Managing nutrition to prevent spoilage and food waste

Hi friends,

It is so good to be back. I took a month off in October to launch KindHarvest.ag, and health challenges kept me away from blogging much longer than I expected. Expect five blog posts per week on agroecology and agronomy topics coming up again.

Carey Reams used to say “Healthy fruit does not rot or decompose in storage, it dehydrates.” He provided several examples, the best known is a watermelon he displayed on his desk which won prizes at the fair in three consecutive years.

Healthy fruit does not rot or decompose in storage, it dehydrates.

Spoilage is an issue of nutritional integrity. When mineral nutrition is balanced, the carbohydrate and protein profile is quite different when compared with fruit where the mineral profile is imbalanced. Fruits and vegetables which spoil quickly are not healthy or nutritionally balanced.

I have personally experienced fruit that does not decompose when stored on the counter and only dehydrates. Sadly, this isn’t such a common experience. The more common experience is that fruits and vegetables spoil rapidly in the refrigerator.

According to the official data sources, 40% of our total food production globally is wasted, with a large part of that waste occurring after it arrives at home.

How much food waste could be eliminated if crops were healthy enough that the fruits and vegetables only dehydrated instead of spoiling within days or weeks?

Here are some apples and an orange that have been stored at room temperature for seven months without spoiling. Dehydrated, but not decomposed.