Declining Fruit and Vegetable Nutrient Composition: What Is the Evidence?
By D. R. Davis. 2009
239 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Three kinds of evidence point toward declines of some nutrients in fruits and vegetables available in the United States and the United Kingdom: 1) early studies of fertilization found inverse relationships between crop yield and mineral concentrations—the widely cited ''dilution effect''; 2) three recent studies of historical food composition data found apparent median declines of 5% to 40% or more in some minerals in groups of vegetables and perhaps fruits; one study also evaluated vitamins and protein with similar results; and 3) recent side-by-side plantings of low- and high-yield cultivars of broccoli and grains found consistently negative correlations between yield and concentrations of minerals and protein, a newly recognized genetic dilution effect. Studies of historical food composition data are inherently limited, but the other methodscanfocusonsingle cropsofanykind, canincludeanynutrientofinterest, andcanbecarefullycontrolled. Theycan also test proposed methods to minimize or overcome the diluting effects of yield whether by environmental means or by plant breeding. This article summarizes three kinds of evidence pointing toward declines during the last 50 to 100 years in the concentration of some nutrients in vegetables and perhaps also in fruits available in the United States and the United Kingdom.
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4ed8f227ffb6db1585dbf575c5a4d903efdc3d5d
How researchers see this paper
The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.
- U. B. Kutman
- Peter J. Gregory
- Ismail Cakmak
- E. Joy
- Martin R. Broadley
- A. Wahbi
- J. Adu-Gyamfi
- M. Heiling
Citations in the corpus
- Agronomic biofortification of cereals with zinc: a review (2018, background): “Recently, a study on a diverse collection of barley genotypes demonstrated that large Zn accumulation in grain was associated with large Cd accumulation (Detterbeck et al., 2016).”
- Approaches to reduce zinc and iron deficits in food systems (2017, background): “206 207 Some studies suggest that the concentrations of mineral elements in edible parts have 208 decreased over the last 50 years or so (Davis et al., 2004; Davis, 2009; White and Broadley, 209 2005b).”