Scientific literature that examines the health benefits of organic food?
Can someone please find me scientific literature that specifically examines the health benefits of organic food? I can't find any specific studies or articles that have graphs, data tables, etc. I can find some articles that talk about organic food in general, but not the lack of pesticides, increased nutriional value, etc.
Agriculture - 5 Answers
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1 :
Part of the problem that you'll have trouble finding such literature is that it's already known that in most realistic cases there is no significant difference in many areas when it comes to safety of food content. Organic often is the same as conventional food in nutritional content, not higher. In other cases it's actually lower due to higher stress from insects and weeds. Those aspects are variable depending on what crops and practices you are looking at, so citing a few sources like the person below does not equate organic always being more nutritional if you're interpreting the findings incorrectly by trying to extrapolate more than the data was intended for. You need to actually go in and look at specifically what they were studying and what methods were used, otherwise you're just cherry picking. If you start comparing specific practices then you can start making definite comparisons, but simply saying organic vs. conventional is much too broad. Another thing to keep in mind is that the nutrients from organic foods are also identical to conventional. Vitamin C is Vitamin C regardless of where you get it from It is very rare that there is ever a difference between synthetic and naturally produced nutrients. The rare exceptions include folate for the synthetic version is actually easily for us to digest, while the natural version of Vitamin E is easier to absorb. Otherwise most are just plain identical. Pesticides are still used in organic operations, just ones that are already produced by other organisms, yet they aren't necessarily safer for us. Not to mention that pesticide use can have literally no bearing on safety at all with some crops, while others do have more problems with residue such as lettuce and spinach. There's a lot of misconceptions people believe when it comes to organic, so first you need to be careful about what you're looking for and the assumptions you are making already. That often leads to a skewed view of how you look at the data. That's basically why I felt the need for presenting those warnings earlier. The main thing is to look at a case by case basis, not just lumping everything organic as a whole. Most of what I know is from nutrition classes and doing research and work in organic fields (unfortunately the research wasn't directly looking at what you're interested in). Generally scientific literature will be scattered and difficult to find in one place, but I would suggest looking in nutritional journals pertaining to questions on food content, or broaden your search to look at things like worker safety. I'm not familiar with journals pertaining to research specifically on organic farming and nutrition, but browse some databases, you might be able to find one. Good luck.
2 :
There is a large body of scientific studies that show that organic food has higher nutritional levels (the first answerer is totally wrong). Comparative studies have been undertaken on a wide range of organic and non-organic food types (mainly fruit, vegetables and milk) and higher nutritional levels have been found in the organic food in most cases (more minerals, vitamins and antioxidants). Here are four reviews of the literature, all of which found higher levels: 1. Worthington V. Nutritional quality of organic versus conventional fruits, vegetables, and grains, Journal of Complimentary Medicine 2001; 7 No. 2: 161–173. This found that found that organic crops had significantly higher levels of all 21 nutrients analysed compared to non-organic produce, including statistically significant higher levels of iron (21% more), magnesium (29% more) and phosphorus (14% more). See link. 2. Review of the scientific literature compiled for the national French food agency AFSSA, by the University of Aix-Marseille. This concluded that organic crops contain more dry matter (are more nutrient dense), more minerals (such as iron and magnesium),and more antioxidants. Published in 2009 in the journal Agronomy for Sustainable Development - see link. 3. Soil Association (2001) "Organic Farming, food quality and human health: a review of the evidence". This found that organic foods have higher nutritional levels on average than non-organic foods (with about half finding higher levels and about half finding little difference). See link. 4. Food Standards Agency, 2009. In this UK review, in almost all of the comparative studies the organic foods had higher beneficial nutrients, including in the majority of the studies where the difference was statistically significant. (Note: the FSA was established by the UK Government to reassure the public over the quality of normal non-organic food and it has consistently declined to acknowledge the benefits of organic food in public. In this review, the FSA - scandulously - put this essential finding in Appendix 12 and dismissed it as ‘not important’ in the main text of their report! So, it was not reported to the public. Nevertheless, the result was consistent with the other reviews in generally finding higher nutrient levels in organic food). Hope this helps. Edit: in response to another answerer, the nutritional differences are NOT explained by differences in variety and environmental differences. These are basic issues that the recent scientific reviewers address. For instance, if you check the Soil Association review, you will see that one of the criteria was that the variety and environment (location, soil type etc.) were controlled; studies that did not respect this were excluded. ie. when these factors are controlled, the scientific evidence shows that organic food has higher nutritional levels. This should be no surprise: higher soil organic matter levels, means higher soil microbial activity, means better soil mineral supplies. Inorganic fertiliser-based systems only supply NPK fertiliser to the soil and do not maintain levels of the other soil nutrients.
3 :
organic is a process there is no difference in nutrition value between organically grown food and nonorganic. If I take a seed, lets say a black diamond variety open pollinated watermelon and apply organic methods to one plant and nonorganic methods to another then you will see no nutritional value difference. The reason why nutrition claims are made to be higher with organic produce compared to nonorganic is because they are comparing two different varieties and two different environments of the plant raising. Lets say hydroponic vs black dirt or picked green and shipped vs picked ripe and locally grown/delivered. http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/Organic/
4 :
http://www.rodaleinstitute.org http://www.ofrf.org http://www.organicconsumers.org http://www.acresusa.com These links all have peer reviewed studies about such topics, among other topics about Organic food and farming
5 :
You may also want to look into health risks of organic food: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/iafp/jfp/2004/00000067/00000005/art00006 http://faculty.uwstout.edu/schultzf/chem-201/docs/organicsafe.pdf http://aem.asm.org/cgi/content/full/71/7/4108?view=long&pmid=16000828
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