Expert reaction to organic food nutrition study | Hacker News Reader

Expert reaction to organic food nutrition study

sciencemediacentre.org

65 pointsalexfarran48 comments

Unfortunately, all the responses are pretty negative and feel selective. The responding authors always criticize details, sometimes even around implied intent rather than factual content, while carefully omitting core parts of the original paper's findings.

For example, nobody even cares to agree that organic food has significantly lower pesticide residues, which I think is a pretty agreeable positive effect of organic produce, and one of the cornerstones of the argument for organic foods. This affects not only the health of consumers (around which there can be an absolutely healthy debate despite the fact that less poison is probably almost always better here), but also impacts the environmental footprint of farming.

There are also loads of straw-man arguments, which further undermines the trust in the credibility of the responders. The OP never denied that eating more fruits and vegetables - organic or not - is better than eating none at all. All that the paper did was publishing findings about the differences between organic and non-organic produce. I don't think antioxidants or phenolic compounds were framed as essential nutrients, and besides that non-essential nutrients do have effects on the consumer's wellbeing and health as well.

A truly unbiased response would feel more balanced. It would welcome certain findings, rounding out the picture with additional facts that might change certain conclusions drawn from the data, and add contradicting data found on a similar scale of research to the conversation. Such a straight and drastic dismissals of the paper in its entirety, however, based on carefully selected details, feels motivated by external factors beyond science or neutral dialog.

The health benefits of Organics are often less about the process and more about the seeds. Heirloom tomatoes as an example tend to be smaller, and squishier, and more flavorful.

The smaller means you can't produce as many per acre.

The squishier means you lose more in shipping.

The Tastier often accompanies more nutritious.

The Pesticide issue is two fold. (same with herbicides) You could dust your plants with arsenic and call them Organic. That would work well, (and is used in certain organic farms often for strawberries) but the residue would be more harmful even in lower amounts than say a Coal-Tar Pesticide (basically an artificial flavor sprayed on to mimic the smell of a predator, or the flavor of something an insect doesn't like)

Organic != Safe

Traditional != Dangerous

My biggest concern is that we cannot produce enough food via organic farming to feed everyone. If we move too much of the market to Organics, we may end up like the places where 40% of their income goes to food, instead of 4% that we currently enjoy in the US.

My secondary concern is that too many people think "all-natural" or "organic" means safe. NightShade is an all natural herb. Doesn't mean I should brew tea of it and have it at bed time.

we may end up like the places where 40% of their income goes to food, instead of 4% that we currently enjoy in the US

Given the level of diet-related illness in the US, much of it a result of ultra cheap (through subsidies) sugars and grains, I can't help but wonder, "if people were paying 25% of their paychecks for food, would they make better choices?"

Of course, the issue there has nothing to do with organics and everything to do with subsidies.

"if people were paying 25% of their paychecks for food, would they make better choices?"

No. They will still choose the cheapest/most-convenient.

4% is an average anyway. There are absolutely people in the US that must spend a notable portion of their income on food. I'm not in the best of situations, and I generally end up spending 20-30% on food, and I don't even eat enough.

Food is already hard enough to get for many Americans.

> You could dust your plants with arsenic and call them Organic.

Support this claim.

Well, you can call your plants organic, but you can't label them organic; at least in the US you're required to be certified to use that term in labeling.

...and actually the claim is explicitly false.

    205.602 Non-synthetic substances prohibited for use in 
            organic crop production

      This is the National List of natural, or nonsynthetic,
      materials that are specifically prohibited in organic 
      crop production. This list includes natural—but highly 
      toxic—materials, *such as arsenic*

See www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/getfile?dDocName=STELPRDC5101542

My bad. I don't farm anymore, and am out of date. 2009 they changed the rules. Previously you could use Arsenic in Organic farming.

http://www.epa.gov/oppsrrd1/reregistration/organic_arsenical...

> My secondary concern is that too many people think "all-natural" or "organic" means safe.

