According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, adult obesity has increased by 60 percent within the past 20 years. Trends for childhood obesity are even worse, having doubled for children and tripled for adolescents during the same time. Americans are the most overfed yet undernourished people in the world.

It might be easy to blame these maladies on the sedentary but high-stress American lifestyle, which probably is a significant casual factor. But an even more important cause might be the lack of essential nutrients in many of today’s foods. A growing number of scientific studies are finding significant declines in the nutritional value of our foods. And dramatic drops in nutrient density have occurred during a period when American farms were under pressure to specialize, mechanize and get bigger – to produce more food cheaper.

Unfortunately, the emphasis of food security programs administered through the USDA – including its farm programs – has been on food quantity rather than food quality. The agency admits its concept of food security is not adequate to ensure healthy diets, but places most of the burden for food quality on consumers.

While many essential nutrients may be lacking in most foods today, they may be found in abundance in foods grown naturally and organically on healthy, productive soils. A 1993 study comparing conventional foods with organic foods, found that organically grown apples, potatoes, pears, wheat, and sweet corn, purchased over a two-year period, averaged 63 percent higher in calcium, 73 percent higher in iron, 118 percent higher in magnesium, 91 percent higher in phosphorus, 125 percent higher in potassium, and 60 percent higher in zinc than conventional foods purchased at the same times.

To learn more about this important topic, read the full article in the September/October edition of Touch the Soil magazine.