UK's FSA Finds No Health Benefits To Organic Food

blackbeak writes "The UK Food Standards Agency's 'Independant Organic Review' results were just released, and the BBC rushed to publish the findings in the shockingly titled article, 'No Health Benefits to Organic Food.' From the article, 'There is little difference in nutritional value and no evidence of any extra health benefits from eating organic produce, UK researchers found.' A peek into the research at Postpeakpublishing provides a slightly deeper look."

Comments

from TFA

[polar red]

The review did not look at pesticides or the environmental impact of different farming practices.

says it all really.

Re:from TFA

[CaptainOfSpray]

You are dead right. I for one would call "not being poisoned by organophosphorus residues" a health benefit. I wonder who paid for this study and then chose the report's title.

Re:from TFA

[Digestromath]

"Our review indicates that there is currently no evidence to support the selection of organically over conventionally produced foods on the basis of nutritional superiority."

I think thats more of an apt summary which doesn't imply a bias based on data which lies outside the scope of thier research.

They were comparing values of vitamins in one to the other, let those facts stand on thier own. There is no nutritional value in sustainability, pesticide use or ecologically sound farming practices nor should any imply as such.

Re:from TFA

[Daemonax]

What? Says what? Their research was only looking at the nutritional differences.

As for environmental impact of organic farming, from what I know, in order to get the same amounts of produce we'd need to expand existing farms much more because organic farms give lower yields. If people ate less, that might help the situation and others, but that's unfortunately unrealistic. Instead given our track record, if we all switched to organic, we'd just destroy some forests. The other alternative is shrinking the human population quite a lot, but I do not like that idea at all.

I think that many people who champion organic have some crazy superstitious assumption beneath many of their claims, and that this assumption is that nature is benevolent, some kind of caring mother, probably called Gaia. Unfortunately nature is not benevolent, and our lives are so much better now because we've managed to subdue much of nature. During all the time we've been evolving we've had to adapt to fit in with nature. We've finally, in the last hundred years or so, been able to change things and make nature fit in with us instead. Though there are still many natural events that we can't control.

Re:from TFA

[managementboy]

tells me you didn't like the outcome of the study, had no better arguments, then had to fall back to insinuating without proof that the scientist are just crooks who will bend the truth to earn a few bucks. Ahh, I love a good conspiracy.

Re:from TFA

[sp3d2orbit]

I've heard this so many times and it is just plain wrong. Here's why:

The digestive track of a cow has evolved to extract caloric value from plant cellulose, ours is not. It is not as simple as saying a cow gets 10% of the energy from the sun via grass and we get 10% of that energy therefore we should just eat grass. No matter how much grass we eat our digestive tracks will not be able to cope -- wasting resources in the process.

Do what nature intended you to do and eat meat.

Not surprised, however...

[Angostura]

The report specifically doesn't look into the main reasons why I tend to buy organic - which aren't do to with health issues primarily, but to do with environmental and animal husbandry factors.

In the UK at least, organic farmers do practice lower intensive farming, leaving hedgerows in and wider strips for wildlife to flourish, they're not allowed to use antibiotics to promote growth in cattle (though they can use antibiotics to treat disease).

I've never taken the health issues seriously, but I do take biodiversity (and antibiotic resistance) very seriously and I'm more than willing to pay a little more to farmers who take additional care to help protect the country's wildlife.

There is one exception to this: I do buy organic carrots with health mind. Various studies have shown that carrot skins do retain a fair amount of insecticide and other pesticide residue. I'm a lazy bugger who likes to eat carrots raw without peeling them and so feel marginally happier choosing organic.

Re:World improves

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with your point is - in my opinion - that in the area of food, technological advancements are either scams or used to sell us processed cheap shit.

Our national consumer protection organisation recently published a list of what some "food" items really are made of. Technology is used to get away with as little of the original ingredients as possible and add as much cheap filler (corn, soy, cheap oils) as possible. How can technologically engineered food with 20% real ingredients for taste and 80% cheap filler be good?

Re:so?

[AuMatar]

But its not always sold as such. I know plenty of people who think that organic is healthier. Organic food advertising and stores actively push that myth.

Breaking news !

[ivan_w]

A [name insitution here] study has determined that using electric cars does not get you from point A to point B any faster than combustion engine powered cars..

Doh !

--Ivan

Title misleading

[HighFlyer]

Replace "Health Benefits" with "Nutritional Benefits" and it's ok. You certainly won't starve eating non-organic food. And you'll get pretty much the same level of basic nutritional elements (vitamins etc.).

But you will get more pesticide contamination, more genetically modified food, more additives and a few other nasty bits and pieces. And you will create more impact on the environment.

And keep in mind that this was a meta-study, just looking at existing publications. Their selection criteria pretty much guaranteed the domination of conventional food studies carried out by the industry.

Re:World improves

[Nursie]

Couldn't agree more.

That and all the chemically dependant "fast-grow, high-yield" fruits and vegetables taste like arse compared to the more traditional ones.

Going for higher, cheaper yield is not always good.

Re:World improves

[krou]

"That is technological improvement, so there's no really any reason why technologically made or improved food would be more riskier."