Too many? I have yet to meet a local-grown organic all-natural afficionado who wasn't convinced this means they are automagically eating healthy and safe produce [and possibly saving small underdog farmers' lives] to boot.

Very few people realise that most (or at least a lot) of the time organic and all-natural is just a marketing ploy.

There are three types of people in the world: those that aren't convinced that organic is safer and eat traditional, those that are convinced but don't care/can't afford organic and eat traditional, and those that eat organic -- and are convinced.

That is, nobody eats organic that isn't convinced of its benefits -- why else would they opt for the more costly of the two?

I would think we would be better at spotting sock puppets. "Expert reaction?" More like paid schill: http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/about-us/funding/

Syngenta? Croplife? BASF?

Well, that list also includes the University of Newcastle (the same university that published the aforementioned study).

In addition to the University of Newcastle as a funder, there are also these:

University College London, University of Bristol, University of Cambridge, University of East Anglia, University of Oxford

And these -

Institute of Mental Health, Institute of Physics (IOP), Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine, Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE), Institution of Civil Engineers, Institution of Engineering and Technology (The IET), Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE)

And many more like -

National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), National Institute for Health Research, National Nuclear Laboratory, Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), Nature

Are they all shills too?

I can just about guarantee you those companies couldn't care less about a few 10 thousands of people eating a little organic food. It's not a threat to them and they simply don't care enough to put out sock puppets. This lack of caring actually gives the new hippie-science disregarding (or whatever you want to call it) authors like Micheal Pollan more air time because nobody calls them on it when they get out of bounds of good science. Nobody writes sensational books about the over-hype and under evidence of the benefits of organic farming nor the dangers of un-regulated and un-inspected food production.

The amount of anti-science junk regarding food production I see posted on HN is stunning given that this is supposed to be a group of intelligent rational people.

All you've basically done is attempted to marginalize a group of people ("couldn't care less about a few 10 thousands of people"), while calling them out for being 'wrong.' In addition, you've attempted to call out HN as being the negation of a "group of intelligent rational people" because they don't share your views. On top of that, you've in no way told us why all of these people are wrong, other than "the people that know the real truth have better things to do than explain it to you."

I haven't called anyone out for being wrong (except the original poster on his shill suspicion, I believe he is unreasonable and almost certainly wrong on that count).

All I'm saying is that it is unlikely these companies care enough about a small niche market that doesn't really doesn't pose a danger to their business nor impact them enough to post shills.

As for unscientific views on the topic of food production... It's not a matter of "wrong". It's a matter of acceptance of science. The rejection of science in favor of unreasonable conspiracy theories and anti-scientific pop authors by this many presumably intelligent members of a "tech" site is surprising and a bit disturbing.

> The paper also reports a decrease in protein, nitrates and fibre in the organically grown crops, which may be undesirable, and which are maybe unsurprisingly not referred to by the authors in their advocacy of organically grown produce.

Hmm. I think this is important, and something I certainly overlooked in the initial hype.

If there's a decrease in both protein and fibre, what is there an increase of to compensate for it? There has to be "more" of something per unit of mass.

I don't know but "conventionally mass-produced" produces tend to be bigger and tasteless... that might have something to do with growers selecting them for the "wrong" trait (gene) [0]. Tomatoes being the best example; they are much better when bought at my local farmer's market (as opposed to buying them at Walmart).

0: http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1112648268/scientists-f...

Tomatoes are a terrible example. Ripe tomatoes damage very easily so tomatoes going to grocers are picked green and then reddened by exposing them to ethylene gas. This minimally affects flavor but causes the tomato to appear "ripe".

If buying from farmers (not distributors) at your farmers market then those tomatoes were most likely ripened in the field then picked rather than gassed which is why they taste much better.

I worked on a commercial tomato farm before. You are both right.

What you get in grocery stores is a green tomato that has been gassed so the flavor isn't the same as truly ripe tomato. Also, the varieties planted that are good for mass productions, packing and shipping aren't necessarily the best tasting varieties.

