When my father made dinner on the nights my mother worked the second shift, we always had vegetables with our unfrozen fish sticks or chicken pot pies — not enough veggies in the latter, he would say; not enough chicken, in my boyhood opinion. They always came from a can, which seemed like the only place one could find vegetables in the 1970s.

This is how I was introduced to spinach. The only canned vegetable that was worse was wax beans. Years later, when I discovered fresh spinach, it became a staple of my diet. It still is.

The problem, though, is I, actually we, were being ripped off. We still are.

Humans need iron to make hemoglobin, the red stuff in our red blood cells that allows them to transport oxygen throughout our bodies. Without enough iron, anemia can set in. It can be life-threatening.

Spinach is adept at absorbing iron from soil. Unfortunately, the amount of iron in the soil is decreasing, or the ability of this leafy green vegetable grown from seed to absorb it is weakening.

Author Thom Hartmann in his 2009 book Threshold highlights the fall of iron. He reported that in 1948 the federal government measured iron in spinach from around the country. This research found the average amount was 158 milligrams in 100 grams of spinach.

By 1965, the U.S. national average of iron in spinach was 28 milligrams per 100 grams. The last time there was a national survey, in 1973, that amount had dropped to 2.2 milligrams per 100 grams. No wonder the feds stopped looking.

The most plausible reason for this rapid decline in iron concentrations is the fact we humans take soil — and the natural world in general — for granted and beat the hell out of it.

When Europeans first arrived in North America, the average depth of topsoil was nearly 2 feet (21 inches), according to Hartmann. The continent’s topsoil today averages about 6 inches.

He noted it can take up to a thousand years — 40 generations — for natural erosion and the action of plant roots, primarily trees, to break rock down to form a single inch of topsoil.

“We add four compounds (potassium, calcium, nitrogen, and phosphates) back in as ‘fertilizer,’ because they are the absolute minimum necessary for plants to grow,” Hartmann wrote, “but the whole spectrum of ‘trace minerals’ and associated nutrients is now largely lost from our soil, and thus from our food.”

Iron is a micronutrient that is essential for plant growth and development. It plays a vital role in various processes, including photosynthesis, cellular respiration, and as a defense against pathogens. It also influences the availability and uptake of other nutrients, such as calcium, copper, manganese, and zinc.

The availability of iron in soil is highly dependent on several factors, such as pH level, organic matter, moisture, and temperature. Under dry soil conditions — like prolonged drought caused by the climate crisis — iron availability is reduced, due to the decreased solubility and mobility of the chemical element in the soil.

A 2024 study titled “An Alarming Decline in the Nutritional Quality of Foods: The Biggest Challenge for Future Generations’ Health” noted that in the past 60 years “there has been an alarming decline in food quality and a decrease in a wide variety of nutritionally essential minerals and nutraceutical compounds in imperative fruits, vegetables, and food crops.”

The authors outlined five potential human-led causes behind the decline in the nutritional quality of food: the unscientific, unbalanced, and often excessive use of fertilizers, which they called “chaotic mineral nutrient application;” the preference for less nutritious cultivars and crops; the use of high-yielding varieties; agronomic issues associated with a shift from natural farming to chemical farming; and the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide.

The study noted more than 2 billion people globally are suffering from micronutrient insufficiency, especially vitamin A, folate, iodine, zinc, and iron. It is the main cause of premature deaths, morbidity, and retardation in the physical and mental growth of children.

“Since the 1940s, crop yield and the per-capita availability of foods have been continuously increasing due to intensive farming techniques, artificial fertilization, pesticides, irrigation, growing high-yielding varieties, and other environmental means, whereas malnutrition tends to increase incessantly due to disrupting the fine balance of soil life and decreasing the nutritional density and quality of the food crops,” the authors wrote.

We think we have more, but we actually have less, much less.

Soil is under constant human-caused stress. Intense cultivation, monoculture agriculture, heavy fertilizer use, and pollution combine to adversely impact its role in the planet’s delicate circle of life. Concrete and pavement imprison it, thwarting its considerable abilities.

Soil, when healthy, is the most biodiverse habitat on the planet. Citing the work of Elaine Ingham, Hartmann noted healthy agricultural soil should have 600 million bacteria, about 3 miles of fungal hyphae, 10,000 protozoa, and about 30 beneficial nematodes in a teaspoon.

Healthy soil is a complex recipe that contributes a wide range of free ecosystem services beyond supporting food crops. Our actions, carelessness, and hubris, however, are draining and poisoning it.

Most of the world’s soils are in fair, poor, or very poor condition, and those conditions are getting worse in more cases than they are improving, according to a 2024 study. The authors noted 33% of all soils are moderately to highly degraded as a result of erosion, loss of organic matter, poor nutrient balance, salinization and alkalinization, contamination, acidification, loss of biodiversity, sealing, and compaction.

If we don’t start taking better care of the soil, our health will continue to wane and our future will dim.

Note: I don’t know how Popeye stomached all that canned spinach.

Frank Carini can be reached at [email protected]. His opinions don’t reflect those of ecoRI News.