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Organic has no health benefits
- gamache 17y agoIt's very infrequent that a scientific study's findings can be reduced to a headline without losing important information, especially when the headline is optimized for iconoclasm. This is no exception. The study found that organically- and non-organically-grown foods showed no difference in nutrition. To assume that the food's nutrition is the only health-affecting factor between organic and petrochemical farming is silly.
- tokenadult 17y agoTo assume that the food's nutrition is the only health-affecting factor between organic and petrochemical farming is silly. What do you suggest would be a verifiable health-affecting factor that would differ between the two forms of farming? http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html
- parenthesis 17y agoOff the top of my head, other questions to consider are: • The environmental effects of different methods of farming and food production. • Are toxins more or less present in the food produced by different methods? • Is the food more or less pleasurable to eat?
- tokenadult 17y agoAre toxins more or less present in the food produced by different methods? This is a good question to ask, because most plants contain phytotoxins adapted to keep microbes or animals from eating them. Human selective breeding of plants already has made plants less toxic as human foods, and human bioengineering of plants could help some kinds of plants become still less toxic to human eaters. http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/109862182/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0 http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/109862182/abstrac...
- pyre 17y agoOut of curiosity, what would be the point of making a fruit toxic to animals? I thought that animals eating a ripe fruit was the entire reason for the fruit (to distribute seeds).
- tokenadult 17y agoCapsaicin in peppers is one example of a fruit with a powerful toxin (irritant) for one class of animals. Mammals in general can't eat chili peppers without severe irritation of the digestive tract. Birds can eat chili peppers without harm--capsaicin is specific to biochemical properties of mammals. Birds don't have teeth, and don't grind up seeds as they eat fruit. Mammals as a class have very effective grinding teeth, and thus would destroy the seeds as they eat the fruit. The plant's adaptation allows it to have seeds spread by one class of animals while it is avoided by another. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capsaicin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capsaicin
- jcl 17y agoIt's ironic that most peppers are now sown because of their irritant properties.
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- NickM 17y agoThe article only seemed to be talking about the levels of nutrients found in organic vs non-organic foods. I would certainly suspect that the levels of pesticides and other such chemicals could also have a huge impact on health.
- jacoblyles 17y agoGot any proof? If not, enjoy your placebos.
- hachiya 17y agoI'd suppose I could drink a bottle of pesticide and tell you how I feel, but I would feel rather stupid proving the obvious.
- tokenadult 17y agoDosage matters. You eat plants that include chemicals that would be harmful in large doses every time you eat plants, but you don't give up eating just because of that risk.
- jacoblyles 17y agoJust because your prejudices fit the biases of the day that doesn't make them scientific.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- gamache 17y ago'Verifiable' is the tough part. That is not my job. But if I were to give it a shot, I might investigate the effects of pesticide runoff on the farming environment, and those who live around it. Or animal farms' antibiotic carpet-bombing's effect on drug-resistance of pathogens. Or the effects of farming chemical production on those who live near the factories.
- easp 17y agoA PCB laced hamburger and one with no such contamination are going to have the same nutritional content. Really though, part of the point of organic food is that it dumps less crap in the environment. Even if the direct impact on human health is non existent, less fertilizer runoff means fewer low oxygen deadzones at the mouth of major rivers, which means more fish, etc.
- dasil003 17y agoAre you suggesting that we should do anything unless we can prove it's a bad idea? I'm all for science, but it is not wild superstition to think that the effects of eating trace amounts of pesticides in all our food over the course of decades might be bad for our health. Now certainly this should be studied, but how long will it take to achieve results, and how possible is it really to isolate the variables? In the meantime should we just assume superfarming methods are all a-okay?
- tokenadult 17y agoGenerally the most industrialized countries with the most modernized agriculture have people living the longest lives with least morbidity, so we have to wonder about the effect sizes of some of the issues we are worrying about here. As I mentioned in another post in this thread, plants "naturally" have toxins to prevent their being eaten, and human beings have had to develop cooking and selective breeding over time (and some agricultural practices that reduce production of those phytotoxins) to increase the safety of what they eat. http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/wrangham/wrangham_index.html http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/wrangham/wrangham_index.html
- dasil003 17y agoWell obviously the immediate effects of being poor and living in a third world country are going to dominate any long term effects of chemical buildup, all the more so in polluted areas where the individual may be exposed to much higher levels of toxic chemicals in general. The rest of your comment seems irrelevant. I'm not disputing in any way that plants have toxins or that we had to develop various practices to make us safer. I don't dispute that many man-made chemicals are safe and useful. I don't even dispute that pesticides could conceivably improve safety from a hypothetical insect-born contagion. However genetically modified mono-crops sprayed with heavy loads of pesticides simply to increase yields does not strike me as something that goes towards food safety at all. It goes towards short-term profit, and you can bet the cost of any long term health effects is simply ignored until 30-40 years down the line when the soil is depleted and the effects of various pesticides have time to show up in the human population. At that point the industry will throw its hands up in the air and say "how could we have known?" while pushing the new and improved fertilizers and pesticides with a new batch of as-of-yet-unknown problems. That's why I think it's a good idea to eat more traditionally raised food. It's not because I'm some hippie idealogue or because I don't believe in science or progress, it just strikes me as a safer bet given the severe holes in nutrition science, and in many ways, the intractability of solving the health "equation".
