16 replies to this topic

[Forever21]

http://caffertyfile....n-regular-food/

(i've always liked pesticides on my salad anyway)

[nameless]

Yeah, so long as you ignore pesticide residue + possible longterm health consequences from consuming pesticides, I expect fruits/veggies are more or less the same. I never thought of organic food as having more nutrients than non-organic food... not sure if anyone really ever did.

[niner]

Organic food doesn't taste any better, either. Organic food may have a higher fungal load than treated crops, and may be less healthy for that reason. It's complicated. I belong to a Community Supported Agriculture group, and get much of my produce from there. I do it to "support local agriculture", and frankly, for the entertainment value. It's fun to go out to the farm and get food, and sometimes I pick stuff off the vine.

[TheFountain]

http://caffertyfile....n-regular-food/

(i've always liked pesticides on my salad anyway)

A quote from the report itself.

'Critics of the report say it ignores possible side-effects from pesticides'

It also seems to ignore the effects of antibiotics and growth hormones. Narrowing its focus on the 'nutritious' quality of the food. Dumb, dumb study.

[maxwatt]

Freshness is all when it comes to nutrients. Fresh produce of any kind is better than wilted week-old organic fruits and veggies. "Heirloom" varieties will often taste better than veggies bred for shelf life, that ripen after being picked green well before being brought to market.

I've found organic and free-range chicken to taste noticeably better than standard super-market chicken. But that may be merely because they were not couch-potato birds, not because they were fed organic grain.

[nameless]

A quote from the report itself.

'Critics of the report say it ignores possible side-effects from pesticides'

It also seems to ignore the effects of antibiotics and growth hormones. Narrowing its focus on the 'nutritious' quality of the food. Dumb, dumb study.

Exactly. It's really a useless study. The point of consuming organic foods is to avoid pesticides. If you disregard this fact in the study, it's pointless.

[niner]

The point of consuming organic foods is to avoid pesticides.

How do you know that microscopic quantities of pesticides are harmful to humans? What if there is no harm at all, or even a health benefit? We know that small amounts of aflatoxin, produced by molds, can result in liver cancer. I'd rather have a very small dose of a fungicide than a small dose of aflatoxin.

[TheFountain]

The point of consuming organic foods is to avoid pesticides.

How do you know that microscopic quantities of pesticides are harmful to humans? What if there is no harm at all, or even a health benefit? We know that small amounts of aflatoxin, produced by molds, can result in liver cancer. I'd rather have a very small dose of a fungicide than a small dose of aflatoxin.

And your reasoning regarding antibiotics and growth hormones? No evidence? Sometimes 'evidence' is anecdotal and I will be damned before I allow someone else to tell me personal experience is not a valid indicator. That said....

[niner]

The point of consuming organic foods is to avoid pesticides.

How do you know that microscopic quantities of pesticides are harmful to humans? What if there is no harm at all, or even a health benefit? We know that small amounts of aflatoxin, produced by molds, can result in liver cancer. I'd rather have a very small dose of a fungicide than a small dose of aflatoxin.

And your reasoning regarding antibiotics and growth hormones? No evidence? Sometimes 'evidence' is anecdotal and I will be damned before I allow someone else to tell me personal experience is not a valid indicator.

I said nothing about antibiotics and growth hormones. I'm speaking only of pesticides. The list of possible carcinogens among pesticides that may or may not be in use today is interesting, but I doubt very much that any of those studies were performed at levels that end users of crops would encounter. There are lots of benign substances that are "carcinogenic" at sufficiently ridiculous dosage.

Anecdotes aren't worth much. Personal experience comes with personal biases, among other things. What do you mean by 'valid indicator'? If you mean something by which to form your personal opinion, then it's fine. If you mean as a means of determining truth? I guess you would be damned there...

[nameless]

The point of consuming organic foods is to avoid pesticides.

How do you know that microscopic quantities of pesticides are harmful to humans?

I don't.

