One of the reasons to vote for me as your first choice for Mayor in November, and vote with your dollars for my soybeans (or soy milk) with more nutrients is because I do a little bit of everything. Sometimes I am a scientist, and I find some really important scientific understanding that will help all the residents Minneapolis if I can manage to explain it clearly.
http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/09/13/food-nutrients-carbon-dioxide-000511
Our food is about half as nutrient dense as it was 50 years ago, and maybe even 1/4 as nutrient dense as what hunter-gatherers were eating thousands of years ago before we started farming.
The article points towards climate impacts and CO2, which I expect are real contributors, but I would estimate only account for 5-20% of the carbohydrate increase.
What really matters is how we grow our food. We’ve gotten so good at growing corn in extreme high-density conditions that it grows so fast there’s no time to absorb the nutrients, even if there were still there in the soil (which is another problem for another article).
When you vote with your money for the lowest price per pound product on the shelf, you tell me, the farmer that empty nutrient deficient calories are what you want me to produce, and produce we do, growing 2-3 times as much corn per acre than my Grandfather could even imagine, and we’ve planted corn for several years in a row, because that’s what’s profitable.
Except, it’s not, at least at the system level. The health care costs associated with nutrient deficient food dramatically exceed what it would have cost to grow better food in the first place, but we compensate doctors for doctor visits and farmers for food by the pound, rather than doctors for having healthy patients because they could afford to get healthy food from a farmer.
Now think about this in how you get your news and politics. Is it about the quantity and price, or is this about quality?
Vote for quality food, vote for the farmer, and vote those things every day with your money.
Mayor Troy 