Carbohydrates and dry matter, among other things. The full paper is currently linked on the front page of HN and has a table.

Water would be my first guess.

Quick, somebody put together the app that does some Bayesian work to score people and their quotes, research, funding, etc. to show on a scale where their tendencies would be expected to be for a given next statement. Let's get META!!! on meta-analyses.

What's interesting is the turf battles going on over what I would say are details vs the "news you can use."

Industrial agra => :P tasting + less desirable enviro impact.

Alt agra => less offputting, better enviro impact, but big hand waving around potential to be capable of scale and affordable for current and future population.

I get a sense there's this looming dread of having to deal with someone saying, "We can't survive (or will have a bad time) as a species if we sit back and slurp big agra, but we can't realistically keep everyone around/afford it if we try to help everyone eat 'correctly/safely'."

If the organic path is the moral path, is it OK to allow food costs to increase substantially? Is it OK to disallow the big agra calories and nutrients which likely enable subsistence for those unable to fight over spots for their Teslas and Priuses at Whole Foods?

"Deer: Predation or Starvation" [1], is an exercise many may remember from high school biology class.

In the exercise, the implicit goal is for students to recognize that the deer population shrinkage was a good and natural outcome leading to balance and that balance is good.

There are various problems with the exercise though; for example, we only see a few years of "balance" with the implication that it continues forever.

Replace wolves with food costs, and deer with humans. We would expect the Industrial Agra crowd to be "pro deer", and the Alternate Agra crowd to be "pro balance" while Industrial Agra itself is "pro wolf".

I find it interesting that if you're interested in rising human populations, then you're coupled to rising food prices no matter what. In other words, consumption of organics is non-linearly related to rising food prices and orthogonal to morality.

[1] http://www.biologycorner.com/worksheets/predator_prey_graphi...

Big agra has been able to shrink the cost per calorie at a rate which has kept food costs in check, so I'm not sure I can allow the assumption of increased costs being a given. We can talk portion of costs, relative costs, or per capita... there could be advances that enable a new green revolution... if you would just pray at the altar of big agra and wear your nitrate and phosphate filters according to the directions. :)

Of course a lot of the "experts" are on the payroll of big food corporations.

It's difficult to have independent science in this day and age on matters where billions are at stake.

There is of course bias on the other side as well (e.g ideological), but nothing trumps actual, solid, business interests as a bias.

And the experts are also on non profit and large research universities, including the university that published the study (University of Newcastle). What's your point?

I made my point already.

A lot of the experts are on the payroll of the food industry. They work directly on it, or their research is funded by it. The same way there was tons of tobacco industry sponsored studies in the seventies, that said it was all OK. The same way studies on sugar were downplayed.

A university (research funds aside) doesn't have the kind of multi-billion interests a whole industry have. Their researchers have other shit that can interfere with their research (e.g the need to churn out papers to stay afloat, or the desire to write a controversial paper to make their names known), but nothing that trumps hard multibillion monetary interests.

In their statements they all ignore the question of environmental impact, pesticides, worker health, etc, which are the strongest reason to buy organic (and not because the food has magical properties).

Exactly, for us the main reason to buy organic is we don't like the concentrated industrialized production of regular food. We care about sustainability, environmental impact, working conditions, treatment of animals, etc. A carrot is a carrot, it's the story behind the carrot that matters.

Yup. Also, I vote with my dollars, preferring local, small business, cash transactions.

I don't think anyone in my family eats organic foods. Many of the older generation have lived into their 90's and 80's. My grandparents are in their 80's now. Would their parents have lived into their 100's had they eaten organic food? They weren't sickly miserable people all their lives. I just don't get the ultra-health kick. My take is to stop worrying about your food so much and eat whatever satisfies your hunger, just not too much. Micromanaging our diets is this generation's yogurt enema.

