First off, this study was only looking at nutritional content. It wasn't trying to determine whether or not organic food is "healthier," merely whether or not you'll get better vitamin content etc. from organic food. One of the major reasons that some people consider organic food to be healthier is that it is pesticide-free, which is not something that this study addresses.
Second, contrary to what many news agencies are inaccurately reporting, this study did not find that there was no nutritional difference. It concluded that there wasn't sufficient evidence one way or the other.
From the Reuter's article:
Reuter's said:
A systematic review of 162 scientific papers published in the scientific literature over the last 50 years, however, found there was no significant difference.
"A small number of differences in nutrient content were found to exist between organically and conventionally produced foodstuffs, but these are unlikely to be of any public health relevance," said Alan Dangour, one of the report's authors.
I don't know what ``many news agencies'' are reporting, but the language in the Reuter's article is pretty clear.
Here's a clue for you: never believe any mainstream news source about what a scientific study says, because reporters are absolute shit at reporting on the results of scientific studies. Look up the actual study and read it yourself if you're interested. At best, mainstream news articles can be useful for alerting you to the fact that a potentially interesting article has been published on a particular topic.
Thank you for the advice. I listened to the scientist talking this morning on the BBC, and I think he can speak for himself...which I THOUGHT I made clear in the original post.
But of course now we can look forward to years and years of people trying to use these news stories as "proof" that organic food isn't healthier, when in fact they're only proof that reporters don't bother to actually read studies before they write articles about them.
So now we're arguing about semantics. What does ``healthier'' mean? If you had a diet high in most vitamins and minerals that people are generally regarded to need to live, and I had a diet lower in those chemicals, would you be ``healthier'' than me?
In an effort to see what you're talking about, I did a bit of research (don't tell my boss I'm not doing physics) about pesticides in food.
First, do organic foods have any less pesticides in them than commercially produced foods? Let's do a quick google search:
http://www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/organic.html
The revised rules went into effect on October 21, 2002. The latest USDA definition states:
Organic food is produced by farmers who emphasize the use of renewable resources and the conservation of soil and water to enhance environmental quality for future generations. Organic meat, poultry, eggs, and dairy products come from animals that are given no antibiotics or growth hormones. Organic food is produced without using most conventional pesticides; petroleum-based fertilizers or sewage sludge-based fertilizers; bio-engineering; or ionizing radiation. Before a product can be labeled "organic," a Government-approved certifier inspects the farm where the food is grown to make sure the farmer is following all the rules necessary to meet USDA organic standards. Companies that handle or process organic food before it gets to your local supermarket or restaurant must be certified, too [20].
Emphasis mine. Organic food is produced without using most conventional pesticides. The caveat ``most'' really kills the pesticide argument. That, and actual tests about levels of pesticides in organic foods:
Frequency of Positive Samples: All three data sets showed striking, highly statistically significant differences between market categories in the percent of samples that had at least one pesticide residue. Conventionally grown samples consistently had residues far more often than other categories. Overall, across 8 fruits and 12 vegetable crops, 73 percent of USDA's conventionally grown samples had residues. For five crops (apples, peaches, pears, strawberries and celery) more than 90 percent of samples had residues. Cal DPR (using less sensitive analytical methods) found residues in 31 percent, and CU found residues in 79 percent, of their conventionally grown samples. Organically grown samples consistently had far smaller percentages with residues: 23, 6.5 and 27 percent in the USDA, DPR and CU data, respectively. In the two data sets that included samples of the third category, residues were found in 47 percent of the USDA IPM/NDR samples and 51 percent of the CU IPM/NDR samples.
Clearly, this
research shows that organic food is definitely NOT pesticide free (as you claimed).
Ok ok ok I know what you're saying.
Those bloody Americans can't do anything right.
An annual monitoring report found traces of pesticides in organic food products for the first time, challenging public perceptions that organic products are free of synthetic plant protection products.
A novelty in this year's report was that, for the first time, countries also provided Europe-wide data on pesticides in organic food.
...
While conventionally grown cereal, fruit and vegetables tend to exceed pesticide limits more frequently than organic food, the very presence of pesticide residue in the latter could raise eyebrows as these products are usually marketed as pesticide-free.
"It is true that pesticide residues were found on those samples too," said Ian Palombi, a communications officer at EFSA. However, he added that samples of organic fruit and vegetables had a generally lower rate of MRL surpluses (1.24% of all organic samples) in comparison to conventionally grown cereals, fruit and vegetables (3.99% of samples analysed).
So 1% of organic food not only CONTAINS pesticides, but the levels exceed the government mandated maximum in Europe. (Note that this article is dated July 10, 2009.)
We've (I've) established that organic foods (broadly defined) are not pesticide free,
en masse. Now, how terrible are these pesticides? Let's take one: chlorpyrifos. (I actually had a bit of trouble finding the name of even one common agricultural pesticide.) Nevertheless, the toxicology report is
here. Looks like pretty bad stuff. I will note that:
Toxicology Report said:
After a single oral dose, the half-life of chlorpyrifos in the blood appears to be about 1 day [41].
So if you do happen to have a bit of it, it gets out of your system pretty quickly. After a week, you're left with something like 0.8% of what you started with.
Ok, so how much chlorpyrifos actually exists in the food that you eat? The USDA sets a limit of around 0.05 mg/kg of chlorpyrifos, depending on the food (
[source]). (I used corn.)
Then we can check: what is the LD-50 for ingesting this drug? That is, suppose we give 100 rats a dose of this drug. At what dose do 50% of them die? A dose of 100 mg per kg of body weight is lethal, according to the toxicology report above.
Next, are there any chances that this is a carcinogen? Again:
# Carcinogenic effects: There is no evidence that chlorpyrifos is carcinogenic. There was no increase in the incidence of tumors when rats were fed 10 mg/kg/day for 104 weeks, nor when mice were fed 2.25 mg/kg/day for 105 weeks [43].
So after feeding rats 45 times the current legal limit of chlorpyrifos for two years straight, they had no higher rates of cancer than other control rats.
Anyway, you will (of course) make your own conclusions from this, or wave your hands and change the subject. I will grant that pesticides do pose a health risk. That's why their use is regulated, and monitored. And that's why you wash the food that you get from the store, as most of these pesticides are water soluble.
If you feel better buying your tomatoes from a farmer rather than a grocer, great. If you think that bringing locally grown produce to market requires less resources, great. But, in the example above, there aren't any indications that organic produce is any healthier, or less harmful to your health than produce grown on a big, ugly, evil commercial farm.
Just as you have to deal with naughty bugaboos like myself trying to convince people that the claim ``organic food is better for you'' is bullshit, I'll have to deal with goofy liberals (ostensibly they're liberals) as yourself blatantly ignoring the science.
Evolution's just a theory, right?
