Study finds non-organic foods just as healthy as organic foods

[SwordoftheVistula]

http://www.reuters.com/article/scien...56S3ZJ20090729

Organic food has no nutritional or health benefits over ordinary food, according to a major study published Wednesday.

Researchers from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine said consumers were paying higher prices for organic food because of its perceived health benefits, creating a global organic market worth an estimated $48 billion in 2007.

A systematic review of 162 scientific papers published in the scientific literature over the last 50 years, however, found there was no significant difference.

"A small number of differences in nutrient content were found to exist between organically and conventionally produced foodstuffs, but these are unlikely to be of any public health relevance," said Alan Dangour, one of the report's authors.

"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."

The results of research, which was commissioned by the British government's Food Standards Agency, were published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Sales of organic food have fallen in some markets, including Britain, as recession has led consumers to cut back on purchases.

The Soil Association said in April that growth in sales of organic products in Britain slowed to just 1.7 percent in 2008, well below the average annual growth rate of 26 percent over the last decade, following a plunge in demand at the end of the year.

[Treffie]

Ain't that a kick in the teeth?

I wonder if we'll hear this on mainstream media?

[Aemma]

Ahh yes, yet another study more than likely paid for by the Big Boys of Food Industry. Don't be fooled by this article good people, its premise is all wrong. Yet again the mentality of nutritionism prevails without any regard for what organic gardening is really about. Organic gardening has of course something to do with the aspect of the health of the produce itself and hence to some slight degree about nutrition but it is much much more than that. Buying organic is an indictment in action of the killing of our soil through the use of petroleum-based pesticides and fertilizers. Buying organic is an indictment in action of the proliferation of corn as the commodity grain which has wend its way into most aspects of our diet. You think you're eating good beef when you're eating a steak these days? Think again. Instead of the corn being processed by mechanization producing anything from ethanol to HFCS to Corn Flakes, the corn is processed by cattle whose own biology has been deftly tampered with. Cattle don't naturally eat corn. Their stomachs aren't made for that. Cows are ruminants who should be feeding on grass not grain. That nice marbling in your steak is the deposits of corn biologically processed into fat most of which wouldn't be there in a pasture-fed cow. Antibiotics are mixed into the corn feed in order to offset the rampant occurrences of illness in cows since the industrialization of our food production dictates the need for confined area feedlots for the production of the meat you find in your local supermarket. Since the cattle live too closely together and are basically force-fed an unnatural food, they are apt to becoming ill, hence the need for antibiotics, which invariably we all get in some doses whenever we consume beef...or chicken or pork or farmed fish. Our food system is a mess good people and has been shown to be directly responsible for the near epidemic obesity and Type II diabetes problems.

No, "organic" doesn't mean perfect by any means. There is much to be done there in terms of defining the term. And some organic outfits are just as industrialized in agricultural method as the conventional farms. This too needs some major sorting out. But I do ask you all to read such articles critically and question them. Question who has funded the study and what stake does this company or group have with respect to the politics involved. Who's the lobby? What is their market share in this system? The Big Boys of Industrialized Food are in a panic seeing their market share going elsewhere. This type of study is as good an example of spindoctoring as any imho.

And finally READ! Read Michael Pollan's books and Joel Salatin's for instance. It'll open your eyes to what you thought was good healthy food.

Ok rant done!

[Manifest Destiny]

I admit that I don't pay a lot of attention to food advertisements, but I've never seen organic food marketed as more nutritious per se. I've only seen claims that it's less likely to be covered in pesticides or other poisons, which seems to make sense.

[Frigga]

Buying organic means that you're not exposing yourself to toxic chemicals. Toxicity from pesticides, herbicides and fungicides is a very serious matter. My boyfriend nine years ago almost died from being poisoning from pesticides, as he used to live next to a vineyard. We now buy organic as much as possible to avoid exposing him to more toxins. Instead of quantity, which is big agribusiness, the modern consumer, which includes us needs to be more concerned about quality. That in turn protects the soil, and it protects our bodies, and the plants and animals we raise on the land.

[Manifest Destiny]

Ain't that a kick in the teeth?

I wonder if we'll hear this on mainstream media?

Reuters IS the mainstream media, isn't it?

[Loki]

Buying organic means that you're not exposing yourself to toxic chemicals. Toxicity from pesticides, herbicides and fungicides is a very serious matter.

Indeed. This study did not even take into consideration the effects of pesticides, and thus is rather inadequate for a genuine comparison. In fact it's a little silly. Organic food was never about just getting more nutrients.

[Kempenzoon]

I wanted to write a long post. But Aemma wrote it all already. I never really decided I preferred organic because of "more nutrients" or whatever crap.

And yeah, organic is more expensive in the supermarket. It's why I'm happy to live in the country and not in a city. ^_^ I don't need to visit a supermarket to get food.

[Crose]

Paying for peace of mind it would seem.
It was my understanding that in order to label a product organic it only had to be a certain percentage. Unfortunately, this and many other things are misleading to consumers, in the name of greed.

[SwordoftheVistula]

Ahh yes, yet another study more than likely paid for by the Big Boys of Food Industry.

This one came from the British government. As far as I know, they don't even grow corn there at all, or much of anything else aside from free-range sheep.

Reuters IS the mainstream media, isn't it?

It's a newswire, and luckily we have the internet to access it, whereas a decade ago only newspaper editors had access to it and could screen stories such as this out. Has the New York Times, or your local newspaper, or local TV news stations picked up this story and run with it? I'll bet not.


As for pesticides, without them we'd go back to the days of massive crop failures and famines every time a new bug came around.


All the food poisoning outbreaks recently have come from organic diseases (bacteria) and the food not being properly cleaned and sterilized, not from chemical agents.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/12/he...rch/12cdc.html