/ck/ - Food & Cooking

>>16041195
There had been far less top soil erosion at that point so the ground still had a lot of elements needed for nutrition. Also Fertilizers were often all natural in sourcing, which also helped recover soil along with crop rotations. Heck even the natural stuff we use like cow manure is worse as the feed cows get now is junk compared to back then

Pure chemical fertilizers had been developed around 1900 were growing in popularity as a solution to improve farming, but were not widely used as few made them at the time. However during WWII the number of these plants grew tremendously as they could also be used for making explosive for the war. After the war there was a huge surplus of these plants so chemical fertilizers prices dropped and the way we made food flipped dramatically around 1950. Problem was that these new chemical fertilizers only restored the stuff that made planet grow big and fast, not what made them healthy to eat

Add to it that refrigeration and freezers were less common so foods were sourced from local and more diverse areas, think lots of farms all around instead of one mega farm far away. Smaller local farmers tended to be more sensitive to the lands health and would put more into restoring the land compared to large agriculture companies. To them it wasn't some numbers in an account but a way of life that they didn't want to risk. Also the freshness had health impacts

Plants themselves were bred and engineered for yield, not nutrition (nothing new) which kept getting more and more out of alignment over time. Then add the rush of food fillers which took off around 1950. Adding stuff like high fructose corn syrup to everything (~1970 in that specific case, but others came before it) may have been profitable, but didn't help the public health. As time passed the data collection got better with new tech, but the end data got worse as lobbyist and even Congress got involve in deciding healthy foods that further mess with stuff