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If organic food actually had a noticeably higher mineral count than nonorganic, I would start eating it. But I don’t see why organic food would actually have mo

If organic food actually had a noticeably higher mineral count than nonorganic, I would start eating it. But I don’t see why organic food would actually have more minerals. Organic doesn’t mean healthier it just means that it uses different kinds of pesticides, to my knowledge

pasabagi 7y ago
Presumably, using natural fertilizers would make a difference, as you'd expect a wider range of minerals than in straight haber-process fertilizer. I don't know if natural fertilizers are always a requirement for organic food, though.
- jjoonathan 7y ago
  If this is actually a problem, I'd much rather someone figure out which minerals need to go into the fertilizer mix (plus some downstream monitoring) than to assume that putting poop on the vegetables makes them wholesome.
  - spenczar5 7y ago
    Why do you prefer that? I don’t particularly care either way, so blanket-preferring man-made chemical fertilizers strikes me as odd.
    - jjoonathan 7y ago
      Preferring measurability strikes you as odd?
      - oh_sigh 7y ago
        You can't miss what you can't measure.
  - all_usernames 7y ago
    Ten thousand years of agriculture is an assumption?
    - jjoonathan 7y ago
      People have put up with a lot of shit -- literal and metaphorical -- over the last ten thousand years. I don't understand the assumption that it simply must be better than anything chemistry has to offer, and I find the aversion to measurement and control inherently suspicious.
      - phs318u 7y ago
        > I find the aversion to ... control inherently suspicious. Interesting. Could you please expand on that? Personally, I find the desire to control inherently suspicious.
        jnbiche 7y ago
        I'd assume he/she means control in the engineering sense of the word: testing and inspecting. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/control https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/control Merriam Webster says that meaning (definition 1a) of the word "control" is archaic, but I still hear it used from time to time. It's commonly used in a number of European languages.
        nitrogen 7y ago
        Could also be in the sense of "control theory", where a feedback loop like measure->analyze->predict->change->repeat is applied.
      - fragmede 7y ago
        No one is saying don't measure things. Fertilizer doesn't come from mysticism and homepathy but from science - make a guess (hypothesis) and test to see if it works. The issue is that we've focused on volume of output from a field, rather than mineral content of vegetables, which is far harder to measure.
  - pasabagi 7y ago
    For what it's worth, I totally agree. Without artificial fertilizer, half the world would starve. I don't think that kind of process makes sense within the context of capitalism, though. One obvious driver in the downward nutritional trend is the fact that faster-growing, larger, longer-lasting vegetables are better products, even if they taste worse and do less for the body. The problem with products is they're optimized for sale, not for use. Adding in extra nutrients is unlikely to improve the product, since it would increase costs.
    - primroot 7y ago
      > faster-growing, larger, longer-lasting vegetables are better product Whatever product fits into the economies of scale, and selective commoditization solely for the sake of profit concentration not nutrition or environment. But back to the idea of measuring everything. These are the counterpoints I can think about regarding measuring and controling: * Measuring and controlling cost resources, some less, some more. E.g. It is easier to measure yields than to measure nutrition. * There is imperfect knowledge on how to respond (control) after a given measurement, or even what measurements are important. E.g. Premature optimization, Goodhart's law, lack of certainty regarding nutrition. * There are conflicting interests on what the result of controlling should be. E.g. more profits or more nutrition? * Under appropriate circumstances systems can respond to variability or keep functioning without human control or input. This is resilience. E.g. Pollinating insects, edible weeds.
  - jonplackett 7y ago
    What, just because you're grossed out by poo?
LamaOfRuin 7y ago
https://www.ams.usda.gov/publications/content/introduction-organic-practices https://www.ams.usda.gov/publications/content/introduction-o... >Soil Fertility: Crops more easily resist disease, survive drought, and tolerate insects when grown in good soil. Organic crop producers build soil quality by adding compost, animal manures, or green manures. As soil organisms break down these inputs, they convert nutrients into forms plants can absorb and create humus that sustains soil quality. Organic producers must not apply sewage sludge or biosolids to soil. Additionally, organic crop producers use cover crops to protect the soil from wind and water erosion. Soil-conserving practices include the use of cover crops, mulches, conservation tillage, contour plowing, and strip cropping.
- bluGill 7y ago
  There is nothing about organic that means it builds soil. Conventional farmers are adapting the same practices. In many cases conventional farming with "chemicals" does better: because of roundup a cover crop can be applied much easier - you can kill it when you are done vs having to plow it up (plowing is a horrible thing to do to soil). I find it amusing they separate "sewage sludge" from manure as if they are not the same thing.
  - throwaway66920 7y ago
    They are not the same thing. Manure is animal poop. Sewage sludge is the output of our sewers. Despite our best efforts to filter this, there is a lot more than poop in there. Heavy metals, drugs, etc.
