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Relative Nutritional Value - Distance Shipped Plus Time to Market Are Inversely Proportional to Nutrients


Chamonix, France (Photo:RLW)

Why ask where your food comes from? Fresh fruits and vegetables in your supermarket travel an average of 1,500 miles before sale. Fresh fruits and vegetables in a typical farmers' market travel an average of 50 miles.

Fresh fruits and vegetables that come from fields in Mexico, Brazil, Chile, China or any other country may or may not comply with U.S. Department of Agriculture or EPA rules and regulations. What are they spraying on your food in these countries? How do we know?

The antioxidants in fresh fruits and vegetables are there to help the plants ward off insects and diseases. If a plant is grown in the genetically identical mass plantings of an industrial farm it does not need to produce antioxidants to fend off insects and diseases - they have all been killed by herbicides and pesticides.

Fruits and vegetables have been developed to stand up to shipping over great distances. The chief consideration is appearance and long shelf life. There is little if any consideration of nutrient value. In fact, the longer a fruit or vegetable stays on the shelf the lower its nutrient levels are. Nutrients deteriorate over time. That is why the Food Industry breaks foods down and removes active nutrients - to extend shelf life. That is why you have white rice and refined white flour. Those pesky nutrients mess everything up for Food Industry profits.

Donald R. Davis, a research associate with the Biochemical Institute at the University of Texas, Austin, recently analyzed data gathered by the USDA in 1950 and 1999 on the nutrient content of 43 fruit and vegetable crops. He found that six out of 13 nutrients had declined in these crops over the 50-year period (the seven other nutrients showed no significant, reliable changes). Three minerals, phosphorous, iron and calcium, declined between 9 percent and 16 percent. Protein declined 6 percent. Riboflavin declined 38 percent and ascorbic acid (a precursor of vitamin C) declined 15 percent.

A study of the mineral content of fruits and vegetables grown in Britain between 1930 and 1980 shows similar decreases in nutrient density. The British study found significantly lower levels of calcium, magnesium, copper and sodium in vegetables, and of magnesium, iron, copper and potassium in fruit. The report concludes that the declines indicate "that a nutritional problem associated with the quality of food has developed over those 50 years."

Relative Nutritional Value (RNV) equals the nutrient level (n) divided by distance shipped plus time to market (d + t), where the nutrient level is assumed to be 100 at perfection. Hence a tomato that travels 1,500 miles in 10 days to reach market has an RNV of .07, while an organic tomato shipped 50 miles in one day has an RNV of 2. And a sprig of parsley grown in your garden that you pick and eat on the spot has an RNV of 100. This is my own equation and its purpose is purely to highlight the issue of nutrient value in our foods.

This formula supposes that local foods are organically grown. Thus their produce had to develop antioxidants to ward off insects and diseases. It also supposes that the soil these plants were grown in is richer than the chemically maintained and exhausted soils of huge industrial farms. This may or may not be true. That is why you ask. Know where your foods come from and how they are grown. It makes a difference.

Richard Wottrich