Fruits and Vegetables Now Offer Fewer Nutrients

December 23, 2004

Interesting article:

This Week In Health

Nutrition and Lifestyle News: Fruits and Vegetables Now Offer Fewer

Nutrients

Here's a good reason to eat even more fruits and vegetables: they may

not provide as many nutrients as they once did. This means that to get

all the health benefits fruits and veggies used to offer, you've got

to eat lots of them. A new study that looked at vegetables and fruit

indicates that, today, some 39 types of vegetables, three types of

melons as well as strawberries all provide less protein, calcium,

iron, riboflavin, phosphorus and vitamin C than the same fruits and

vegetables did 50 years ago. Researchers at the University of Texas in

Austin found that celery, green peppers and tomatoes have lost the

most protein, while cantaloupe, lettuce and tomatoes now have less

phosphorus than in the past. Eggplant and tomatoes have less vitamin C

than they used to. The researchers suggested that the reason for the

change may be that farmers choose to plant higher-yielding crops,

which might have less energy to take minerals from the soil or to

synthesize the vitamins and amino acids which are needed to form

proteins. The study was published in the December 2004 issue of the

Journal of the American College of Nutrition.

Source: Journal of the American College of Nutrition, December 2004

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