Jeez, how many of these are there going to be? Several months ago, recall, we had a large study under the aegis of Stanford University, that told us in no uncertain terms that organic food wasn’t any better for us than the ordinary industrial agriculture garbage that litters the aisles of American supermarkets. Well, to be more precise, the study claimed there was no additional nutritional benefit from organic food. This, as is now pretty clear, is a worthless claim.
Lo and behold, here’s another one! This one comes to us courtesy of a group of pediatricians—who also assure us that there is no nutritional difference between organic foods and the usual crap. In fact, this comes with the imprimatur of the American Academy of Pediatricians, so you know you won’t be able to argue with it—these people are doctors. And of course it got featured prominently in an NBC news segment—just like the Stanford study. To be fair, the AAP study looks a bit more balanced than the Stanford study—it does highlight the fact that organic foods don’t have pesticides and insecticides. Well, that’s something. And the NBC story itself, as is so often the case, isn’t actually very good—it goes for the headline excitement, rather than plain old reporting.
Again, what they did was review studies. How come no one can every undertake their own study any more? It’s all reviewing other people’s studies. Of course, this lets you avoid dealing with the issue of bothering to find out who actually funded those other studies. Actually, who funded the AAP study? I can’t tell. The Stanford study was funded by—indirectly—the agribusiness industry—Cargill provide funding to the foundation that sponsored the study. Quelle surpise! Of course, we know that academics would never let their integrity be compromised by external funding.
OK, let’s cut to the chase here. There are numerous reasons to eat organic foods that have nothing to do with nutrition. I’m perfectly prepared to believe that the nutritional differences of some organic carrots grown on some local farm aren’t all that different from what comes by the railcar load from California or wherever carrots come from. That’s not the point anyway. It’s the nutritional differences in overall diet that matter—and I’ll bet people who eat organic food tend to not eat the load of crapola that passes for “diet” for many Americans, or many Britons, for that matter. Moreover, there’s the chemicals issue, which the AAP points out is a real issue—this got by-passed entirely in the Stanford study—but of course, they weren’t looking for anything like that. Frankly, when someone tells me that there’s no evidence that pesticide levels in industrial agrigarbage will have long-term health effects, that’s going to end the conversation right there. Finally, there’s the fact that often—although not always, certainly—organic means local, or at least regional. And supporting local agriculture, while it gets more difficult every year, is one of the most worthwhile endeavors citizens can pursue these days.
The estimable food writer of the New York Times, Mark Bittman, went to town a few weeks ago on the Stanford study, trashing it magnificently. As Bittman points out, the Stanford study defines “nutritious” pretty narrowly—purely in terms of containing more vitamins. This not only misses the point, it seems designed to obscure it. Bittman also points out that the study has some embarrassing limitations—or outright errors, depending on your point of view:
Yet even within its narrow framework it appears the Stanford study was incorrect. Last year Kirsten Brandt, a researcher from Newcastle University, published a similar analysis of existing studies and wound up with the opposite result, concluding that organic foods are actually more nutritious. In combing through the Stanford study she’s not only noticed a critical error in properly identifying a class of nutrients, a spelling error indicative of biochemical incompetence (or at least an egregious oversight) that skewed one important result, but also that the researchers curiously excluded evaluating many nutrients that she found to be considerably higher in organic foods.
There’s more, of course—how can there not be? Bittman call it “junk science,” and he seems to be correct. Bittman has some other choice comments:
Like too many studies, the Stanford study dangerously isolates a finding from its larger context. It significantly plays down the disparity in pesticides (read Tom Philpott on this) and neglects to mention that 10,000 to 20,000 United States agricultural workers get a pesticide-poisoning diagnosis each year. And while the study concedes that “the risk for isolating bacteria resistant to three or more antibiotics was 33 percent higher among conventional chicken and pork than organic alternatives,” it apparently didn’t seek to explore how consuming antibiotic-resistant bacteria might be considered “non-nutritious.” Finally (I think) it turns out that Cargill (the largest privately held company in the United States) provides major financing for Freeman Spogli, and that’s inspired a petition to retract the findings.
None of this makes me feel better at all about the food establishment in the United States. This follows on a superb investigation by Bloomberg (which is showing signs of turning into a really interesting and important news organization in its own right) on the complete failure of the food inspection system in the United States over the past several decades as the system essentially has been privatized. Why should 3000 Americans die annually from contaminated food? I don’t know either. I bet it’s not going to improve under President Romney.
