I can't say I ever thought that organic food would have higher levels of vitamins than their non organic counterpart. And, of course, article says they have similar levels of specific vitamins.
Organic does apparently have less pesticides (also per article) -- which is what I thought was one of the major motivations to go organic, not "more vitamins"
Perhaps for you, but I anecdotally find that many people who buy organic tend to think that it's also more healthy in terms of vitamins. There's a tendency to think that organic has a "higher nutrition density" because of the naturalistic fallacy, in that natural == better; people think that any modification to plant products only spreads out or even decreases that nutrition.
In terms of pesticides, though, years of scientific study have been used to clear the pesticides used on our foods. People who think that pesticides are somehow unhealthy are also not scientifically justified. Organics are also "no healthier" than non-organics in terms of pesticides as well, since pesticides are found to have no health impact.
People do it organic and especially local vegetables because they are more nutritious. But "more nutritious" doesn't mean "more vitamins". First of all, which vitamins? Surely they didn't test for every single vitamin found in all vegetables, not to mention other nutrients.
Second, it's dubious whether the nutrient theory of nutrition completely describes our body's relationship with food. Many people eat organic food because it eliminates the unknowns. We know that industrial farming has a negative effect on food quality, but the negative effect could be even larger than we are capable of measuring, so better to play it safe.
This echoes Europe's policy on GMOs, which is that if there is any risk of catastrophe, that risk is not worth taking. There is a name for this sort of policy, but I've forgotten the term and can't seem to find it.
Another reason that I personally avoid industrial agriculture is because it is fundamentally unsustainable: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/28/a-banker-bet.... I get all of my vegetables from a local farm mainly for this reason and another that comes from taking a sort of Marxist perspective on the issue. Industrial farming creates a lot of repetitive, unfulfilling jobs. I'd rather support people that live with and love their land, who get to engage with the challenge of optimizing all of the energy and nutrient flows in their farm. Running a farm can actually be a very interesting design/engineering problem.
The title of the Reuters article is of course utterly misleading, in that it simple-mindedly equates "no difference in vitamin content" with "no healthier than." The key disambiguating sentence appears on the second paragraph of the article:
"Organic produce and meat typically isn't any better for you than conventional varieties when it comes to vitamin and nutrient content, according to a new review of the evidence.
"But organic options may live up to their billing of lowering exposure to pesticide residue and antibiotic-resistant bacteria, researchers from Stanford University and the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System found."
Unfortunately they didn't bother to get the short URL to the original article right, so we can't go and find out what the authors of the original article were actually saying about the matter.
What I call organic is way more healthy and nutritive:
I call organic not only to those that are natural but also to food that I could trace, e.g eggs that start with 0 or 1 in Europe had expiration rate witch is a fixed date from the egg laying. The fruit from my friends house is picked the same day I visit them.
As a general rule the levels of antioxidants and vitamins in food decay exponentially with time and temperature. Some fruit is stored in cold and anaerobic rooms for months. It looks like fruit but had degraded. Fortunately it is easy to taste the difference(It taste like nothing).
Antibiotics and hormones in meat certainly affect humans for the bad. In USA(money is everything there) and some parts of Europe is totally out of control. I have friends that are doctors and had problems as microbes develop resistance to antibiotics, and they have to use much more aggressive ways to fight them. People die because the treatment is not as effective as it was in the past.
"Organic milk and chicken may also contain more omega-3 fatty acids"
That is exactly what we want. Food has a tremendous unbalance between omega3 and omega6 because omega6 is so cheap to industrial manufacture so we have to consume natural fish(not farmed) or wild animals(like wild boar, deer or grass eating cow) to compensate.
I had seem tremendous abuses of synthetic pesticides in Spain, where I worked installing greenhouses. It too easy for some people to add too much to be sure they don't lose money. Some people continue using DDTs and other forbidden chemicals because it is effective.
Nothing to see here, just another PR article from the food industry to fool consumers.
Unfortunately, the "organic" label means less and less.
What I think is still true (although I have no data to back it up) is that farmers who actually conscientiously maintain their soil, in a way that maintains both the fungal colonies and the nutrient density, through natural means... that is, using proper crop rotation, nitrogen fixing cover crops, and manure addatives, but no chemical additives (which are allowed under organic farming, so long as they are "organic" chemicals).... those foods are more nutritive.
