Amy Scott

We'll have the details when we do the numbers.

If you're a fan of a dense bean salad or homemade hummus, then you probably have chickpeas in your pantry.

And yes, they are protein-rich and delicious, but it turns out they and a bunch of other food staples might not be as nutritious as they were even a decade ago.

And the reason is carbon dioxide.

Sarah Kaplan wrote about it at the Washington Post in a story called The Invisible Force Making Food Less Nutritious.

Sarah, welcome to the program.

Thanks for having me.

So climate change has a lot of consequences for food, but I was surprised to learn that the carbon dioxide itself that's causing global warming is a problem.

Can you talk about why?

Yeah.

So scientists think that it has to do with the way that plants grow.

They take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and turn it into carbohydrates.

And when there's more carbon in the atmosphere, that's more, you know, quote unquote food for the plants to grow.

But the problem that plants are facing is that there's not a comparable increase in the other kinds of minerals.

Things like zinc and iron, phosphorus, calcium, these really important minerals in the soil that are not so important to the plants, but are really important to the people who consume those plants.

And that means that any given bite of a plant is going to have more sugar in it and less of these essential nutrients.

Wow.

So I talked about chickpeas.

That's a big one.

What are some of the other crops that are losing their nutritious value?