Study finds organic food no more nutritive than non-organic | Hacker News Reader

Study finds organic food no more nutritive than non-organic

reuters.com

25 pointscarbocation68 comments

Bad title. Misleading.

I can't say I ever thought that organic food would have higher levels of vitamins than their non organic counterpart. And, of course, article says they have similar levels of specific vitamins.

Organic does apparently have less pesticides (also per article) -- which is what I thought was one of the major motivations to go organic, not "more vitamins"

Perhaps for you, but I anecdotally find that many people who buy organic tend to think that it's also more healthy in terms of vitamins. There's a tendency to think that organic has a "higher nutrition density" because of the naturalistic fallacy, in that natural == better; people think that any modification to plant products only spreads out or even decreases that nutrition.

In terms of pesticides, though, years of scientific study have been used to clear the pesticides used on our foods. People who think that pesticides are somehow unhealthy are also not scientifically justified. Organics are also "no healthier" than non-organics in terms of pesticides as well, since pesticides are found to have no health impact.

>...pesticides are found to have no health impact

I assume you meant something more like ...the level of pesticide residue found on foodstuffs at the retail level in the United States (assuming no accidents, negligence, or sabotage) are found to have no health impact. Basically I agree with what you are saying.

Yep. Thanks for the clarification--I sometimes rely on contextual implication more than I should.

Organic foods for increased vitamins seems like an expensive alternative to vitamin supplements. But I feel like people who eat organic foods would rather not eat manufactured vitamin supplements, leaving the main benefit of organic food to be the fact that it's less processed and more "natural". I prefer to eat cows that don't eat cows, and chickens that don't eat chickens.

Chickens eat other chickens in the wild - what's wrong with that?

I'd imagine it's a slightly smaller proportion of their diet than in an industrial feed lot.

>an expensive alternative to vitamin supplements

I'm not sure that's true, it depends on absorption.

It seems reasonable to assume that human bodies are built to extract nutrients from whole foods most efficiently.

The people who think that non-organic foods are low in vitamins are probably also likely to be afraid of far worse health issues that could potentially come from consuming the "chemicals". So while it certainly makes economic sense to take vitamin supplements like you described if non-organics are just lower in nutrition content, I think there's worry about worse negative health problems coming from eating non-organics.

I would love to see links to human studies that prove pesticides have no effects on the human reproductive system. I assume, from your claims, you have some great controlled double blind studies to point me to?

>I would love to see links to human studies that prove pesticides have no effects on the human reproductive system

What you're looking for doesn't exist, since you can't prove a negative. But the FDA, which exerts a very high level of scrutiny over the food industry, has a very large database of studies if you look at their website under "food". Specifically, their pesticides page [1], and their Residue Monitoring Report, a very comprehensive analysis on pesticide levels consumed by the population and their effects [2].

[1]http://www.fda.gov/Food/FoodSafety/FoodContaminantsAdulterat...

[2]http://www.fda.gov/Food/FoodSafety/FoodContaminantsAdulterat...

But to make it easy, I quote:

>Results in these reports continue to demonstrate that levels of pesticide residues in the U.S. food supply are well below established safety standards.

The FDA and EPA establish these standards, so if you want the science supporting those standards, you'll have to ask them. I'm aware that you're referring to a specific study about birth defects, which is why you requested studies specifically referring to the reproductive system; but I defer again to the FDA and EPA. They monitor these things very closely, and if there is sufficient scientific support for pesticide-borne issues, they will have taken appropriate action. If not, that just means that the science is inconclusive, as is usually the case when one or two outlier studies make new or exotic claims. In this case, I also wouldn't be surprised if there was some strong selection bias in choosing the studies commonly presented due to the alarmism of news media, and the industry/FDA will be aware of further subtleties.

Right but your point amounts to an argument from authority, and animal models show specific harm from these chemicals. We share very similar endocrine systems. I don't think you can blanket say that there is 'no evidence"--it is far too early.

Deferring to a body that knows far more about these topics than either you or I is hardly an authority fallacy. The FDA will be aware of the animal models and birth defect studies, and I trust in them to adequately regulate pesticide use in response--and they will regulate infinitely more accurately and thoroughly than I would if I were left to literally analyzing scientific studies to find what I should and shouldn't buy at the supermarket.

