The Complex Quest for Nutritional Truth: Beyond Certificates and Into the Soil

Defining what constitutes a reliable nutritional certificate is fraught with challenges—both scientific and systemic. The journey to measure nutrients, quantify their benefits, and certify their efficacy is tangled in a web of variability, interdependencies, and global crises. Let’s unravel this complexity by considering the core issues, from inconsistent lab results to the ecological underpinnings of nutrient production.

1. Lab Variability and Soil Diversity: Apples and Oranges?

The first hurdle lies in the variability of results from laboratories across the globe. Academic and commercial labs frequently produce conflicting data when analysing the same samples. This divergence is not merely technical; it reflects the diversity of soils, farming practices, climates from which those samples originate, as well as the varying standards, equipment, and technician skills employed by different laboratories.

Soils differ widely in their composition, shaped by geological variance, regional ecosystems, climate conditions, and human intervention. A carrot grown in rich, biodiverse soil will bear little resemblance nutritionally to one cultivated in depleted, intensively farmed land. Yet, both might still meet the same "standard" on a nutritional certificate.

Adding to this, the dynamic nature of bioavailability—the degree to which nutrients can be absorbed and utilised by the human body—renders static lab results somewhat futile. Bioavailability depends not just on the food or supplement ingested but also on the health of the gut microbiome, a system degraded by modern, sanitised diets.

2. The Gut-Spoil Nexus: A Vicious Cycle

A compromised gut microbiome, stripped of its diverse beneficial microbes by processed foods, diminishes the body's ability to metabolise even the most nutrient-rich foods. This degradation creates a feedback loop: poor gut health reduces nutrient absorption, while the lack of nutrients further exacerbates poor gut health. One could argue whether it is even valid to measure human faecal samples as a reflection of the foods ingested, given that the issue may lie earlier in the soil—or that the starting point might be the inherent variability among humans themselves! Modern agricultural practices exacerbate the issue. By prioritising yield, speed, and uniformity over ecological health, these systems produce foods that may look nutritionally rich on paper but fail to support human health in practice. The gut, much like the soil, thrives on diversity and microbial activity—yet our food systems often fail to provide either.

3. Global Agriculture: Feeding Populations or Feeding Markets?

The problem isn't just nutritional; it’s deeply systemic. Global agriculture has become a volume-driven enterprise, prioritising marketability over sustainability. Crops are bred for appearance, storage, and transportability rather than nutrient density. While this approach might sustain growing populations in the short term, it neglects the long-term ecological and human costs.

Adding to the crisis is the degradation of topsoils worldwide, which are rapidly losing the organic matter and microbial life necessary for nutrient cycling. Many current nutritional standards, based on outdated national tables, fail to account for the declining quality of soils. An "apple" from a degraded orchard may no longer be nutritionally equivalent to an apple grown decades ago. Yet, both are measured against the same baseline.

4. The True Measure: Carbon as a Proxy for Health

If traditional nutrient measurements fall short, what then is the solution? Increasingly, soil carbon emerges as a promising proxy. While not a nutrient itself, carbon signifies a living, functioning ecosystem. The presence of soil carbon reflects a healthy exchange between plants and soil microbes: plants produce photosynthetic sugars, which they trade with microbes for bioavailable minerals.

This process is not just critical for soil health but mirrors the dynamics needed for human health. The same microbes responsible for nutrient cycling in soil are those required to optimise the gut microbiome. A healthy soil biome, rich in organic matter and carbon, inherently supports the production of nutrient-dense plants.

While soil carbon offers a promising metric, it is not yet fully understood. Measuring it accurately and linking it directly to human nutritional outcomes remains a frontier of science. But can we afford to wait for academic consensus when its very presence signals that we are on the right track for all the reasons outlined above?

Measuring nutrient profiles, carbon, chemical residues, toxins, heavy metals, and other factors significantly raises the cost of food—often beyond what consumers are willing to pay or what farmers can afford to bear. However, the carbon market provides a potential solution: a source of income that allows farmers to invest in developing and stewarding their land without passing these costs on to consumers. Instead, the cost is borne by the carbon market itself, which is eager for offsets in a world struggling to innovate quickly enough to reduce CO2 levels in the atmosphere.

This is where plants, the quiet achievers, play a pivotal role. They can efficiently and rapidly sequester carbon while delivering all the added benefits of healthier soils, nutrient-dense foods, and restored ecosystems. By tapping into the carbon market, farmers are not only incentivised to build soil carbon but also supported in creating a sustainable system that benefits the planet, consumers, and agriculture itself.

5. What Are We Measuring For?

Currently we might do basic measures for proteins, fats, amino acids, carbohydrates, or more critical measures for risk compliance around toxins, heavy metals, chemical residues... (if we are lucky as each test is costly) and the list goes on depending on what the market is paying for or the seller maybe hopes the buyers are looking out for.

Amid these complexities, a fundamental question arises: Why are we measuring nutrients in the first place? Is it solely for human survival and health? Or should we also consider the ecological benefits of a nutrient-rich, biodiverse planet?

Current practices skew toward the former, often sacrificing planetary health for human-centric gains. Yet, without a thriving planet, human health becomes unsustainable. This paradox highlights the need for a more holistic approach—one that integrates human and ecological well-being.

Conclusion: Rethinking Nutritional Standards

The quest for a definitive nutritional certificate reveals a deeper truth: the systems we use to measure and certify nutrients are as degraded as the soils they rely on with hope from pioneers at the Bionutrient Food Association and startup Edacious ™. True progress lies not in refining these flawed measures but in adopting a systems-based approach that prioritises ecological health as the foundation of human health whuch we at Urth soil carbon marketplace aim to support.

Soil carbon, while imperfect, offers a starting point—a shorthand for assessing the interconnected health of plants, microbes, and humans. By focusing on restoring soils and their microbial diversity, we not only enhance the nutrient density of our food but also rebuild the ecological cycles that sustain life itself.

In the end, nutrition is not just about individual survival; it’s about reestablishing balance in a system that connects us all.