Crop duster working overhead in California as farm workers pick produce |
Well, the jury is out. Stanford
University just published a study saying that
the literature “lacks strong evidence” that organic foods are more nutritious
than conventional. Some of you are probably kicking yourself for trading your
child for that precious locally grown, organic tomato you bought last week at
Whole Paycheck.
While conventional farmers are
doing the “Told-You-So” dance and bobo moms weep for their not-above-average
children, is there still a reason to eat organic despite the study? Yes there
is and it has everything to do with health. Despite the title of several
headlines across major newspapers,[1]
organic food is better for you, and dare I say it, healthier for you. And
here’s why[2].
1.Pesticides. According to the study, the researchers found
that 38% of the food study had pesticide residues. This is in comparison to 7%
found in organic produce. The researchers had basically poo-poohed the effects
of pesticides because all pesticides levels were below the mark of what is
accepted by Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). But what the researchers did
miss was the long-term effects of pesticides. The longest term study was two years.
Most cancers and other associated diseases with pesticide exposure take much
longer than 2 years to manifest.[3]
And if you have kids, you should be especially worried. Because pesticides
affect children more adversely than adults due to body weight, their even
exposure that is under EPA levels for
adults could be threatening for children.
2. Antibiotic exposure.[4]
While the researchers did acknowledge antibiotic exposure as a reason for going
organic, what they did not explicate was the effect having antibiotic-laced
meat in most grocery stores, namely, antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Currently,
80% of all antibiotics used in the US are for livestock use. And most of those
antibiotics aren’t curing Elsie the cow of her nasty cold – they are used to
promote growth or yield (e.g. milk or meat output) for animals. This rampant
use of antibiotics in farms and ranches has only increased the amount of
antibiotic-resistant bacteria. According to the US
Food and Drug Administration’s own reports, common meats, such as chicken
breast, ground turkey, ground beef and pork chops, have had increases of 26.6%,
55.3%, 11.5% and 17.5% in E. coli that were resistant to 3 antibioitic classes.
Ground turkey, for some reason is the real winner with 28.2% of all samples
resistant to four antibiotics classes. And that’s just E. coli. Just wait to
you see the numbers for Salmonella.
Until the FDA actually gets their act together about banning
or severely curtailing sub-therapeutic use of antibiotics, the only insurance
we have against the growing tide of antibiotic resistance is consumer power. If
there is a growing market for antibiotic-free meat, then farms will realize
there is a market for them. Yes, that means you will have to pay for your meat,
but do you want to see salmonella become the next ebola? Only through
collective action can we stop this public health nightmare. Relying on the
vegan next door will not do the trick.
3. The Environment. Although there are plenty of people who
argue this point, I think it’s worth reiterating. The methods used for organic
farming protect soil fertility. Any farmer will tell you the key to growing
crops is in the soil. No soil equals no farm. The problem of conventional
farming is in the snowball effect it has on the environment. By using
destructive tilling practices and monoculture, conventional farming denudes and
erodes the soils of not only the healthy bacteria and nutrients needed to grow
crops, but insures that for the next generations that they will be dependent
upon fertilizers to get the same yield. The run-off of fertilizers from
industrial farms have been implicated mass pollution that not only destroys
drinking water for residents but also creates “death zones” (or eutrophication)
in bodies of water due to high concentrations of fertilizers. Organic farming
insures that nutrients are not stripped from the soil. And healthier soil means
less water, less erosion and often, better yields.
Speaking of pesticides, they too cause a chain reaction
across ecosytems by poisoning the entire food chain in a particular ecosystem.
But there’s one benefit to pesticides – pests get heartier. In a farmers’
version of the nuclear arms race, heavy use of pesticides encourage pesticide
resistance in organisms, which in turn only encourages heavier use of
pesticides in another form.[5]
4. Biodiversity. And of course, organic practices encourages
biodiversity. Plants and animals, like people, depend on genetic diversity to
keep a healthy population. Monoculture and industrial farming practices not
only destroy the genetic variation that keeps plant species hearty, but also
destroys the local ecosystem that provides homes, food and shelter for millions
of other species in the area.
