Is Organic More Nutritious? New Study Adds to the Evidence
npr.org
npr.org
As alluded to in that conclusion, the study isn't so much a comparison of organic vs. conventional as it is a comparison of grass fed vs. grain fed animals. The article does refer to this in passing and then continues along.
And it is odd to tout the increase in omega-3s anyway. "Yay, we raised the omega-3s found in beef from a tiny-amount to a statistically-interstingly-higher-but-still-tiny-amount."
Going on to the next study cited in the article doesn't help it. Note how the article shifts from saying that the compounds are potentially beneficial over to saying they are. And then it ignores the evidence mounting that maybe all of our hopes that lots of dietary antioxidants would help us live longer/better may have been sadly misplaced.
Bah...I hate the state of health news reporting.
I agree that any science-for-the-public reporting tends to do a bad job of conveying the inherent uncertainty in current research, but I feel like this was not terrible.
I personally hope organic is healthier because I can afford to buy it, but I'm reminded of watching the super at my old building toss the recycling into the regular trash - perhaps it's all really treated the same.
Carrots are highly absorbent, more so than other vegetables. They absorb so much that can't be washed or peeled away.
With milk, I just want to know the cow is happy. Buying organic increases the chance of that. You may laugh, but we all have our reasons.
I'd be interested to hear what other products people here consider a must-buy-organic. I can't afford to buy everything organic, but I'm willing to expand my essential organic list if convinced.
Then you want to take a look at the Dirty Dozen or the Dirty Dozen Plus. Actually, it's better to view the complete list at http://www.ewg.org/foodnews/list.php.
Btw, Carrot is at #25, so it's not even the worst offender.
I prefer organic eggs, meat, poultry and tomatoes. I'm not much of pro-organic or environmentalist, but they taste so much better, I don't mind paying extra.
This is idiotic. Organic farmers can't use chemicals to stop ticks, lice and other pests.
The cows can be living in hell to keep you happy.
They don't care about the fact they are eating a, basically religiously created feed.
For happy cows drink soy or plant based milks or non organic.
The organic milk I buy comes from a dairy farm about 90 min drive from where I live. It runs about 150 head of cattle - Freisian/Jersery cross on 300 acres. Their milk processing plant is next to the farm.
Whether you "organic or not organic" is up to you, but I try to source milk from local farms with an emphasis on welfare of the animal and quality of the product.
Supermarket milk is generally ultra-heat treated to increase shelf life, even the so-called "organic" variety. The animals are packed in to increase "efficiency" and make the milk cheaper.
In the end, I don't mind paying more, and I'm supporting local dairy farmers. What the hell are you doing?
Yes, it is, but I'd like to know why you frame this as a bad thing.
> In the end, I don't mind paying more, and I'm supporting local dairy farmers. What the hell are you doing?
While I appreciate your good intetions, I think the "What the hell are you doing?" is a little bit overstated, since this is a low-impact, low effort activity and, really, does the fact that you're doing something oblige me to somehow "one-up" you?
> does the fact that you're doing something oblige me to somehow "one-up" you?
Not unless you called me an idiot for doing something. Which you didn't, but the person I was replying to did.
I don't mind at all if someone calls my argument into question, but at least come back with more than opinion. There are plenty of reasons beyond the welfare of animals to support local business. I admit it's not just the happiness of the cow which motivates me. Perhaps I should have explained that.
The more money we can circulate in the local community, the healthier that community is. I'm no economics expert, but I have a hunch that spending up at my local restaurants, cafes, dairy farms and businesses is doing my bit to improve the region where I live. I also try to do my "bit" for the environment and animal welfare within the eating habits I currently enjoy. Hence.... "what are you doing" was an invitation to suggest a "non idiotic" approach since they thought so little of mine!
This breaks the HN guidelines. When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names:
It's probably not really about the cow being happy though, is it? It's about what is better in your cereal.
No. I like milk, as do billions of people. And discussing how to find and encourage quality of the milk, welfare of the cow, and protection of the environment via methods such as organic farming, is a worthwhile discussion.
As I mentioned in another reply, organic or not, I source my milk as locally as possible from dairy farms that process their own milk on site, and who run their farms with an emphasis on welfare of the animals and minimal environmental damage.
I wonder where that soy milk you mention comes from? Probably not down the road from my house. I actually did drink soy for a long time until I got sick of it, and lost trust in it.
I don't, by any means, assert you or anyone else should care about the welfare of cows. I also don't assert anyone should care about minimizing environmental damage. However, if you do claim to care about those causes, it strikes me as the height of irrationality to choose to support an industry so massively at odds with them, especially for something as trivial as a sip of milk. When you care so little that it's non-distinguishable from not caring... you don't care.
I'm not trying to pick on you. So many people today just seem to "care" about things only because it's trendy, and then only the minimum amount necessary to be able to consider themselves caring individuals.
It's fine. The catalyst for good discussion isn't typically everyone agreeing and getting along.
