By now, I am sure that at one point or another, you have heard the phrase that “If you eat a balanced diet, you will get the nutrients that your body needs to function correctly” (source).

As technology moves forward and time becomes a scarce commodity, there has been a dramatic turn towards convenience and pre-prepared foods that contain highly-processed meats, refined oils and carbohydrates. These foods are typically devoid of vital micronutrients, yet packed with a cocktail of chemical additives; including artificial colourings, flavourings and preservatives.

We often hear that it’s important to eat a well-balanced diet, containing at least 5 servings of fruits and vegetables, for us to be healthy (source). But in regards to nutrients, is it really enough, and are there other factors at play? And even though it may be enough for now, will it be enough in the future with increased forms of stress?

The purpose of this article is to outline various reasons why you are probably not getting as many nutrients as you thought.

If we keep up with current modern lifestyles, the nutrient content of our foods is only going to degrade in both quality and quantity of nutrients. So even if we are getting enough nutrients now, it has been projected that our children and their children will not be getting the nutrients that their bodies need to be healthy and develop to their full potential. This is very unfortunate and means that the rate of diseases, that are a direct result of primary and secondary nutritional deficiencies, are going to skyrocket.

Note: This article only covers 5 reasons, and in the future I will write about the nutrient depletion that occurs due to pharmaceutical medications.

Nutrient-Deficient Food Supply

First let’s take a detailed look at the changes in our food supply. Simply eating a balanced diet that meets the recommended servings of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, fats and proteins, may not ensure ample nutrient intake. Since 1940, the nutrient concentration in foods appears to be diminishing in protein, calcium, phosphorus, iron, riboflavin (vitamin B2) and vitamin C (source, source, source, source, source, source). Some researchers suggest that these variations are only due to soil variations. The evidence showing the diminishing nutrient content of our food is undeniable, while simultaneously we have increased other factors, listed in this article, that increase our micronutrient needs. Thus, I feel that these are two primary factors that have contributed to the rising levels of diet-induced ill health all across the world.

A comparison study that looked at the changes in the average nutrient content of 43 fruits and vegetables between 1950 and 1999 found the following (source):

6% decrease in protein
16% decrease in calcium
9% decrease in phosphorus
15% decrease in iron
38% decrease in riboflavin
20% decrease in ascorbic acid

The first point is the largest and most important factor when understanding this issue, which I have further broken down into categories as follows:

An example of the selenium levels in United States Soil (source)

Environmental Conditions
Differences in climate, light and soil are responsible for large variations in the nutrient content of plants. Calcium-rich soil produces plants higher in protein, while potassium-rich soils produce plants higher in carbohydrates. Regional rainfall can create wide variations in vegetable and mineral composition, in particular, calcium, magnesium and potassium (source).
A plant cannot move around like a human to obtain nutrients from various places of the world. Thus, its mineral content is largely dependent on what is present in the soils. Selenium levels in plants for example, may range widely depending on where the plants were grown (see image to the right). This is true for all of the elements, since minerals do not occur in equal amounts across the Earth.
The intensity of light will also affect the nutrient composition of plants since plants also use these compounds to protect from stressors. This can be harnessed to produce more vitamin and phytonutrient-rich foods. For example, tomatoes grown with increased red and blue light had upwards of 65% more vitamin C than controls (source). This is exemplified in the various strengths of Biosuperfood that are grown under the supervision of Dr Michael Kiriac which are recommended on the Integrative Mineral Balancing Program.
Quality of Fertilisers
The minerals that are present in the soil are unique to its location. Most farmers know that they need to supplement their soils so that they can get the best crop yield. However, farmers don’t generally get paid for a higher quality product that contains more nutrients, but instead by weight. Thus most farmers only supplement their soil with NPK (nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium) fertilisers. It is well known that humans need at least 77 minerals for optimal health. Fertilising the soils with these isolated NPK fertilisers, rather than more comprehensive fertilisers, alters the composition of plants and leads to nutrient losses because the balance of minerals are also important to plants. An example of this is plants raised on soil that is high in potassium, have higher levels of potassium, but reduced levels of calcium and magnesium (source, source).
Genetic Engineering
Modern fruits and vegetables are very different from their ancestors. They were genetically selected and in some cases modified, whether by selective breeding or genetic modification. Often these foods were modified to improve shelf-life, yield, or other characteristics rather than their ability to extract or synthesize nutrients from their environments. Compared to wild plants, these genetically engineered or modified plants are higher in sugar and lower in essential nutrients such as vitamins, minerals and amino acids (source).
Time of Harvest
The maturity and harvesting of plants prematurely affect the potential nutrient and anti-nutrient content of the crop, in particular; fibre, vitamins A, B, C, and phenolic compounds (source, source, source, source).
Farming Practices
Technically, farming practices encompasses most of the sections of this article.
Free-range and grass-fed animals produce much more nutrient-rich foods in comparison to feed-lot animals. Dairy products, for example, are higher in vitamin A, E and beta-carotene (source). Feed-lot animals produce meat containing lower amounts of these essential nutrients. Also, the antibiotics which are commonly fed to these animals could potentially alter human gut microflora (source).
It is known that chemical residues, industrial waste including toxic metals, pollute the land, water and food supply (source). A 2004 analysis of 2,644 individuals found that “most people in the U.S carry a significant body burden of pesticides and pesticide metabolites” and the average person has tested positive for 13 out of 23 of those analysed. Estrogenic compounds such as DDT and its metabolites, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB’s) and p-nonyl-phenol and bisphenol-a, are of particular concern (source).

