Study Finds Organic Foods Not More Nutritous
If you were to ask the a random person on the streets, “Are organically grown foods more nutritious than conventionally grown ones?”, what would you expect the answer to be? I would imagine the majority of people would say that organic foods are in fact more nutritious. A recent study found quite the contrary, organically grown foods are not more nutritious over foods that were conventionally grown. The study was done by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine to determine the exact question I proposed.
This study that was funded by the U.K Food Standards Agency, was conducted on foods grown over the last 50 years. It concluded that produce grown organically and conventionally have comparable contents of many major vitamins and minerals include nitrogen, vitamin c, magnesium, potassium and more. In meats, there was no difference in any nutritional content. This is another blow for organic products because of the bad press already receive in America for allowing non-organic ingredients to be used in something labeled organic.
Many US food organizations think that the studies our outdated and newer studies show that there is in fact a difference between the two. Regardless of the nutritional content, I think that many people buy organic foods because they were not treated with pesticides or dangerous chemicals like conventionally grown foods usually are. It gives people a feeling that they are putting foods into their body that they know are safe to eat.
I decided to do a quick poll to determine how you feel about this study.
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Comments
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August 7th, 2009Trackback from : Follow the debate on the FSA organic report | PI Blog
I am still going to buy organic…weither its in my head or not, I just feel better when I purchase organic.
LOL no one has said yes yet…interesting
There is no guarantee that the food we consume is safe for us.. Atleast when it is organic..we can be assure its healthy… I won’t stop buying organic produce unless and until there is a major difference found in the nutritional content.
What a shocking revelation. But I am still tempted to go organic!!
I voted no because, for me… it’s not about the nutritional factor, As one example….I buy organic meat because I don’t want any hormones in the meat.
Till then,
Jean
It’s not that they are more nutritious…It is the fact that they do not have a artificial junk or have had anything done to them to change there original state.
Like Jean, I buy organic because it doesn’t have a load of chemicals in it and despite the nutrition being the same I believe it is better for your body.
In my opinion, the report is a red herring. It doesn’t say what protocols were used (it’s a summary of other research), but if they narrowly defined it and controlled for variables, it would look like this: take the same variety of vegetable and grow it with and without artificial pesticides and fertilizers.
The result is entirely predictable: no significant difference in nutritional content by weight. It’s also irrelevant. The legitimate, and sufficient, reasons for preferring organic produce concern environmental responsibility and toxic residues, not nutrition. Of course, some organic producers have claimed more benefit than they had; that’s business SOP and I’m sure there’s much more of it coming from food factories.
I don’t understand why an organic apple is almost twice the price of a regular apple. I would figure that without the use of expensive pesticides and/or hormones added to these natural foods, the price savings would be forwarded to the customer.
Well I think I agree with this article, you probably DO get the same amount of vitamins weather organic or not. The real difference with organic is you don’t get all the chemicals along with with nutrition, so I will continue to by organic produce.
Of course, my consumption of organic foods is because of what is NOT in them. But the important point is that this reductionist attitude is deeply misleading. Michael Pollan called it ‘nutritionism’. Plus, I have some doubts about the study itself: there are SO MANY variables in nutrient content, depending on things like variety, time of harvest, condition of the field, weather, post-harvest handling … and on and on. You can probably conduct a study to get whatever results you want. Better to go back to what Grandma said: if the colour and flavour are good, it’s likely good for you.