{"id":64314,"date":"2022-12-01T10:54:46","date_gmt":"2022-12-01T15:54:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=64314"},"modified":"2022-12-01T10:54:46","modified_gmt":"2022-12-01T15:54:46","slug":"rising-co2-is-reducing-nutritional-value-of-food-impacting-ecosystems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=64314","title":{"rendered":"Rising CO2 is reducing nutritional value of food, impacting ecosystems"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Rising CO2 is reducing nutritional value of food, impacting ecosystems<\/a><\/h3>\n

Heightened atmospheric CO2 levels are cutting the proportions of protein and other vital nutrients in plants, impacting crops, people, pollinators and ecosystems.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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  • As CO2 levels rise, so do carbohydrates in plants, increasing food\u2019s sugar content. While carbon-enriched plants grow bigger, scientists are finding that they contain proportionately less protein and nutrients such as zinc, magnesium and calcium.<\/em><\/li>\n
  • A meta-analysis of 7,761 observations of 130 plant species found that overall mineral concentrations in plants declined by about 8 percent in response to elevated CO2 levels \u2014 25 minerals decreased, including iron, zinc, potassium and magnesium.<\/em><\/li>\n
  • New research found that as atmospheric CO2 rose from preindustrial to near current levels, the protein content in goldenrod pollen fell by 30 percent. Bees and other pollinators rely heavily on goldenrod as protein-rich food for overwintering. The loss of pollinators could devastate many of the world\u2019s food crops.<\/em><\/li>\n
  • Research into the correlation between CO2 concentrations and the nutrient content of food is in its early stages. More study is urgently needed to determine how crops and ecosystems will be altered as fossil fuels are burned, plus mitigation strategies.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n
    \"Rice
    Rice fields in Kashmir, India. Staple crops such as rice and wheat are forecast to become less nutritious as a result of increasing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. Photo courtesy of sandeepachetan.com travel photography on Flickr under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 license<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

    A<\/span>mong the myriad impacts climate change is having on the world, one in particular may come as a surprise: heightened atmospheric CO2<\/sub>\u00a0levels might be adversely affecting the nutritional quality of the food you eat. As carbon dioxide in the atmosphere continues to increase, you could end up eating more sugar and less of important minerals such as zinc, magnesium and calcium \u2014 without even realizing it. Those effects could also be reverberating up the food chain and altering ecosystems in as yet poorly understood ways.<\/p>\n

    \u2026click on the above link to read the rest\u2026<\/p>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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    Rising CO2 is reducing nutritional value of food, impacting ecosystems Heightened atmospheric CO2 levels are cutting the proportions of protein and other vital nutrients in plants, impacting crops, people, pollinators and ecosystems. As CO2 levels rise, so do carbohydrates in plants, increasing food\u2019s sugar content. While carbon-enriched plants grow bigger, scientists are finding that they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[113,1004,33445,1912,33444,582],"class_list":["post-64314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-carbon-emissions","tag-co2","tag-ecosystems-claire-salisbury","tag-food-production","tag-mongabay","tag-nutrition"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=64314"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64314\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64315,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64314\/revisions\/64315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=64314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=64314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=64314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}