Screenshot_2020-01-05 Public Health Reports.png

Industrial pollutants, food additives, pesticides and toxins found in household products interfere with nearly every aspect of our cellular functions. One study from Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York reported an average of ninety-one industrial compounds, pollutants and toxic elements in the blood and urine of nine volunteer subjects. There were detectable residues found in every single one of the volunteers. Of the one-hundred and sixty-seven toxins isolated from the blood and urine of the human subjects, seventy-six are known to cause cancer in both humans and animals, ninety-four are known to be toxic to the brain and seventy-nine cause birth defects (source). The data can be seen in the photo to the right. These exposures increase our nutritional need of vitamins, minerals and amino acids to counteract these stressors and pollutants.

Food Processing
It may seem like no big deal, but the way that we process our foods for consumption and storage can have a major impact on its nutritional content. There have several studies showing that nutrient losses due to food processing are rampant. If we define all treatments on our food from harvest to consumption, then more than 95% of our food may be considered as processed.
- Refining of wheat to make white flour removes 80% of its magnesium, 70-80% of its zinc, 87% of its chromium, 88% of its manganese and 50% of its cobalt.
- Refining sugar cane to make white sugar removes 99% of its magnesium and 93% of its chromium.
- Polishing rice removes 75% of its zinc and chromium.
- Drying meats, upwards of 90% of thiamine (vitamin B1) is lost (source) and losses of up to one-third of pyridoxine and pantothenic acid in freeze-drying fish (source).
Long-distance Transportation and Storage
The moment food is harvested, the levels of certain nutrients begin to diminish. Nutrient losses in the supply chain mean that by the time some nutrients (e.g. calcium and folate) reach households, they barely scrape by (source). Fresh grown foods may have spectacular nutritional status and even exceed our requirements, but they diminish in their nutrients during long-distance transportation and subsequent exposure to the environment (light and temperature).
Most foods available in grocery stores are grown thousands of miles from population centres where they are bought. They may spend weeks in transportation and on supermarket shelves before they even reach your plate. This is another factor that makes me wonder, are we really getting enough nutrients?
Keeping food in the fridge, for example, may prolong its shelf life, however the food’s nutrient content diminishes (source, source). Canned food may be quite old. Frozen foods are nutritionally better, but the same line of thought applies.
- Broccoli stored in the fridge for 35 days reduces about 39% of its vitamin C and 29% of its sulforaphane (source).
- Tomatoes stored for just 5 days decreased the ascorbic acid content by almost 12.6% (source).
- Every time you eat an apple that is cut and exposed to oxygen long enough to see the flesh go brown, the vitamin content depletes due to oxidation (source).
- Grapes can lose upwards of 30% of their B vitamins (source), while tangerines can lose almost half their vitamin C when stored for 8 weeks (source).
- Asparagus stored for a week can lose up to 90% of its vitamin C (source).

2. Convenience

Modern lifestyles are typically based on convenience (source) since most people are juggling work, family and social activities. Health is often the least important value. This means that much less time is available for choosing high-quality food and meals, and typically most people are likely to buy food that can be stored on the shelf for a long period of time. Convenience foods are chosen because they are cheap and caloric-dense, but are also often high in unsaturated fatty acids, refined carbohydrates and sodium, which are processed to enhance taste but destroys nutrients in the process. These foods are often associated with poor micronutrient intake and low serum concentrations of vitamin A, E, C, B12, folate and carotenoids (source).

