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Scientists Say Organic Food May Not Be Healthier For You
Hugh Pickens writes "NPR reports that although organic fruits and vegetables, grown without synthetic pesticides or fertilizer, comprise a $29 billion industry that is still growing, a new analysis of 200 peer-reviewed studies that examined differences between organic and conventional food finds scant evidence of health benefits from organic foods. 'When we began this project, we thought that there would likely be some findings that would support the superiority of organics over conventional food,' says Dr. Dena Bravata, a senior affiliate with Stanford's Center for Health Policy and co-author of the study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. 'I think we were definitely surprised.' Some previous studies have looked at specific organic foods and found that they contain higher levels of important nutrients, such as vitamins and minerals. For example, researchers found in one study that tomatoes raised in the organic plots contained significantly higher levels of certain antioxidant compounds. But this is one study of one vegetable in one field; when the Stanford researchers looked at their broad array of studies, which included lots of different crops in different situations, they found no such broad pattern. Here's the basic reason: When it comes to their nutritional quality, vegetables vary enormously, and that's true whether they are organic or conventional. One carrot in the grocery store, for instance, may have two or three times more beta carotene than its neighbor. But that's due to all kinds of things: differences in the genetic makeup of different varieties, the ripeness of the produce when it was picked, even the weather. Variables like ripeness have a greater influence on nutrient content, so a lush peach grown with the use of pesticides could easily contain more vitamins than an unripe organic one."
Is anyone actually surprised by this?
There's a big difference between healthy foods and nutritious foods. People don't buy organic for nutrition. That's what people buy vitamins for. People buy organic food for what it *doesn't* have, namely pesticides (and hormones for meat and dairy).
This study looks like one that is clearly designed to support industrial farming by distracting consumers. "Hey, you were buying organics for reason A, but it makes no sense to buy organics for reason B, so you should stop."
Because if they'd linked to the Stanford site, they would have had to admit that this isn't actually what the study says. Yes, vegetables grown similarly with or without pesticides have similar nutritional content. Hardly shocking. But also, vegetables grown without pesticides don't have pesticide residue!!! Which is why people buy organic food. If you're buying organic because you want more vitamins, sure, switch back to your pesticide-laden foods instead.
Don't forget that organic food isn't just about increased nutritional content( and that is assuming this study is telling the truth, for example, Stanford has ties to Monsanto).
Organic farming is also about food security. Having food at all. Conventional farming uses fertilizer made from oil. A finite resource that is running out. Making artificial fertilizer has been polluting and destroying our environment........including farm land and drinkable water.
Organic food is also about human health in terms of pesticide use. When you buy organic food you aren't consuming the pesticide that is used on other crops. You are also aren't contributing to the manufacture and disposal of pesticides which is getting into your soil, your water and effecting your health indirectly.
If you go to the Annals of Internal Medicine web page, they advertise the paper with this headline: "Are Organic Foods Healthier? There is little evidence that organic food is more nutritious but it may have fewer pesticides and antibiotic-resistant bacteria."
This seems like a much fairer evaluation of the results than the NPR or Slashdot headline.
The other facets of organic vs. non organic?
Non-organic farming relies on fossil-fuel based fertilizers and pesticides in humongous quantities.
Why, to support soil depleting and disease susceptible monocultures. Without proper rotation of crops, this leaves the soil barren of nutrients unless you pump fertilizers into it, and when farming is done, contributes to soil erosion.
With a monoculture, one fungus or insect can destroy an entire crop, necessitating the use of pesticides and other harsh chemicals.
Even of organic does not offer much greater health benefits, it robs Monsanto, Cargill, Dow, and Chevron of a constant revenue stream.
It also reduced reliance on fossil fuels, reduces carbon emissions (both from the production and use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides), creates (at least anecdotally) safer food, and makes for a cleaner environment.
What is NOT desirable about that? Oh, profit for the megacorps, I forgot.
Silence is a state of mime.
We grow lots of our own food. We do "blind taste tests" from time the time and it is fucking easy to work out which is the home-grown stuff. If you operate on a small enough scale to watch your plants individually grow, pick at the right time and select the best fruits for next year's seeds, you are going to get the best food. Could we still operate non-organically? Well, we could use pesticides, slug-killers, etc., but I absolutely do not want to discourage cooperative insects or kill garden wildlife/cats.