Similarly, most people haven't read Einstein's paper on general relativity, but it's prudent to still take stock in GR because the physics community has read the research and come to a conclusion. I also don't think that there's "no evidence" of pesticide harm--there definitely is evidence that the pesticide levels that we consume are harmful. It just isn't sufficient evidence to be significant enough that we should assume it to be true that we need to eat organic. Every field has fringe studies that provide evidence for unique claims; the claims just don't become meaningful until that evidence becomes piled up enough to be significant. In this case, the evidence against pesticide residue levels being harmful is insignificant as judged by the FDA, and the evidence of pesticide levels being safe is judged significant.

I fundamentally lack respect for bureaucracies because although they may be made up of minds far brighter than mine, they are subject to organizational dysfunctions and well documented psychological failings like group-think. The Peter Principal is another problem, as well as the influence of outside money. Additionally, the incentives are wrong for individual scientists--making bold calls is a career risk. Going with the flow is career enhancing.

Further, the FDA doesn't operate on the precautionary principle.

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide

Distorting effects of authority (this applies both within the FDA, and regarding listening to the FDA)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment

Conformity and group-think: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments

> pesticides are found to have no health impact

There was a time not too long ago when cigarettes were found to have no health impact.

We have only just begun to understand how to treat cancer with gene therapy.

It's paranoid to say that pesticides cause cancer. It's arrogant to say they absolutely don't. And I think it's reasonable to say that farming as close to the naturally evolved food chain as possible is a good thing.

I recognize that without today's increased yields we'd have a lot more starvation and hunger in this world. But it's not a binary choice. It's not hippy pastoral-era farming vs post-modern industrial farm. We can find a balance.

> eating as close to the naturally evolved food chain as possible is a good thing.

Where does the "naturally evolved food chain" end? Right before Agriculture? Is baking bread "unnatural"?

Except some research shows that cooking foods allows us to reach calories that would typically be unavailable due to denaturing things like plant cell walls.

There is also research that shows a correlation between exposure to pesticides and both birth defects and cancer.

Until more conclusive evidence exists that proves otherwise, why take the risk?

It would've been pretty easy to see what sort of health impact cigarettes had if there had been much rigorous study at the time. The common pesticides used on farm goods, quite to the contrary, have been very rigorously evaluated by numerous bodies, especially the FDA. The rigor is likely largely a result of the public's learned suspicion of everything.

While it's good to anticipate that there are lots of things that can cause cancer, it's not a scientific approach to take to assume that all goods are guilty until proven innocent. Nor is the naturalistic fallacy scientific--you fall into it with your comment on things close to the natural food chain being more likely to be healthy, if I take you to be referencing goods that can cause long-term health problems like cancer.

While you're right that it doesn't have to be a binary choice, it actually essentially is. More or less all GM/pesticide-treated goods have literally no observed downside, and so while we will continue to monitor long-term population health performance to ensure that nothing is causing any issues, right now we find that it is only a choice between more or less starvation; higher or lower food prices; better or worse produce quality; and higher or lower rates of crop damage, which can lead to health issues in those who consume tainted crops.

People do it organic and especially local vegetables because they are more nutritious. But "more nutritious" doesn't mean "more vitamins". First of all, which vitamins? Surely they didn't test for every single vitamin found in all vegetables, not to mention other nutrients.

Second, it's dubious whether the nutrient theory of nutrition completely describes our body's relationship with food. Many people eat organic food because it eliminates the unknowns. We know that industrial farming has a negative effect on food quality, but the negative effect could be even larger than we are capable of measuring, so better to play it safe.

This echoes Europe's policy on GMOs, which is that if there is any risk of catastrophe, that risk is not worth taking. There is a name for this sort of policy, but I've forgotten the term and can't seem to find it.

Another reason that I personally avoid industrial agriculture is because it is fundamentally unsustainable: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/28/a-banker-bet.... I get all of my vegetables from a local farm mainly for this reason and another that comes from taking a sort of Marxist perspective on the issue. Industrial farming creates a lot of repetitive, unfulfilling jobs. I'd rather support people that live with and love their land, who get to engage with the challenge of optimizing all of the energy and nutrient flows in their farm. Running a farm can actually be a very interesting design/engineering problem.