3. Not Eating Enough

Most people are simply not consuming optimal amounts of nutrients through their diet alone (source). According to data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination (NHANES), only 40% of Americans eat five or more servings of fruits and vegetables each day (source). Consuming fruits and vegetables are important for overall health, including reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality (chance of dying) (source). Nutrition surveys have shown deficiencies in many nutrients including calcium, magnesium, potassium, vitamin C, E and K (source) and we regularly see deficiencies in calcium, magnesium, potassium, zinc, selenium, lithium and chromium with Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis (HTMA). I have not found one person living in Australia that has a good level of selenium without supplementing it.

4. Stress

Stress the straws that breaks the camels back

We are all familiar with stress, but did you know that 75% of the reasons why most people go to the doctor are related to stress (source)?

Stress is not a thing, but instead a reaction to a particular stimulus (source). Our reaction to either a physical, mental, or environmental influence is called stress. To me, the major difference between eustress (good stress) and distress (bad stress) is the perception of enjoyment. Yet, both can still be stressful, such as exercise and the corresponding inflammation, or the exposure to radiation and an increased amount of free radicals.

Micronutrients (vitamins and minerals) are essential for optimal physical and mental function, their deficiencies are also associated with numerous diseases. Regardless, prolonged stress increases our metabolic nutrient needs and can even exacerbate health problems (source, source).
This means that if you are just scraping by with your micronutrient intake, physical, environmental or emotional trauma may just be the ‘straw that breaks the camels back’ and causes a nutritional deficiency. This is especially true if you are dependant solely on food as a source of nutrients and not supplementing your diet.

As we experience various environmental and physical stressors, our internal biochemistry also experiences metabolic adaptations, which increases our nutrient requirements. Depending on the stress and the duration, our micronutrient (vitamins and minerals) and even macronutrients (fats, proteins and carbohydrates) requirements also increase (source, source).

Stress, or even the perception of stress, can affect your nutrient status in at least two ways. One is through excessive sympathetic nervous system activity that requires an increased nutrient allocation to maintain physiological functioning. And secondly, the activation of the flight-or-flight response, which reduces our digestive ability. By reducing our ability to digest and assimilate our foods, we are not able to get the nutrients out of the food we consume.

Stress depletes many nutrients including b vitamins, vitamin c, vitamin e, calcium, magnesium, potassium and zinc. Zinc and magnesium are the first elements to be depleted during an alarm reaction. Coincidentally, these nutrients are also commonly deficient in the population.

Some examples of nutrient depletion due to various forms of stress include:

Urinary magnesium excretion increased significantly during exam times, and corresponded to the increase in student’s anxiety,
suggesting that magnesium was depleted (source).
Extreme physical stress is associated with a reduction in magnesium (source).
Cold exposure excreted significant levels of nicotinamide (vitamin B3) metabolites in their urine (source).
Psychological stress and excess exercise have been associated with changes in iron concentrations (source, source).
During times of high and prolonged physical activity, zinc levels are significantly lowered. This also impacts zinc’s other biological functions such as its antidepressant and immunological qualities (source).

It is not just a one-way street though, while micronutrients are depleted by stress, and increase our needs, they also help us recover from stress and increase our resilience to it.

Magnesium, for example, can suppress the ability of the hippocampus to stimulate the release of ACTH (the hormone that tells your adrenal glands to pump out cortisol and adrenaline), and reduce the responsiveness of the adrenal glands to ACTH. Thus, magnesium is effective at dampening the stress response (source).
We also know this is true from Mineral Balancing Science since magnesium lowers sodium levels which is a critical indicator for adrenal gland status. Sodium levels on a Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis are correlated with aldosterone levels, and magnesium has also been shown to inhibit, or block aldosterone (source). This means that magnesium can be effective at recovering from the alarm stage of Hans Selye’s General Adaptation stage of stress (source). The caveat is that 80% of people already have low functioning adrenal glands and are in the exhaustion stage of stress. This means that the lion share of people should not just take an isolated magnesium supplement as it will further deplete their adrenal hormone production.

