ИСТИНА

Human health is known to depend on nutrition, which in its turn is strongly connected with the quality and composition of agricultural products. It is a well-known fact that the lack of certain microelements in soil and water results in “hidden hunger” related diseases and excessive concentrations of some elements, either of natural or technogenic origin, may lead to intoxication of humans. Though endemic diseases related to geochemical anomalies are well described in literature, still there is no global inventory of soil geochemistry – human health relationship, and such inventories are also lacking for many regions of the world. Actually it is evident that for the regions with high proportion of urban population simple correspondence between soil composition and human health does not work, mainly because the inhabitants of metropolises hardly use local food as the main basis of their nutrition. The diet of an urbanite consists of the products collected from all over the world, and these products reflect geochemical characteristics of various remote soilscapes. The contribution of soil geochemistry of the source area depends on the products derived from each of these areas. Different plant species and even different varieties differ in their ability to accumulate microelements. Some food products such as milk have elevated concentrations of microelements due to their accumulation in trophic chains. All these details should be considered when calculating the balance of microelements in human nutrition. The analysis of relevant literature showed that the proportion of local food in the diet of a typical citizen depends on the location of the settlement (if it is situated in an agricultural area or not), its size, the level of development of the country and specific region, and on the cultural context. Bigger cities in more developed countries are more integrated in a global food system and thus their inhabitants do not depend on regional peculiarities of soil composition. Small settlements in less developed countries are almost entirely dependent on local food and thus are subjected to the negative effect of local geochemical anomalies. The same is true for the followers of a popular “100 Mile Diet”. Further research is needed to understand the effect of soil conditions on food quality and human health. Food system structure should be taken into account to quantify the contribution of local and imported food in the micronutrient balance in human nutrition.