    - briantakita 7y ago
      While there are many benefits to unfettered trade, a downside is lack of quality control of the inputs into the system. Garbage in, Garbage out...
wil421 7y ago
I think you’re forgetting about fertilizer. You can’t spray the common green fertilizer on Organic crops. Some organic fertilizers I’ve used at my home garden: bone meal, blood meal, fish emulsion and egg shell.
legulere 7y ago
Slower growth through less fertilizer (including CO2), leads to a higher mineral rate if I remember correctly
- foofoo55 7y ago
  Minerals need to be in the ground before they can get into the plant. The depletion of soil & vegetable quality has been going on for years. This isn't the first study on the topic by a long shot. [1] [1] - https://www.vitacost.com/blog/food-nutrition/nutrition/how-is-soil-depletion-affecting-your-food.html https://www.vitacost.com/blog/food-nutrition/nutrition/how-i...
- koolba 7y ago
  That sounds reasonable if the absorption rate is not uniform. Any source for this?
- lightedman 7y ago
  No, bioavailability of the nutrient is the only real thing that matters when it comes to fertilizers. Most organic fertilizers are not as bioavailable as even the most basic hydroponic fertilizer.
all_usernames 7y ago
Organic farming includes crop rotation, fertilizer, soil quality, and erosion control standards that would hypothetically affect mineral contents. Monoculture (conventional corn or soybean for example) uses huge amounts of synthetic fertilizer to increase yields per acre far beyond what the soil can naturally sustain. Wide swaths of American farmland has lost literally feet of topsoil over the past 50 years. The soil is largely sterile, and depleted of minerals. Monoculture also means the ecosystem that can replenish the soil is absent.
- bluGill 7y ago
  Farming has changed since the dust bowl of the 1930s. Soil has been lost, but conservation factors have been found. Farmers are now building topsoil. We can only build top soil by about 1mm/year so it takes a long time to get any measurable change (vs the rate of loss which was much higher).
- all_usernames 7y ago
  Can't imagine why this was downvoted.
  - colechristensen 7y ago
    Because it is inaccurate.
    - phs318u 7y ago
      Please point out the inaccuracies.
- wil421 7y ago
  Corn and soybeans are most definitely rotated. Peanuts are a common nitrogen fixer and Alfalfa is great too. >This crop rotation benefits both alfalfa and wheat/barley/corn. On the one hand, cereals tend to decrease the development of weeds, leaving the field free for the alfalfa cultivation. On the other hand, there are findings suggesting that corn following alfalfa yields approximately 10% more than corn following corn.[1] [1]https://wikifarmer.com/alfalfa-crop-rotation/ https://wikifarmer.com/alfalfa-crop-rotation/
simonsarris 7y ago
Adjacent: Butter/milk from grass-fed cows has a noticeably better amino acid profile https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10531600/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10531600/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7905466/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7905466/
- oh_sigh 7y ago
  This makes sense, because grass and the alternatives(probably corn/oat meal) don't have the same nutritional profile. A more apt comparison might be whether cows which get sprayed with a manufactured anti-fly compound have a different nutritional profile than cows that are sprayed with, say, lavendar oil to keep the flies away.
- taurath 7y ago
  The biggest difference in food I’ve ever seen is eggs from pasture raised chickens vs farmed ones - it’s night and day.
jacobwilliamroy 7y ago
Organic particularly means "no roundup". Non-organic crops tend to be round-up resistant strains. If the seed engineers for said strains weren't being careful, they could have affected other aspects of the seed's physiology while selecting for round-up resistance. One concrete example is how certain modern strains of apple seeds have weaker dormancy, causing imbibing and radicand emergence to occur prematurely, usually before the apple is even eaten. Such changes are an unintended consequence of human selection for size. It's possible that the tinkering required to increase plant vigor in the presence of non-organic pesticides has a greater adverse effect on mineral content. Though there are lots of other variables to consider as well such as soils, fertilizers, storage and transportation, the positioning of plants, whether they are able to share nutrients.
AlanYx 7y ago
"But I don’t see why organic food would actually have more minerals." It could be the opposite too. There's some evidence that, in some cases, purely hydroponic greenhouse-grown produce, which often qualifies and is sold as "organic", has fewer nutrients than soil-grown produce.
Obi_Juan_Kenobi 7y ago
It's going to be very much case-by-case. 'Organic' is a very big tent, with lots of different practices. Some is, as you say, quite conventional but with different chemical use. But organic can also incorporate other sustainable farming practices that are more likely to result in real differences.
bryanlarsen 7y ago
I expect organic food to have a substantially lower mineral count. Organic farming uses a lot more tillage than conventional farming does.
porknubbins 7y ago
Thats the legal requirement for organic but I’ve noticed it varies a lot in other aspects depending in the food. In US supermarkets standard food is generally big ag, bland, commodity level junk. I think organic has now become a byword for a subset of consumers who want to opt out of our low quality US food system and are willing to pay to do that. For example organic chicken seems to me to be often a different (smaller, better tasting) breed, free range, not water frozen, better packaged etc, not just organic, so that overall it is healthier in a variety of ways.

