Scientists Say Organic Food May Not Be Healthier For You 497
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."
Re:Careful technique vs organic (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Careful technique vs organic (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:And? (Score:5, Interesting)
> organic growers tend to choose cultivars ...
Yep. Bingo. Another article -- I believe I saw it here, might have been elsewhere -- showed that you were just as likely to get food-borne illness from organic meats and eggs.
I think there are certain cases, such as using growth hormones in meat, where the organic has an advantage. But yeah, look at tomatoes: nothing beats a big, juicy, ripe beefsteak grown in your own backyard, whether you fertilize it with chemicals or compost. The tomatoes at the grocery stores -- again, organic or otherwise -- are special cultivars that have been selected for ruggedness and shelf life. Nutritional content (and taste) is secondary to the vendor.
(I grew up in farming country, folks, and trust me: a solid-red tomato should NOT be crunchy and green on the inside. If it is, it was gassed.)
When it comes to poultry, again, whether organic or not, the issue is the "plumping" -- how much broth they inject into it, and what went into it. When you say, "I prefer Swift to Hormel turkeys," what you're actually saying is, "I like Swift's injected 'basting' solution better. I don't like the taste of chicken skin, and at present, I've stopped eating Tyson's chicken because they apparently grind up and use the skin in their "plumping" solution. (YMMV, of course.)
I'm not at all surprised by this study, and I expect that others will bear this out as well.
Re:It's also worse for the environment (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, a potentially better solution is to grow food in multistory greenhouses located in urban areas.
Since you can precisely control the growing environment in a greenhouse, that makes it possible to grow a huge variety of food year-round, and being located in an urban area, it also means way lower transportation costs since there is less need to ship in food hundreds to thousands of kilometers/miles away. Don't be surprised that within 50 years, much of our vegetable supply will be grown this way.
You're not an Organic Grower (Score:3, Interesting)
There's a difference between the original motivations of organic food production
and the USDA definition of 'organic' . The USDA is driven by market and industry
lobbies.
The problem is use of the term 'Organic' which has been easily co-opted by
the agrobusiness industry.
A better name for the original expectations of organic patrons would probably be
'Agro-Chemical-Free-Certified'. But now we also have GMO to contend with
which can build the pesticide into the genes of the plant.
ie: Texas cattle killed by dry GMO grass , and migrating monarch butterflies
killed by GMO corn.
Thalidomide [wikipedia.org] was a great chemical miracle too.
Re:Careful technique vs organic (Score:5, Interesting)
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.