Micronutrient deficiencies now affect billions of people around the world…
The world is facing a food crisis. Micronutrient deficiencies now affect billions of people around the world.
Micronutrients are essential vitamins and minerals for our bodies, and their deficiency can cause very serious health problems.
They are important for many functions, including blood clotting, brain development, the immune system, energy production, bone health, and disease prevention.
The root cause of the crisis lies in the increased reliance on ultra-processed foods (“junk food”) and the way modern food crops are grown: the seeds used, the crops produced, the harmful chemicals (fertilizers, pesticides) and their deadly impact on farmland.
As early as 2007, nutritionist David Thomas observed a radical change in the habits of US citizens, with an increase in the consumption of convenience and packaged foods, often low in essential micronutrients but rich in chemical additives such as dyes, flavors and preservatives.
In the study just cited, the author noted that between 1940 and 2002, the growing methods, preparation, origin, and final presentation of staple foods had changed significantly, resulting in significant depletion of trace minerals and micronutrients in foods.
Thomas added that ongoing research clearly links micronutrient deficiencies to physical and mental illness.
Before the so-called “Green Revolution”, many of the ancient crops that were later replaced had significantly higher nutrient content per calorie.
For example, the iron content of millet is four times that of rice, and oats contain four times more zinc than wheat.
As a result, between 1961 and 2011, the protein, zinc, and iron content of the world’s directly consumed grains declined by 4 percent, 5 percent, and 19 percent, respectively.
The authors of a 2010 article in the International Journal of Environmental and Rural Development noted that the cropping systems promoted by the “Green Revolution” have led to a reduction in the diversity of food crops and a decrease in the availability of micronutrients.
They also noted that micronutrient malnutrition is leading to increased rates of cancer, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and osteoporosis in many developing countries.
They added that farmland is increasingly affected by micronutrient-related diseases.
In 2016, India’s Central Soil Water Conservation Research and Training Institute estimated that the country loses 5,334 million tons of soil every year to soil erosion due to excessive and indiscriminate use of fertilizers, insecticides and pesticides over the years.
On average, 16.4 tons of fertile soil per hectare are lost each year.
The report concluded that the unwise use of chemical fertilizers has led to the degradation of soil fertility, resulting in the loss of micro- and macronutrients and consequently low yields.
The so-called chemical-intensive “green revolution”, with its hybrid seeds, fertilizers, and synthetic pesticides, has encouraged greater concentration of crops, leading to less diverse diets and less nutritious foods.
Its long-term effects are leading to degradation of farmland and mineral imbalances, which in turn are adversely affecting human health.
However, micronutrient depletion is not only due to poor dietary intake of nutrient-rich foods or unhealthy soils.
Take wheat, for example.
Rothamsted Research, in the United Kingdom, evaluated mineral concentrations in wheat and soil samples archived as part of the Broadbalk Wheat Experiment.
The experiment began in 1843, and the results show a significant downward trend in the concentrations of zinc, copper, iron and magnesium in wheat grains since the 1960s.
Recent studies have shown that concentrations of these four minerals remained stable between 1845 and the mid-1960s, and then declined significantly by 20-30% in the following years.
This phenomenon coincided with the introduction of high-yielding crops.
The researchers concluded by noting that their concentrations in the farmland used in the study either increased or remained stable.
So, in this case, the problem is not the cropland.
Unhealthy food…
An article appearing in 2021 in the journal Environmental and Experimental Botany reports that the increase in the percentage of the world’s population suffering from zinc and iron deficiency has occurred over the past four decades, a period that witnessed the beginning of the so-called “green revolution”.
Confirming the findings of Rothamsted Research in the United Kingdom, a recent study by scientists at the Indian Council for Agricultural Research found that the nutritional value of grains consumed in India has declined.
According to the researchers, many of today’s crops do not absorb enough nutrients, even when the soil is perfectly healthy.
A recent article in Down to Earth reports the results of a study that found that rice and wheat, which provide more than 50 percent of the daily energy needs of people in India, have lost up to 45 percent of their nutritional value over the past 50 years.
