Please don’t let the title of this entry scare you. What you are about to read is why nature knows best and that we do not necessarily understand the complexities of our food. This article discusses the importance of a special type of Nitrogen. The atom Nitrogen exists in two distinctive stable formats. Nitrogen Isotope 14 (14N) and Nitrogen Isotope 15 (15N). What this means is that the amount of neutrons and protons differ. Nitrogen Isotope 14 has 7 neutrons and 7 protons while Nitrogen Isotope 15 has 8 neutrons and 7 protons. Nitrogen represents about 78% of our atmosphere and most of it is 14N while only 0.37% is 15N.

Amazing, isn’t? But why is it important?

Nitrogen is essential to all life as it is the basic building block for amino-acids and hence our proteins. Well, there is something strange happening throughout the food chain. To put it in difficult words: The ratio of 15N/14N tends to increase with trophic level such that herbivores have higher nitrogen isotope values than plants, and carnivores have higher nitrogen isotope values than herbivores. Depending on the tissue being examined, there tends to be an increase of 3-4‰ at each trophic level. (thank you Wikipedia) In simple words, the higher you go up the food chain, the higher the levels of Nitrogen 15 in the body. Going up to as much as 2% ( and in some cases even more) of the Nitrogen in your body (compare that to the 0.37% natural abundance)

Well, this got me wondering. Could it be that the body prefers the Nitrogen Isotope 15 over Nitrogen Isotope 14?  That is not an easy question to answer, because the implications to what we eat and how it is produced are enormous. Why? I’ll get to that later on.

First our food. The purpose of eating is to provide us with the necessary nutrients and energy to lead a healthy life. When talking about Nitrogen in our food, we are talking about proteins, the basic building blocks of life.

There is a “thing” called the “Nitrogen balance”, which refers to the amount of Nitrogen we take in through our food, and the amount of Nitrogen that gets excreted (through urine, faeces, saliva, etc.) . If this is equal, there is always enough nitrogen available to create the necessary proteins for your body. However, research in the early 20th Century already indicated that when you consume Nitrogen Isotope 15 rich food, the body will hang on to those 15N atoms and prefers to replace existing 14N atoms. (The metabolic activity of body proteins investigated with l(-)-leucine containing two isotopes. By Rudolf Schoenheimer, S. Ratner and D. Rittenberg)

So the initial conclusion looks simple. Let’s go for Nitrogen Isotope 15 in our food production. But there is a catch. Recent research has indicated that plants and soil microbes, the first steps in the food chain, have a preference for 14N. (PREFERENCES FOR DIFFERENT NITROGEN FORMS BY COEXISTING PLANT SPECIES AND SOIL MICROBES. By Kathryn A. Harrison, Roland Bol, Richard D. Bardgett)

It took me a while to grasp the contradiction in this, but it was eventually not that difficult to understand.

It has to do with the law of physics, we always chose the path of the lowest energy. As 14N is slightly lighter, a plant looking for Nitrogen will obviously prefer this type as it would require more energy to absorb and transport the 15N atom. However, when it comes down to protein forming, it is the other way around. Amino acids are free floating in a cell and it is the task of the ribosome enzyme to collect these amino-acids and combine them into a protein. As the 15N atoms are heavier, these amino acids will move around at a slower speed in the cell, making it easier to be captured by the ribosome.

Protein creation is a permanent ongoing process in our body and it is a fight against time for the ribosome to make as much as possible. The direct implication of the 15N atoms being heavier, and hence slower, is that more proteins can be formed in the same time period, as the ribosome doesn’t have to “chase” as much for capturing an amino acid.

But how do we make sure that there is enough 15N available to increase protein levels in our food?

Let’s first look at a natural ecosystem. A flourishing eco-system has all the aspects and levels of the food chain, which means that there is a natural enrichment of the 15N levels through Nitrogen fixation, manure, and decaying materials (microbes, plant and animal material). This enriched Nitrogen is brought into the soil by a whole set of “creatures”. As a plant cannot move, it will have to absorb what is available in the soil and will make use of all the Nitrogen readily accessible. In a way, it is forced by nature to absorb 15N.

