Snow White was tempted by an apple with appetizing aesthetic appeal, but its beauty was beyond deceptive.

Instead of biting into a flavor-filled, nutritious and scrumptious treat, she was sickened and left wanting.

While Snow White may just be a child’s fable, it’s an alarming reflection and lesson in nutrition deception for today’s commercial food consumer.

Aside from the recent salmonella and E. Coli outbreaks, today’s produce won’t make the consumer sick as it did Snow White, but its surface appearance bodes a deceptive nutritional value — a value that’s rapidly decreasing.

This is in part because of current agricultural practices across the nation.

As land prices and the demand for development continue to spike, small family farms are pushed out of business, causing the food chain to advance toward a big-farm, corporate agricultural industry.

“On one hand, I see more and more farm land being bought up all the time by the big corporations,” said Gayle Alleman, a registered dietician with the Washington State University Kitsap County extension program, who was a member of the Minnesota-based Farmers Legal Action Group in the 1980s. “In the ’80s it was just dreadful.”

In Kitsap County from 2002 to 2007, farm acreage decreased 5 percent from 16,094 to 15,294 acres and the average size of Kitsap farms decreased 16 percent from 27 to 23 acres, according to the 2007 Census of Agriculture.

“We’re seeing more people farming on smaller plots of land,” said Jackie Aitchison, director of the Washington State Farmers Market Association and manager of Poulsbo’s farmers market. “There’s a whole movement of urban farmers intensely growing on 2.5 acres or less.”

Presently, one farmer in Iowa can feed some 129 individuals. One hundred years ago that same farmer could feed about 12 people. This, according to Michael Pollan, journalism professor at the University of California at Berkeley, a contributor to the New York Times and award-winning author, is the reason there are very few farmers left: “We don’t need them.”

The national and global result of big farming is declining food quality and safety, experts say.

“There’s several things going on with food,” Alleman explained. “Big farms put chemicals in the soil that kill microorganisms that replenish the soil, and with that we see a decrease in minerals in the food and crops have to get minerals from the soil that are needed to make vitamins. So one can begin to see how we have a decrease in the amount of vitamins in food as well.”

According to information compiled by the Northwest Earth Institute in Portland, Ore., based on studies done throughout the world by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization: “The prevailing method of farming is leading to a serious shortage of minerals.”

The UN studies show since 1985 the vitamin and mineral content in beans has fallen by 60 percent, 70 percent in potatoes and 80 percent in Snow White’s apples. Popeye would have to eat 200 cans of spinach to get the same amount of iron he got from one can 50 years ago; cauliflower contains 50 percent less vitamin C than in 1963; there’s 60 percent less vitamin A in apples and 50 percent less in broccoli. In 1900 wheat was 90 percent protein, compared to 9 percent today.

Compounding the nutrient concern is the average distance food must travel — estimated at 1,200 to 1,500 miles — before it reaches the palate of hungry shoppers.

“Heat, air and light are enemies of vitamins and the longer something is in transit the longer it is exposed to the air,” Alleman said. “Nutrient quality diminishes as soon as something is picked.”

As nutrients in food gradually decrease health issues may start to crop up.

Alleman said lower nutritional status in food could lead to sub-clinical deficiencies, which is where the body is not functioning optimally, but disease state has yet to be reached.

“I think a lot of Americans are walking around with sub-clinical deficiencies which could lead to a larger health concern,” she said. “With more depleted foods we eat we become malnourished. A lot of Americans are walking around with slight malnourishment and could feel a lot better.”

The changes and status of the industrialized food change are rapidly being noticed by the masses.

Poulsbo farmer Andrea Wigglesworth, who sharecrops one-and-a-quarter acres for her Finn Hill Farm, grew up in the Midwest eating food that tasted like food. As Wigglesworth got older and began to make her own food choices she noticed something: “It didn’t taste like food at all, it was vile.”

She’s also noticed the effects of transportation, chemical fertilizers and pesticides.

“Almost all fruits and vegetables get their sweetness in the last two weeks on the vine or the tree. The emphasis hasn’t been on flavor or nutrition, but on harvesting, shipping and sales,” she said. “If you use synthetic fertilizer on a carrot it’s like using steroids, they grow big and quick, but it’s mostly water content not nutrient-dense content. Pesticides go into the water content.”

Another twist to the food chain crisis is oil and petroleum, which are used to transport food thousands of miles and make chemical fertilizers and pesticides at a time when oil is a scarce resource and environmental concerns are skyrocketing.

But it’s not all doom and gloom for food and agriculture, especially at the local level, as several Kitsap farmers, shoppers and advocates are seeking viable local solutions and healthy change.

The No. 1 solution, they say, is to buy and grow locally — and people are.

It cuts down on transporting food thousands of miles — currently less than 1 percent of the food consumed in Kitsap is grown here; it maintains freshness and nutrients, and it increases food safety.

Although farm acreage and size in Kitsap has decreased, the number of farms has increased from 587 in 2002 to 664 in 2007, according to the agricultural census. More than 300 farms in Kitsap are one- to nine-acre establishments.

“More people are getting into farming and it’s a very good thing,” Aitchison said. “Food can be produced locally, it’s more affordable, healthy and good for the local economy.”

Rebecca Slattery, who’s been tilling the 13-acre Persephone Farm in Indianola since the early ’90s, cultivates 53 varieties of vegetables and an array of orchard fruits.

She and partner Luisa Brown grow for Community Supported Agriculture, and provide some 60 customers each summer with the finest and freshest local produce at a 10 to 15 percent savings. They also sell at the Bainbridge Island market, do a little catering, and sell to a few local restaurants.

Their specialty is salad greens that are suited to grow in Kitsap’s climate and shortened growing season, as fresh is best: Tomatoes, strawberries and numerous other crops don’t actually grow in the Northwest year round.

“Fresher food is more nutritious than old,” Slattery said. “Localness is important. We’re getting the food into our customers’ hands in 24 hours as opposed to it coming from days away.”

The change is seen in the increased interest in shopping at farmers markets and the questions shoppers are asking.

Farmers markets in the county range from Kingston to Port Orchard; there are 125 across the state.

In 2008, Poulsbo’s market netted $202,000 in 108 hours of business with some 15,000 customers buying the produce. In 2007, Bremerton’s market generated $26,000 and in 2008 that more than doubled to $58,000.

Aitchison estimates the Bainbridge market brings in $400,000 and in 2007 Kitsap farmers markets saw $1.1 million in sales.

The average Kitsap farmers market runs four hours a day, one day a week, for 25 to 27 weeks.

“It’s pretty incredible when you look at it like that,” Aitchison said. “There are very few retail businesses that can do that. It’s an incredible amount of money that goes through a farmers market and it stays local for a while.”

In 2008, Poulsbo’s farmers market grew 60 percent.

Wigglesworth, who’s on the Poulsbo farmers market board, said a few years ago people asked if the produce was organic. In 2008, people wanted to know where it was grown, and if the food was local.

She said one day a year the farmers poll customers to see if the growth is due to an influx of population or if the current population is becoming more food aware.

“Overwhelmingly it was the local population so that shows people at the market were very concerned,” Wigglesworth said. “Once someone tries something that has been allowed to grow to maturity, you get spoiled.”

Farmers market season starts blooming in mid-April.

For those who’d like to grow their own garden or supplement their summer produce; spinach, peas, lettuce, carrots, beets, chard and squash are among the plants that thrive in Kitsap, said Peg Tillery, a horticulturist and shoreline educator for the WSU Kitsap extension.

“The secret to growing here is to look for the shortest growing season,” Tillery said, “60 to 70 days is ideal.”