Improving Health from the Ground Up

Connecting the Dots Between Soil Health and Human Health

Photo by Megan Thomas on Unsplash

You are what you eat! This familiar catchphrase makes sense to us: our health is the sum total of the good, the bad, and the ugly of our daily dietary habits. But what if you turn this phrase onto its head and add a four-letter word: Food. You are what your food eats. Wait . . . How can our food eat? What does this even mean?

What Your Food Ate is the title of a book by David R. Montgomery and Anne Biklé. The Seattle-based husband/wife authors stopped at Dog Eared Books in Ames earlier this week to answer these questions – and more.

They admit they're as surprised as anyone else that food, health, and nutrition have been thrust into the national political dialogue today, propelled by the newly released Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) report, and the upcoming new Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2025-2030.

"We like having more eyeballs on it," Biklé said. But as they point out in their book, nutrition isn't so simple as, "An apple a day keeps the doctor away." In fact, don't be surprised by an updated prescription that ups the dosage to compensate for a growing deficit known as the dilution effect.

"Research shows the nutrient content of food has been declining," Biklé said. "The typical carrot contains less zinc. Beef has less iron. If plants could talk, perhaps they'd say they prefer a little more of this or that."

Food is Medicine

Americans are living longer, but less healthy lives. Our collective health status suggests a flashing Code Blue emergency:

· Seven out of 10 Americans die of chronic diseases, and about one-half live with at least one.

· By 2016, treating chronic diseases consumed as much 75% of the $3.3 trillion annual U.S. health care budget.

· American longevity ranks far below our counterparts in the developed world.

· The number of obese adolescents has tripled since 1970.

Many variables must be factored in regarding health (genes, diet, physical activity, and the gut microbiome) as well as exposures to toxins and pathogens in the environment. But research confirms a link between some chronic diseases and diet. "There's no one best diet for all, due to these variables," Biklé said. "But we're awash in cheap, plentiful calories and hooked on pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals."

Biklé and Montgomery maintain that poor soil health is causing a decline in the nutrient content of food, and it's also impacting human health. They cite research over several decades revealing this nutritional drop-off. These nutrients range from trace amounts of minerals like zinc and copper to more significant micronutrients including iron, manganese, and selenium. All of these connect to a wide range of cell functions, the activation of genes that slow or prevent chronic disease, and boost the immune system. What Your Food Ate delves into the role of phytochemicals, (think polyphenols in blueberries) over centuries in Eastern medicine, and describes flavonoids as "overlooked gems."

Based on these declining levels in our food, Biklé and Montgomery argue there needs to be a greater focus on how we grow what we eat. But they don't write simple prescriptions. "It's not just organic vs. conventional farming," Biklé said. "There are industrial organic fields, too."

Our North Star Should be Soil Health

What Your Food Ate raises challenging questions about the role of agriculture. "Agriculture and how we farm really is health policy," Biklé said. "Can we please start working on it?"

Few can argue with the phenomenal success story of American agricultural production. Americans spend 50% less of their income on food today than in the 1950s. However, the societal costs to health care have more than doubled. "Maybe cheap food isn't so cheap, after all," Biklé and Montgomery contend.

Photo by Franki Chamaki on Unsplash

Their diagnosis is that modern agricultural practices disrupt the soil microbiome, leading to:

· Degradation of our soils, primarily through less organic matter. Soil fungi and bacteria consume organic matter and convert it to nutrients that plants take up and use.

· Single-minded focus on breeding new high-yield varieties for easier harvesting, processing, and shipping, without a corresponding concern about a growing deficit in nutritional value

· Agronomic practices, including plowing, which breaks down organic matter rapidly, and fewer crop rotations, result in a diminished fungal diversity in fields

· Overuse of synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides; Biklé and Montgomery point to research beginning in 1939 in Britain showing chemical fertilizers compromised the delivery of micronutrients critical to plant nutrition; glyphosate stimulates soil microbes that bind minerals, making them unavailable to plants and microbiota, and reducing earthworms, which play a vital role in Nature's fertilizing system.

They say nitrogen fertilizers opened the door to monocultures, which in turn opened the door to pesticides. "Farmers continue to get high yields from depleted soil with heavy tillage and nitrogen fertilizer use," Biklé said.

