Many crops have lost as much as 50% of several key nutrients since the 1960s, a report has found.
The report found that this nutritional loss combined with the rise of GLP-1 drugs could push around five million UK working-age adults below safe levels of essential vitamins and minerals.
‘Hollow Harvests: Rebuilding the nutritional value of crops in an age of abundant calories’ has argued that decades of breeding and farming for yield have reduced many nutrients in crops.
It showed that cereal yields per hectare are up 215% since the 1960s, and undernutrition in the developing world has fallen from 35% to 12%, but more than two billion people still have at least one clinical micronutrient deficiency.
This ‘hidden hunger’ costs account for 7% of the global disease burden including countries like the UK and US, where diets can be high in calories but still low in nutrients such as selenium and folate, it found.
A 2026 global study found that fewer than a third of bread-wheat varieties released since the 1960s meet the recommended zinc target, and similar patterns appear in vegetables and fruit.
The report suggests that so far, we have avoided some of the consequences of this by eating more, with global calorie supply up 38% since 1961.
However, GLP-1 drugs are expected to squeeze that buffer as users typically cut food intake by up to 39%.
While at the same time, rising atmospheric CO2 is projected to reduce wheat protein by up to 12.7% and zinc by 36.5% by mid-century. Crops are also dealing with the degradation of soils to the point that limits micronutrient supply.
The report said that targeted 30%-40% increases in crop nutrient density could counterbalance GLP-1’s dietary effects and roughly halve several existing UK micronutrient deficiency rates, with no changes in diet required.
“For 60 years we’ve measured food security in calories and tonnes per hectare, and on those measures, we’ve done remarkably well. But we’ve been quietly hollowing out what’s inside our food,” said Will Summers, senior associate, climate at Deep Science Ventures, which published the report. “As weight-loss drugs mean people eat less, the nutritional quality of every bite starts to matter much more.”
The report has called for government, farmers and the food industry to make crop nutrient density a measured and rewarded target.
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