time for a revolution in food by the people for the people. There are many aspects to this, ranging from education to cooking but one that caught my imagination was testing nutrients.

Rather then the complex process of policing international farming methods why not nutritionally analyse the end product? What would the implications be of a food system that valued nutrients rather simply on a two-tier organic/non-organic per unit basis?

That question will have to wait as this pieces word count has gone way over budget but in my hunt for a farm, this is a direction that inspires… more to follow.

Future questions

How do we know whats in our food — an overview of nutrient testing

Indoor controlled environment farming is exciting, and I’ve no doubt it has a place in global food production but can it recreate the nutrienal complexity of an ancient forest or even a farm that is modelled on a forest?