Why is the taste and nutrition of our food in decline? Many blame declining soil health. And yes, the biology of soil plays a massive role in mediating nutrition to plants. But the story is much bigger. Agriculture is a complex system where genetics, soil, weather, fertilizers, and management practices all interact. Over the last 40 to 60 years, we’ve selected for plants and animals that grow faster and bigger. The result? More yield, more calories, but less nutrition per gram of food, less tasty food! Formally, genetic dilution is the reduction of desirable traits within a population when genes linked to less favorable traits dominate. In agriculture, it shows up as lower nutrient density, weaker flavor, and the loss of other quality traits in crops and livestock. Put simply, breeding programs have traded quality for quantity. Modern wheat often contains less zinc and iron than older lines. Rapid-growth livestock breeds tend to have less flavor and lower nutritional value than heritage breeds. For decades, we’ve been breeding for one outcome: more yield. The implications are profound. Does less nutrition per gram make us eat more? Are we less satiated because our food carries fewer micronutrients and bioactive compounds? If we keep breeding for abundance, what happens when abundance no longer nourishes us?
Exactly why we're focusing on growing heritage grains!
Hopefully there a point in the future where the system is optimised with less waste so the focus doesn't have to be so much on quantity above all else. One day yields are used at near full capacity to feed the world so the focus can shift to quality. The first step is understanding what our current foods are lacking and why. Which is 100% where Edacious comes in. Making lab testing and nutrition software affordable and accessible. We can't change what we don't know. Interested to see the outcome from the partnership with ROA
It isn’t just that nutrition is in decline; toxicity is on the rise as well.
Great mission - would love to learn more about how you are tackling this at Edacious Eric J. Smith
Love this! Educational content like this is key Eric J. Smith
In my nutrition degree, we called it starving obesity. Eat and eat but the body never gets the nutrients it needs so it craves more food.
Deligene | Innovation in agrifood| No fluff
3dYes, breeding for high yields is part of the answer, but other factors are at play as well. Early picking and post-harvest practices, for example, can significantly affect fruit taste tomatoes stored for just a few days at 4 °C often lose their flavor completely. Another key driver is climate change, and more specifically the rise in atmospheric CO₂. Under elevated CO₂ conditions, most crop plants tend to accumulate more starch while producing lower levels of protein and many secondary metabolites that are essential for flavor.