>Finally, I believe for many parts of the world I suppose it isn't as bad as portrait to have a higher carbohydrate share in their meals.
Actually this is a big problem eg in South Africa, which has very high obesity rates. For most poor people a meal is refined maize porridge, often with a coco-cola, or bread and a coke. It’s imperative that people get access to cheap, quality protein, it could be something like lentils, beans ...
I would expect any effect of atmospheric CO2 concentration on a person's carbohydrate intake to be totally dominated by food preference / availability / choice and by selective breeding of plants used for food.
That's my main gripe with the article, too. It's really interesting biologically, but it doesn't really talk about the effect size. The influence of selective breeding is even mentioned in the article, but without explaining the relative influences.
> The data we have, which look at how plants would respond to the kind of CO2 concentrations we may see in our lifetimes, show these important minerals drop by 8 percent, on average. The same conditions have been shown to drive down the protein content of C3 crops, in some cases significantly, with wheat and rice dropping 6 percent and 8 percent, respectively.
I had the same gripe. 6%-8% change doesn't quite seem insignificant, but this is under CO2 concentrations that "we may see in our lifetime". So how much more CO2 were these plants exposed to than the controls, and how strong is that "may"?
Actually this is a big problem eg in South Africa, which has very high obesity rates. For most poor people a meal is refined maize porridge, often with a coco-cola, or bread and a coke. It’s imperative that people get access to cheap, quality protein, it could be something like lentils, beans ...