How many nutrients are there in fruit & vegetables?
The key to good health
Vitamins, minerals and trace elements are nutrients that are essential for good health absolutely necessary are.
It is therefore important to know to what extent our diet contains sufficient of these nutrients.
It is impossible for us to determine whether a meal contains sufficient vitamins, minerals and trace elements.
What's left in our food
About how many vitamins and minerals our food contains, is unfortunately not much known.
However, in the past, research was carried out by the Wageningen University.
The results of this study were then published by The Consumer Association published.
The figures were so disturbingthat The Telegraph even devoted an article to it in 2008 with the headline: "Vitamins away from vegetables".
The conclusion was that there were significant decreases in the amounts of vitamins and minerals in almost all fruit and vegetables.
It is striking that, despite the alarming figures, no more recent research can be found.
The production of food nowadays is more of a emphasis on quantity and less on quality.
This makes it more difficult nowadays to find food that contains sufficient vitamins and minerals.
Fall in vitamins in our diet
Here are some examples of the decrease of vitamins in our fruit and vegetables:
Falling minerals in our diet
And here are some examples of the reduction of minerals in our fruit and vegetables:
Causes of decline
The 'modernisation' of our agriculture underlies this substantial decrease of nutrients in our fruit and vegetables.
The intensive agriculture has, over time, led to the bottom arm of nutrients.
With the help of fertiliser It tries to maintain production in spite of the exhausted soil.
But the limited composition of fertilisers does not allow the soil to recover sufficiently, which results in crops do not contain all the necessary nutrients have at their disposal.
As a result, the crops not really healthyas a result of which they fungi, insects and other (un)pests attract.
To combat them plant protection products such as pesticides, insecticides and fungicides.
This toxic substances come with the fruit and vegetables in our body rightly so, but also in the soil.
In the soil these toxins kill all supporting organisms which are useful for the development of the crops.
This makes the soil only poorer.
Furthermore, the fruit and vegetables harvested early so that they can be kept longer are.
But just in the final stage of their maturation the crops produce vitamins.
So by harvesting them early, they become vitamins unfortunately no longer produced.
Conclusion
It is important to realise that fruit and vegetables contain less vitamins, minerals and trace elements than before.
Fruit and vegetables remain important, but provide less in the way of nutrient requirements than before.
"A vitamin is a nutrient that, if you don't get enough of it, can make you sick.
Albert Szent-Györgyi
Physician and Nobel Prize winner