The way that food is produced now differs significantly than the way it was produced even 50 years ago. To use the lives of your relatives that lived into their 80's and 90's as 'proof' that no one needs organic food is disingenuous, regardless of the existence (or lack) of health benefits to eating organic food.

As an example, did your 90-year-old relatives eat Monstano-engineered "Round Up-Ready" corn for a majority of their lives? If not, then how can you claim that their lives have any bearing on the current situation?

50 years ago they were spraying crops with DTD and other terrible pesticides. If you don't remember, soldiers in the Spanish American war suffered more casualties from the terrible food they were given than from combat[1]. The industrial revolution started more than 90 years ago and industrialized agriculture is not a new phenomenon.

I was thinking about this post this morning and wondering if the ultra-longevity origanic food types would cut off their testiciles if it was shown that you could squeeze out a few extra years of life if you did it early enough. This micro-managing of food eaten is obsessive, although I think half the people writing comments are actually conspiracy crazed about Monsanto and other big companies who must be out to get them (which is not to say that big companies are not screwing over people or small farms, they probably are).

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Army_beef_scandal

Organic is a toxic anti-science religion.

Do we really need an article explaining how organic is not better for you?

Do people on HN really think that could be true? I'd like to think not.

If you go to an organic farmer and explain that this method using chemicals has been prove better and harmless through science they won't do it because they are fundamentalists.

I'm amazed by the tolerance of the organic religion by the scientific community.

Good to be clear that any contrary evidence presented in the future will evidently, be nonsense, because 'chemicals have been prove (sic) better and harmless through science'. Thanks for that assurance.

Pesticides have not been proven harmless, just acceptably harmful. Much like how lead is bad for you but some lead in drinking water is accepted.

There is a similar issue with GMO food. Everything out there might be safe, but there is little research done before new strains enter mass production so some caution is reasonable even without demonstrated harm.

PS: IMO, anything still considered safe after 30 years is probably ok but organic / non GMO is a reasonable catch all for that kind of a track record.

Some pesticides are pretty harmful some are really not.

There are many unrelated types of compounds we are talking about here... from severe (and generally now banned) biocides like Methyl Bromide gas all the way to a light camomile tea solution.

It's like your dad saying "drugs are bad!" then proceeding to drink a six pack. Dose and type mean everything. Not all pesticides are dangerous to man nor the general environment.

Some pesticides are pretty harmful some are really not.

The burden of proof is on the advocates of pesticides.

I'm utterly exhausted by the endless hair splitting and PR campaigns. As a consumer citizen, I do not have the resources or wherewithal to determine which pesticides might be acceptible. When negative information is routinely buried, such as the brouhaha over honey bee colony collapse disorder, I've completely lost my patience and confidence in agribiz and its captured regulators.

They can all rot.

There is testing, science etc for things like pesticides and residue. The burden has been born and carried to a conclusion. Its new claims that the testing was not good enough that have a burden - its easy to call foul or claim hidden problems, then be conveniently too exhausted to do anything about it. Sometimes its not that problems are buried; sometimes they're not real.

That's a perfectly rational argument, however there is a long history of pesticides turning out to be more harmful than originally thought. There are even commonly used pesticides that are known to be harmful to people that are still in common use with the assumption that the residue is not harmful.

Unfortunately, that's vary hard to test as the population for a study is much smaller than the population effected by any given pesticide. When you include environmental effects the argument generally becomes one of acceptable harm. As there is also a ridiculous oversupply of food there also clearly over used.

...pesticides turning out to be more harmful than originally thought.

Licenses (to sell pesticides) should be periodically reauthorized, given the current best available science. Factoring cost to benefit in the authorization, of course.

Like all these intractable policy issues, at the heart it's about governance. Right now the burden of proof (of harm) is on the critics. That's inefficient and unnecessarily adversarial.

Bee death suggests that we are not always researching everything affected by pesticides.

This excerpt is from the NRDC.. hardly a pro-chemical group, on the disappearance of bees...

