Junk Food Is Bad For Plants, Too (xpost from Good Reads)

[drokhole]

Junk Food Is Bad For Plants, Too

How a steady diet of fertilizers has turned crops into couch potatoes.
BY ANNE BIKLÉ & DAVID R. MONTGOMERY

Most of us are familiar with the much-maligned Western diet and its mainstay of processed food products found in the middle aisles of the grocery store. Some of us beeline for the salty chips and others for the sugar-packed cereals. But we are not the only ones eating junk food. An awful lot of crops grown in the developed world eat a botanical version of this diet—main courses of conventional fertilizers with pesticide sides.

It’s undeniable that crops raised on fertilizers have produced historical yields. After all, the key ingredients of most fertilizers—nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and potassium (K)—make plants grow faster and bigger. And popular insecticides and herbicides knock back plant enemies. From 1960 to 2000, a time when the world’s population doubled, global grain production rose even more quickly. It tripled.1

But there is a trade-off. High-yielding crops raised on a steady diet of fertilizers appear to have lower levels of certain minerals and nutrients. The diet our crops eat influences what gets into our food, and what we get—or don’t get—out of these foods when we eat them.

(snip)

Modern agriculture also influences phytochemical levels in food. These powerful bioactive compounds made by plants confer innumerable health benefits to themselves and the people who eat them. In general, the closer a crop type is to its wild ancestor, the higher its phytochemical levels.4 Yet NPK fertilizers translate into lower phytochemical levels. When plants grow explosively they tend to cut back on making phytochemicals.

(snip)

But the things that fuel plant growth on today’s farms, chiefly NPK fertilizers, are not the same things that plants need to stave off disease, heal from injuries, and fend off pests and pathogens. In other words, our big human brains have long, and erroneously, conflated plant growth with plant health. And herein lies a pickle for modern agriculture.

much more at the link

[AxionExcel]

1. k & r

The crap GMO-herbicide-pesticide diet is undermining the physical, mental and emotional health of people - as evidenced by the swelling numbers of degenerative diseases.

[drokhole]

2. Agreed, they tend to be traced back to the same type of thinking...

An older OP of mine:

THE COMPLEX NATURE OF GMOS CALLS FOR A NEW CONVERSATION

And another great Nautilus article on the matter:

How the Western Diet Has Derailed Our Evolution

Apologies, those might keep you busy for a while.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

3. so they found out that roundup ready plants fed to poultry killed off benificial gut bacteria

The same bacteria that protect our guts too.

[progressoid]

4. Well that's weird. You must have read a different article.

The linked article doesn't seem to discuss GMOs at all.

[AxionExcel]

5. The same deranged Corporate Borg, Inc. that produces crappy, sickening junk food

produces it with GMO crud. Unlabeled, of course.

[progressoid]

6. All food is a chemistry experiment.

Eggs, shellfish, peanuts, coconut, etc. That stuff might kill you. And they aren't even GMO foods.

[AxionExcel]

7. Equating Monsanto, Syngeta etc. to Mother Nature is a dangerously false equivilency

You are welcome to eat your share of synthetic chemical glorp from the industrial corporations. That's your right.


But I also have a right: to know what's in my food, and to avoid harmful synthetic chemicals.

"Study shows 75% of Germans tainted by toxic glyphosate (GMO handmaiden) - according to a study carried out by the Heinrich Böll Foundation.

"The toxic herbicide glyphosate can enter the body through food or drinking water.

A new study shows that the majority of Germans have been contaminated by the compound.

(Glyphosate is used on over 80% of GMO crops. Scientists are finding it in beer, tampons, and a wide range of other products. Although this study was done in Germany, it is highly likely Americans are being contaminated by this toxin – handmaiden to the GMO industry - at a similarly high rate).

http://www.euractiv.com/section/agriculture-food/news/overwhelming-majority-of-germans-contaminated-by-glyphosate/

[progressoid]

8. I would be more worried about the cash register receipt from your health food store.

“There's more BPA in a single thermal paper receipt than the total amount that would leach out from a polycarbonate water bottle used for many years," said John Warner, Ph.D., president of the Warner Babcock Institute for Green Chemistry. Research has linked BPA to an increased risk of breast and prostate cancers, cardiovascular disease, and reproductive and brain development abnormalities.

In the study, published in Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers measured the amount of BPA in the urine of 24 volunteers before and after they spent two hours handling thermal paper receipts. About a week later, half of the volunteers returned to perform the experiment again, but this time they wore nitrile gloves (the type commonly used in doctor’s offices and hospitals).

In the first group, BPA levels taken four hours after handling receipts were three times higher than they were at baseline; eight hours later, BPA levels were five times higher. But there was no significant increase in the group that wore gloves.

"We now have several hundred studies—including more than 50 in humans—showing health effects from BPA at exposure levels we experience in everyday life, indicating the need for strong safety guidelines to protect public health,” said Laura Vandenberg, Ph.D., assistant professor of environmental science at University of Massachusetts Amherst School of Public Health and Health Sciences, who was the lead author of a recent report analyzing more than 450 studies on the effects of low-level BPA exposure.

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2014/03/the-health-risk-of-bpa-in-receipts/index.htm

You know, since you want to avoid harmful synthetic chemicals.

By the way are you typing this on an electronic device made of bamboo? I'd hate for you to be using technology that is furthering the poisoning of the planet.