TE
TechEcho
Home24h TopNewestBestAskShowJobs
GitHubTwitter
Home

TechEcho

A tech news platform built with Next.js, providing global tech news and discussions.

GitHubTwitter

Home

HomeNewestBestAskShowJobs

Resources

HackerNews APIOriginal HackerNewsNext.js

© 2025 TechEcho. All rights reserved.

The great nutrient collapse – key crops are getting less nutritious due to CO2

41 pointsby Osiris30over 5 years ago

5 comments

glofishover 5 years ago
Let&#x27;s not jump the gun here. It just shows that there is more to nutrition than simply calories in and calories out.<p>Changing the size of algae alters the way it gets utilized by zooplankton. That is a far cry from an actual &quot;collapse&quot; of its nutritional content.<p>Of course, no paper could ever resist a clickbait title.
numtelover 5 years ago
Don&#x27;t forget how CO2 impacts us too.<p>&gt; on average, a typical participant’s cognitive scores dropped 21 percent with a 400 ppm increase in CO2<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;thinkprogress.org&#x2F;exclusive-elevated-co2-levels-directly-affect-human-cognition-new-harvard-study-shows-2748e7378941&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;thinkprogress.org&#x2F;exclusive-elevated-co2-levels-dire...</a>
mips_avatarover 5 years ago
There does seem to be evidence that our fruits and vegetables are getting less nutritious[1]. However this seems to be mostly that we are optimizing for everything other than micronutrients and nutrition. When we optimize for growth speed, weather resistance, pest resistance we must be giving up something. Luckily this is a great candidate for a market solution. Plenty of people pay a price-premium for higher nutrient foods (such as higher omega-3 in cage free eggs)<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.scientificamerican.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;soil-depletion-and-nutrition-loss&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.scientificamerican.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;soil-depletion-an...</a>
not_a_cop75over 5 years ago
So maybe we have to simply cut down on our use of fertilizers if we want the same quality product as before?
8bitsruleover 5 years ago
The last sentence: &quot;When his paper was finally published in 2014, Loladze listed his grant rejections in the acknowledgements.&quot;<p>Five years may not be a long time ... depending on how much time we have.