Actually, it's pretty well established that it's going to take industrial agriculture to feed the world's population in the coming years. Unfortunately it is organic farming that will ultimately turn out to be unsustainable.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=organic-far...

"Of course, the cost of using 171 million metric tons of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer is paid in dead zones at the mouths of many of the world's rivers. These anoxic zones result from nitrogen-rich runoff promoting algal blooms that then die and, in decomposing, suck all the oxygen out of surrounding waters."

Right.

In 2009, a programme from BBC's 'The Natural World' series covered this precise issue: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00hs8zp

The programme's presenter is a farmer, from a family of farmers. She explored the latest developments in 'sustainable' agriculture and arrived at some surprising conclusions. 'Permaculture' was one of the most radical ideas, and the suggestion is that it could truly revolutionize modern farming.

It was a thoughtful, reasoned and compelling commentary; a programme which I found important enough to make an 'offline' copy for myself...

The title of the Reuters article is of course utterly misleading, in that it simple-mindedly equates "no difference in vitamin content" with "no healthier than." The key disambiguating sentence appears on the second paragraph of the article:

"Organic produce and meat typically isn't any better for you than conventional varieties when it comes to vitamin and nutrient content, according to a new review of the evidence.

"But organic options may live up to their billing of lowering exposure to pesticide residue and antibiotic-resistant bacteria, researchers from Stanford University and the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System found."

Unfortunately they didn't bother to get the short URL to the original article right, so we can't go and find out what the authors of the original article were actually saying about the matter.

What I call organic is way more healthy and nutritive:

I call organic not only to those that are natural but also to food that I could trace, e.g eggs that start with 0 or 1 in Europe had expiration rate witch is a fixed date from the egg laying. The fruit from my friends house is picked the same day I visit them.

As a general rule the levels of antioxidants and vitamins in food decay exponentially with time and temperature. Some fruit is stored in cold and anaerobic rooms for months. It looks like fruit but had degraded. Fortunately it is easy to taste the difference(It taste like nothing).

Antibiotics and hormones in meat certainly affect humans for the bad. In USA(money is everything there) and some parts of Europe is totally out of control. I have friends that are doctors and had problems as microbes develop resistance to antibiotics, and they have to use much more aggressive ways to fight them. People die because the treatment is not as effective as it was in the past.

"Organic milk and chicken may also contain more omega-3 fatty acids" That is exactly what we want. Food has a tremendous unbalance between omega3 and omega6 because omega6 is so cheap to industrial manufacture so we have to consume natural fish(not farmed) or wild animals(like wild boar, deer or grass eating cow) to compensate.

I had seem tremendous abuses of synthetic pesticides in Spain, where I worked installing greenhouses. It too easy for some people to add too much to be sure they don't lose money. Some people continue using DDTs and other forbidden chemicals because it is effective.

Nothing to see here, just another PR article from the food industry to fool consumers.

This is a meta-study, which looks at a couple hundred studies done on this. From the article:

Many of the studies didn't specify their standards for what constituted "organic" food..

I'd say this is a pretty serious limitation to both the studies in question, and, as a result, to this meta-study.

Unfortunately, the "organic" label means less and less.

What I think is still true (although I have no data to back it up) is that farmers who actually conscientiously maintain their soil, in a way that maintains both the fungal colonies and the nutrient density, through natural means... that is, using proper crop rotation, nitrogen fixing cover crops, and manure addatives, but no chemical additives (which are allowed under organic farming, so long as they are "organic" chemicals).... those foods are more nutritive.

Organic/non-organic, like all certifications, doesn't measure exactly what you'd like it to. In the end, sustainable, healthy farming is a very complex thing, and the details matter. If you want to get really high quality produce, you really do have to educate yourself and talk to the people producing your food. There's no silver bullet.

Organic and conventionally grown broccoli ( 2012 Aug 30 )

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22936597

"... In addition, organic broccoli maintained higher concentrations of bioactive compounds (ascorbic acid and phenolics) and antioxidant potential during storage than conventional broccoli, with higher potential health beneficial effects."

I think the point of organic food it isn't to get more (good) stuff, it's to get less (bad) stuff.

The fact that they have lower amounts of pesticides, chemicals and antibiotic-resistant bacteria makes organic food healthier (as in doesn't make your health worst).