- karzeem 17y ago"There is little difference in nutritional value and no evidence of any extra health benefits from eating organic produce, UK researchers found." To add to your point, "no evidence of any extra health benefits" is different from "evidence that there are no extra health benefits".
- RyanMcGreal 17y agoNot only that: it showed that there is little or no difference in nutrition for the specific nutrients studied - despite the fact that nutrition does not reduce to a few vitamins and minerals.
- igrekel 17y agoStrange how the study doesn't address the main reasons why I would tend to favor organic foods: less pesticides, its the only way (at least in Canada) to control GMOs in what you eat. Of course there would be other environmental reasons as well, but it still remain based on monocultures.
- michael_dorfman 17y agoAlso, this study looked at the people eating the food, and ignored the people growing the good. Obviously, farmers are exposed to pesticides (and other petrochemicals) in much greater concentrations than consumers....
- by 17y agoAccording to the abstact of the study, which the BBC do not link, http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/ajcn.2009.28041v1 http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/ajcn.2009.28041v1 the objective was "We sought to quantitatively assess the differences in reported nutrient content between organically and conventionally produced foodstuffs." and it was "restricted to the most commonly reported nutrients". The word 'nutrient' according to Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutrient http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutrient does not cover pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, growth hormones and all the other medicines and chemicals excluded by organic farmers. The study, according to the link above, did not conclude that 'Organic has no health benefits'.
- apgwoz 17y agoExactly. The article avoids the "truth" as to why most people even eat Organic. The health benefits in eating organic are in what you aren't eating (e.g. pesticides, etc).
- Retric 17y agoIt's also just a strait up lie. "Among the 55 of 162 studies that were included in the final analysis, there were a small number of differences in nutrition between organic and conventionally produced food but not large enough to be of any public health relevance, said study leader Dr Alan Dangour. Although the researchers say that the differences between organic and non-organic food are not 'important', due to the relatively few studies, they report in their analysis that there are higher levels of beneficial nutrients in organic compared to non-organic foods. " PS: There is a difference between saying there is no significant effect vs. no effect.
- adamhowell 17y agoNutritional science is broken. Boiling (pun intended) fruits and vegetables down to their individual nutrients is the only way we know how to measure their supposed benefits -- but nutrients don't act alone in foods, they act in combination with everything else in the food. But since we still can't measure that, we don't. Also, reductionist nutritional science makes it possible for Lucky Charms to tout health benefits on the front of their box by listing individual nutrients. This is profitable for the food industry. For more I'd recommend "In Defense of Food" by Michael Pollan.
- wglb 17y agoExcellent counter. In Omnivore's Dilemma, he notes that there exists evidence that the old idea about nutrition being reduceable to just three basic components is likely to be wrong. If you don't know where to look for evidence, it is quite likely you aren't going to find it.
- mattmaroon 17y agoI don't eat organic vegetables because I believe they are significantly better for me health-wise. I do so where possible because they're tastier (having not been engineered to retain excess water to increase weight for sale) and MUCH better for the environment. I do limit myself to organic/all natural prepared foods though due to lack of preservatives. See In Defense of Food as to why. There's very little doubt that stuff is awful for your health.
- erikwiffin 17y agoI don't eat organic vegetables due to a lack of preservatives. I cook only for myself, and I often find my irradiated, preservative laced, genetically engineered food going bad. If I bought organic, I'd never get to eat anything. :/
- mattmaroon 17y agoPreservatives are found in processed foods, not vegetables. Organic vegetables generally don't last any less long than normal ones. They make lots of organic frozen prepared foods. You can get organic macaroni and cheese in a box that's just like the regular (but tastes better). There are organic canned soups, pasta sauce, frozen burritos, etc. You name it you can buy it.
- jrockway 17y agoBe careful with this. You can get the "USDA Organic" logo with less than 100% organic ingredients. So it's possible that your frozen dinner has preservatives and other crap in it that you are trying to avoid by "going organic". Read the ingredients to be sure. If it's something you can't buy and add to your food yourself, it's probably in there for the seller's benefit; not for yours. (Less spoilage == higher profit margin.)
- mattmaroon 17y agoUmm, not legally. The USDA regulations specifically forbid artificial preservatives. (Natural ones like citric acid are fine.) They can and sometimes do cheat, even though the fines are enormous, but reading labels won't help with that.
- dtf 17y agoI don't know, what's a consumer to do? I read this, and then the side panel has links to three previous BBC News articles: - Organic produce 'better for you': £12m study shows organic food contains more antioxidants and less fatty acids. - Organic food 'better' for heart: 10 year study shows tomatoes contain more antioxidants. - Organic veg given health boost: research shows soup made from organic veg contains six times more aspirin (?!) Many of these kinds of stories seem to have the grubby handprints of PR companies all over them. Are antioxidants good or bad? I don't even know any more... Until I know any better, I'll be sticking to my trusty two criteria: 1. Does it taste good? 2. Is the price in line with the taste?
