Thomas Hager » Food Science

Are Vegetables Getting Less Nutritious?

TomHager — Tue, 03 May 2011 17:26:48 +0000

A new article in Scientific American makes the case that declining soil quality and increasing dependence on crops bred for size and transportability — rather than nutritional value — makes today’s grocery-store produce significantly less nutritious than the greens (and reds and yellows and purples) your grandparents ate. Looks like good soil = better crops, both when it comes to quality as well as quantity. Just what you’d expect. But the story as written is a bit too much of a downer. The drops in vitamins and minerals the authors note are disquieting, true. But the unspoken good news is that we can quickly bring the nutrition back if we get down in the dirt and work on improving soil quality (through proven methods like soil conservation, crop rotation, and improved fertilizers) and work toward breeding more nutritional value into our crops — like this project is doing in Africa.

Ho, Ho, Ho

TomHager — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 00:35:04 +0000

Here I am in Hanoi, standing in front of Ho Chi Minh’s tomb. Hanoi was grey, crowded, and the air was chokingly dirty on the day we visited (we spent most of our time up north in a lovely hill area called Thanh Hoa, visiting farmers and sharing one memorable meal with local Communist officials, who toasted us endlessly with tiny cups of coconut wine). The ride into Hanoi from the airport was fascinating — the entire route under construction, cars and buses sharing lanes with mobs of cyclists, and all the revolutionary slogans that once called defiance to the US from billboards along the way now replaced with big ads for banks, construction firms, and electronics.

Then to the tomb. There were more mobs, of Vietnamese tourists this time, visiting their version of Washington, DC, and paying tribute to the Father of their Country. Ho is revered in the Communist manner: His body carefully preserved and put on display every day. At night it’s lowered into a temperature-controlled crypt below the tomb.

Yes, fellow children of the Sixties, Uncle Ho is now a tourist attraction.

And the Vietnamese kept blaming the air pollution on the Chinese.

Haiti and the World

TomHager — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 22:42:01 +0000

Next week I leave on a trip around the world to gather stories about people who are using their brains (and guts) to help solve the looming problem of world hunger. I’ll post occasional updates both here and on my Facebook page.
But my thoughts are now in Haiti. I’ve been reading about the food riots that took place there in the spring of 2008, which resulted in several deaths and the resignation of the Prime Minister. The recent earthquake is going to make things much worse. For now, send your prayers to the Haitians and money to established aid organizations. For the future, start thinking about food the way Haitians do — they spend more than half their income on food, any spike in prices throws many into malnutrition, and they’re always teetering on the brink of hunger. That could be many of us, too, in a few decades, unless we take needed action now.