Concentrations of essential nutrients such as zinc and iron have declined by 33% and 27% in rice and 30% and 19% in wheat, respectively.
During the same period, the concentration of arsenic, an element highly toxic to human health, in rice has increased by 1,493 percent.
Down to Earth cites research by the Indian Council of Medical Research that non-communicable diseases increased by 25 percent in the Indian population between 1990 and 2016.
An estimated one-third of India’s two billion people live with micronutrient deficiencies.
This is because modern rice and wheat crops are less efficient at absorbing zinc and iron, regardless of their abundance in the soil.
Plants have lost the ability to absorb nutrients from the soil.
The increased prevalence of diabetes, childhood leukemia, childhood obesity, cardiovascular disease, infertility, osteoporosis, rheumatoid arthritis, and mental illness has been shown to be directly related to diet, especially micronutrient deficiencies.
The sharp increase in the percentage of the world’s population suffering from zinc and iron deficiency over the past four decades has coincided with the global expansion of high-yielding, input-responsive cereal crops released in the post-Green Revolution era.
According to Devinder Sharma, an expert in agriculture and agricultural policy, high yields are inversely proportional to plant nutrition : “The decline in nutritional levels is so severe that new high-yielding wheat varieties have experienced a sharp decline in the content of copper, an essential trace element, by up to 80 percent. In addition, some nutritionists attribute this phenomenon to the worldwide increase in cholesterol.
India is self-sufficient in several commodities, but many of these foods are high in calories and low in nutrients, and have led to the abandonment of more nutritionally diverse farming systems and more nutritious crops.
The importance of agronomist William Albrecht and his research should also not be overlooked.
In his studies, he found that cows fed less nutritious crops ate more, while cows that ate nutritious grass stopped eating once their needs were met.
This may be one of the reasons why obesity rates are increasing in the human population.
In light of the previous discussion of the Green Revolution’s negative impact on nutrition, Prof. Glenn Stone’s New Histories of the Green Revolution (2019) debunks the claim that the Green Revolution increased productivity: it merely introduced more (nutrient-poor) wheat into the Indian diet at the expense of other food crops.
Stone argues that per capita food productivity did not increase ; it actually decreased.
Obesity has become a global concern, including in India.
The problem is multidimensional and, as noted above, excessive caloric intake and nutrient-poor diets (coupled with an increasingly sedentary lifestyle) are factors that lead to the consumption of sugary, high-fat, industrially processed foods in an attempt to fill the nutritional gap.
There is also considerable evidence linking human exposure to agrochemicals to the problem of obesity.
Numerous other studies have linked pesticide exposure to obesity and diabetes.
For example, an article published in 2022 in the journal Endocrine reports that first exposure to environmental pesticides occurs during early life stages, such as pregnancy and lactation, and that these can cause central and peripheral tissue damage and subsequent life-threatening growth disorders.
A 2013 paper on the causes of modern disease published in the journal Entropy reported that glyphosate (the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup), the world’s most widely used herbicide, amplifies the harmful effects of other foodborne chemical residues and environmental toxins.
The negative effects are insidious and manifest themselves slowly over time as inflammation damages cellular systems throughout the body, causing conditions associated with the Western diet, including gastrointestinal disorders, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, depression, autism, infertility, cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.
The industrial narrative has nothing to say about the food system itself, which views “food” as just another commodity to be exploited for profit, regardless of its impact on human health or the environment.
What we are seeing is simply the introduction of new technological “solutions” to circumvent the effects of previous “innovations” and policy decisions that have favored the profits of Western agribusiness (and Big Pharma).
Quick technological fixes do not offer real solutions to the problems described above.
Such solutions involve challenging the corporate power that shapes narratives and policies to suit its agenda.
Healthy food, healthy people and healthy societies will not be created in an ever-expanding bio-science park specializing in the manipulation of food and the human body (for corporate profit) under the banner of “innovation” and “health” without addressing the power relations that underlie bad food and bad health.
A radical overhaul of the food system would be needed, starting with the way food is grown.