So, supermarket organic stuff which is "organic" in the sense of merely sticking to some list of requirements (e.g. "no pesticide") may not be tastier. You are buying for the farming method.
But "organic" in the practical sense - at least in the UK (supermarket veggies when I was in northern VA were, without exception, ghastly) - tends to mean more than simply following that list. If nothing else, the produce is picked at the right time and arrives at the supermarket quicker and fresher.
Organic food has plenty of pesticides too. Most of them are worse than the synthetic ones.
Pesticide free...? Nature has its own pesticides. Many plants, especially fruit trees, produce their own pesticides when attacked by insects. These pesticides are *inside* the fruit and can be very toxic. You can prevent their formation (ie. make the fruit less toxic) by applying artificial pesticides when the insects appear.
No sig today...
We grow lots of our own food. We do "blind taste tests" from time the time and it is fucking easy to work out which is the home-grown stuff.
Home grown is not the same thing and not what is being discussed. I have a garden too and our tomatoes (organically grown for what it is worth) taste better than anything I can get from the grocery store if for no other reason than I can actually pick them when they are ripe. But that's a different issue. I'm merely talking about food in the grocery store with the label organic on it. Quite simply I've never seen any persuasive evidence that organic food from the grocery store is tastier or more nutritious than non-organic food and I've never met anyone who could tell the difference just by taste or appearance.
So, supermarket organic stuff which is "organic" in the sense of merely sticking to some list of requirements (e.g. "no pesticide") may not be tastier. You are buying for the farming method.
Sort of. Unfortunately seeing organic on a label doesn't mean nearly as much as people think it does. It's a pretty narrowly defined term with loopholes you can drive a tanker truck through.
Organic food is not sprayed with synthetic pesticides. They may or may not have pesticide residues, and the synthetic stuff is generally safer.
Yep. 99% of the flavor of a tomato is whether it was picked when it was red on the plant or picked when it was green then ripened in a truck on the way to the store.
You can try it at home if you have plants. Pick a green one and ripen it on a window ledge. When it's nice and red pick a red one off the plant and compare the flavor. Remember, these are from the exact same plant...
Taste has very little to do with organic vs. inorganic and an awful lot to do with how it spent its last few hours. Stuff which ripens fast then goes mushy (bananas, tomatoes, strawberries...) is very susceptible to this.
No sig today...
Yes. Organic food is not sprayed with pesticides. Hence, it contains no pesticide residue.
Simply not true.
No sig today...
You are measuring it wrong. So is the TFA and the damnfool study it is based on.
Organic farming is not about tastiness. It is about using farming methods that enhance the local ecosystem rather than relying on fertilizers and pesticides that cripple big parts of the ecosystem, both at the farm and downstream from its fields. The opposite of organic farming is Monsanto, Round-Up, and burning 7 Calories of diesel fuel to get 1 Calorie of lettuce to market.
That many who buy organic food find it tastier has to do with same factors that make a Thanksgiving Day turkey taste better than a turkey served up on a sweltering July day. Taste is an experience with a rich psychological component involving memories and future expectations. It is not simply a matter of signals from neurons on the tongue.
Will
Why are there so many studies on nutritional content when that's not why most people eat organic?
People eat organic because they perceive it is healthier or more nutritious or tastier (or all of the above) or because it is fashionable to do so. The problem is that there is limited evidence that it actually has the benefits that are typically claimed. The theory of organic farming seems to make sense - keeping the nasty industrial chemicals and pesticides out seems like it should result in a healthier product. I'll freely admit that, in theory, organic farming seems to make sense. Problem is that just because this seems to make sense doesn't mean it actually results in a product with the benefits claimed. The jury is still out but so far the evidence is very poor that organic food is measurably superior in ways that affect health or taste for most people. There's nothing wrong with eating organic food but by doing so one is accepting a theory that so far is unproven by science. A leap of faith if you will.
I think the fashion aspect of organic food is actually the strongest reason a lot of people eat organic or specialty foods. While not exactly the same thing, go into a Whole Foods store and look a the amount of gluten free foods. Genuine gluten allergies are quite rare but people claiming to have a problem with gluten is quite fashionable lately for reasons that I don't really understand. There is far more gluten free food than would be justified by the actual number of people who have diagnosable health problems with gluten. It's a placebo effect to be sure. I think organic food is similarly fashionable. People perceive a benefit (real or not) based on what others are saying/doing and so they think it might be worth doing too. Remember that the strongest marketing message ever is "everyone else is doing it".
