with the degree of vitamin A deficiency; deaths are usually due to related infections such as pneumonia and severe diarrhea. Providing large doses of vitamin A reduces the risk of dying from these infections.”16
More obvious results would include night blindness, in which a vitamin A-deficient person’s ability to see at night is sharply curtailed. Whitney and Rolfes provide a graphic description:
The person loses the ability to recover promptly from the temporary blinding that follows a flash of bright light at night or to see after the lights go out. In many parts of the world, after the sun goes down, vitamin A-deficient people become night-blind: children cannot find their shoes or toys, and women cannot fetch water or wash dishes. They often cling to others, or sit still, afraid that they may trip and fall or lose their way if they try to walk alone. 17
This condition may progress to total blindness.
Another result of vitamin A deficiency is “keratinization,” a condition where the victim’s epithelial surfaces are adversely affected. Mucus secretion drops, interfering with normal absorption of food along the digestive tract, causing general malnutrition. Problems also develop in the lungs, interfering with oxygen absorption, as well as in the urinary tract, the inner ear, and for women in the vagina. On the body’s outer surface, “the epithelial cells change shape and begin to secrete the protein keratin—the hard, inflexible protein of hair and nails. The skin becomes dry, rough, and scaly as lumps of keratin accumulate.”18
An attractive picture, eh? Blind, disease-prone children, short of breath, suffering from malnutrition, with problems peeing, and with scaly lumps all over their skins. Will we be seeing this in the near future? Again, probably not. But the tendency is there, and steadily increasing. Who can say where we’ll be in another 20 or another 50 years, if present trends continue unabated? The Canadian potato, remember, has already lost all of its vitamin A.
And what of iron, down by more than half in Canada’s potatoes, by 10 percent in the American tomato, and by various amounts in many other fruits and vegetables?
Statistically, low iron is the world’s most common nutrient deficiency, and is particularly dangerous for menstruating or pregnant women and for growing children. Iron is absolutely necessary for the proper maintenance of hemoglobin in the blood and myoglobin in the muscles. It helps both of these proteins carry and release oxygen, permitting the biochemical reactions that give us energy. As the authors of Understanding Nutrition explain, a series of events can be triggered by insufficient iron in the body, events which can ultimately lead to life-threatening anemia:
Long before the red blood cells are affected and anemia is diagnosed, a developing iron deficiency affects behavior. Even at slightly lowered iron levels, the complete oxidation of pyruvate is impaired, reducing physical work capacity and productivity. With reduced energy available to work, plan, think, play, sing, or learn, people simply do these things less. They have no obvious deficiency symptoms; they just appear unmotivated, apathetic and less physically fit.... A restless child who fails to pay attention in class might be thought contrary. An apathetic homemaker who has let housework pile up may be thought lazy. 19
If the iron deficiency continues and worsens, it eventually leads to full-blown iron-deficiency anemia:
In iron-deficiency anemia, red blood cells are pale and small. They can’t carry enough oxygen from the lungs to the tissues, so energy metabolism in the cells falters. The result is fatigue, weakness, headaches, apathy, pallor, and poor resistance to cold temperatures... The skin of a fair person who is anemic may become noticeably pale. 20
Such a condition can be particularly damaging if it occurs in growing children.
At the same time that they are losing nutrients, other vegetables and fruits are also suffering a drastic decline in the number of varieties available to consumers. Just as the number of tomato varieties is sharply limited in the supermarket, so are those of potatoes and apples. As investigative journalist Brewster Kneen noted in his landmark book, From Land to Mouth: Understanding the Food System:
Even though there are 2,000 species of potato in the genus solanum, all the potatoes grown in the United States, and most of those grown commercially everywhere else, belong to one species, solanum tuberosum. Twelve varieties of this one species constitute 85 percent of the U.S. potato harvest, but the one variety favored by most processors, the Russet Burbank, is by far the dominant variety. By 1982, 40 percent of the potatoes planted in the United States were Russet Burbanks.21
To witness the poverty of choice among apples, just walk into the corner supermarket and look on the shelves. Most chain stores have only three varieties on display: red delicious, golden delicious, and Granny Smith. Sometimes a Canadian store will also feature MacIntosh. Looking at such a display, it is useful to keep in mind that at the turn of the last century “there were more than 7,000 apple varieties grown in the United States. By the dawn of the twenty-first century, over 85 percent of these varieties, more than 6,000, had become extinct.”22
By the year 2000, 73 percent of all the lettuce grown in the U.S. was one variety: iceberg.23
ACROSS-THE-BOARD DEGENERATION
Examples of the rapid decline in nutrients in our foods are not limited to vegetables and fruits. A general, across-the-board degeneration affects nearly everything we eat.
For instance, according to the USDA tables, chicken–which many of us eat in an attempt to avoid steroid-rich red meats–is in deep trouble. Skinless, roasted white chicken meat has lost 51.6 percent of its vitamin A since 1963. Dark meat has lost 52 percent. White meat has also lost 39.9 percent of its potassium, while dark meat has lost 25.2 percent.
And what has chicken gained? Light meat, 32.6 percent fat, and 20.3 percent sodium; dark meat, 54.4 percent fat and 8.1 percent sodium. Let’s hear it for fat and salt.
Dairy products are no better. According to the USDA, creamed cottage cheese–eaten by millions of dieting men and women precisely because it is seen as a low-fat source of calcium and phosphorus to maintain strong bones and teeth–has in fact gained 7.3 percent fat since 1963, while losing 36.1 percent of its calcium, 13.1 percent of its phosphorus, and—incidentally—fully 53.3 percent of its iron. And what has it gained, besides fat? Hey, you guessed it: 76.85 percent in sodium.
We are also seeing increases in carbohydrates, which include sugars and starches. Good old healthy broccoli, for example, while losing 45 percent of its vitamin C, has seen its carbohydrate content jump upward by 13.8 percent since 1963.
As for bread, traditional mainstay of the Western diet, the highly processed nature of the typical soft, all-but-crustless, bleached-flour white supermarket loaf makes it hard to evaluate. In the process of manufacture, the nutritionally best parts of the original wheat grain are sifted, milled, or chemically bleached out of the flour to make it as perfectly white as possible. The purpose here is purely cosmetic, designed to accommodate the widespread–and completely irrational– public prejudice that white bread is somehow “better.” Then a small portion of these nutrients is put back in to “enrich” (the pure irony of the industry’s euphemism here is almost comic) what would otherwise be a loaf of nothing. So-called “enriched” white bread thus actually does contain some nutrients. But compared to loaves made by more traditional baking methods, the supermarket product is rather pathetic.