But wait just a hot minute, here in Iowa, we don't eat most of our farm crops: corn, soybeans, hay, alfalfa, or oats. We grow little wheat. Our grain crops are fed to livestock. What Your Food Ate posits that the same diminished nutrient content in the vegetables and fruit on our dinner tables is rippling through to livestock rations, and into the meat, milk, and cheese we consume.

Dairy cows kept in barns, consuming only Total Mixed Rations produce much more omega-6 fats than omega-3 fats. Research shows dairy cows eating forages rich in omega-3s will produce milk with more omega3s. Humans need both essential fats to regulate inflammation in our bodies. Similar issues are true for beef cattle, poultry, eggs, and even farmed fish.

Biklé and Montgomery highlight their visits to small organic farms in Connecticut and California, as well as a Montana ranch and with a research scientist turned South Dakota farmer, where they gather supporting evidence and some soil samples to make their case. They acknowledge that small vegetable farms make the most sense in rural areas close to large cities. (Research backs the finding that minerals and vitamins tend to be higher in organic vegetables than conventional grown.)

They award high marks to regenerative agriculture for building organic matter in the soil and supporting soil life. Their book also references J.I. Rodale, a respected pioneer in organic farming.

But as Biklé pointed out this week at Dog-Eared Books, "Farmers get a lot of fingers pointed at them. But what many others may not understand are the constraints they operate under that make it hard for them to break out of the system."

Ultra-processed Smorgasbord Stumbling Block

An estimated 60% of American adults' calorie consumption consists of ultra-processed foods, and for children, it's at 70%. Ultra-processed foods typically are packed with sugar, salt, fat, and refined flour and contain low amounts of fiber, micronutrients, and phytochemicals. So why does it matter if our food starts out with the best nutrients and soil health in the world, if it ends up as ultra-processed products?

Even if agriculture were to undertake the heavy lift of increasing cover crops, no till or reduced till and regenerative agriculture, and decreasing commercial fertilizers and chemicals, we're still not going to improve human health if food manufacturers stock the grocery store shelves and freezers with ultra-processed products, and we buy them.

Agriculture should be part of health policy, but not as the authors suggest, as a stand-alone. The industrial food complex and consumers must come to the table, too. Food companies have promised RFK, Jr. to remove certain dyes, but it must go much farther than this.

One step forward in the recent MAHA report is to define ultra-processed foods by the end of this year. Not all ultra-processed foods are created equal.

Easier Said Than Done

There's so much we don't know. As Biklé and Montgomery point out, we have very few studies focusing on the linkages between farm practices and human health.

Furthermore, science still is updating the answers to questions we thought were cut and dried. For instance, you may have read about a recent study with surprising results regarding full-fat dairy and saturated fats. Researchers taking a new look are finding that saturated fat across an array of dairy foods doesn't have the same unhealthy impact.

The key seems to be how saturated fat is delivered. Butter, mainly made up of fat and water, still is a negative influence on cholesterol. But cheese, which is laden with calcium, protein, minerals and more, doesn't have the expected unhealthy impact. Yogurt has been linked with the prevention of Type 2 diabetes. (Some yogurts contain high levels of sugar.) Scientists say dairy products may have gotten a bad reputation based on their inclusion in other foods heavy with sodium, processed meats, and refined starch.

The new Dietary Guidelines for Americans later this year are expected to include this update. Since it's based on scientific studies, that's a promising sign.

"We've had more focus on pharmaceutical research than on the role of diet" Biklé says. "Some fats are good for us. We need both saturated and unsaturated fats." She and Montgomery don't demonize seed oils, or fawn over the faux milk lining our grocery store shelves. But they give us a lot to chew on.

In the not-too-distant-future, they foresee shoppers won't leave home without their handheld bio nutrient meters to scan the nutrient profiles of food products. In the meantime, we'll have to rely on science-based appetizers from our nation's food and agriculture research labs to improve our health. Grand fiats announced over social media, or reports slapped together using A.I. with fake panelist credentials won't fit the menu.

Will Americans have the appetite to pursue the secret sauce to improving our health? Or will it prove to be hard to digest?

Photo by Nina Berries on Unsplash

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