- tokenadult 17y agoIs the price in line with the taste? Most of us reading HN are consumers in industrialized countries with thriving, free-market economies. For eaters in poor countries, every gain in efficiency in agriculture is a reduction in price of food for eaters who devote most of their income to food. There have to be seriously inexpensive ways to produce food in some countries for some people to eat at all.
- easp 17y agoOr they might be permitted some land of their own where they can grow their own food, or be given access to commons to where they and their animals can forrage. You have a totally skewed way of thinking if you think we need free markets in order for people to avoid starving. People are perfectly capable of providing their own food given some land some seeds and some sun, and some water. The amount of land required isn't even all that high. Indeed, it is probably their ability to produce a surplus that lead to markets in the first place and those markets made it possible to justify cutting people off from the ability to feed themselves. At this point, there are plenty of cities in the US where it isn't legal to store rain water that falls on your own land.
- tokenadult 17y agoYou have a totally skewed way of thinking if you think we need free markets in order for people to avoid starving. You need to take that up with the historians of economics. The last few major famines in my lifetime were all in countries that have adequate capacity to produce food, but had governments at those times that tried to impose Marxist socialism on their populations. More to the point of this thread, will you allow the smallholders you mention to use whatever means they find economical or convenient to grow food on their own land, or will you insist that they grow only "organic" crops?
- mcantelon 17y ago"...there is not sufficient research on the long-term effects of pesticides on human health" Sounds like the tobacco lobby of yesteryear. Given the fact that cancer is on the rise and I have a choice between food treated with carcinogens and food not treated with carcinogens, I'll take the food not treated with carcinogens, thanks.
- Robin_Message 17y agoI don't mind eating food containing tiny amounts of carcinogens, but I do object to poor farmers, without safety equipment, handling drums of the stuff.
- GHFigs 17y agoAs is typical for science reporting, the headline makes a broader claim than the article itself: "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." (emphasis mine)
- DannoHung 17y agoI really think more people need to worry about eating nonprocessed food before they start discriminating between organic or not.
- lutorm 17y agoThat's a good point, in a choice between eating nonorganic fresh vegetables and an "organic" TV dinner it's likely the veggies come out on top.
- sophacles 17y agoSo, the book Omnivore's Dilemma asks a question which I'm not sure is sufficiently answered by this study, but may be answered elsewhere (and I just don't know): Is it correct to treat food as a commodity. For example (ripping straight from the book here) is a carrot grown in Michigan the same as a carrot grown in Florida? There is a base assumption that we can treat the foodstuffs as commodities, but if this is not true, we cannot believe this study. If the organic is grown in already marginal land, while the "standard" food is grown somewhere fertile, is it possible to get these results, or possibly results indicating organic food is less healthful?
- jff 17y agoIf you want bruised, overpriced fruit and vegetables, head on down to the local organic market! Spend 10 minutes to sort through a basket of tomatoes at the hippie organic market on Maui (the only store in the village) to find the four or five that aren't bruised to hell and back, then pay double price for the privilege. And then there's the sustainability and economic problems. Can the farms near NYC produce enough organic produce to supply the whole city? How much will a head of lettuce cost if everyone is buying organic? Given the lower efficiency of organic farming, how much more land do we need to convert to farmland? Apparently it's already too expensive for low-income people to get fresh food--at least, we hear so every couple weeks on slow news days. Increase the popularity of organic food; it's going to get even harder for these people to get fruit and veg. Posting this on a Silicon Valley site... thank god for the -8 point limit, because I sense many a "downvote for disagreement" coming.
- omouse 17y agoYou're absolutely right. It's amazing how many people have jumped on the organic bandwagon when they have reaped the benefits of GMO crops and efficient farming. It's like climbing up a ladder and then kicking it away once you're at the top.
- lutorm 17y agoI don't understand your point. What are the supposed benefits of GMO grops that makes it easier for me to eat organic? Are you talking about global food supply? If so, there are many other issues we can bring up, one being that most food grown in the US goes either to animal feed or to plants that make HFCS and a slew of other things that don't really count as "food" to me.
- philwelch 17y agoIf we all ate organic, a third of the world population would have to starve to death from sheer shortage of food. Don't talk about animal feed, either--we'd have to raise more cattle just for the manure if we didn't use chemical fertilizers.
- teilo 17y agoThe assertion of the study, "Organic foods are not more nutritious" is a function of the metrics used to measure "nutritious". Did they check trace mineral content? Did they check phyto-nutrient levels? No, in fact, they checked nothing at all. This was not a study. It was a meta-study. Meta-analysis is a very poor tool. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta-analysis#Weaknesses http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta-analysis#Weaknesses Note in particular the File Drawer Problem. As other posters note: Organic food tastes better. Now, why is that? Is the only difference between the two really a matter of trace-pesticide use?
- rjurney 17y agoOrganic food doesn't taste better. In fact, it can taste worse. There is an enormous amount of variation in taste of any given food each season, each harvest, each field, etc. You're just telling yourself what you want to believe.
- jayded 17y agoThe study was done in the UK. Conventional produce there may be very close to organic. However in the US this study would likely have very different results.