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Comment by lambdaba | Hacker News Reader

I doubt modern fruit, optimized for sweetness, has a very favorable vitamin-mineral/fructose ratio.

It’s not clear to me why vitamin/fructose ratio would even be important?

Generally vitamins aren’t helpful unless you were deficient, which is uncommon in western diets.

Vitamin D deficiency is common in high latitudes. Most people don't get enough from their diets so supplements are recommended for them.

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/vitamins-and-minerals/vitamin-...

Vitamin B (thiamine) deficiency is also common among alcoholics. Lots of heavy drinkers out there. While obviously drinking less is the preferred solution, if they aren't willing to do that then supplements can reduce the harm.

https://adf.org.au/insights/alcohol-related-thiamine-deficie...

You won't get Vitamin D from eating fruit

Vitamin D from supplements isn't anywhere near as good as getting actual sun exposure because you get a combination of both D3 release mediated by UVB exposure in addition to NO release mediated by UVA. The fact is that unless you're on the express train to Rickets town, it's probably the NO that's most beneficial as it reduces blood pressure and improves cardiovascular outcomes.

Before you go all in on the supplements (a) get measured for vitamin D levels first and (b) if you're anywhere in the ballpark of replete (you probably are) then make an effort to get outside, often, and without sunscreen. To the extent you don't get burned of course.

Not sure why you are being downvoted, this is a good point to bring up.

I didn't downvote, but I can imagine that most people weren't aware of that claim. I'm skeptical of it as well since I'm not aware of any research that shows fructose in fruit increasing over time.

Commercial incentives are to engineer varietals for contemporary aesthetics (sweet, unbitter, colorful, unblemished, large) and crop turnover (rapid growth, tolerance for depleted soil), nutrition has been way down on the priority list for nearly a century now.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/soil-depletion-an...

If you don't believe food is sweeter and less nutritious, you're firing a shot at many-billion-dollar industries that have been earnestly been trying to optimize the above for all that time.

It's not a pleasant thing to believe, but its hard to refute.

IIRC, You should be able to do your own deep dives here:

https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/food-search?type=SR%20Legacy&query=

> It's not a pleasant thing to believe, but its hard to refute.

Refute what? There still hasn't been any evidence provided for this claim.

To add to your point.

The food industry, like any other industry, focuses on numbers. Consumer spending favors new varieties of fruit with sweeter taste (e.g., increased glucose/fructose content). This process has led to our current comical situation where fruit, which is perceived as natural, has become unfit for consumption by animals.

>Fruits have gotten too sweet for some animals and zookeepers have had to find alternative foods.

https://weather.com/news/news/2018-10-03-fruit-so-sweet-zoo-...

There is a large and wealthy segment of the population concerned about food health and quality, and large companies who market to them. Are their values not being met? Or are you just describing the quality received by the average consumer.

If you're older I think some of this is obvious. Biggest example for me is grapefruit, they used to be barely sweet, when I was a kid they were mostly bitter and we used to add sugar to them, now they're always extremely sweet.

same here! Thanks for bringing up memories of sugar grapefruit. My parents' generation used to sugar their strawberries...

My parents' generation used to add sugar to everything because they considered sugar a source of energy.

I remember eating strawberries directly from the plant, and they were sweet. However, my aunt would serve the same strawberries with sugar as an afternoon snack.

This may differ based on location, as my grapefruit (non organic normal supermarket bought) are still quite bitter. I'm located in Europe so these might be Spanish grapefruit, though not sure.

Your palette changes pretty significantly over time, especially between childhood and adulthood. Grapefruit may not have changed at all, and you might still find them sweeter at 30 than you did at 8.

Try buying conventional fruit and an organic one and taste the different, e.g. grape fruit.

Based on my experience of having moved countries, I can tell you that many types of fruit in this new country(AU) is definitely a lot more sweet than what I am used to. This is not scientific research of course and it could be attributed to many things(soil, environment, fertilizer etc) besides favoring the sweeter lineage but I have noticed that it made me stop eating them.

Now a Granny Smith apple here may be different to the Granny Smith apple I used to eat but this is just to illustrate that I am not comparing two different kinds of apples.

Because it's not a factual statement. It's a "truthy" sounding statement, but the person making it didn't actually go and look it up, which they could've done in seconds on the device they're currently using.

It's practically the definition of FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt). Based on no evidence "I think there's a danger because it's feels like there's a danger!"

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