# Do Pollinators Contribute to Nutritional Health?



## AmericasBeekeeper (Jan 24, 2010)

Do Pollinators Contribute to Nutritional Health?
Despite suggestions that animal pollinators are crucial for human nutritional health, no studies have actually tested this claim. Here, we combined data on crop pollination requirements, food nutrient densities, and actual human diets to predict the effects of pollinator losses on the risk of nutrient deficiency. In four developing countries and across five nutrients, we found that 0 to 56% of populations would become newly at risk if pollinators were removed. Increases in risk were most pronounced for vitamin A in populations with moderate levels of total nutrient intake. Overall, the effects of pollinator decline varied widely among populations and nutrients. We conclude that the importance of pollinators to human nutrition depends critically on the composition of local diets, and cannot be reliably predicted from global commodity analyses. We identify conditions under which severe health effects of pollinator loss are most likely to occur.
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0114805


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

You can get whatever answer you like to a question like this. Especially since it involves a lot of speculation and the results depend a lot of how you refine the question. If one crop fails because of a lack of pollinators, what will people plant instead? No one knows. They are just speculating.


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## deknow (Jul 17, 2006)

"We found 0 to 56%"

What kind of finding is that?


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## Mbeck (Apr 27, 2011)

Let's just go with

"Should the imperiled honeybee populations continue to decline nearly 60 % of the U.S. population is in danger of health damaging nutrional diet deficiencies, resulting in staggering mortality rates and billions of dollars in unforeseen healthcare cost grinding our economy to a halt."


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