Organic food 'has no health benefits'


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Blah blah blah argument from ignorance. You don't know about, nor care for, and haven't examined the studies yourself, therefore they're flawed.

How do you know the difference in what you taste is between "organic" and "non-organic" food, and not in freshness or some other variable unknown to you that is arbitrary to both types of food production? Sorry, from personal experiences alone one is not qualified to draw conclusions. That's not how science works. Things need to be honestly investigated in-depth and objectively, biases and placebos controlled.

And lets not forget "organic" food production industry is big business, worth billions. Their marketing isn't immune to fudging the benefits of their products. Like the entire "natural is better" fad. Two words: botulism toxin.

Those are valid points, but I did not say that my own conclusions are based in scientific facts.

My opinion is based on my personal experience, not just with organic food, but also with the other kind of food. I do know (out of experience of producing it) what goes into the food that is sold on the supermarket. For that fact I've chosen to organically produce, and buy organic.

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You are welcome anytime.

"Migas ?> alentejana com carne de porco" with a tomato salad on the side, and a good quality Borba red wine.

Does that sound good to you?:))

:yes:: Sounds quite fine.

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Argument is about capitalism, not food

This week the Food Standards Agency published a review paper showing that organic food is no better than normal food, in terms of composition, or health benefits. The Soil Association's response has been swift, and received prominent and blanket right of reply: this is testament to the lobbying power of this ?2bn industry, and the cultural values of people who work in the media.

I don't care about organic food. I am interested in bad arguments. Theirs has three components.

Firstly, they say that the important issue with organic food is not personal health benefits, but rather benefit to the environment. This is a popular strategy from losing positions: "Don't talk about that, talk about this."

Secondly, they say that there are positive health benefits of organic food, but they are related to the absence of pesticides, and cannot be measured by the evidence that has been identified and summarised in the FSA paper. This, again, is gamesmanship.

Either you are proposing that there are health benefits which cannot ever be measured. In this case you have faith, which is not a matter of evidence.

Or you are proposing that there are health benefits which could be measured, but have not been yet. In this case, again, you have faith rather than evidence, but you could at least start recruiting researchers now, using your ?2bn, to investigate your beliefs with fair tests.

And thirdly, sadly, like many industries in a corner, the Soil Association seeks to undermine the public's understanding of what a "systematic review" is, which itself causes collateral damage to everybody's ability to engage in debates on evidence. They say that the report has deliberately excluded evidence to produce the answer that organic food is no better.

The accusation is one of "cherry-picking", and it is hard to see how it can be valid in the kind of study conducted by the FSA, because in a "systematic review", before you begin collecting papers, you specify how you will search for evidence, what databases you will use, what types of studies you will use, how you will grade the quality of the evidence (to see if it was a "fair test"), and so on.

What is it that the FSA ignored which so angered the Soil Association? As an example, from their press release, they are "disappointed that the FSA failed to include the results of a major European Union-funded study involving 31 research and university institutes and the publication, so far, of more than 100 scientific papers, at a cost of ?18m, which ended in April this year". They gave the link to qlif.org.

I followed this link and found the list of 120 papers. Almost all are irrelevant. The first 14 are on "consumer expectations and attitudes", which are correctly not included in a systematic review of the evidence on food composition. Then there are 22 on "effects of production methods": here you might expect to find more relevant research, but no.

The first paper ("The effect of medium term feeding with organic, low input and conventional diet on selected immune parameters in rat"), while interesting, will plainly not be relevant to a systematic review on nutrient content. The same is true of the next paper, "Salmonella infection level in Danish indoor and outdoor pig production systems measured by antibodies in meat juice and fecal shedding on-farm and at slaughter": it is not relevant.

Furthermore, the overwhelming majority of these are unpublished conference papers, and some of them are just a description of the fact that somebody made an oral presentation at a meeting. The systematic review correctly looked only at good-quality data published in peer-reviewed academic journals.

This raises the issue of transparency: we want the methods and results of scientific research to be formally presented, and accessible by all.

