[Changes in agri-food production systems and nutritional profile of foods (1930-2024)]

In the last decades, agriculture and animal husbandry in industrialized countries underwent a deep transformation. Extensive systems gave way to intensive, mechanized models driven by genetic and technical innovations that multiplied productive capacity. Food became more abundant, supply chains more stable. This also raises a question that today appears far from secondary. If cultivated varieties, yields, production factors, and the criteria used to select plants and animals are changing, does this alter also the nutritional composition of the foods we consume?This paper reviews available evidence on seven foods representing different trajectories in the agri-food system: apple, tomato, potato, carrot among plant products; chicken, pork, beef among meats. The timeframe spans from the 1930s to the present. For plant foods, yields increased three to five folds, while several studies report declines in selected micronutrients, often between 5% and 40%. The dilution effect is the most common explanation of this phenomenon. For meats, outcomes depend on selection goals: broiler chicken shows higher fat and lower protein density, while pork moved in the opposite direction.What emerges is that upstream choices in fields and farms shape not only the volume of the production, but also what the final product actually contains. This has implications for estimating actual nutrient intakes, for the composition tables we rely on, and for the criteria guiding genetic improvement.