How Important is Organic Food?

By now you've probably gotten wind of the story that NPR put out about the Standford study on organic produce as compared to conventionally grown produce. The NY Times also reported on it, more than once, as well as Discovery.com. The gist of the reporting is that organic is no better than conventional foods. At least, that is what you would take away from the headlines if you didn't dig deeper. Luckily plenty of people did.

Here is an interesting retort of the reported-on story by Nora Poullion, over at the Washington Post. Sustainable Food News also had some opinions. What did the study actually find? (Actually, it wasn't novel research, it was simply a meta-analysis of the current available research.) It found that organic food has less pesticides. It also found that the risk for isolating bacteria resistant to 3 or more antibiotics was higher in conventional than in organic chicken and pork. They also found strong evidence that organic foods are generally more nutritious than their conventional counterparts.

What did the headlines read? "Organic foods not healthier, study finds.", "Why organic food may not be healthier for you", etc. Natural News reported on this strange occurrence, where sensationalized headlines misrepresent the facts.

The abstract of the study can be found here. If you actually get the entire paper and read it, you see that the outcomes of the study are not as surprising as the headlines make them out to be. Of course, there are numerous benefits to organic food and organic farming. One of the most important of which, is exposure to herbicides and pesticides. Conventional farming exposes consumers to many times the amount of these chemicals that organic produce does. For more details on the study head over to Food Matters.

At Innate Response, we are acutely aware of the dangers of herbicides and pesticides. We currently test every single batch of our vitamins for over 140 compounds and counting. We add new ones as we become aware of them in order to deliver as pure and clean a product as possible to our practitioners and their patients.

So what do you think? Is organic food important?

Labels: conventional, farming, herbicides, organic, pesticides