Of course organic food is sprayed with pesticides. I try grow my own food as organic as possible and use pesticides all the time. Do you think magic keeps the bugs off? I just put up a sign that says "Dear bugs I'm trying to grow organic food here, please leave"?
No the difference is we use pesticides and fertilizers that are derived from natural sources. But some of the pesticides are still hazardous if used incorrectly. Many are toxic to fish and amphibians.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Here's the thing, the horribly mis-named "organic" farming originally meant a whole lot more than this USDA Organic garbage. It referred to using a "natural" cycle of poop into soil into food into poop rather than the psuedolinear system of oil-fertilizer+pesticides-plant-poop-waste.
When you use synthetic fertilizers and pesticides you destroy soil diversity and make it literally impossible for the soil to support a plant without synthetic fertilizers. You wind up growing hydroponically, in a dirt medium. You can no longer justifiably call it soil, because healthy soil contains living constituents and is primarily made up of organic matter.
We need to stop throwing away shit. If you take a look at the gross mismanagement of pigshit in this country, you will be stunned in every possible way. But if you collect it in a tank (the fact that the pigs are being raised in such a way that it is actually economically feasible to collect their shit centrally is another part of the problem, but we'll take it as a continued given for the extent of this comment) you can "cook" it under its own power and get methane out, perhaps then converting it to electricity on-site. Some pig-raising operations are actually energy-positive under such a plan, selling power back to the grid as they produce more than enough for their own operations. What's left is a safe and effective natural fertilizer, and it cooks itself much more rapidly than it does when left in a holding pond that can break, seep, or overflow due to rain.
There are plenty of opportunities to do damage to the soil with organic products, so it doesn't necessarily mean that organic products aren't selling out the future for profits today, but it is more likely. Right now it also means it doesn't include GMO ingredients, so in the absence of clear GMO labeling requirements it's the only way to know you're not buying them if you don't want to for one reason or another. Can we get some meaningful food product labeling, please? I want to know the country of origin and anything else important about every ingredient, what year is it anyway? It shouldn't be hard to track this. Provide exemptions for people doing business in their home town if you must, but they ought to have all the information they need if the providers of ingredients have the same responsibilities.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
There is a very good reason to buy organic food : sustainability. It causes less pollution and uses less synthetic additives (which are often derived from fossil resources).
And your evidence for this is what? Nice theory but you seem to have so far merely asserted that your claim is true. Organic food actually requires more work to farm per unit of food. Even proponents will not dispute that crop yields are significantly lower. Just because you use less fertilizer or pesticides does not automatically mean that less resources or pollution were generated during its production. It still has to be planted, irrigated, harvested, transported and tended - all of which use vast amounts of energy and cause pollution. With non-organic methods you can produce more food using less space and with less of certain resources so at some level there appears to be a trade off. You might be actually right but it's not merely a simple or obvious assertion that organic is somehow more sustainable than non-organic. You need actual evidence to determine that.
4) And those methods often produce tastier food.
Debatable. While my own experience is hardly data, I've tried all sorts of organic and non-organic food and frankly I cannot tell the difference most of the time and I've never met anyone else who can either without seeing the label on the product. I defy anyone to take a blind taste test on eggs from your local mega-mart and tell me they can tell the difference between organic and non-organic
I can always tell the difference between organic and inorganic food. The inorganic food is always either gritty or metallic.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Here's the thing, the horribly mis-named "organic" farming originally meant a whole lot more than this USDA Organic garbage. It referred to using a "natural" cycle of poop into soil into food into poop rather than the psuedolinear system of oil-fertilizer+pesticides-plant-poop-waste.
So... organic farming isn't about not making food from metal, stone or other INORGANIC substances such as silica gel????
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Organic milk definitely tastes different, and for some reason it lasts 3x longer than regular milk. I don't know if it's technically healthier or not, but it without a doubt tastes very different.
That's because of how it is usually pasteurized. Look at most organic milk and you'll notice that it typically uses ultra high temperature pasteurization. Products that undergo this process last much longer and it does affect taste. I've had non-organic milk that undergoes the same process and the end product tastes very similar.
