Comment by Elrac | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Elrac | Hacker News Reader

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The article informs us that anthocyanins are good against cancer and a slew of other illnesses. However, what little research about the antioxidant properties of anthocyanins exists is based on in vitro studies, and it's well known that anthocyanins are at least for the most part unlikely to survive being digested.

The article informs us that "one species of apple has a staggering 100 times more phytonutrients than [Golden Delicious]." There are thousands of different phytonutrients, and no edible plant has no phytonutrients, so exactly what is this figure telling us? 100 times more of a certain nutrient? 100 times more different varieties? 100 times more by total weight? I guess we need to buy the author's upcoming book to find out, if at all.

This doesn't look like any kind of evidence-based complaint about the deficiencies of modern food; it looks like the kind of pseudoscience used to promote unnecessary supplements and overpriced organic food. And feel-good books about medicating yourself by a judicious choice of the "right" foods.

The author feeds our fears but not our appetite for real, credible information.

Agreed. My skepty-sense goes off the moment I hear the word "superfood". Steven Novella on the idea:

First, the idea of “superfood” itself is not valid. There is no magical combination of nutrients that make a food into a “superfood” where it will start to have fabulous benefits. Food is just food. It also doesn’t really matter how you get your nutrients, as long as you get enough in reasonable proportions. The best way to accomplish this is to eat a variety of foods and make sure you get enough fruits and vegetables. This includes avoiding an excess of certain kinds of food and an excess of overall calories.

There is no “zone,” however, where proportion of nutrients turns food into anything other than food, that will boost your immune system (which itself is a problematic idea) or shift your metabolism into some sort of optimal state. There is no science behind any of these ideas, but they do sound satisfying to the scientifically illiterate. In short – there is no such thing as a “superfood.”

From http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/human-breast-mi...

While I agree to some extent that "food is food" I don't think that's the start and end of it.

Fruits tend to have a lot of water in them. Imagine a fruit that has somehow magically had all its cell have 50% more water in them. It'd be 50% bigger than before. And it would sell for 50% more than before. But would it have 50% more nutrition in it? Hard to say, but it feels like no. There'd be more of some stuff sure, like more cell walls to hold all that extra water. But more of the stuff you want? I don't know.

I think this is a legitimate concern to have in the whole "superfood" or modern food nutrition debate. Farmers like increasing yield, and there are probably ways to increase yield without increasing nutrition. It's like the old cram an extra 100lbs on every cow in water with salt trick that ranchers used to and perhaps still use.

I'm not suggesting that the whole idea of a superfood is real or valid. But there probably are foods which are better for you by virtue of the fact that the agricultural machine hasn't highly optimized them for whatever yet. I am skeptical of the claim 100x, but I might readily believe 2x or 3x.

Would it sell for 50% more? I strongly suspect that an apple with 50% more water would be less tasty and would not sell as well.

The most expensive apples in my grocery store are correlated with their availability and popularity when it comes to taste.

Oh, of course. And I agree. But this isn't a step-change that's happening, it's a slow increase in yields or whatever. It's not as though one year they made a tomato that was 50% bigger and firmer and tasted terrible but shipped and looked amazing and everyone switched over to it en-masse. It's 1-2% a year, year after year, in a slow way so that it's very hard to notice.

Not that anyone's trying to hide it either, it's just that the interests of the farmers and the people in the supply chain and the grocery store are different in some ways and probably opposed a few to those of the people eating the food.

It's not feeding any fears.

It's telling us the simple fact that our food consists of plants and trees selected for taste and appearance. This article specifically is discussing how this has led to diminishing nutrition in those plants.

This is not controversial. A different article could have talked about the same issue but presented a different effect which is that nearly the entire banana crop in the world is at risk of being wiped out because we've pretty much eliminated any variety in order to get the sweetest and best looking bananas.

> This is not controversial. A different article could have talked about the same issue but presented a different effect which is that nearly the entire banana crop in the world is at risk of being wiped out because we've pretty much eliminated any variety in order to get the sweetest and best looking bananas.

First, this has already happened once.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_disease

Second, this is an argument against monoculture, not selective breeding. If I have 5 types of selectively bred bananas, I have fixed the monoculture problem but not your claimed selective breeding problems.

This is not controversial

Maybe it should be - because it certainly is disputed by scientists. Not NY Times-bestselling "scientists", but certainly peer-reviewed scientists.

The intuitive connection between the claim that grocery market food has been selected for "taste and appearance" and the claim that this has led to "diminishing nutrition" is most certainly controversial.

Can you cite any peer-reviewed publications disputing the decline of nutrients found in food? I found this evidence to the contrary, for example:

    Historical food composition data and the growing of
    archived seeds suggest that the average content of
    some nutrients in many foods has decreased over the
    last century.

    Although the changes are small in comparison with
    other factors affecting nutritional status, we might
    benefit if agriculture were to place greater focus on
    nutrient content, rather than just yield.

http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPag...

"Nutrition" implies a health outcome; it is not enough to count the nutrients in a food and then declare it less nutritious. The claim in the article is that food which is the result of agriculture is less nutritious, which means that we have a worse health outcome from eating it than food we ate before agriculture. I think that is controversial, and it was not backed up.

>It's telling us the simple fact that our food consists of plants and trees selected for taste and appearance

It's telling us a lot more than that.

Further this is an "Opinion" piece, in the opinion section of a newspaper. Opinion sections are not held to any standard of truth, and pretty much anything goes, even when factual claims are made. No information in this article can be trusted as reliable, because of that.

And the linked-to comment section is full of FUD as well, in case you were looking for an after-meal fear digestive.

Tons of real credible information in peer-reviewed publications if you care to look. Plenty of in vivo studies as well. Presumably you know how much of any anthocyanin is needed to catalyze a putative reaction in the body? No, you don't. On the article itself I won't comment.

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