Magnesium is not the only micronutrient that has been shown to be helpful for reducing stress. Julia Rucklidge and Bonnie Kaplan have shown that people who received high-doses of micronutrients following natural disasters reported less anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (source, source, source).

5. Pollution

Pollution is a another form of environmental stress. For the reasons I have listed throughout this article, so severe are nutrient deficiencies today, that in addition to the recommended diet and supplements on an Integrative Mineral Balancing program. We recommend everyone use unrefined sea salt, kelp and plant-derived minerals as extra mineral sources.

As health improves, fewer supplements are needed. While our exposure to pollution rises, so too does our nutrient requirements to combat the oxidative stress. This is why smokers require more vitamin C than non-smokers. Cigarette smoke, which is only one form of pollution to the air, has been documented to increase the accumulation of lead and copper, and also cadmium (source) which depletes zinc levels. B-vitamins may also protect from environmental pollution (source). Pollution can also increase our chances of developing cataracts.

Just like for us humans, pollution also affects plants and limits their ability to perform photosynthesis and overwhelms their detoxification capacity. Elevated CO2 in the atmosphere increases the sugar and starch in plants while decreasing their protein levels. Pollutants also impact the plant's ability to accumulate minerals from the soil, in particular, calcium, magnesium, selenium, iodine and zinc (source, source, source).

By 2050, scientists have estimated that due to elevations of atmospheric CO2, the disparity in protein intake will become prevalent. Significantly effecting vegan and vegetarian diets, increasing the risk for protein (source), iron (source) and zinc deficiencies (source, source). So much for veganism being the diet of the future, sorry Bill Gates (source). As you likely know, we do not advocate vegetarianism or veganism on the Integrative Mineral Balancing Program. The reason is that these diets are already low in zinc and many amino acids necessary for toxic metal detoxification. It seems as though this is only going to get worse in the future. Using moderate climate change projections, scientists have predicted selenium losses of 58% in the soil (between the year 2080–2099) and losses from croplands to be even higher, with 66% of farmlands predicted to lose 8.7% selenium. These losses could increase the worldwide prevalence of selenium deficiency (source).

Conclusion

All of the reasons above are why I personally feel that it is important for everyone to be on an Integrative Mineral Balancing Program. If we keep up with current modern lifestyles, the nutrient content of our foods is only going to degrade in both quality and quantity of nutrients. Due to not eating enough, convenience, food supply, stress, pollution, environmental conditions, time of harvest, long-distance transportation, food processing, genetic engineering, quality of fertilisers, and modern farming practices, I make the argument that we are not getting enough nutrients to counteract the factors which are negatively effecting our health through diet alone.

These are all reasons why we recommend every person, especially those on the Integrative Mineral Balancing Program, to supplement daily and strongly suggest that you avoid the ‘food-based only’ approach to obtain optimal health.

Tips for Enhancing your Nutrient Intake

Always incorporate nutrient-dense foods. These include animal products such as their meat, milk and glands. Also, make sure you cook your vegetables and minimise the nutrient inhibitors in foods by soaking grains and beans. Choose organic and free-range sources of protein, especially if you are going to consume animal fats.
Preserve nutrients during cooking. Try not to overcook foods as the prolonged heat depletes vitamins that are found in food. Regardless of cooking method, vegetables should still be colourful and slightly crisp when consumed (source).
Steaming vegetables retain their nutrient content much better than boiling them. However, pressure cooking is much better and retains more than 90% of the nutrients (source).
Always buy fresh and local foods. Knowing your farmer is one of the best ways to ensure that your food is fresh. Buying local also reduces the amount of time that foods are in storage, cold storage or transit and this means higher nutrient values of foods and less CO2 emissions in the atmosphere.
Consider getting a hair tissue mineral analysis to see if you are deficient in specific elements. While eating locally is ideal, it also may mean eating foods that are scarce in minerals, simply because they are not oresent in the soil.
Take high-quality nutritional supplements. Always supplement according to your metabolic needs. Unlike foods, one of the benefits of supplements is that you can be sure that they are providing your body with consistent levels of vitamins and minerals (source).
Begin a Mineral Balancing Program and take the guess work out of which supplements you need and if you are deficient.

Sources

5 Reasons We Are Not Getting Enough Nutrients

Nutrient-Deficient Food Supply

Environmental Conditions

Quality of Fertilisers

Genetic Engineering

Time of Harvest

Farming Practices

Food Processing

Long-distance Transportation and Storage