I found this article at TimesOnline the other day. I found it interesting so I copied the entire thing. What do you think about this?
Organic food gives no health benefits to consumers, according to research for the Food Standards Agency published today.
Shoppers pay more for organic fruit, vegetables, chicken, beef and milk but the food gives no nutritional enhancement to people’s diet.
The watchdog stopped short of advising consumers that buying organic produce was a waste of money but its message was clear: choosing to eat organic food will make no important difference to a person’s overall health. Eating a healthy balanced diet is the only important thing, the report concluded.
The research — the first and biggest study undertaken of scientific papers published in the past 50 years on the health and diet benefits of organic food — will come as a blow to the organic food industry, which is now worth £2.1 billion a year in Britain..
Expert View
Guy Watson
Opening quote If we are going to change the lamentable way most people eat it will have to be by making it fun Closing quote
Guy Watson
* More
* Post a comment
Cabbages and kings: Britain’s 12 best organic producers
Food specialists pick the purest, greenest and tastiest dozen organic food and drink products
* Britain’s best sorbet and ice cream
* Root manoeuvre
* Top 10 heritage pubs in London
Related Links
* Claims for organic food can harm your health
* Farmer – organic is still good for you
* Chocolate bars targeted in fight against fat
Multimedia
* VOTE: is organic food a waste of money?
* Read the report in full
The findings, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, also threatens to put the FSA on a collision course with organic champions such as the Soil Association.
The £120,000 year-long study by a team from the London School for Hygiene and Tropical health was headed by Dr Alan Dangour, a public health nutritionist. His team identified some differences between organic and conventionally produced food but concluded that they were not sufficiently important to make any difference to a person’s health or give nutritional benefit.
Dr Dangour said: “There is more phosphorus in organic food. Phosphorus is an important mineral but it is available in everything we eat and is not important for public health. Acidity is also higher in organic produce but acidity is about taste and sensory perception and makes no difference at all for health.
“A small number of differences in nutrient content were found to exist between organically and conventionally produced crops and livestock but these are unlikely to be of any public health relevance.
“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.”
He made clear, however, that he had not looked at pesticide and herbicide residues in food produced by organic and conventional farming methods. The study also did not seek to compare the taste of the products.
The FSA insisted that it was neither pro nor anti-organic food and it recognised that there were many other reasons why people chose to eat organic — such as concern for the environment and wildlife, higher animal welfare standards and stricter rules on use of antibiotic medicines in animals and pesticides on crops.
Gill Fine, the agency’s director of consumer choice and dietary health, said: “Ensuring people have accurate information is absolutely essential in allowing us all to make informed choices about the food we eat.
“This study does not mean that people should not eat organic food. What it shows is that there is little, if any, nutritional difference between organic and conventionally-produced food and that there is no evidence of additional health benefits from eating organic food.”
Peter Melchett, policy director at the Soil Association, admitted that he was disappointed by the conclusions but said that he was confident that consumers would make their own minds up.
“The FSA has always sated there was no scientific evidence to show organic food was better for health than conventional food. But it has not stopped the growth of the market. Some 8 per cent of shoppers are regular users of organic food and they do so for a variety of reasons. As far as FSA advice is concerned people tend to use their own common sense.”
He was adamant that five-year research work funded by the European Commission and due to be published next year would show that organic food was beneficial to health.
He also challenged the conclusion by the researchers that the nutritional differences found in organic and conventional foods were not important.
“Consumers will decide for themselves,” he said.
The premise of the study is to evaluate the nutritional content of the organic versus conventional food. It is not surprising that the results show little difference in this dimension which assesses what is in the two groups. What is more imprortant is what is *not* in the organic group as well as the way in which it is produced. Organic food is often grown outside of the Western notion of monoculture, which is more stressful on the environment than a more Eastern method of producing many types of food products on the same land. The second approach typically depends on more environmentally friendly fertilizers and pest management, both of which should reduce the risk of resource contamination and consumption of toxins by humans and other animals.
So, the question of which is better for you, organic or conventional food, is larger than the narrow scope of this study.
Hi Natasha,
"He made clear, however, that he had not looked at pesticide and herbicide residues in food produced by organic and conventional farming methods. The study also did not seek to compare the taste of the products."
I don’t see the point in making a year long study that compares organic food to industrial food if you don’t talk about pesticides… a stupid way of spending 120,000 squids.
Organic foods have been shown to be the biggest waste of money there is. There is no health benefits at all for organic foods. People have even taken random taste test and have shown that the normal foods taste better then the organic foods. Some people say that organic foods do not use all the same pesticides and fertilizers as normal food but they use exactly the same stuff. Actually the use of manure as a fertilizer is more harmful since it can contain such parasites as E. Coli and the parasite that causes mad cow disease. Anyone who doesnt agree with this needs to watch Penn and teller’s Bullshit episode on organic foods.
Also it takes more land to grow organic foods. If every acre of land avilable for crops was used to grow organic foods, at the most it could only feed up to 4 billion people, meaning that over 3 billion people in the world with the current world population estimates would starve. Who wants to be the 3 billion starving people??
To expand on what David said. All the cases of people getting sick the past couple of years has been directly linked to "organic" food. I have never heard of people getting sick off of "non-organic" food. I grew up on a farm and let me tell you if they tried to be 100% organic they wouldn’t even get 15% produce out of the field. How many people would starve then? I personally perfer irradiated food that way it is almost completly germ and bacteria free. It all comes down to how you want to live your life, if you are happy buying the expensive "organic" food then keep doing it. Just don’t try to force people to live your lifestyle.
Firstly what Dr Dangour says is fundamentally incorrect acidity does have an effect on health, but the acidity comes mainly from the soil – balance can normally be found by eating a mix of acid and alkaline foods.
Organic is subject to standards and unfortunately some of the standards & requirements in the US are against the concept of natural food.
Food does not have to be organic to be good or to be grown "successfully" without artificial fertiliser, pesticides etc. There are some really good studies that show good sustainable farming methods can produce more than enough food for the world without conventional methods of excess chemical use.
The taste issue is a question of conventional foods being overgrown due to fertiliser versus natural tasting foods with little or no fertiliser which naturally are less sweet or salty etc.
Nutrients come mainly from really well cared for soil – they don’t just appear in the foods also they are not the only value in natural or organic foods, large enzyme counts as well as the energy of the plant are of huge benefit.
These scientific studies are generally very narrow in their focus – they are looking for a result so their framework is kept narrow to produce a high chance of the required result. Its PR basically due to huge money and power of Agribusiness.
Organic can be very good, but growing in good soil in your back garden is always infinitely better – and it reduces your dependency on mass produced, transported foods.
Agreed tigger, right on target you are in your last sentences. Since I live in The Netherlands, which is a crowded and packed little country… the part where I live the air is pretty poluted as they say. Since I believe conventional fruits and vegetables you buy now are dramaticly degraded in nutrition, there is a need to take a good supplement to beef up your immune system. As far as I know now the best one to take is Jús, which is recently available too here. And the strength you gain is amazing, not only to me, but my mother (70) too. It clearly shows you regain for being sick in a few days, which before took weeks to recover. This is what food and fruit can do for you, and it is pretty logical!
Watch the documentairy ‘Food Matters’ I can advise also, very interesting!
ParseError thrown
syntax error, unexpected '}', expecting elseif (T_ELSEIF) or else (T_ELSE) or endif (T_ENDIF)