Organic/non-organic, like all certifications, doesn't measure exactly what you'd like it to. In the end, sustainable, healthy farming is a very complex thing, and the details matter. If you want to get really high quality produce, you really do have to educate yourself and talk to the people producing your food. There's no silver bullet.
"... In addition, organic broccoli maintained higher concentrations of bioactive compounds (ascorbic acid and phenolics) and antioxidant potential during storage than conventional broccoli, with higher potential health beneficial effects."
I think the point of organic food it isn't to get more (good) stuff, it's to get less (bad) stuff.
The fact that they have lower amounts of pesticides, chemicals and antibiotic-resistant bacteria makes organic food healthier (as in doesn't make your health worst).
Who cares about healthier? Organic food, especially local organic food, simply tastes better. Probably not because it is grown without pesticides but rather because the farmer gives a damn.
It all comes down to people's perceptions. When they hear that something is organic or natural, many people assume it must be better for us, and if it is better, it must contain more nutrients.
Food company's like to use this to their advantage, and the terms have lost a lot of their meaning unless you know how the food is produced. I think this is a key point. An organic farm using improperly composted manure for fertilizer or contaminated water for irrigation may end up poisoning people with e-coli. On the other hand, grass fed, free range chickens produce the best eggs I've ever tasted. If the farmer happened to also give the chickens antibiotics, I don't know if that's really a bad thing.
The other big issue of course is cost. Food labeled organic is much more expensive. Many people just cannot justify the extra cost. When our son was small, we looked at giving him organic milk versus regular milk (http://foodconstrued.com/2010/09/got-milk/). We started with organic but eventually switched to regular.
And I always thought the motivation behind eating organic food was it's less of a burden on nature. Is personal health really the only thing people are concerned about?
Organic cereal crops generally yield at about 0-50% of the rate of conventional cereal crops. This means they need twice as many acres of land per bushel, twice as much fuel per acre, et cetera. In other words, it's much more of a burden on nature than conventional cereal crops.
And I really did mean to say 0 above -- organic cereal crops fail at a much higher rate than conventional crops. That's a lot of diesel fuel burned for no return.
> But organic options may live up to their billing of lowering exposure to pesticide residue and antibiotic-resistant bacteria
That is the entire point of buying organic. I dont know anyone (sampling bias) that thinks organic has anything to do with nutrient content. That's what non-gmo is for*
[+] [-] arn|13 years ago|reply
I can't say I ever thought that organic food would have higher levels of vitamins than their non organic counterpart. And, of course, article says they have similar levels of specific vitamins.
Organic does apparently have less pesticides (also per article) -- which is what I thought was one of the major motivations to go organic, not "more vitamins"
[+] [-] Variance|13 years ago|reply
In terms of pesticides, though, years of scientific study have been used to clear the pesticides used on our foods. People who think that pesticides are somehow unhealthy are also not scientifically justified. Organics are also "no healthier" than non-organics in terms of pesticides as well, since pesticides are found to have no health impact.
[+] [-] msutherl|13 years ago|reply
Second, it's dubious whether the nutrient theory of nutrition completely describes our body's relationship with food. Many people eat organic food because it eliminates the unknowns. We know that industrial farming has a negative effect on food quality, but the negative effect could be even larger than we are capable of measuring, so better to play it safe.
This echoes Europe's policy on GMOs, which is that if there is any risk of catastrophe, that risk is not worth taking. There is a name for this sort of policy, but I've forgotten the term and can't seem to find it.
Another reason that I personally avoid industrial agriculture is because it is fundamentally unsustainable: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/28/a-banker-bet.... I get all of my vegetables from a local farm mainly for this reason and another that comes from taking a sort of Marxist perspective on the issue. Industrial farming creates a lot of repetitive, unfulfilling jobs. I'd rather support people that live with and love their land, who get to engage with the challenge of optimizing all of the energy and nutrient flows in their farm. Running a farm can actually be a very interesting design/engineering problem.
[+] [-] toomuchcoffee|13 years ago|reply
"Organic produce and meat typically isn't any better for you than conventional varieties when it comes to vitamin and nutrient content, according to a new review of the evidence.
"But organic options may live up to their billing of lowering exposure to pesticide residue and antibiotic-resistant bacteria, researchers from Stanford University and the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System found."