If a government report on anything relies substantially on unpublished and inaccessible research then we are correctly concerned: in fact, I raised such concerns, two weeks ago, because the key piece of evidence presented by the Home Office to justify retaining DNA from innocent people who have been arrested was an incompetently presented piece of unpublished and incomplete research.

In reality, this is not about organic food. The emotive commentary in favour of organic farming bundles together diverse and legitimate concerns about unchecked capitalism in our food supply: battery farming, corruptible regulators, or reckless destruction of the environment, where the producer's costs do not reflect the true full costs of their activities to society, to name just a few. Each of these problems deserves individual attention.

But just as we do not solve the problems of deceitfulness in the pharmaceutical industry by buying homeopathic sugar pills, so we may not resolve the undoubted problems of unchecked capitalism in industrial food production by giving money to the ?2bn industry represented by the Soil Association.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/20...ce-organic-food

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:yes: Sounds quite fine.

Anytime you stop by my town just let me know and we'll have that lunch. :)

also described in the recent episode of Penn and Teller "bull****" (S07E06)

Enjoy your meal:

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Exactly.

Organic food is nutritionally better for you than cheap processed foods.

Soil to grow organic fruit, veg and herbs is better quality, no inorganic pesticides adds to the quality of the finished product.

I get the feeling this ''false advertisement'' similar to the Lord Ha-Ha in WII.

I think it's a snatch at trying to promote inorganic products and to drop the price of organic.

My shopping basic contains around 10% organic per month.

All fresh meat, produce, eggs and dairy are nutritionally better for you than cheap processed foods.

(Funny thing is if you look at cost per pound of food, the processed food is actually more expensive than fresh food. Processed food tends to be loaded with salt, sugar, excess fat and calories. You eat more calories but get less volume which leads to over indulging because you don't feel as full as fast as you do eating healthy.)

What the study is saying is that organic foods are no healthier than their non organic fresh counter parts. Processed foods weren't even mentioned.

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Right. Now eat a fresh raw tomato biologically produced, then eat another (if you dare) produced using chemicals

Uhh, all foods grown are produced using chemicals, including organic foods. Growing food is a chemical and biological process and organic soils and fertilizers are loaded with chemicals which is why they work to fertilize the soil. There are also natural pesticides that are used in growing organic foods that are also chemicals. Everything involves chemicals and chemistry or else life would not be possible. All food is produced using chemicals including organically grown food.

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How many people have heard of the Codex Alimentarius legislation? I'm guessing not many, so I will explain it. It will REQUIRE that ALL organisms that are to be eaten by humans be genetically modified, plants and animals. It will also outlaw high concentration vitamins and minerals.

People need to wake up and hold the people responsible that are behind this crap. Where's the motive. Who's going to profit from this?

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Everything we eat except maybe gum was once alive as a plant or animal. I'd really like to know who isn't eating organic food.

or⋅gan⋅ic

  /ɔrˈg?nɪk/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [awr-gan-ik] Show IPA

Use organic in a Sentence

?adjective

1. noting or pertaining to a class of chemical compounds that formerly comprised only those existing in or derived from plants or animals, but that now includes all other compounds of carbon.

2. characteristic of, pertaining to, or derived from living organisms: organic remains found in rocks.

3. of or pertaining to an organ or the organs of an animal, plant, or fungus.

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Uhh, all foods grown are produced using chemicals, including organic foods. Growing food is a chemical and biological process and organic soils and fertilizers are loaded with chemicals which is why they work to fertilize the soil. There are also natural pesticides that are used in growing organic foods that are also chemicals. Everything involves chemicals and chemistry or else life would not be possible. All food is produced using chemicals including organically grown food.

:rofl:

"Chemicals" as in herbicides, fungicides, pesticides, chemical fertilizers, insecticides, (...)

Everything we eat except maybe gum was once alive as a plant or animal. I'd really like to know who isn't eating organic food.

or⋅gan⋅ic

  /ɔrˈg?nɪk/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [awr-gan-ik] Show IPA

Use organic in a Sentence

–adjective

1. noting or pertaining to a class of chemical compounds that formerly comprised only those existing in or derived from plants or animals, but that now includes all other compounds of carbon.

2. characteristic of, pertaining to, or derived from living organisms: organic remains found in rocks.