I'd estimate that the amount of bacteria on organic food is higher, not lower due to the lack of said pesticides and using dung as fertilizer.

See the 2011 E. Coli outbreak in Germany that killed 50 people, caused by organic sprout: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Germany_E._coli_O104:H4_ou...

Just because food is grown in a non-organic/commercial system, doesn't necessarily mean it's grown without using manure as a fertilizer. There have been many cases of non-organic products being contaminated with E.Coli as well:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_North_American_E._coli_O157:H7_outbreaks

Pesticides also don't necessarily inhibit bacterial growth (though granted, they probably don't help it), so I don't buy into the assertion that their application is somehow sanitizing your food.

It's not that pesticides sanitize the food.

It's that chemical fertilizers don't potentially introduce disease organisms into the field the way that manure does.

Properly processed manure does not do that. Compost it first at a high temperature, then mix it into the soil over the winter.

You don't just take fresh manure that throw it on the field.

Pesticides have no effect whatsoever on bacteria. And dung from plant fed animals is harmless.

And all bacteria is not equal, so it's doesn't matter how much there is - it matters what kind. Cheese is just full of bacteria, so are pickles, and yogurt. Food grown using antibiotics will have more of the dangerous resistant kind, rather than the beneficial kind.

With the sprouts it was not the organic that was the issue - it's simply that it's sprouts. Sprouts are wet, not cooked, and not washed. It's a perfect environment for bacteria if you are not careful.

I don't think non-organic sprouts even exists - they grow in less than a week, why would you put pesticides on it?

"And dung from plant fed animals is harmless."

Nonsense.

Animal dung can carry everything from tapeworms to salmonella to E. coli.

Update: added link.

http://umaine.edu/publications/2510e/

What I think the guy is getting at is a holistic view here. That the manure from animals raised in healthy conditions-- meaning low density, no antibiotics, natural diet--is a safe and ecologically sound fertilizer. It is, after-all, how farming developed over thousands of years.

Sorry if that sounds too Michael Pollan for you but I think it passes as both common sense and historically accurate.

> It is, after-all, how farming developed over thousands of years

You may be right about it being safe, but I'd be careful about using this logic. Over "thousands of years", we had a life expectancy at birth of 30 years, indicating that among other things the food supply may not have been very safe.

Right. Not to mention the ever-present fear of famine.

Going back to low-tech, low-energy, localized production is a recipe for the return of large-scale famine.

Which is also nonsense.

Animals raised without antibiotics and vaccinations carry a horde of diseases.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoonosis#Partial_list_of_zoonos...

Click through a few of these and note how many of them are spread by animals in living in a low density, no antibiotics, natural diet environment.

Such as?

I'm far from an expert but this has been an interest of mine for years -- deeper than just watching Food, Inc.

You're right that livestock in feedlots carry awful diseases. But in proper conditions--you could even say humane conditions--they don't inherently carry any more diseases than you or I.

I mean, what are you arguing for exactly? That we shouldn't use natural sources of NPK? Try your hand at explaining that.

"they don't inherently carry any more diseases than you or I."

I don't eat crops fertilized with human feces, either.

"That we shouldn't use natural sources of NPK? Try your hand at explaining that."

I don't like famines that kill millions of people.

I also don't think I'd care to live in a world where 90+% of us were illiterate peasants bound to the soil (serfs if we were lucky, slaves if not), spending our entire lives on hand-cultivation of crops.

That was the norm essentially everywhere on the planet right up until the development of modern, mechanized agriculture.

Do you think there's no natural manure fertilizer on your crops? You've got an interesting argument here. You're against organic food because it's more likely to spread bacteria and parasites? But you've not really offered any facts, just blanket statements. I'm going to bow-out of this now -- apologize if I'm reading this wrong but this all seems too trollish for my tastes.

I've provided links for everything. You've provided none.

A couple more:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famines

Note how few of these occurred in countries with industrialized agriculture (the exceptions being cause by war devastation or the like).

https://www.google.com/search?q=percentage+of+population+in+...

Numerous sources demonstrating that pre-industrial farming resulted in 90-odd percent of the population being peasants.

This is a ridiculous assertion.