5. Taste. Last, but not least, taste is probably a huge
reason why you should buy organic. While the jury is still out as to whether
there is a statistically significant difference in flavor, but think about it.
Because organic farmers have higher costs compared to conventional farmers, the
need to take care of their crops is paramount if they want to market them. Seen
all those pictures of workers dumping bins of green, unripe tomatoes into a
giant truck? Try doing that with a ripe brandywine, and you can forget about
selling it…because it will be tomato sauce.
Furthermore, as freshness counts in good tasting produce,
the quicker turnaround time between farm to market insures a better tasting
product. What tastes better? A three-month old apple from Argentina or an apple
you just got off the tree? Most conventional produce is grown for
shelf-life-NOT for taste. Add the chemicals sprayed on most apples, and you’ve a
recipe for avoiding apples. Going organic insures a steady market for farmers
that care about good tasting food – instead of good for a
trans-Atlantic-boat-ride food.
Of course the irony in the Stanford
study was that it proved what organic advocates said it was supposed to do:
raise crops and livestock that have no exposure to pesticides, antibiotics and
hormones. Organic practices are about METHOD-no one every promised a
nutritional benefit. But in buying organics, you are buying for health – your
health, public health and the earth’s health. And if don’t remember that, we’re going to be a lot less
healthy in the future.
[1] Titles
include This Week’s “Is
organic food a waste of money,” National Public Radio’s “Why
Organic Food May Not Be Healthier for You,” New York Times, “Stanford
Study Casts Doubt on Advantages of Organic Meat and Produce.”
[2] There are
several problems with the Stanford University study. And they are serious ones.
But main gist here is WHY one should buy organic, NOT why Stanford researchers
stink. But in the interest of scientific geekdom, I will go through the major
problems of this study. First, the actual design of the study is problematic:
the researchers did a meta-analysis of 240 studies and only used 17 studies
actually looked at the effects in humans themselves. The biggest problems with
meta-analysis is in selection and confirmation biases. We don’t know which
studies why studies were accepted or taken for analysis, therefore researchers
could potentially cherry-pick studies that confirm their original hypotheses.
Also meta-analyses are not consistent in experimental assumptions and methods,
including that of the meta-analysis itself. It’s like comparing apples and
oranges. And then there’s the infamous Simpson affect. The studies themselves
could all point to being statistically significant in one direction, but the
meta-analysis proves otherwise. The best example of this would be Derek Jeter’s
batting average. A study at
Dartmouth looked at different ways of calculating Jeter’s batting average…only
to conclude that different calculations gave very different answers.
Furthermore,
the study has some serious omissions in terms of what defines health. Only
17 of the studies included human test subjects, and of those 17, only three
analyzed the health outcomes (of which two of the three looked at
allergies-which has nothing to do with nutritional profiles of organic food).
The lack of metabolic analyses in these studies is seriously problematic in
determining the full nutritional or health value of organic versus
conventional. Could our bodies use nutrients more efficiently if they were
found in organic food form? What role does pesticides and antibiotics have in
metabolizing food? Without a deeper analysis into those biomedical questions,
the study doesn’t really help with the study of health outcomes.
And
lastly, the study didn’t look into the other motivators for eating organic.
While the researchers in the study claimed that the question of organic foods’
nutritional content was a frequent one, people eat organic for plenty of
different reasons, with nutrition probably being one of them. But by not
investigating the actual motivators in buying organic foods, the researchers
missed a real opportunity to pinpoint the why consumers make the food decisions
that they do.
[3] Diseases
linked to pesticide exposure include Parkinson’s,
hormone disrupters or endocrine system imbalances (early puberty, decreased
sperm count, etc.) and cancer (260 studies link pesticide exposure to cancer).
[5] There’s one
more environmental benefit to organic farming: carbon sequestration. According
to some studies, organic farming is better at capturing carbon than it’s conventional
couterpart, thus making it a better weapon fight climate change. Unfortunately,
there are not enough studies to make this a conclusive benefit of organic
farming. But if it is true, organic farming could be another weapon against
climate change.