Today’s Apple May Contain 38 Percent Fewer Nutrients Than the Same One From 1950
Capitalism and farmer practices are to blame
“An apple a day keeps the doctor away.” As a child, I remember happily chanting this saying after a pleasant day at school, excited to share with my friends on the school bus what I had learned. After growing up and becoming an educated adult, we all know that you’d be naive to take this saying literally.
But what if the saying were true?
There’s research that shows that fruits and vegetables from 1999 versus those from 1950 have a difference in vitamin and mineral content of up to 38 percent. In other words, for the same amount of fruits/vegetables you ate if you lived in 1950, if you ate those fruits in 1999 you would only get 62 percent of the energy compared to the 1950 version of the fruit or vegetable. Other studies cite similar statistics of a general decline in nutrition. How did this come to be?
For the same amount of fruits/vegetables you ate if you lived in 1950, if you ate those fruits in 1999 you would only get 62 percent of the energy compared to the 1950 version of the fruit or vegetable.