When I explain to people why I choose to live in Britain, I usually say, “We like the weather and the food.” This usually stops conversation, but, in London at least, we don’t get the temperature or humidity extremes that we used to get in New York or Boston. And the food—my butcher can tell me which farm my meat is coming from this week. We’ve been to the farm that our vegetables come from. We don’t have to worry about antibiotics in our meat even on those occasions we get some from Marks & Spencer or Waitrose. And it tastes good—the real reason to eat organic—or at least local. And we can do that here. Mrs W is of the view that she didn’t really know what veal was supposed to taste like until we moved here, and I’m inclined to agree. Plus, given the depressing state of farming even here, there are still lots of small farms getting by providing us city folk with the fruits and vegetables and meats of their labors at markets all over London—or any other city or town you might hit on market day. A return to more localism entails a move to more local food production–which is exactly what major agribusiness firms don’t want. So the nutritional differences between organic and non-organic are the least of the issues here. As Bittman says, it’s a distraction. Hey, what’s for dinner?
ht: Chris in Paris
The stamps above are a series from Sweden, which takes organic farming seriously.
Categories: Food/Drink, Health
Progressive Culture | Scholars & Rogues 
All of these studies and opinions generally lead down a rabbit hole, because they’re comparing things that are very difficult to compare and come with variables and assumptions that screw up drawing valid assumptions.
First, plants can only uptake nutrients in their elemental form. Chemical fertilizers are simply a short cut through what normally requires very healthy soil to break the long molecules of cow shit down into constituent pieces. You can have an organic farm/garden that produces weak, nutritionally void produce. If you don’t have the proper soil biota, all the organic matter containing large quantities of essential nutrients doesn’t get to the plant. The problem with industrial/chemical agriculture is what became an over-reliance on the chemical fertilizers that plants can take up readily. It is very possible to have a non-organic farm/garden with healthy soil; in fact, this kind of farm/garden will drastically reduce the level of chemical fertilizer input and maximize its potential.
Second, the word organic should be discarded into the compost bin of history. You can buy organic fertilizer on a wide spectrum, from kelp extract to complete, balanced fertilizers, to a truck load of aged horse shit. The complete fertilizers are almost exclusively made from the waste products of animal production, which are then heavily processed using fossil fuels to make them immediately available to plants. I’m not so sure that there’s much difference between squeezing N out of the shit stew of a manure pond and squeezing it out of the atmosphere using the Haber-Bosch process.
People think that organic means pesticide free. It doesn’t. There is a very long list of organic pesticides, and organic growers use them. Do we know if ingesting large quantities of Neem oil, Potassium salts of fatty acids, and pyrethrum is good for us? (In the US, the OMRI list allows for some non-organic solutions when organic solutions are unsuccessful … so there’s that.)
Third, comparing the two types of produce is difficult. What kind of conventional farm did it come from is an important question. The kind where the soil is just an inert media for holding the plant up, or one that pays attention to soil health? Even in the former, it is possible to supply all the major, minor, and micro nutrients via water soluble, chemical fertilizers … not that it’s generally done. That’s the point where organic (a good organic farm/garden) is likely to win the battel. another consideration is plant varieties. The big conventional farms are likely to grow hybrids which have been bred for various things but generally not nutrition or flavor, whereas organic (unless its the new wave of industrial organic) is more likely to grow older varieties or hybrids bred for less concerns about look and keep. But the big one here is that if you’re comparing organic to conventional by buying something from the farmers’ market and buying something from the grocery store, it’s no contest. One has its full complement of nutrition because it was vine ripened and the other was picked green and “ripened” in transport. Plants don’t ripen fruit for our benefit, the seeds contain all the nutrients necessary to get a plant to “adulthood” and the ability to feed itself; the rotting fruit around it is like a little fertilizer bomb. [I’m setting side plants using animals to do their bidding by evolving nutritious fruit to get the animals to eat it and shit out the seeds.] Buy the produce from a conventional farm that’s local and you’re likely to see no, to very slight difference in the end product’s nutritional makeup.
Don’t get me wrong. I strongly support eating local, fresh food. It is much better for you in a great many ways. It’s better for your community. It’s better for the environment. But, you’d be better off eating local food from a farmer that uses some conventional means than buying the organic shit now populating grocery stores. Organic has become ideological, and organic consumers will, it appears, gladly foresake the ability of their precious local farmers to actually make a living to maintain their ideological purity. About to lose all your vine crops to some infestation that your overapplication of organic pesticides won’t kill? Too bad. The farmer’s mortgage payment isn’t the concern of the consumer, is it? Realize that a few pounds of urea properly timed will not destroy your soil biota and will significantly increase your yield? Too bad, you’ve crossed a line that the ideologically pure consumer has drawn in the sand, even if they have zero understanding of how plants and soil work. They’re organic!
