Average Nutritional Content by Climate
Nutrient Dryland Soil Humid Soil Potassium 2.44% 1.27% Calcium 1.92% 0.28% Phosphorus 0.78% 0.42% Total mineral nutrition 5.14% 1.97% Ratio of Potassium to Calciuim 1.20/1 4.50/1
Analyzed as a whole, these data tell us a great deal about how we should manage our soil to produce the most nutritious food and about the judicious use of compost in the garden as well. I ask you to refer back to these three small charts as I point out a number of conclusions that can be drawn from them.
The basic nutritional problem that all animals have is not about finding energy food, but how to intake enough vitamins, minerals and usable proteins. What limits our ability to intake nutrients is the amount of bulk we can process--or the number of calories in the food. With cows, for example, bulk is the limiter. The cow will completely fill her digestive tract at all times and will process all the vegetation she can digest every day of her life. Her health depends on the amount of nutrition in that bulk. With humans, our modern lifestyle limits most of us to consuming 1,500 to 1,800 calories a day. Our health depends on the amount of nutrients coming along with those calories.
So I write the fundamental equation for human health as follows:
