Hello and welcome to Sigma Nutrition Radio. This is episode 590 of the podcast. My name is Danny Lennon.

You're very welcome to the show. Today we're going to be looking at the question of is the nutrient

density of our crops declining? And this is based on a widely discussed topic and I think

oftentimes a claim being made that the crops today

for a variety of reasons contain much fewer micronutrients than in the past and this is having

a noticeable negative health impact and so generally there's quite broad universal claims often given,

oftentimes without much nuance or specification,

and also often without actually citing some of the key literature.

And so we want to take a dive into this topic

and talk to someone who is maybe uniquely qualified to address this question specifically. So today I'm going to

be talking to Dr. Edward Joy, who is a senior research fellow in food systems and nutrition at

Rothamstead Research, as well as being an associate professor at the London School of Hygiene

and Tropical Medicine. And his work centers on the intersection of agriculture and nutrition.

And so in this conversation, we're going to be diving into some of the evidence from

agronomy as well as public health to try and clarify whether the nutrient content of

crops has indeed declined, what factors might be responsible for that and maybe what we can do

to improve the situation.

If you are a Sigma Nutrition Premium subscriber, you will of course get a set of detailed

study notes to accompany this episode as well as getting the key ideas segment to follow

this conversation. If you're listening on the free public feed of the podcast and you're

interested in getting more of these extra learning tools like our study notes or key idea segments

or our premium exclusive episodes that we publish each month, then take a look at Sigma

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