the fatal mistake of thinking that what we knew about nourishing plants and people was all we needed to know
It’s a mistake we’ll probably keep repeating until we develop a deeper respect for the complexity of food and soil
back to the polyphenols, which may hint at the nature of that link.
two suggestive theories. The reason plants produce these compounds in the first place is to defend themselves against pests and diseases;
Who would have guessed that humans evolved to profit from a diet of these plant pesticides? A second explanation (one that subsequent research seems to support) may be that the radically simplified soils in which chemically fertilized plants grow don’t supply all the raw ingredients needed to synthesize these compounds,