But if they state this:
'Critics of the report say it ignores possible side-effects from pesticides'

Then what was the point to the study? You can't say non-organic foods are the same as organic, unless you study pesticides and possible longterm health issues too. There is also the issue of antibiotics and growth hormones, but even ignoring those, I see no real point to this study. By stating 'Organic is no healthier than regular food', it gives a really misleading message. They really don't know if it's healthier or not, as they didn't study pesticides, hormones or antibiotics.

[Mind]

I eat organic sometimes and I grow some of my own. I don't by organic very often because it is so expensive, sometimes 5 to 10 times the cost of industrial agriculture products.

[Athanasios]

Pesticides are not a big problem. Most of them break down quickly in light and farmers have regulations on how soon they can harvest after a spray. The produce you need to wash are ones that worms target such as apples.

People get most of their chemical exposure from home cleaning products and whatnot.

[JackChristopher]

Anecdotes aren't worth much. Personal experience comes with personal biases, among other things. What do you mean by 'valid indicator'? If you mean something by which to form your personal opinion, then it's fine. If you mean as a means of determining truth? I guess you would be damned there...

The data will never find that I don't do well on nuts. Sure I have biases, but an interplay between my experience and the data is best; going to either extreme has. caveats. If I just listened to one side, I'd be chomping on whole grain nonsense against my intuitions that wheat is no good.

Edited by JackChristopher, 31 July 2009 - 01:44 PM.

[TheFountain]

Anecdotes aren't worth much.

Anecdotes are the reason we are on this forum. The world says we age and there is nothing we can do about it, we say we might be able to slow down the process and there IS something we can do about it, hence our presence here. Based on anecdotal ideology. Ultimately some ideology leads to scientific discovery, some does not. Some remains a philosophical notion that some may or may not choose to base their life on. Both are okay.

Personal experience comes with personal biases, among other things.

Too much objectivism numbs you to the other side of truth, humans need balance.

What do you mean by 'valid indicator'? If you mean something by which to form your personal opinion, then it's fine. If you mean as a means of determining truth? I guess you would be damned there...

Not really. If A(I ate something that had an immediate effect, such as vomiting) equals B(I stopped eating that particular food which caused me to vomit, thus my vomiting ceased) then I think the truth is quite eminent in some anecdotal cases. That does not mean that someone elses A=B causality would not be completely different. Some people can eat and drink dairy till they are happy and bloated, other's become sickened at the slightest intake. The truth varies from case to case and does not always require scientific data to conclude.

Edited by TheFountain, 31 July 2009 - 02:41 PM.

[Blue]

Despite its claims the review was quite limited. To quote "Analysis was conducted on nutrients or nutrient groups for which numeric data were provided in at least 10 of the 137 crop studies identified by the review."

That of course meant that only a few of the most well-known of vitamins, minerals, and large groupings like overall protein content were studied. This in fact still showed very interesting differences like that "phytochemicals (phenolic compounds and flavonoids" and magnesium, which is commonly deficient, was higher in organic crops.

No satisfied with this the review decided to drop studies not of "satisfactory quality". Which was 2/3 of the peer-reviewed studies. After this there were among the little remaining data no longer any interesting differences so "no significant health advantages" could be proclaimed which would "deal a new blow to the organic food lobby" to quote AFP.

As well ignoring a very large part of the literature and findings regarding positive nutrients there was as previously mentioned here no study of negative ingredients like pesticides. Or heavy metals. To quote, studies "primarily concerned with non-nutrient contaminant content (cadmium, lead and mercury)" were automatically excluded. Also automatically excluded were studies which "were primarily concerned with impact of different fertiliser regimes". Which importantly meant that the study deliberately avoided looking at the impact of using water treatment sludge as fertiliser. Which of course probably contains every toxin human produce.

Edited by Blue, 31 July 2009 - 03:32 PM.

[ajnast4r]

thats just not true. there have been discussions and studies posted here that show a number of fruits, vegetables & grains have higher vitamins/mineral/antioxidant levels when grown organically.

[frederickson]

can any of our european posters comment on the extent to which the british governmental body that commissioned this study is in bed with agribusiness?

even before critiquing the obvious holes in the study, my first thought was that this would be your typical lobby-influenced, federal smear campaign of any competitors of the major food and drug corporations.