A variety of sources are now reporting on the "news" that the amount of nutrients in our food supply has decreased over the past 50 years.

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=1671868

I find this fascinating, because I've been telling people about this in my nutrition lectures for years. Would you like the most obvious alert? Compare the food pyramid today from the one originally published about 20 years ago. The intake recommendedation raw fruits and vegetables had increased every time an update to the food pyramid has been released. This is because the amount of measured nutrients in our raw food supply is decreasing.

Of course, that's for raw food. How much raw food are you eating. You also know that cooking depletes many nutrients and therefore increases the amount of food you need to satisfy your nutritional requirements, right? Either that, or take supplements to supplement your nutrient intake.

ABCNews reports that using data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Davis concludes that recently grown crops have shown decreases of up to 38 percent in protein, calcium, vitamin C, phosphorus, iron and riboflavin when compared with produce from past decades.

The main problem is attributed the needs of the modern world. There are more people to feed so fertilizers and other "techniques" are being used to increase crop yield and speed the growth of the plants. Unfortunately, the plants can't keep up with the demand and the amount of nutrients distributed to the fruits and vegetables have decreased as a result.

Let's not forget green harvesting…but that's another blog.