[voakbasda]

Studies repeatedly have shown that micronutrients do not get replenished in monoculture crops, resulting in a measurable decrease in nutrition available in food grown in that soil. So, yes, food was actually better a hundred years ago.

[pfdietz]

Micronutrients are, by definition, present in micro amounts, so they can be fully replenished artificially with only small additions of material.

[freedomben]

Yes but it's difficult to get them in a form that is highly available for digestion/absorption, so most fortified food may have the same things on paper but it doesn't all get absorbed into your body.

[pfdietz]

We are not eating soil, we are eating plants (and animal flesh). An atom of (say) molybdenum taken up by a plant will be put into use in that plant in a way that's not dependent on its state in the soil.

Measurement and correction of soil trace element abundances -- often on a small scale -- is already state of the practice for large scale agriculture.

The whole micronutrient thing sounds like trying to apply a thin coating of science to a non-scientific thought process.

[LargoLasskhyfv]

What about chirality? I mean this in several ways. First we are not doing atomic assembly or molecular kitchen here.

Which means the atoms of single nutrients transform into molecules by biochemical processes.

Second, those structures are involved further into transporting nutrients around the plant during growth.

Third, the structure of the soil with a healthy network of fungi and soil seems to be important. Or at least that is the way plants have evolved, even if it seems chaotic and inefficient (like photosynthesis).

Fourth, with wine people speaking of the Terroir, which determines the complex interactions of soil, geography, temperature, sunshine, weather and whatnot else to produce that one specific taste. Why wouldn't the same be true for other plants and products thereof?

Fifth, if it would be sufficient to give them just the 18 common nutrients, light, water and heat they need, why can't we have them massproduced in the most efficient way in growhouses via (say) Aeroponics, where their roots are in no growth medium at all anymore, just sprayed with a fine mist which contains all the necessary nutrients?

Sixth, science is the process of understanding what happens by modelling, until further evidence necessitates revising of the model.

If one does not completely understand how the interactions between https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhizosphere & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycorrhiza contribute to taste and nutritional value of the harvest, pointing to big-AG instead, that isn't scientific either, only dumb commerce.

Seventh, I'm not saying I know it, or others do, it's just that we all don't really know so far. While you pretend to.

Do you really think all the posters in this thread complaining about taste are suffering from some placebo/nocebo effect? Dancing their names under the full moon, or what?

Man, you are so killing my nerves!

[pfdietz]

Chirality? You mean, of organic molecules?

Plants make their own organic molecules. They're not fungi, slurping them up from the soil.

Micronutrients, as the term is used in agriculture, means specific chemical elements that are needed in lesser amounts than the primary nutrients (N, P, K) and the secondary nutrients (Ca, Mg, S). Micronutrients are B, Cu, Fe, Cl, Mn, Mo, and Zn.

Soil structure is of course important, but that doesn't have anything to do with micronutrients.

[AniseAbyss]

If you could afford it. Which is precisely where we find ourselves today isn't it? You can buy whatever artisanal produce you want. You can have your yak milk from Bhutan if you have the money. The plebeians will just have to do with the supermarket.