End rant of former professional horticulturist, mostly organic gardener, close friend of organic farmers who populates his freezer with meat by participating in the slaughter/dressing of animals for food. Yes, i’ve been off the chicken and pork from a grocery store or even a butcher grid for years now, mostly off the beef grid too. Grow and can, extend my seasons, etc.
yeah, I take your point about soil. Personally, I’m pretty indifferent to the difference between organic and local–they’re usually pretty close here. I think there I’d be more mindful of it, but probably not by much. Where we used to live (and my daughter still lives) in Massachusetts there’s a pretty thriving community garden initiative, and it’s fine. And the local food market–not the supermarket–does get local foods, especially in the fall, when they often have local corn. Still, it’s not like it is here. Here they have animals, everywhere. That’s the thing that I notice when I’m driving around New England–yes, there are farms, but they are rarely animals. So where manure gets used here, you get the replacement there. It makes a difference. So most of what you get at local markets comes from farms with animals. What a concept. But I agree,buying something called organic in a supermarket is not the way to go–it probably isn’t really, and you’re not really helping small farmers.
My rant wasn’t directed at you, Wuf. I know that we’re in agreement on the issue.
The lack of animals severely hurts the small farms of America, more so the new age small farmers who may choose not to keep livestock for personal or moral reasons. One of the problems here is the rules for slaughtering/dressing/selling meat. It’s almost impossible to do it legally and economically for a small farmer.
There’s really no way to keep a small, organic farm without livestock in my opinion … or at least it’s the best way. For example, the field rotation at my friends’ farm is an acre to garden, an acre to green cover, an acre to chickens, and an acre to pigs. The pigs follow the garden, the green follows the pigs, the chickens follow the green cover, and the garden follows the chickens. Pig numbers keep growing, but chickens have reached their carrying capacity at about 1300/year plus some turkeys. It appears that pigs will eventually be at 20-30. A lot of produce comes out of an acre. So we’re talking a lot of food from a relatively small space with no inputs beyond water and some animal feed.
They’re not certified organic, because that requires something like $10K and just isn’t worth it. But i’d say they’re Wendell Barry approved, and when i included a long Barry quote in the marriage ceremony i performed for them this summer, it was very well-received. We Americans want the the status of labels and are too often unconcerned with the underlying ideals that give those labels status.
So long as your friend has a reliable network that assures distribution, the organic label is probably unnecessary. But it’s getting to the point where it’s becoming another food fad, which is why organizations like Cargill are hoping they can debunk it into going away. But as energy costs keep rising, as they will once the true costs of production get factored in to shale gas, transportation costs are going to increase and become a lot more important, and that will encourage more local demand and production. That’s my theory, anyway. For the time being, I’m going to stay in a country where meat tastes like meat.
pesticides(poisons) are harmful to health .currently government of Punjab (India) running a train to carry cancer patients to city hospital this caused due to use of pesticides.And Endosulfan (a pesticide which poured over a farm for 15 years by govt in kerala,India) caused severe damage to children(like un developed organs) today the mothers waiting for their children to die.
If any one want the reports for the above go to this website http://www.indiaforsafefood.in/docsbooklet
Did You Know?
1)Today around 35 lakh acres of land is cultivated and managed in Andhra Pradesh (India) by farmers without the use of pesticides.
2)Studies show that less than 0.1% of pesticides for pest control fall on target insects. Rest dissipates into the atmosphere, contaminating our resources.
3)Nearly 40% of pesticides registered in India belong to Class I and Class II WHO categories of acute toxicity.
4)India has at least 67 pesticides in use which have been banned elsewhere, as per Government’s information shared in the Parliament.
5)In Andhra Pradesh (India) , 1000s of farmers have adopted Non Pesticidal Management of crops through a government programme called Community Managed Sustainable Agriculture.
6)Farming can indeed be done profitably without synthetic pesticides & research proves this; experience on millions of acres shows this.
7)Pesticides like Mancozeb and Captan, classified as Probable Human Carcinogen (US EPA) continue in India.
8)We are what we eat.
9)PESTICIDES are poisonous and 51 percent of the total food products in india are contaminated with the high percentage of pesticides than the Maximum Residue Limit (MRL) claimed, Dr G V Ramanjaneyulu Scientist of Center for Sustainable Agriculture Hyderabad
10)Nearly 99-9% of pesticides used never reach their target organisms – they end up in our air, soil, water, food etc.
11)Many banned and restricted pesticides in India routinely appear in residue testing done by government and independent agencies.