pasabagi 7y ago

Presumably, using natural fertilizers would make a difference, as you'd expect a wider range of minerals than in straight haber-process fertilizer. I don't know if natural fertilizers are always a requirement for organic food, though.

jjoonathan 7y ago
If this is actually a problem, I'd much rather someone figure out which minerals need to go into the fertilizer mix (plus some downstream monitoring) than to assume that putting poop on the vegetables makes them wholesome.
- spenczar5 7y ago
  Why do you prefer that? I don’t particularly care either way, so blanket-preferring man-made chemical fertilizers strikes me as odd.
  - jjoonathan 7y ago
    Preferring measurability strikes you as odd?
    - oh_sigh 7y ago
      You can't miss what you can't measure.
- all_usernames 7y ago
  Ten thousand years of agriculture is an assumption?
  - jjoonathan 7y ago
    People have put up with a lot of shit -- literal and metaphorical -- over the last ten thousand years. I don't understand the assumption that it simply must be better than anything chemistry has to offer, and I find the aversion to measurement and control inherently suspicious.
    - phs318u 7y ago
      > I find the aversion to ... control inherently suspicious. Interesting. Could you please expand on that? Personally, I find the desire to control inherently suspicious.
      - jnbiche 7y ago
        I'd assume he/she means control in the engineering sense of the word: testing and inspecting. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/control https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/control Merriam Webster says that meaning (definition 1a) of the word "control" is archaic, but I still hear it used from time to time. It's commonly used in a number of European languages.
        nitrogen 7y ago
        Could also be in the sense of "control theory", where a feedback loop like measure->analyze->predict->change->repeat is applied.
    - fragmede 7y ago
      No one is saying don't measure things. Fertilizer doesn't come from mysticism and homepathy but from science - make a guess (hypothesis) and test to see if it works. The issue is that we've focused on volume of output from a field, rather than mineral content of vegetables, which is far harder to measure.
- pasabagi 7y ago
  For what it's worth, I totally agree. Without artificial fertilizer, half the world would starve. I don't think that kind of process makes sense within the context of capitalism, though. One obvious driver in the downward nutritional trend is the fact that faster-growing, larger, longer-lasting vegetables are better products, even if they taste worse and do less for the body. The problem with products is they're optimized for sale, not for use. Adding in extra nutrients is unlikely to improve the product, since it would increase costs.
  - primroot 7y ago
    > faster-growing, larger, longer-lasting vegetables are better product Whatever product fits into the economies of scale, and selective commoditization solely for the sake of profit concentration not nutrition or environment. But back to the idea of measuring everything. These are the counterpoints I can think about regarding measuring and controling: * Measuring and controlling cost resources, some less, some more. E.g. It is easier to measure yields than to measure nutrition. * There is imperfect knowledge on how to respond (control) after a given measurement, or even what measurements are important. E.g. Premature optimization, Goodhart's law, lack of certainty regarding nutrition. * There are conflicting interests on what the result of controlling should be. E.g. more profits or more nutrition? * Under appropriate circumstances systems can respond to variability or keep functioning without human control or input. This is resilience. E.g. Pollinating insects, edible weeds.
- jonplackett 7y ago
  What, just because you're grossed out by poo?