Dairy products assist intake of the full spectrum of nutrients. It's not just about a "sip of milk" or what I like on my cereal.
A million people caring a "minimal amount" is better than a million people not caring at all.
Meat - an industry at the very top of the environmental impact list. I call for the abolishment of live export and improvements to other factors of the industry such as slaughterhouse standards. I eat meat infrequently and place importance on where it comes from.
To suggest that it's the "height of irrationality" that I eat any meat at all, is to claim that by buying meat I somehow support the entire industry with all its flaws and variables. But I can eat meat and actively vote and push against the standards I disagree with within the industry.
Everything we do has some issue, environmental or otherwise up the chain. The mining of precious metals, or the massive problem of e-waste doesn't mean I will avoid buying gadgets, but I may buy them less frequently and choose the gadgets built to last. If millions do that, industry change can happen.
Why? Because if they actually tasted different to all the other processed junk out there, then maybe people would choose them instead.
Heirloom varieties (what you seem to be praising) and organic methods have only a casual relationship (sure, organic certification may require non-GMO, but lots of the work on big, brightly colore. perfectly round, non-bruising, transportable, shelf-stable, beautiful varieties -- that incidentally produces tastes-of-nothing garbage -- is non-GMO "traditional" breeding methods that's perfectly capable of being organic, and often is what you get when you buy organic. Heck, because of the way GM methods work, you end up preserving other traits besides the one you want to change better than "traditional" breeding.)
Natural
The last one of these bullshit food words is natural. And these comments are directed at all you environmental jackoffs out there. The word natural is completely meaningless. Everything is natural. Nature includes everything. It's not just trees and flowers and the northern spotted owl. It's everything in the universe. Untreated raw sewage, polyester, toxic chemical waste, used bandages, monkey shit. It's all perfectly natural. It's just not real good food. But you know something? It is zesty. And it's tangy, too. Bon appe'tit, consumers.
The rest of the chapter is here if you'd like to read it: http://pastebin.com/jejt4dfm
"Right now, roughly 800 million people suffer from hunger and malnutrition, and about 16 million of those will die from it17. If we were to switch to entirely organic farming, the number of people suffering would jump by 1.3 billion, assuming we use the same amount of land that we're using now."[0]
[0]http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/science-sushi/httpblogss...
There is also the issue that the idea of greater productivity is highly geographical and seems to be valid in the context of European and North American monocropping agricultural systems. Other farming systems may produce a lot more overall nutrients - it is not at all clear that systems fueled by synthetic fertilisers are more productive as far as overall ecnomic/livelihood benefit or nutrients are concerned in East Asian and African agriculture. Results got from research done in Europe and North America (greater productivity in monocropping non-organic systems) are often suggested as valid in the context of "ensuring sufficient food production Africa / East Asia" which at least from what I know of Bengal seem to be a truth which requires substantial modification (see for example a relatively conservative discussion in [1]).
Further, Rodal Institute's longitudinal study[1] seem to suggest that organic practices can indeed match conventional.
Finally - hunger and starvation is generally not an issue of too little food production as Amartya Sen's nobel prize winning research on Bengal famines highlighted.
[0] http://www.fao.org/docrep/003/ac116e/ac116e05.htm [1] http://rodaleinstitute.org/our-work/farming-systems-trial/
That's really what it's all about - for me. That organic tends to be more nutritious is a bonus,
The UK Soil Association Organic standards (http://www.soilassociation.org/organicstandards) are known to be some of the strictest. And section 4.11 on controlling pests and disease makes me very pleased to support organic farming.
I wonder then... what about indoor grows using organic methods that are bug free and stress free with all variables controlled for optimum conditions.
Yeah, but they are still clean and known as cleanrooms. I know about microbes, thanks
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertilizer#Nitrogen_fertilizer...
I thought about it. It sounds like using energy to make a system move in a direction away from the point of lowest energy (decayed fields on a rocky, dead planet), which is basically what the Universe and the human race do for a living. So it's not crazy.
Whether or not it's the best use of energy, and whether or not the effects on future generations is good or not, I don't know.
The entire food system is heavily dependent on hydrocarbon energy and long supply lines.
Take oil and natural gas away and billions of people would starve to death.
The world produces enough food to feed everyone. For the world as a whole, per capita food availability has risen from about 2220 kcal/person/day in the early 1960s to 2790 kcal/person/day in 2006-08, while developing countries even recorded a leap from 1850 kcal/person/day to over 2640 kcal/person/day. This growth in food availability in conjunction with improved access to food helped reduce the percentage of chronically undernourished people in developing countries from 34 percent in the mid 1970s to just 15 percent three decades later. (FAO 2012, p. 4) The principal problem is that many people in the world still do not have sufficient income to purchase (or land to grow) enough food."
Taken from http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20f....
I did not want to just say 'there is enough food, but the distribution is not fair'.
For example, pastured livestock on a commercial scale, such as what this article is promoting, is an absolute disaster form a carbon footprint perspective.