You might be thinking this already, but your salad isn’t what it used to be. A new report from UK-based Deep Science Ventures found that American fruits and vegetables are roughly half as nutritious as they were 60 years ago, with degraded soil quality draining vitamin C, calcium, and iron out of the food supply.

The Green Revolution of the 1960s dramatically increased world food supplies through high-yielding crop varieties, chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and modern irrigation. New strains of wheat, rice, and corn nearly doubled food production between 1960 and 1985 in developing countries like India and Mexico. It’s estimated that these hybrid grains and new farming practices saved over a billion lives.

This came at a cost, but not in calories. We’ve been measuring the number of calories in food for 60 years—that hasn’t changed. In fact, per capita calorie intake has increase due to the rise of ultra-processed foods.

For the past 60 years, we’ve quietly “hollowed out” what’s inside our food. The Green Revolution focused on producing calories at the cost of nutritional quality. We now have an abundance of food that’s deficient in many of the vitamins and micronutrients we need, which creates a new nutritional problem— “hidden hunger.”

Deep Science Ventures recently published a 57-page report titled Hollow Harvests. Researchers were able to show a 20%-50% mineral and protein density decline in many key foods by using historical food datasets and long-term crop archives going back almost 160 years. The deficiencies increase the risk of chronic disease, poor mental health, and underdeveloped children. Now we have what researchers are calling a “triple burden,” where obesity coexists with hidden hunger.

The most common deficiencies were seen in iron, iodine, vitamin A, zinc, folate, vitamin B12, vitamin D, and calcium. The health outcomes tied to these deficiencies affect growth, cognition, immunity, reproduction, and metabolic health.

The authors of the study stated that consumers need to eat twice the number of fruits and vegetables to get the same level of vitamins and minerals we got in the 1960s.

I always suspected our food’s quality was dropping, but the actual data is much worse than I feared. Maybe this explains why fertility rates have fallen to a record low and cancer rates in young people are 80% higher than they were in the 1990s.

We live in a world where an apple is not as good for you as it used to be. Securing the nutrients our bodies need for optimal health demands intentional effort. Here’s what I recommend:

1. Visit A Farmers Market Every Week. The most nutritious food you can eat will be locally grown by someone who takes the time to do it right. When you go to farmers markets, you can actually “shake the hand that feeds you,” as Michael Pollan recommended in his 2008 book In Defense of Food. You can ask local farmers if they used non-GMO seeds, pesticides, and organic fertilizers.

At the grocery store, you’re buying food that’s picked early and ripened on the way. This process causes all produce to be lower in vitamins and minerals. When produce is picked at peak ripeness, key nutrients like potassium, magnesium, phosphorus, and vitamins C and A can be found in higher concentrations.

2. Grow Your Own Vegetables. Everyone should be growing some type of vegetables in their back yard or even on their patio. Tomatoes and lettuce can be grown just about anywhere. And setting up a small herb garden is easy enough for anyone to do.

No food tastes as good as the food you grow on your own. You can start composting so you know your plants are being fertilized well, and you are doing your part to recycle your table scraps. You can grow better varieties of food by getting heirloom seeds from a local exchange like Seed Savers, the seed exchange at your local Library, or the Central Indiana Seed Swap Facebook Group. Heirloom varieties are more nutrient dense than commercial crops that have been bred solely for fast growth and shelf life.

3. Eat Twice as Many Fruits and Vegetables. The authors of the study stated that we need to eat twice the number of fruits and vegetables to get the same level of vitamins and minerals we got in the 60s. At Exercise Inc, we recommend 2 – 3 servings of fruit a day and 4 or more servings of vegetables. Most of the popular research on this subject recommends we need at least 5 servings (or cups) of fruits and vegetables a day to get an adequate amount of nutrients.

More recent research points towards doubling the 5 servings to 10. A meta-analysis of over 2 million people found that while five portions lowered risk of chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease and cancer, the greatest benefits were seen at ten portions of fruit and vegetables a day. Japan has been recommending 10 servings of fruits and vegetables a day for a long time.

4. Take a Multivitamin. I know I’ve opened a can of worms with this one. You want to know which multivitamin you should take. There are literally over 100,000 different vitamin supplements on the market. Some are good and a lot of them are not so good.

The best way to know if a vitamin is legit is by only buying vitamins that are USP (United States Pharmacopeia) verified. This means the vitamins or supplements have been verified to ensure they contain what’s on the label, they are free of contaminants and pesticides, and they have been produced according to FDA Good Manufacturing Practices.

Maybe it takes “two apples a day to keep the doctor away.” Well, cheers to another apple.

Stay Strong,

Bo Railey