LamaOfRuin 7y ago

https://www.ams.usda.gov/publications/content/introduction-organic-practices https://www.ams.usda.gov/publications/content/introduction-o... >Soil Fertility: Crops more easily resist disease, survive drought, and tolerate insects when grown in good soil. Organic crop producers build soil quality by adding compost, animal manures, or green manures. As soil organisms break down these inputs, they convert nutrients into forms plants can absorb and create humus that sustains soil quality. Organic producers must not apply sewage sludge or biosolids to soil. Additionally, organic crop producers use cover crops to protect the soil from wind and water erosion. Soil-conserving practices include the use of cover crops, mulches, conservation tillage, contour plowing, and strip cropping.

bluGill 7y ago
There is nothing about organic that means it builds soil. Conventional farmers are adapting the same practices. In many cases conventional farming with "chemicals" does better: because of roundup a cover crop can be applied much easier - you can kill it when you are done vs having to plow it up (plowing is a horrible thing to do to soil). I find it amusing they separate "sewage sludge" from manure as if they are not the same thing.
- throwaway66920 7y ago
  They are not the same thing. Manure is animal poop. Sewage sludge is the output of our sewers. Despite our best efforts to filter this, there is a lot more than poop in there. Heavy metals, drugs, etc.
  - briantakita 7y ago
    While there are many benefits to unfettered trade, a downside is lack of quality control of the inputs into the system. Garbage in, Garbage out...

wil421 7y ago

I think you’re forgetting about fertilizer. You can’t spray the common green fertilizer on Organic crops. Some organic fertilizers I’ve used at my home garden: bone meal, blood meal, fish emulsion and egg shell.

legulere 7y ago

Slower growth through less fertilizer (including CO2), leads to a higher mineral rate if I remember correctly

foofoo55 7y ago
Minerals need to be in the ground before they can get into the plant. The depletion of soil & vegetable quality has been going on for years. This isn't the first study on the topic by a long shot. [1] [1] - https://www.vitacost.com/blog/food-nutrition/nutrition/how-is-soil-depletion-affecting-your-food.html https://www.vitacost.com/blog/food-nutrition/nutrition/how-i...
koolba 7y ago
That sounds reasonable if the absorption rate is not uniform. Any source for this?
lightedman 7y ago
No, bioavailability of the nutrient is the only real thing that matters when it comes to fertilizers. Most organic fertilizers are not as bioavailable as even the most basic hydroponic fertilizer.

