▲ ▼ Mineral loss in the vegetables, declined by 90%
Research estimates put 90% decline of minerals in vegetables in the last 100 years. This, added with challenges in the diagnosis of critical minerals in the human body is affecting the treatments for nutritional deficiency and related diseases.
Loss of minerals in the vegetables have been attributed to several causes such as extermination of soil life through modern farming practices of heavy tilling, over-fertilising, inadequate fertilisation, focussing on macronutrients etc.
For faster production, plants are fed Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potassium but other essential elements which are required for the health of plants are ignored. This causes nutrient deficiency, not only for plants but also for other organisms which subsist on plants such as humans.
There is a need gap for startups to stop the loss of minerals in vegetables and also revitalise soil health.
Would the plant based meat such as the ones from Impossible Foods https://impossiblefoods.com/ or Beyond Meat https://www.beyondmeat.com help with compensating for the mineral deficiency?
I'm very optimistic about plant based or other pseudo/faux meat, but they don't address this problem of diminishing minerals in vegetables on other hand this problem might be hurdle in the plant based meat as well.
Plant based meat compensate for the meat's flavour and nutrients. They add supplementary nutrients to compensate for the loss from meat, but I wonder whether they compensate for the loss of nutrients in the vegetables which form the bulk of their product.