First of all, "organic farming" doesn't preclude you from treating sick animals with antibiotics, if necessary, nor does it prevent you from vaccinating. (Sick animals are required to be held back for a specified period before entering the food chain.) What it does attempt to prevent is animals being fed prophylactic antibiotics, which is a major cause of antibiotic resistant bacterial strains.

Second, organically raised animals are not festering with disease. My wife and I have hundreds of healthy, organically raised animals on our farm. For example, in the last summer we have grown, processed and sold over 500 chickens which we have lost ZERO to illness.

Animals raised in humane, low stress (and the low stress is key) situations GET SICK VERY INFREQUENTLY. It's in situations where they are concentrated in industrial settings (ie. chicken broiler barns or cattle feed lots) that the stress kicks in, suppresses immune system function and you end up with sick animals that get fed antibiotics to cover up the symptoms.

Your anecdote does not trump data.

Sorry.

I welcome any data that you care to provide.

Animal dung when fresh can carry all that, sure. But you are supposed to compost it first, and mix it into soil.

Both of which will kill the harmful organisms.

The operative phrase is "antibiotic-resistant bacteria", bacteria is around us all the time, this is in-escapable, the antibiotic-resistant variety is what is bad.

Who cares about healthier? Organic food, especially local organic food, simply tastes better. Probably not because it is grown without pesticides but rather because the farmer gives a damn.

And yet, when double-blind tests are done the non-organic food usually does better.

Link?

This is total bullshit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Jq4DGEn9Is

That was not a double blind taste test, that was a single blind test and basically worthless.

I simply do not believe those people that were quoted about pesticides. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson_Institute#Criticism

They make some good points, but they are very careful to pick and choose only things that support their story.

Compare organic to non-organic carrots. Double blind yourself all you want, hands down organic carrots (things labeled as) are x10 better than the woody sticks they are compared to.

That has more to do with the cultivar than the method of growth.

Standard supermarket vegetables are bred to withstand shipping and handling, not for taste.

Ok, so organic is correlated but not the cause. I will stick with my weak, can't be transported long distances tasty food.

By not using poisonous pesticides, organic farms are healthier for farm workers, for people drinking water near the farm, and for wild animals.

It all comes down to people's perceptions. When they hear that something is organic or natural, many people assume it must be better for us, and if it is better, it must contain more nutrients.

Food company's like to use this to their advantage, and the terms have lost a lot of their meaning unless you know how the food is produced. I think this is a key point. An organic farm using improperly composted manure for fertilizer or contaminated water for irrigation may end up poisoning people with e-coli. On the other hand, grass fed, free range chickens produce the best eggs I've ever tasted. If the farmer happened to also give the chickens antibiotics, I don't know if that's really a bad thing.

The other big issue of course is cost. Food labeled organic is much more expensive. Many people just cannot justify the extra cost. When our son was small, we looked at giving him organic milk versus regular milk (http://foodconstrued.com/2010/09/got-milk/). We started with organic but eventually switched to regular.

Title is not supported by facts discussed in article.

And I always thought the motivation behind eating organic food was it's less of a burden on nature. Is personal health really the only thing people are concerned about?

Organic cereal crops generally yield at about 0-50% of the rate of conventional cereal crops. This means they need twice as many acres of land per bushel, twice as much fuel per acre, et cetera. In other words, it's much more of a burden on nature than conventional cereal crops.

And I really did mean to say 0 above -- organic cereal crops fail at a much higher rate than conventional crops. That's a lot of diesel fuel burned for no return.

True, it's not an "all win for organic", but nature is more than just land. It's also soil, and animal life.

Woah waoh, high yields aren't free. Fortifying that soil to produce those yields has a cost -- both economic and ecological. Synthetic-N is just the beginning.

And the "0-50%" sounds ballparkish to me. If you have any cites I'd love to take a look.

> But organic options may live up to their billing of lowering exposure to pesticide residue and antibiotic-resistant bacteria

That is the entire point of buying organic. I dont know anyone (sampling bias) that thinks organic has anything to do with nutrient content. That's what non-gmo is for*

* in some cases

It doesn't even mention taste… give me free range ibérico ham over its caged cousins anyday.

Who claimed organic food has more nutrients. It has to be free of pesticides, hormones and other harmful chemicals and must taste natural.

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