all_usernames 7y ago

Organic farming includes crop rotation, fertilizer, soil quality, and erosion control standards that would hypothetically affect mineral contents. Monoculture (conventional corn or soybean for example) uses huge amounts of synthetic fertilizer to increase yields per acre far beyond what the soil can naturally sustain. Wide swaths of American farmland has lost literally feet of topsoil over the past 50 years. The soil is largely sterile, and depleted of minerals. Monoculture also means the ecosystem that can replenish the soil is absent.

bluGill 7y ago
Farming has changed since the dust bowl of the 1930s. Soil has been lost, but conservation factors have been found. Farmers are now building topsoil. We can only build top soil by about 1mm/year so it takes a long time to get any measurable change (vs the rate of loss which was much higher).
all_usernames 7y ago
Can't imagine why this was downvoted.
- colechristensen 7y ago
  Because it is inaccurate.
  - phs318u 7y ago
    Please point out the inaccuracies.
wil421 7y ago
Corn and soybeans are most definitely rotated. Peanuts are a common nitrogen fixer and Alfalfa is great too. >This crop rotation benefits both alfalfa and wheat/barley/corn. On the one hand, cereals tend to decrease the development of weeds, leaving the field free for the alfalfa cultivation. On the other hand, there are findings suggesting that corn following alfalfa yields approximately 10% more than corn following corn.[1] [1]https://wikifarmer.com/alfalfa-crop-rotation/ https://wikifarmer.com/alfalfa-crop-rotation/

simonsarris 7y ago

Adjacent: Butter/milk from grass-fed cows has a noticeably better amino acid profile https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10531600/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10531600/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7905466/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7905466/

oh_sigh 7y ago
This makes sense, because grass and the alternatives(probably corn/oat meal) don't have the same nutritional profile. A more apt comparison might be whether cows which get sprayed with a manufactured anti-fly compound have a different nutritional profile than cows that are sprayed with, say, lavendar oil to keep the flies away.
taurath 7y ago
The biggest difference in food I’ve ever seen is eggs from pasture raised chickens vs farmed ones - it’s night and day.

jacobwilliamroy 7y ago

Organic particularly means "no roundup". Non-organic crops tend to be round-up resistant strains. If the seed engineers for said strains weren't being careful, they could have affected other aspects of the seed's physiology while selecting for round-up resistance. One concrete example is how certain modern strains of apple seeds have weaker dormancy, causing imbibing and radicand emergence to occur prematurely, usually before the apple is even eaten. Such changes are an unintended consequence of human selection for size. It's possible that the tinkering required to increase plant vigor in the presence of non-organic pesticides has a greater adverse effect on mineral content. Though there are lots of other variables to consider as well such as soils, fertilizers, storage and transportation, the positioning of plants, whether they are able to share nutrients.

AlanYx 7y ago

"But I don’t see why organic food would actually have more minerals." It could be the opposite too. There's some evidence that, in some cases, purely hydroponic greenhouse-grown produce, which often qualifies and is sold as "organic", has fewer nutrients than soil-grown produce.

Obi_Juan_Kenobi 7y ago

It's going to be very much case-by-case. 'Organic' is a very big tent, with lots of different practices. Some is, as you say, quite conventional but with different chemical use. But organic can also incorporate other sustainable farming practices that are more likely to result in real differences.

bryanlarsen 7y ago

I expect organic food to have a substantially lower mineral count. Organic farming uses a lot more tillage than conventional farming does.

porknubbins 7y ago

Thats the legal requirement for organic but I’ve noticed it varies a lot in other aspects depending in the food. In US supermarkets standard food is generally big ag, bland, commodity level junk. I think organic has now become a byword for a subset of consumers who want to opt out of our low quality US food system and are willing to pay to do that. For example organic chicken seems to me to be often a different (smaller, better tasting) breed, free range, not water frozen, better packaged etc, not just organic, so that overall it is healthier in a variety of ways.