Of course, the welfare and quality of life of the animals that make up our food is of no concern to you? Or the effect on the environment? Just that the food is not "risky" to your health?

I'm not a vegetarian, but frankly, the shit that we're doing to our animals to mass produce meat cheaply is disgusting.

And define "risky", because from here I'm sitting, there are a large number of direct and indirect risks we suffer thanks to mechanisation and industrialisation of our food supply. Environmental destruction, such as poisoning our water supply, the earth, and the air. Increased risks of diseases, too. IMO, things like swine flu are direct results of the mechanisation and industrialisation of our food process.

It is no coincidence that La Gloria (which is suspected of being ground zero for Swine Flu) just happened to have a huge hog farm operated by Granjas Carroll (50% owned by Smithfield Foods). Their hog operations generate lagoons of waste stuffed with antibiotics, ammonia, methane, hydrogen sulfide, carbon monoxide, cyanide, phosphorous, nitrates, heavy metals - all sorts of shit that isn't shit.

Slashdot won't let me C&P the URL properly, so combine it together: http://www.rollingstone.com/ /politics/story/12840743 /porks_dirty_secret_ the_nations_top_ hog_producer_is_ also_one_of_ americas_worst_polluters

"In North Carolina alone [Smithfield's lagoons of waste] have spilled, in a span of four years, 2 million gallons of shit into the Cape Fear River, 1.5 million gallons into its Persimmon Branch, one million gallons into the Trent River and 200,000 gallons into Turkey Creek. In Virginia, Smithfield was fined $12.6 million in 1997 for 6,900 violations of the Clean Water Act - the third-largest civil penalty ever levied under the act by the EPA. It amounted to .035 percent of Smithfield's annual sales."

It's not just our meat, either. Chlorine being used to wash "ready to eat" foods? Growth hormones, antibiotics and all sorts of shit in milk? What about pesticides? Just recently saw a report that suggests the cocktail of pesticides could be behind Colony Collapse Disorder. Carcinogenic ingredients being added to food?

Again, IMO, the incidents of cancer that we're seeing these days are directly linked with what we're doing to our food supply.

Technology's a great thing, except when it gets in the hands of greedy, unethical bastards who couldn't give a shit except to their bottom line.

Re:World improves

[rohan972]

Technology in food production isn't just for processed food, it's having a tractor to work your ground instead of a digging stick. Even organic farming uses technology, the question is which technologies to accept and which to reject. Personally I'm not a big fan of poisons sprayed on my food regardless of what this study says.

Re:World improves

[ericrost]

I challenge you to find cheaper food than the organic produce grown within a few miles of my home. If people would focus on buying locally produced veggies and meat, it would cut a huge chunk of transportation cost (and waste) out of the system.

Re:World improves

[nizo]

What they did not look at was the effect of using herbicides and pesticides on health.

Or how about the impact of herbicides and pesticides on the land on and around the farm where the food is grown? It isn't just about the food itself; personally I think that food that isn't making the surrounding environment toxic is healthy for me and my kids too.

Re:World improves

[Philip K Dickhead]

Your short response is so pregnant with errors of thought, that I wonder if it were not meant merely to goad.

Let us suppose that your monoculture becomes the opportune host for a parasite, and eliminates 80% of all strawberries on earth - as there are no other lines to introduce for survival. This has already happened once, to the Banana. The chalky item eaten today, a "Cavendish" is very different from the fruit of my early childhood. That's because those "Big Mike" variety went extinct in the '60's from Panama disease. The replacement was discovered in Asia after many years - and was transplanted in Central America. Trust me, youngster: it's a poor replacement.

Your proposition says the particular choices that we are making at this point in economic, climatic and political history are near-perfect, and without genetic diversity, will serve nearly all circumstances into perpetuity. Not bloody likely.

You also assume that lines are chosen for their "tastiness". This is almost NEVER the case! They are chosen for pest/pesticide hardiness, storage and shipping convenience - and... their suitability to industrial-scale monoculture methods!

For my point, try eating an heirloom apple sometime. Do so, while also sampling that tasteless Fuji from you favorite grocers.

Re:World improves

[stoicfaux]

Never mind that using "Organic" agricultural practices exclusively would lead to massive starvation all around the glob. The only reason that we have enough to feed the global population now is the use of "Modern" agricultural practices that grew out of the "Green Revolution".

Mass-producing cheap food is good. Mass-producing cheap food that isn't healthy is...?

Mass-production tends to specialize since specialization is very efficient. In the US, we mass produce food by specialized on corn, soy, and something else that I can't remember. However, our bodies may not be able to handle an over-specialized diet. For example, we get certain nutrients more efficiently when eating certain food combinations. There's also evidence that things like high fructose corn is really unhealthy since we never evolved to eat it. Go read the omnivore's diet and in defense of food books for more details. Diet and food production is a very non-trivial subject.

So, the real question is: can we mass produce cheap, healthy food? The really nasty question is, what do we do if we can't mass-produce enough cheap healthy food to support future (or even current) population growth? Do we trust evolution to select humans that can live on cheap unhealthy food? Do we start producing healthier but more expensive food and let the have-nots die or eat unhealthy food? Do we find a way to create cheap healthy mass-produced food without going bankrupt?