Organic Produce: Better For You and No Better For You

If  you read health headlines on a regular basis, the title of this article is what your brain must reconcile.  Is organic food, with its strict regulations regarding pesticides and fertilizers better for you or not?

The results of a British investigation on the nutritional benefits of organic produce reveal organic food is no more beneficial than ordinary produce.  It sure is worse for your wallet, but the researchers didn’t study that.  They merely concluded from 50 years of nutritional studies “there were a small number of differences in nutrition between organic and conventionally produced food but not large enough enough to be of any public health relevance”.  Now what do we do?

Serve it up. Chemicals are fine by me

For all the oppressive regulation involving organic farming in the United States and the high cost to purchase this produce in the stores,  there was an expectation the trouble and expense were worth it.  Would you pay $.20 more per pound for bananas if it reduced your risk of cancer and other diseases?  Probably.   How about a seven dollar gallon of milk?  If you have a bunch of children chugging down cereal every morning, that habit might not leave enough for the electric bill.

Now, how about the price tag if there is no nutritional benefit?   And if people stop paying extra for organic, will farmers consider it worth the regulatory trouble? Already the recession is forcing some organic advocates to buy the ordinary stuff.

The study was commissioned by Britain’s Food Standards Agency and is in direct conflict with another study performed in that country less than two years ago.  In October of 2007,  a headline appeared in the newspaper Telegraph that read “Organic Food Better Than Ordinary Produce”.    This is what drives people crazy.

The current obsession with food studies goes back to the 1980s with the declaration that oat bran lowers cholesterol.  Food companies jumped on it and the American public, aware heart disease is the number one killer and high cholesterol is a culprit, went oat bran crazy.   Where oat bran was not added to cereals and baked goods at the plant, consumers sprinkled it at home like fairy dust with magical abilities.

And then the awful truth.  Several years later, follow up studies showed something else; oat bran as a substance doesn’t lower cholesterol, but it provides enough bulk in the stomach to prevent people from filling up on higher cholesterol foods.

Fast forward to the 21st century and the claim a daily glass of wine improves heart health.  That’s great, except a recent study said any amount of alcohol increases a woman’s risk of cancer.

The cure for all these conflicting studies?  Ignore them.  Eat what you want in moderation.  If you’re trying to lose weight, eat like a bird with depressingly few calories each day. Just make sure those calories involve plenty of vegetables, fruits and nuts, olive oil, wine and beans.

How do I know that?  A recent study on the benefits of the world’s healthiest diet, the Mediteranean diet, showed the five key components that provide the greatest health benefit are the ones I listed above.  Not the fish, not the yogurt as some long believed,  but those five.    That is, until the next study comes down the pike showing it’s really the fish and yogurt, and not that other stuff.

Tagged as: farming, Health, Organic, produce