Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (264972)	5/28/2008 11:02:17 PM
From: neolib	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

All I'm trying to point out is that our production and distribution system for food has largely been predicated on efficiency (i.e. economic factors) not food quality factors. Just because X wins in the marketplace due to economic reasons does not mean X is the best biologically suited for you as food. You seem to confuse the two. What I can say is that almost all the food we eat currently (other than natural meat perhaps) has been bred for decades if not a century or more (in some cases, 1000's of years) with the general goal of improving yields and availability, both of which enhance profit in food production. This has largely been carried out without much regard to the underlying biological use of the food. Fruit is the classic example of this, but nearly all grains, most vegetables, and much of domestic meat production has seen identical pressures in this regard. So which segments did you have in mind as being counter examples? BTW, I'll give you one more example with some actual numbers. The first named blueberry cultivar is called Rubel (sp??) and is basically a wild blueberry selection. It has small fruit, but is very high in nutrients. Many of the most popular blueberry varieties which have been developed over the last 100 years since Rubel was "tamed" from the wild are nice big and very good looking. Consumers love them. They also typically have 1/2 down to 1/4 or so the antioxidant levels of Rubel. Rubels actually still are a reasonable commercial crop, largely for processed blueberries. But they are almost absent from fresh markets, because of size. Consumers shop for appearance. It is not a Communist plot that breeders breed for metrics which consumers open their wallets for. But it is also not true that what consumers open their wallets for is necessarily "better" by the most reasonable food value metrics. I would suspect that grains have seen this effect much more than other foods, and given their central position in human food consumption this deterioration in quality is interesting. In the case of grains, it is quite ancient as well, not just an artifact of modern science and modern consumers. For grains, the driving factor has been yield/acre (which impacts most crops) as well as pest resistance. It should come as no surprise that this is not the same as breeding for what happens to be the best nutritionally for a human body. So again, what examples do you have in mind where you think quality as gone up significantly? Certainly to the degree that health inspections or even industry grading is enforced, you could argue that AVERAGE quality might have increased, but most such rules are not recent, and they don't reflect improved quality compared to what a careful consumer could always get. What I have in fact observed is a renewed interest by industry to try and address actual food quality based on eating, not appearance metrics. This is good, and I wish all such efforts the best success. BTW, you might also illuminate this problem by looking at wine grapes vs. table grapes. The higher end of the wine market is consumed with quality of the finished product, and this quality depends heavily on the quality of grape grown. Contrast that with table grapes. Wine grapes don't have to have appearance or storage attributes to attract consumers, since they are harvested and controlled by the winery, and the finished product stores well (is in fact enhanced by time). Consequently you will see a very different history in terms of breeding for wine grapes vs table grapes. By and large, eating fresh wine grapes would be more healthy for you than eating commercial table grapes. But they would not sell well.