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Apr 2

Target: A Healthy Harvest

Diets that Work Comments Off on Target: A Healthy Harvest

For many people in the United States, French fries and breakfast cereal count as vegetables. And it shows with television programs like The Biggest Loser, healthy living programs in schools, and weight-loss challenges in the workplace, its evident that malnutrition is at epidemic proportions in this country.

But its not just obesity thats capturing attention; the fact is, most Americans are struggling just as much with undernourishment and nutritional deficiencies.

Agricultural producers and growers like to pride themselves on feeding the world, but what are they feeding? According to Philipp Simon, a geneticist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and a horticulture professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, 13 percent of the worlds population is undernourished, 30 percent are iron-deficient, and 2 percent have a vitamin A deficiency. And its not just third-world countries most Americans are chronically deficient in vitamins A and C as well as calcium, magnesium, and potassium. Consumers also struggle to get enough fiber, folate, and vitamin E in their diets.

These are all nutrients that can only come from the diet, and many come solely in the form of plants, such as vitamin C in orange juice. Encouraging consumers to eat more fruits and vegetables is one way to approach the problem; another way is to boost the nutritional content in the foods that people are eating. This has led to fortifying foods in some cases, as in bread and cereals, and to improving horticultural practices in other cases, such as adding selenium to the soil to increase selenium levels in garlic. Another strategy has been in breeding nutrition into plants.

Carotene and Carrots

Researchers have been successful in breeding nutrition into plants in many cases, such as increased protein into maize, iron into beans, zinc into rice and wheat, and vitamin A into maize, sweet potato, and some cucumber varieties. The bulk of Simons work has been with carrots, which contains the most vitamin A of any fruit or vegetable.

Even though, carrots have historically been one of the few crops to have increased its nutritional content the average carrot contained 60 parts per million (ppm) of vitamin A in the 1950s, to 90 ppm in the 1970s, to 130 ppm in the 1990s carrots continue to have potential, up to 300 ppm. So, theres a lot of opportunity for breeding nutrition into crops, Simon added.

An advantage to breeding vitamin A, also known as carotene, into carrots is that its easy for the consumer to choose the more nutritional carrot the deeper the orange color, the more vitamin A it has.

There are challenges, however, with getting the research out into the field. As with all crops, there is a pull between quality and quantity. Some varieties have more nutritional value than others. Some yield better. Some are more flavorful. Some are more convenient. Some have a longer shelf life.

Higher carotene content generally imparts no economic benefit to growers, Simon said. Future work will focus more on marrying qualities that growers are looking for, such as yield and shelf life, and what consumers want, such as flavor and convenience, with nutritional content.

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Target: A Healthy Harvest

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