Punch on: Open thread 31/07/09

Paul says:

08:08am | 31/07/09

According to the UK’s Food Standards Agency, and as gleefully reported today by the BBC, ‘Organic has no health benefits’, so we can all breath a sigh of relief and return to eating pesticide and chemical filled garbage. There’s probably no health benefits to unleaded paint then, eh? Any benefits left in quitting smoking? Do we even need to debunk this utter foolishness?
Personally, I wouldn’t expect an organic pepper to have significantly more nutrients than any other pepper, since they are usually not genetically engineered, though nutrient levels were the only factor in the study’s determinations. Turns out organic peppers do indeed have elevated nutrient levels, but not significantly elevated, according to the FSA. The health benefits of not ingesting a host of ingredients far too dangerous to be included in a child’s chemistry set is a glaring omission.
According to the study’s Executive Summary:
“This review does not address contaminant content (such as herbicide, pesticide and fungicide residues) of organically and conventionally produced foodstuffs or the environmental impacts of organic and conventional agricultural practices.”
And not all studies on organic and conventional practices were reviewed…
Articles were excluded if they:
were not peer-reviewed
did not have an English abstract
did not address composition of nutrients and other substances
did not present a direct comparison between organic and conventional production systems
were primarily concerned with impact of different fertiliser (sic) regimes
were primarily concerned with non-nutrient contaminant content (cadmium, lead and mercury)
were authentication studies describing techniques to identify food production methods
In other words, only Western studies focused strictly on nutrient comparison were reviewed. That would seem to overlook many studies which might show organic food to be a much healthier option. It’s a safe bet that the overwhelming majority of the reviewed studies were the product of the traditional food industry.

iansand says:

11:17am | 31/07/09

I am waiting for someone to come up with an inorganic diet.  “Organic” must be the most misused word of the last two decades.

The authors of the study revealed its limitations, as they should.  It is a pity that journalists in search of a good headline do not have the same scruples.