Benefits of Organic Food: What Big Farmers Want Secret
October 7th, 2009 Posted in Green Living & News
Organic food has been big in the market for over a decade, but the USDA won’t openly confirm the health benefits of organic food.
For years, conventional farmers have claimed that their food is just as healthy as organic food, and the government won’t step in to validate either side, but several researchers have.
As a scientific benchmark, researchers used three growing methods for the experiment: organic, sustainable (fertilizers, but no pesticides), and conventional (fertilizers and pesticides).
Here’s what they found:
- Organic and sustainable food have a higher concentration of polyphen-olics, an antioxidant that may help prevent cancer and heart disease.
- Antioxidants are produced by the plants as a natural way to fight of pests. With insecticides on the plants, crops won’t produce antioxidants.
- Sustainable plants had more antioxidants in them than the purely organic, suggesting a balance should be found.
Researchers intend to widen the scope of the tests beyond the crops used (corn, strawberries, and blackberries) to include tomatoes, peppers, and broccoli among others.
In a separate study, researchers used children’s urine tests to study the amount of chemicals in their system. Subjects were chosen as they left grocery stores (i.e. a supermarket with conventional foods and a largely organic market) with their parents.
- Parents logged their child’s eating habits based on food labels for three days before the urine samples were taken.
- Children who have eaten conventionally grown foods show higher signs of organophosphate (OP) pesticides. OP pesticides have been shown to cause changes to personality and permanent changes in brain chemistry to test animals in their development phases even in low doses.
- Some levels of OP pesticides, chosen for the study because of their widespread use on foods children commonly eat, were found to exceed EPA acceptable thresholds for no likelihood of “acceptable” effects.
Not everyone believes this research. The Food Standards Agency has repeatedly stated that conventional food is just as healthy as organic. In a review of other research, the FSA has said that there is no nutritional advantage to eating organic foods.
Critics suggest that the report ignores both the research above and the use of pesticides. FSA suggests scrapping the suggestion to peel foods for children, where sprayed pesticides would likely accumulate.
Organic sales in the United States are expected to hit over $32 billion in 2009, and many people keep their own gardens. If you grow your own herbs, you may be better off than buying conventionally grown food, but the benefit may not be as great as you think.