Unfortunately they didn't bother to get the short URL to the original article right, so we can't go and find out what the authors of the original article were actually saying about the matter.
[+] [-] forgottenpaswrd|13 years ago|reply
I call organic not only to those that are natural but also to food that I could trace, e.g eggs that start with 0 or 1 in Europe had expiration rate witch is a fixed date from the egg laying. The fruit from my friends house is picked the same day I visit them.
As a general rule the levels of antioxidants and vitamins in food decay exponentially with time and temperature. Some fruit is stored in cold and anaerobic rooms for months. It looks like fruit but had degraded. Fortunately it is easy to taste the difference(It taste like nothing).
Antibiotics and hormones in meat certainly affect humans for the bad. In USA(money is everything there) and some parts of Europe is totally out of control. I have friends that are doctors and had problems as microbes develop resistance to antibiotics, and they have to use much more aggressive ways to fight them. People die because the treatment is not as effective as it was in the past.
"Organic milk and chicken may also contain more omega-3 fatty acids" That is exactly what we want. Food has a tremendous unbalance between omega3 and omega6 because omega6 is so cheap to industrial manufacture so we have to consume natural fish(not farmed) or wild animals(like wild boar, deer or grass eating cow) to compensate.
I had seem tremendous abuses of synthetic pesticides in Spain, where I worked installing greenhouses. It too easy for some people to add too much to be sure they don't lose money. Some people continue using DDTs and other forbidden chemicals because it is effective.
Nothing to see here, just another PR article from the food industry to fool consumers.
[+] [-] donaldc|13 years ago|reply
Many of the studies didn't specify their standards for what constituted "organic" food..
I'd say this is a pretty serious limitation to both the studies in question, and, as a result, to this meta-study.
[+] [-] erikpukinskis|13 years ago|reply
What I think is still true (although I have no data to back it up) is that farmers who actually conscientiously maintain their soil, in a way that maintains both the fungal colonies and the nutrient density, through natural means... that is, using proper crop rotation, nitrogen fixing cover crops, and manure addatives, but no chemical additives (which are allowed under organic farming, so long as they are "organic" chemicals).... those foods are more nutritive.
Organic/non-organic, like all certifications, doesn't measure exactly what you'd like it to. In the end, sustainable, healthy farming is a very complex thing, and the details matter. If you want to get really high quality produce, you really do have to educate yourself and talk to the people producing your food. There's no silver bullet.
[+] [-] pella|13 years ago|reply
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22936597
"... In addition, organic broccoli maintained higher concentrations of bioactive compounds (ascorbic acid and phenolics) and antioxidant potential during storage than conventional broccoli, with higher potential health beneficial effects."
[+] [-] davidedicillo|13 years ago|reply
The fact that they have lower amounts of pesticides, chemicals and antibiotic-resistant bacteria makes organic food healthier (as in doesn't make your health worst).
[+] [-] VMG|13 years ago|reply
See the 2011 E. Coli outbreak in Germany that killed 50 people, caused by organic sprout: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Germany_E._coli_O104:H4_ou...
[+] [-] Aloisius|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jordanthoms|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eskilianno|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mast|13 years ago|reply
Food company's like to use this to their advantage, and the terms have lost a lot of their meaning unless you know how the food is produced. I think this is a key point. An organic farm using improperly composted manure for fertilizer or contaminated water for irrigation may end up poisoning people with e-coli. On the other hand, grass fed, free range chickens produce the best eggs I've ever tasted. If the farmer happened to also give the chickens antibiotics, I don't know if that's really a bad thing.
The other big issue of course is cost. Food labeled organic is much more expensive. Many people just cannot justify the extra cost. When our son was small, we looked at giving him organic milk versus regular milk (http://foodconstrued.com/2010/09/got-milk/). We started with organic but eventually switched to regular.
[+] [-] droithomme|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hadron|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bryanlarsen|13 years ago|reply
And I really did mean to say 0 above -- organic cereal crops fail at a much higher rate than conventional crops. That's a lot of diesel fuel burned for no return.
[+] [-] AndrewKemendo|13 years ago|reply
That is the entire point of buying organic. I dont know anyone (sampling bias) that thinks organic has anything to do with nutrient content. That's what non-gmo is for*
* in some cases
[+] [-] eyko|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anuraj|13 years ago|reply