Headline:

"Vegetables half as nutritious as they were in the 1960s"

Body:

"The study found that many crops had lost 20pc to 50pc of several key nutrients."

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So, vegetables are possibly 80% as nutritious as they were in the 60's if these key nutrients capture the complete nutritional value of vegetables, which they don't. Regardless, that's some pretty sloppy linkbait garbage.

The study in question was by "Deep Science Ventures" - a venture capital firm specializing in bio-technologies.

People have been trying to spin stories about soil degradation since... ironically, the 1960s.

While these might be true, the actual answers are usually much more mundane:

- We choose fruits and vegetables increasingly for their taste

- The rise of hydroponics and salad vegetables in general

- Quicker harvests with less time to absorb nutrients

Our diets are much more diverse and fortified compared to the pre-war period - nutritional deficits are not nearly the concern they used to be.

Sigh, more sensationalist, low-quality coverage, and, as always, proper scientific studies refute these claims: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S088915751....

Also Deep Science Ventures / Hollow Harvests is a biased startup that simply cannot be seen to be objective on these matters.

There is more of a new vitamin in veggies and fruit and that is vitamin S; S for sugar. I noticed lately that little grape tomatoes taste more like grape than tomato! Other offenders are corn and green peas; corn that is so sweet that it doesn't taste like corn. Oranges that are too sweet. Grape fruits that have lost tartness. Even lemon is sweeter. I read that even soya bean has changed to be sweeter and it has less protein. Probably it is the same for most pulses; they have modified them to cook faster so they have more starch and less protein.