Just wondering what views there are on organic food?
Healthier or a marketing ploy?
Better taste or no difference?
I have a view but I thought I would stay neutral and see what everyone else thought.
mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur
The greatest derangement of the mind is to believe in something because one wishes it to be so
Louis Pasteur
De omnibus dubitandum
In general, organic food is healthier, but not actually because it's organic. One of the biggest differences is simply the varieties grown. Inorganic produce tends to be varieties that look good and can survive a long time in transport, but don't necessarily taste as nice, while organic produce tends to be better tasting, but not as easy to transport, and is often grown more locally rather than being carried around the world. This has nothing to do with the farming technique at all, but the two factors are usually combined.
As for this quote from Skeptoid:
This is simply not true. If you give any living thing different conditions, it's chemical makeup will be different. You can change the colour of some flowers simply by growing them in soil with too much or too little of certain minerals. The famous New England autumn trees are thought to be mainly due to the soil and not the trees themselves, since the same trees grown elsewhere look far less spetacular.When you take the exact same strain of a plant and grow it in two different ways, its chemical and genetic makeup remain the same.
The question is not whether the different farming methods can produce different chemical makeups in crops, the question is whether organic farming actually does, and whether those differences are significant and beneficial. There is certainly some evidence that shows organic crops can have significant differences, for example this article. However, I'm not aware of any studies that show organic is generally better - the same article points out that organic carrots and milk have not been shown to have any benefits. There have been questions raised recently as to whether eating antioxidants is actually beneficial, so even the result for tomatoes may not really mean anything.
Better sorry than safe.
There is evidence of higher levels of Salicylates in organically grown fruit and veg.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11876493 for starters, and I remember a New Scientist article covering this too.
Antioxidants are currently in query. Salicylates are thought to be an effective preventative of heart problems (and possibly strokes), this is being tested but I can't find conclusive results to date.
I came across this.Originally Posted by brettdbass
It comes from personal comments on an EU report suggesting organic is more nutritious, and I might be wrong, but Wiki suggested the results have not yet been peer-reviewed, or published in a journal.Victor M. Shorrocks M.A. D.Phil. M.I.Biol. on 30 Oct 2007 at 2:53 pmThere have been many attempts over the years for advocates of organic food to highlight particular studies that show organic food to be more nutritious in one way or another but the overall picture is one of no consistent differences. In very many studies organic food has been found to be inferior. I would refer readers to the review in 1997 by Woese et al. in J.Sci.Fod Agric. 74, 281-293 in which the results of more than 150 separate studies, comparing organic food with traditionally produced food, were assessed.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/your...pinionid=22843
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic...ritional_value
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear
bright, until you hear them speak.
Im no Botanist, so I dont really know if thats true (seems like a reasonable observation to me though) You should contact Brian Dunning about that mate, he does address areas where he has been mistaken during a podcast, and he corrects his information as any good sceptic should.
De omnibus dubitandum
It's true. Hydrangea flower colour can be altered in many varieties with the addition of aluminium salt. Also, a mate of mine makes quite a good living out of using various different plants to remove heavy metals from the water running out of of old mine workings.
"I'm putting on me top hat,
Lah-di-dah me new shoes,
Standing on me tail"
Come on then, Bunny. Give your view.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear
bright, until you hear them speak.
In which case, either "nutritional value" does not include levels of salicylic acid, or the links you provide have not been referenced to the one I provided.
My best informed guess would be that it's the former of those two options!
You are quite right - I have been a little remiss getting back to this thread. I thought you guys were all doing such a good job, I felt I wasn't neededCome on then, Bunny. Give your view.
My view is that organic food, as defined, is no better that non-organic. Locally grown and fresh is certainly better nutritionally and taste wise but I bet that in a blind test you could not tell the difference between local and organic.
An interesting point was made about the make up of plants and the growing environment. The example of flower colour and metal ions in the soil is well known, for example. The point I would make is that growing conditions are bound to vary from place to place and so I don't really see what this has to do with organic or non-organic. If the point is that pesticide might change the make-up of the plant, well yes but as far as I am aware, only in terms of the phytoalexins. These are chemicals induced in the plant by disease or attack from pests. Phytoalexins are the plant's chemical defense mechanism and as you might expect from the description, they can be rather toxic. So if anything, I would argue that the presence of extremely low levels of pesticide on the food is healthier than high levels of natural phytoalexin.
Organic food was a good idea (for the western world, that could afford it anyway) but the marketing boys got hold of it and its health benefits were overstated by sound-bite.
Going back to pesticides for a moment, I am talking here about risks of residue on the food. In terms of environmental damage, that's a different matter I feel. Plants contain a huge number of chemicals anyway. It has been pointed out by an American scientist, Bruce Ames, that the number of potential carcinogens ingested in a single cup of coffee exceed the amount of pesticide consumed for a whole year.
Salicylic acid is not, as far as I am aware connected to nutritional value. This particular bit is not my area and so I am sure I will be corrected if I am wrong.
Happy to have a food fight with anyone who disagrees.
mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur
The greatest derangement of the mind is to believe in something because one wishes it to be so
Louis Pasteur
Much of the organic movement is potentially dangerous and IMHO unethical.
On eth potentially dangerous side, you have the fact that less regulated quantities of some fairly potent pesticides are allowed to be used, as if you squint at them you could possibly call them “natural”, but if your refine out the active ingredients, and properly regulate the amount used (or use more effective alternatives) all of a sudden you’re “contaminating” food. It’s the same fallacy which declares herbal remedies as “safe” but refined medicine as inherently dangerous.
The unethical side relates to animal welfare- specifically veterinary care. The organic movement has it in for antibiotics, now there are issues with routinely giving animals massive doses of antibiotics so that you can rear them is appallingly cramped and dirty conditions, however, even eth best cared for animals get sick at times, and encouraging denying animals proper care and treatment for a political/ philosophical point, is just downright nasty.
I’m not for the overuse of pesticides, fertilizers or antibiotics- but there is a place for them in effective, sustainable and ethical farming to produce nutritious food, the organic lobby rejects mostly due to the naturalist fallacy and a fear of technology. It’s an ideologically driven movement which happens to have a got some thing partially right (different verities, growing food for taste not look etc)- but much more wrong.
We might see a lot less organic food on the supermarket shelves in the coming months/years if consumers are too cash-strapped to pay the extra amount it costs.
Mousse from a bowl is very nice, but to put it on a person is demented!
I wonder if an organic chicken farmer would refuse to use antibiotics if his brood(?) caught some sort of bacterial infection, and was in danger of having to be killed. I doubt it, somehow.
I imagine pesticides, fertilizers and antibiotics are quite expensive, so I'm guessing conventional farmers would only use them as necessary, and in the most cost-effective quantities. I presume these substances are all checked by DEFRA, or whatever the correct current title is.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear
bright, until you hear them speak.
that all depends on how many were infected, and the markets which the farmer supplies. Administering antibiotics means that the meat cannot be sold as organic, nor can their products (eggs in the case of chickens) be sold as organic for a fairly considerable period of time, if the farmer usually only sells meet to organic suppliers, it may be worth their while to let their chickens go untreated, or use homeopathy, which is supported by the soil association, and which amounts to the same thing.
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