I can always tell the difference between organic and inorganic food. The inorganic food is always either gritty or metallic.
How to break this gently?
You're not eating the packaging, are you?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Absolutely:
Organic agriculture is (as originally intended anyway) about things like:
Not using practices or chemicals that are destructive to the local or downstream ecosystems.
- Pesticides - kill birds, cause cancer,
- massive doses of nitrogen fertilizers - require a massive energy-intensive petrochemical industry, destroy downstream ocean life.
- Monocultures - destructive of genetic diversity, more susceptible to massive crop failure if you don't addict yourself to high chemical dosing.
- GMOs - imply monoculture - create specialized and thus adaptively fragile crops which are dependent on industrial-scale inputs, and which threaten natural bio-diversity and in general threaten the operation of the natural selection process of eco-system self-maintenance.
Using practices that maintain (sustain) the ability of the local ecosystem to support the agricultural yield by itself for an extended period of time:
- leave the land in as good productivity as you found it, without massive inputs.
- techniques like rotation, co-planting, use of compost to build soil,etc.
Using practices (fair-trade) that are fair to agricultural workers and small-scale land-holders, that continue to employ them, that give them a stake in their output and in maintaining their land and community, and that don't damage their health through exposure to pesticides etc.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
That's crap.
In the long run intensive farming destroys the productivity of the soil and the side affects of the run off fertilisers severely harm other neighbouring eco-systems like waterways. So in the short term yes "modern" intensive farming boosts production but long term the balanced more "natural" organic approach is sustainable because it nurtures a healthy biodiversity. Go and read the UN millennium report on biodiversity and human health, perhaps the biggest pulling together of science on the affect of man and farming practises.
The NPR article and the study that it reports upon starts with the wrong premise. Taste is not the only consideration. Here are some other issues that should be considered when purchasing food:
Localvore:
-Was the food grown locally, benefitting local farmers, or does the apple sauce come from China, and blueberries from Chile?
-Does the food grown distantly consume more fuel to bring it to market?
-Do you mind eating frozen foods that are out of season locally?
-Does supporting local farmers create a more vibrant local economy?
Contamination:
-Do environmental conditions and industrial food processing allow the food to be contaminated?
http://www.fda.gov/Food/FoodSafety/FoodContaminantsAdulteration/Metals/ucm280223.htm
Fertilizers:
-Does your purchase support farming that pollutes rivers, creates brown tides in estuaries, and dead zones in the ocean?
-Is the fertilizer derived from petroleum, and does that process cause pollution of it's own?
-Is the fertilizer biologically contaminated? (For instance, E-coli)
Pesticides:
-Does the method of farming reduce beneficial insects, such as bees?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_collapse_disorder
-Are their traces of pesticides left in or on food items?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daminozide
Biodiversity:
-Do you want to support a system of monoculture which eliminates varieties of plants and animals because they are not commercially profitable?
-Does the increasing lack of diversity contribute to disease blights which wipe out crops such as potatos and bananas?
-Does growing invasive species create a risk for local wildlife
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_carp
Sustainability:
-Is the farming method water neutral?
-Does the farming method create dust bowls?
-Can the farming method be sustained in the long term?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Sisters_%28agriculture%29
Processing:
-Does industrial processing, mechanical separation, and handling contribute to contaminiation? (For example, salmonella)
-Is the jar of peanut butter filled with corn syrup (non-seperating), more healthy to eat than the one that contains only peanuts (oli seperates)?
-Does the processing of the food kill off beneficial bacteria flora?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gut_flora
GMO's:
-Do the tomatos on the store shelf have fish genes spliced into their DNA?
http://thegreendivas.com/2011/06/10/waiter-theres-a-fish-in-my-tomato-a-gmo-story/
-Are foods that create their own pesticides safe to eat?
-Have GMO plants and animals proven themselves to be historically safe, with minimal unforseen consequences?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Africanized_bee
Political:
Do you want to support ADM and Monsanto who manipulate the FDA and sue farmers who choose not to use their products?
Do you want to support banana companies, and coffee companies that mistreat and neglect workers?
Is it rational for countries such as Ethiopia to grow crops for corporations to export while starving local populations recieve international food aid?
The answers to these questions cause me to support local, organic, sustainable products wherever I find them.