In current agriculture, we use synthetic fertilizers to provide  the necessary Nitrogen to our plants. This Nitrogen is extracted from the air (and combined with natural gas) via the Haber process. This Nitrogen has not gone through any of the normal steps of enrichment and hence is low in 15N (even lower than the 0.37% natural abundance). Because of the lack of 15N in this inorganic Nitrogen, plants are having difficulties in building the necessary proteins. The end-result is an inferior product.

An example of this is that most wheat farmers around the world are struggling to achieve the necessary 10% protein (gluten) in their produce, leading to inferior flour quality and less soft and fluffy bread.

So what is the solution? Well, the only way to make sure we are getting the protein in our plants and animals is to adhere to the natural system, which would mean that we need to start re-applying manure to our fields, work with nitrogen fixing cover-crops and trees, use mulch, make sure you have wildlife and birds, and last but not least is, respect all life-forms for their contributing part to this food web.

Very often, people see themselves as on top of the food chain but in reality this is not the case. Next time you get bitten by a mosquito or a tick, you will realize that something is just consuming your blood which is extremely rich in 15N. (especially in the “globin” part of hemoglobin)  The task of these parasites is to take that accumulation of 15N and bring it down the food chain for further enrichment. And it is all part of the system. Ask any farmer, a sick animal has more parasites than a healthy animal. Strangely enough, when an animal (or you) get sick, the body is pushing all the 15N to the outer parts of the body as if it is preparing itself to offer the most important elements back to nature.

As a permaculture and natural farmer, I try to understand the intrinsic qualities of naturally produced food. The Permaculture Design Guide from Bill Mollison made me understand that there is still a lot of understanding to be found on all the aspects of our eco-system. This article was about Nitrogen but the isotopic fractioning also occurs for elements such as carbon and oxygen.

As a producer of natural meat, I have always stood by Bill Mollison’s idea that meat must be part of the human diet. His reasoning behind this idea is that 90% of all plants are inedible for humans but are made edible to us through the consumption of meat. As we are striving for biodiversity, it is an excellent way to build and maintain a diverse ecosystem that benefits all. The accumulation of 15N in animals (especially omnivores which are higher in the food chain) makes it healthy to eat meat. Although, only on the condition that the animals have been grown in a natural environment.

All of this is proven science but there might be more to it than we currently understand. So let me propose a bold theory. I read a lot about the cause of degenerate diseases such as autism , ADHD, Alzheimer, etc..

It is very often linked to the use of GMO’s or pesticides. Most of the information is based on correlation rather than causation.

We have seen a steady decline in the protein levels of our food over the last decades which could be explained by the way we produce our food. Reports have indicated a decline of 5 to 40%  in nutrients since the 1940’s. (Declining Fruit and Vegetable Nutrient Composition. What is the evidence? By Donald R. Davis)  The science of paleopathology which uses the 15N as a measurement of diets and heath in our ancestors, has found that a minimal shortage of protein in the diet results in adverse health effects after a period of 30 to 50 years.

So as a final point, I would like to state the following. Could it be that the increase in degenerative diseases has been caused by the world-wide introduction of synthetic Nitrogen which limits the amount of proteins formed in our food because it does not follow the process of natural enrichment? When looking at the increase of these diseases we see them grow  substantially at the end of the 20th Century and rising in the 21st Century which would, from a time-frame perspective, “correlate” to the introduction of large scale application of synthetic nitrogen about 30 to 50 years earlier.

Makes you think, isn’t it? So next time you are buying some meat, make sure you verify that it has been grown in a natural way and with respect for the natural processes. If so, it will be really healthy for you. If not, you might be contributing to the end of the world as we know it. Your choice, your freedom.