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This is a good idea imo. Cus we grow vegetables so big and fast nowadays they end with with less nutrients in them by volume.

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I do not see much value in a golden lettuce, because nothing stops you to eat one carrot every day, which will provide enough beta-carotene.

Moreover, the carrot is certainly cheaper, because it is not patented and it is available from a myriad of sources. Also a boiled carrot is unlikely to cause any health problems, while raw lettuce periodically causes disease outbreaks, so it is not a good choice for a staple food that you must eat every day to ensure your recommended intake of a vitamin.

There are other domains where genetic engineering can provide results that cannot be obtained by any alternatives.

For example, there are genetically-modified strains of the fungus Trichoderma that can be used to produce high-quality proteins, either whey proteins or eggwhite proteins.

Such fungal cultures have the potential to become a much better source of proteins than the milk and eggs or the meat produced by animals and they would have important advantages over plant proteins, by having a superior amino-acid profile and not requiring expensive methods for separation from starch.

Even without the patent angle, carrots are cheaper than regular lettuce. They're one of the cheapest foods there is. And they are trivial to add to any meal, just put a carrot on the plate. It doesn't need anything else like all the stuff thrown into salads to make lettuce appealing. And everybody likes carrots, even kids who normally complain about vegetables will happily eat carrots.

Especially baked carrots, that was the only veggie I’d eat growing up (unless you count a singular broccoli in a sea of cheese a vegetable, I’d classify that as a mess).

A large part of the problem in the us is soil depletion. We need to regenerate it by allowing roots of various weeds to pull nutrients up to the surface.

This makes me scratch my head. Can you share the science?

https://www.npr.org/2021/02/24/967376880/new-evidence-shows-...

Basically our use of fertilizer and weed killer killed off our microbiome in the soil. This lead to soil collapse where churning biological process add nutrients back to the soil.

Climate change too. Even weeds people don't or can't eat have less nutrients in them. That's quite disturbing plants are not as nutritious but you can't tell that by looking at them.

Who is "we"? Because that sounds like a highly localized problem specific to the North American continent.

Higher atmospheric CO2 is actually causing this all around the world. Faster, bigger plants with less nutrient density.

Greenhouses in the Netherlands would like a word, which are growing high nutrient crops fast using elevated CO2 concentrations. It's not the rate at which things grow that makes them less nutricious, it's selectively breeding for things that grow faster without bother to also select for "and taste good/have plenty of nutritional value".

This one doesn't get to hide behind global climate change.

How then did the Plioocene megafauna grow so large if the plants they consumed were 'faster, bigger [...] with less nutrient density'?

https://www.rmets.org/event/pliocene-last-time-earth-had-400...

The last time carbon dioxide was so plentiful in our planet's atmosphere was in the Pliocene era, around 3 million years ago. Life on Earth was dominated by giant mammals; humans and chimps had shared their last common ancestor. Although the sun's force was about the same, the sea levels were 15 metres higher and Arctic summer temperatures were 14 degrees higher than the present day.

No, this is not yet another 'climate change' thing no matter how much you want to pull that concept into the discussion. It is a large-scale 'industrial' agriculture thing with crops which have been bred for fast growth on relatively mineral-poor soil using simple nitrogen fertiliser instead of manure from pasture-raised livestock.

> How then did the Plioocene megafauna grow so large if the plants they consumed were 'faster, bigger [...] with less nutrient density'?

Herbivores are adapted to extracting nutrients from a food source that isn't nutrient or calorie dense. Compared to carnivores, they eat a massive amount of food relative to their body weight. If a food source is less nutritious, they just eat more of it.

Lower nutrient density isn't an issue when there's plenty of food to eat. There weren't 8 billion people to feed 3 million years ago, and back then they lived right alongside their food.

>There weren't 8 billion people to feed 3 million years ago, and back then they lived right alongside their food.

sorta. there was more fauna/megafauna biomass then than now. the nutrient requirements were likely even greater.

The same amount of nutrients can be had from plants with lower nutrient density. One simply has to consume more of the plants.

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