"Scientists studying the disorder believe a combination of factors could be making bees sick, including pesticide exposure, invasive parasitic mites, an inadequate food supply and a new virus that targets bees' immune systems. More research is essential to determine the exact cause of the bees' distress."

Maybe it is pesticides. But stating "maybe" as fact happens all to often and muddies the issue. I would add... bees in this case are domestic bees. Maybe they can be made resistant to said pesticides. Or are all pesticides just bad because they are bad no matter what?

"I'm utterly exhausted by the endless hair splitting and PR campaigns"

You obviously have no idea what you are talking about nor any reasonable conception of the necessities of modern food production.

But ya... it's a conspiracy!

Edit: Apologies. That was harsh and a bit over the top. It's just I get very tired of uninformed rhetoric on the issue. I am an agronomist by training. I have been an organic grower. I was on the cover of Johnny's Selected Seeds one year with a patch of organic chard. I've been a conventional grower. Organic growing has some real benefits.. particularly in preserving soils. But the whole pesticides are always bad thing is simply a modern day superstition. This isn't "hair splitting". We are talking about many classes of very different compounds. They are studied. They are regulated. Maybe they should be studied and regulated more... I don't know, but the world needs technology. It isn't evil.

In short... I reject all forms of unscientific thought when it comes to manipulating physical reality. Superstition starves people. That's the bottom line. Stick to science.

Honest question: Why are neonicotinoids still used? Here's a typical news item of late:

Bird decline 'smoking gun' for pesticide's effects

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-28216810

I'm an enthusiastic fan of making decisions based on best available science. So long as the decisions are revisited as science progresses.

Color me skeptical.

Seems like the use of neonicotinoids should be suspended until this mess is figured out. I can't imagine how that's controversial.

Ignoring for the moment that agribiz suppressed bad news. It also seems reasonable that all research is published, both positive and negative. Let the informed "free market" decide.

We have banned many chemicals in the past that were proved harmful and no doubt we will continue to do so. The point is.. the chemical in the article was introduced because it is LESS harmful than it's predecessors (DDT for example). I agree, probably more complete and broader scope research needs to be done before releasing chemicals (and drugs as well for that matter), but with technology you don't always get everything right the first time. Believe me.. farmers don't want to spend any money they don't have to. And I highly doubt Monsanto and friends are out to enslave and poison the world. They are simply producing a product that there is a need for.

There is a level of negative impact we have to accept if we are going to have this many people on the planet. I would note... the chemicals that make your computer monitor colored, the fuels that run your car and heat your home, the production and use of those has severe environmental impacts as well.... much more persistent and severe than neonicotinoids. Short of reducing population or living standards, we are stuck moving forward and cannot go back. So there are impacts yes... we have to work to minimize them, and maybe we should do more, but doing things like calling for an all out ban on all pesticides is unrealistic. Are we willing to accept the death of millions of people due to rising food prices and starvation over the deaths of several species of birds and bees? I don't think we are (well...maybe some of us are and maybe we should, but that's a different topic).

My point is... all pesticides cannot be lumped together. They aren't all the same. We need to do the best we can and maybe that is better than we are currently doing. But we are going to need pesticides. They aren't bad. It isn't a conspiracy. I don't think a company presenting it's supporting research when their chemical comes into question is "suppressing". I appreciate they need to do this. I might add... you can't always get good information from journalists and people who write sensationalist books about the BIG AG CONSPIRACY!. Maybe there does need to be more regulation of big companies, some of them are abusive of the environment and humanity in general, this isn't confined to ag companies... it is a pertinent topic and I don't disagree with you on that.

People really are trying to work on the problem, generally keeping the needs of people to eat as first priority. The whole sensationalist-superstition- unrealistic approach doesn't help and it really boils me because I have been close to the issue. It would be like people trying to ban the internets because OMG HACKERS iz stealing our bankcards!!! Sorry for the hot and aggressive tone earlier... I think I explained my irritation.

this article is fucking trash

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