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| Did any of you grow the new vegetable varieties that are supposed to be higher in certain nutrients such as beta-carotene and lycopene? I'm not sure that I can name the company that has them and get away with it here, so I hope you know what I'm talking about. I'd like to know how their taste and production compare to other varieties.
Sandy |
Follow-Up Postings:
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| The added nutrient value for people in food-rich areas is generally negligible compared to giving up on varieties with known richer flavors, imo...especially in the home garden. We can usually eat enough of the vegetables in question, as well as gaining nutrients from other sources, to get a good fix of the nutrients in question. |
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| Can't see the advantage of extra licopene or beta carotene. You already eat megadoses of it if you have a garden, with poor absorption. You are better off putting an extra table spoon of olive oil in your tomato salad, and double the absorption, than getting these new varieties with unknown taste and hardiness. Also, things such as collards or spinach have more beta carotene than carrots, so an extra orange carrot is not doing much for me. |
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- Posted by Slimy_Okra 2B (My Page) on Thu, Sep 20, 12 at 21:40
| What the above two said. It's just a marketing gimmick. Farmers will be better able to sell more orange carrots or more red tomatoes, but except for this, there's no practical benefit. Most people don't even get their five servings of fruit & veggies a day, which can lead to the dangerous assumption (by some) that an extra- orange carrot counts for two regular orange carrots, etc... |
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| In fact, nutrient levels of market veggies have gone down over the last 50 years, so bringing them back up is not a bad thing. Breeders probably focused so tightly on color and early production that nutrition level was ignored. I certainly wouldn't pay more for 'high-nutrient' seed, but I wouldn't sniff at it at standard prices. |
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| In carrots, color and nutrients are the same when it comes to beta carotene. Declines in mineral content of the food are related to soil declines and not to new varieties. Same goes for tomatoes and licopene. I doubt that carrots today have less beta carotene than in the old days, in fact in the really old days carrots were white. Orange carrots are, what, 200 years old? |
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| In the US new varieties and breeding push a lot more native nutrient content that soil conditions based on what I've been around. Our North Americans soils in many areas were horrible in most of the non-South-Western US from the 1910-1930s. We've done a lot to build it's nutrient holding capacity since then. In India, Africa, and Australia it's an issue, though. It's gotten really horrible in parts of India and drought has pushed issues in Australia (home of some of the oldest soils in the world where people still live). Nutrient uptake and availability is pushed heavily by soils and additions to soil. Many of the "negative" nutrient studies pushed by people are heavily "pushed down" by iron, calcium, and phosphorus numbers which are more susceptible to being made nutrient unavailable by some of our "modern" soil conditioners, pesticides, herbicides, etc... We see less copper in nutrient values because we're not spraying it all over our plants compared to years past. Fwiw, we also eat a lot less harmful arsenic these days in our veggies (especially tree fruits). That said, we get well more than enough of these nutrients and if you're growing it yourself it's probably not going to be an issue because most of us aren't turning our soil into a chemistry beaker twice a year. |
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| Btw, the "holy grail" in breeding right now is attempting to create aluminum tolerant plants that can grow in areas where liming the soil (Africa, especially) is either unavailable on a large agricultural scale and/or prohibitively expensive. Greenhouse production is the "answer" right now given how cheap it's become commercially in year-round growing areas, but that's more avoiding the issue than solving it. Al is absolutely toxic as hell to living things, especially plants trying to grow. So many soils on the planet are capable of growth...they have the water/irrigation...they're just too full of aluminum and the pH makes it plant available. The solution isn't to remove the Al from the soil...it's to make Al tolerant plants in areas where you can't lime the soil enough to make the Al plant unavailable based on reactions that happen at a certain pH value. |
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- Posted by gardener_sandy z7 VA (My Page) on Mon, Sep 24, 12 at 13:34
| Thanks for all the thoughtful responses. I was fairly sure it was a marketing ploy, but I also expect a lot of R&D went into them. What I really was asking was about the taste and production compared to standard varieties. I haven't grown any of them and it appears that none of you have either. I get asked a lot of questions about such as this and I guess I'll have to give at least one of them a try next year to see for myself. Sandy |
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| the best nutrients that one can get is to grow your own in a garden that contains all the nutrients each plant needs. couple of years ago they bought out this high nutrient broccoli it flopped mostly people couldn't see the difference (yes i know) but it was a rip off price. for me it would maybe only be the first crops that had higher nutrients any consecutive crops would be at same level as common stuff as farmers do not look after the soil properly nutrient wise. why our homegrown looks and tastes better at least. len |
Here is a link that might be useful: lens straw bale garden
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| glib the color was changed for some king or something like that. Rock dust,blood meal,bone meal, compost, cotton seed meal, green sand, dry leaves, grass clippings, manure, sea weed & kelp, coffee & tea grounds. These can all help, but I think that four greens,a yellow or orange & two red vegetables are enough to keep most of us alive & well. Half that if you eat them raw. |
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