Climate change is making our food less nutritious
Rising carbon dioxide levels are seriously damaging the nutritional value of the world’s most important crops — and it’s only going to get worse, a new study reveals.
The protein content of rice, wheat, barley and potatoes declined between 6 percent and 14 percent under increased CO2 concentrations, putting the world’s most vulnerable populations at greater risk of suffering from severe protein deficiencies, according to the study published in Environmental Health Perspectives.
“These findings are surprising,” Samuel Myers, lead author of the study, told NexusMedia. “If we sat down together 15 years ago and tried to anticipate the human health impacts of anthropogenic CO2 emissions, we would not have predicted that our food would become less nutritious.”
CIFOR