through just about any corporate chain-owned grocery store, produces a horrific picture of losses so steep, and continuing at such a rate, that it is not an exaggeration to speak–literally–of the coming end of food.
Start with some of the most obvious losses, and their potential consequences in terms of human health.
On July 6, 2002, the Toronto Globe and Mail began publishing a series of articles on food, including one by reporter Andre Picard, who wrote:
Fruits and vegetables sold in Canadian supermarkets today contain far fewer nutrients than they did 50 years ago. Vital vitamins and minerals have dramatically declined in some of our most popular foods.
Take the potato, by far the most consumed food in Canada. The average spud has lost 100 percent of its vitamin A, which is important for good eyesight; 57 percent of its vitamin C and iron, a key component of healthy blood; and 28 percent of its calcium, essential for building healthy bones and teeth.
It also lost 50 percent of its riboflavin and 18 percent of its thiamine. Of the seven key nutrients measured, only niacin levels have increased.... The story is similar for 25 fruits and vegetables that were analyzed [in a Globe and Mail, CTV study].1
Picard’s numbers were based on food tables supplied by the Canadian government, but were fairly close to what the USDA tables were showing. In fact, some of the Canadian data was taken originally from the USDA tables. What Picard was saying was generally true for the U.S. as well.
It was also true in Britain. There, researcher Anne-Marie Mayer published a study in the British Food Journal, a respected scholarly source for nutritionists and food specialists. She wanted to answer the question: “Has the nutritional quality (particularly essential mineral content) of fruits and vegetables changed this century during the period of changes in the food system and the modernization of agriculture?”2 To get her answer, she looked at the United Kingdom’s equivalent of the USDA food tables, The Chemical Composition of Foods, for 1936 and 1991, and compared the contents of 20 vegetables and fruits. Her results:
There were significant reductions in the levels of calcium, magnesium, copper and sodium in vegetables, and magnesium, iron, copper, and potassium in fruits. The greatest change was the reduction in copper levels in vegetables to less than one-fifth of the old level. The only mineral that showed no significant differences over the 50- year period was phosphorus. 3
SMALL NUMBERS, BIG CONSEQUENCES
Numbers. Most supermarket shoppers are not math majors, nor experts in statistics. And besides, numbers sitting there on the page all by themselves are a little boring. Just how important is it whether the trace amounts of copper, say, in a given food are going up or down by a few milligrams? A milligram is a very small thing, one one-thousandth of a gram. And a gram is only a bit more than a twenty-eighth of an ounce. A milligram of some substances would be so small we couldn’t even see it without a microscope–a mere speck. What difference does it make whether we swallow a couple of specks of anything on a given day?
The answer is, a big difference. The human body is a mysterious thing, resilient and adaptable, but amazingly complex. The very resilience and adaptability that have made us the most successful species in the history of our planet depend on an intricate number of finely tuned relationships–between our bodies and the environment, between each of the organs inside our bodies, and between each of the cells inside those organs. We walk a thousand minute bioenvironmental tightropes every day, every moment, teetering and tipping, and righting ourselves just in time to maintain equilibrium, staying within the narrow band of conditions, both internal and external, that allow us to survive.
If the outside temperature falls below 32 degrees F and we aren’t wearing protective clothing, we freeze to death in a few minutes. If it climbs much above 120 degrees F, and we can’t find shade or an airconditioned building, we can die of heatstroke.
I’ve personally experienced both temperature extremes. Stranded by the highway late at night, during a January blizzard in Quebec, I huddled inside my snowbound car with only a thermal snowmobile suit and a lit candle between me and the –28 degree F winter wind outside. When the snowplow smacked into my back bumper in the morning, I was grateful that a couple of spots of frostbite on my cheeks were the worst the cold had done.
A decade later, crossing the Arabian desert during the first Gulf War, with temperatures well above 120 degrees F, I noticed that the air actually burned my lungs when I inhaled, while the sweat evaporated almost before it formed on the surface of my skin. It was a tremendous physical relief to pull off the road and walk into an air-conditioned restaurant in that throbbing, shimmering heat. If I’d stayed out in it much longer, after five hours in a car whose air-conditioning system had broken down, I’d have paid a steep price.
A narrow band.
As for copper, we’re all familiar with this practical, beautiful metal. We make pennies out of it, and electrical wiring, and polished kettles to boil our tea water. Anyone who’s traveled to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula has seen copper ore, and probably bought a nugget or two at some souvenir stand. Copper roofs, turned green by contact with the air, adorn many of our best-known architectural monuments.
A normal, healthy person has about 100 milligrams of copper in his or her body, distributed throughout a variety of cells and tissues. Only 100 mg. A few specks. What can happen if that number goes up or down?
An article in a recent issue of Discover magazine ought to give an idea.4 The author, a neurologist from Concord, New Hampshire, recounted his experience with a 22-year-old patient he called Megan, who suffered from a disorder called Wilson’s disease. Wilson’s is a genetic disorder that prevents the body from properly eliminating excess amounts of copper. As Dr. John R. Pettinato explained:
Copper is an essential trace element, and most diets provide about one quarter more than is needed for cellular metabolism. The liver processes this excess copper into bile, which is excreted in the stool. Some people inherit a defect in this processing pathway, and symptoms occur as harmful amounts of copper accumulate in the brain and the liver. 5
A few specks too many accumulated in Megan. She became depressed, anxious, and developed anorexia, as well as a bad case of the shakes. Her legs and head shook, and she was rarely tremor-free. Then she began to drool, especially at night; “her extremities had become stiff, and her arms didn’t swing naturally when she walked. She felt dizzy and off balance and seemed to shuffle.”6
If Pettinato hadn’t quickly diagnosed and treated her, Megan might have gotten a lot worse. The full range of symptoms of Wilson’s can include hepatitis, liver damage, tremors, slurred speech, lack of coordination, cramping, emotionality, depression, parkinsonism, psychosis, and “other bizarre behaviors.” Some patients die. All that from a few specks too many of a single element.
Of course, Megan was suffering from too much copper. What about too little? As the authors of Understanding Nutrition note, copper deficiency is relatively rare, but is seen in some malnourished children. “Copper deficiency in animals raises blood cholesterol and damages blood vessels, raising questions about whether low dietary copper might contribute to cardiovascular disease in humans,” say Whitney and Rolfes.7
Copper is only one of the many nutrients our bodies need. Some, like iron, or vitamins A and C, are of major importance and have been studied in great detail over the years. Others,
