| Scarcity of Minerals and
Vitamins in Our Food
Veggie
Nutrients Dip in Tests
Some Blame Environment; USDA Says
Better Tests a Factor
Washington - No one
is sure why, but government records of vitamins
and minerals in a sampling of vegetables show
the level of nutrients has gone down over two
decades, some dramatically. The little
publicized changes in broccoli, cauliflower and
other vegetables are prompting suspicion by some
in organic gardening and vegetarian circles that
a changing environment could be affecting the
produce Americans eat. But the U.S. Department
of Agriculture, while acknowledging that its own
data indicate a decline, says it is just as
likely that testing techniques for measuring
vitamins A and C, and calcium and iron, among
other nutrients, have simply become more
accurate, making the old data wrong.
" It's rather
difficult to attribute the change to any one
factor." says David Haytowitz, the USDA
nutritionist whose job is to keep information on
vegetable vitamins and minerals. " I'm not
saying it's one or the other." says Joanne
Holden, the research leader of the USDA's
Nutrition Data Laboratory in Beltsville, MD. "
I'm just saying that we can't avoid looking at
all of these things." Haytowitz says there is no
way to be certain because it is impossible to
retest the onions, collards and other vegetables
that show changes in nutrients over the last 25
years. Those vegetables or ones from the same
crop, have long since been destroyed or eaten.
But testing methods have improved substantially,
he said, so the laboratory's goal is to focus on
better analysis. The governments approach does
not satisfy Alex Jack, a Massachusetts author,
editor and advocate of natural food diets. Jack
was updating a book: " Healing Food." with the
latest USDA nutrition information when he first
noticed changes between figures published by the
government in 1973 and 1997. " My best guess is
that this was environmental, part of the large
environmental crisis - Food quality, air
quality, water quality, sea quality. " Jack
said. " I don't have definite proof, but I think
that government and our representatives should
be looking into this." Jack published his
findings in "One Peaceful World." his newsletter
advocating a macrobiotic diet, in the spring of
1998. Anne Marie Mayer, a British nutritionist
now working on a doctorate at Cornell
University, had found similar decline in England
during research that began in 1995. No one else
appears have done such an analysis.
Jack randomly
selected 12 vegetables to check nutrients:
broccoli, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower,
collards, daikon, kale, mustard greens, onions,
parsley, turnip greens and watercress. Comparing
data published in a nutrition handbook in 1975
with data on the Internet in 1997, he found that
the amount of calcium reported for raw broccoli
- the kind sold at supermarkets - had declined
by 53 percent. Broccoli also had 38 percent less
vitamin A, 48 percent less riboflavin, 35
percent less thiamine and 29 percent less
niacin. Similar declines were found for the
other vegetables. The measurements were for 100
grams (3.5 ounces) of each uncooked vegetable,
the equivalent of one-third to one-half a
cup.
The above text
was published in the OMAHA WORLD-HERALD on
Saturday, January 29, 2000
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