3. of or pertaining to an organ or the organs of an animal, plant, or fungus.

Organic> is just how that type of food is named, it (obviously) doesn't mean the other type of food isn't organic as being, or derived from, an organism.
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Yuo guys REALLY need to watch a recent episode of Penn & Teller's bullsh1t, they covered all this rather nicely.

Some fun facts from that show, where they ran a mini-study in a local market.

1. People were given a blind choice or 2 of the same foodstuffs (tomato, apple). 90% preferred and chose the non-organic item.

2. People were presented to 2 banana halfs. They were told one was organic, one was not. They were told which was which. They ALL chose the organic half as the better tasting etc. The 2 halves were from the SAME banana.

3. Organic farmers have to use organic pesticides. These pesticide forumalae are 30 years old and none too healthy. Modern synthetic pesticides are FAR superior in effectiveness and safety.

4. If the whole world converted to organic farming, 3 billion people will starve to death.

5. There is absolutely zero evidence that modern pesticides cause environmental damage, or that the food is any less nutricious than organic. In fact, the food is often better tasting and has better yield.

6. Much organic produce comes from places like China, which has no controls over food quality.

So, eat organic all you like, hell.. *I* do too; but don't fool yourselves that it's any better for you OR the environment. It's become little more than a brand name, giving food producers an excuse to charge you even more for their wares.

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This doesn't surprise me at all. When free school milk was introduced back in the day, it made quite a radical difference to the health of generations as compared to their parents. We don't seem to see this with organic food, but it's been around long enough now.

Organic is just a label as far as I can tell, a fashion trend. Eggs seem to have a requirement, by law, that the packet tells you where they came from.

Is there any such requirement about how 'organic' food is produced? I've never heard of it, nor have any organic farmers bothered to publicise their methods.

They just quietly let people make assumptions about what it means. It's like the "natural" label that is being added to everything, because "natural" automatically makes it "better" and "healthier" ... everyone loves a bit of natural bacteria and virus to make them ill, a natural bit of cancer, a natural tornado or earthquake...

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I work with several guys who live on farms, vegetables, cattle, tobacco, etc. One was talking the other day about what a joke the organic label is. He said his neighbor sells his beef as organic and gets more money, but the only thing he does different is not spray pesticides on his rosebushes.

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I don't know how it is done in other parts of the world, but in the EU food must follow strict rules to be labeled as organic.

What is organic farming?

Put simply, organic farming is an agricultural system that seeks to provide you, the consumer, with fresh, tasty and authentic food while respecting natural life-cycle systems.

Principles

To achieve this, organic farming relies on a number of objectives and principles, as well as common practices designed to minimise the human impact on the environment, while ensuring the agricultural system operates as naturally as possible.

Typical organic farming practices include:

  • Wide crop rotation as a prerequisite for an efficient use of on-site resources
  • Very strict limits on chemical synthetic pesticide and synthetic fertilizer use, livestock antibiotics, food additives and processing aids and other inputs
  • Absolute prohibition of the use of genetically modified organisms
  • Taking advantage of on-site resources, such as livestock manure for fertilizer or feed produced on the farm
  • Choosing plant and animal species that are resistant to disease and adapted to local conditions
  • Raising livestock in free-range, open-air systems and providing them with organic feed
  • Using animal husbandry practices appropriate to different livestock species

Logo and labelling

The current EU organic legislation sets out rules for plant and animal production and for the processing of food and feed to be labelled as organic. Compliance with the EU organic legislation is required for all products carrying the EU organic logo. In order to being able to trace organic products, the name or code number of the certification body that has certified the organic producer, has to be on the label.

To make it even easier to recognise organic food in shops, new labelling rules will apply from 1 July 2010 with a mandatory use of the EU organic logo on all pre-packaged organic food produced in the EU. The origin of the farmed ingredients has to be indicated together with the logo, and the code number of the certification body has to accompany the label.

In addition, you can find many private organic standards in the Member States. Most of these standards have their own organic logo. However, they have all as a minimum to apply the harmonised EU organic legislation.

Facts

Statistics show that many consumers in the EU are looking for products bearing these organic logos and labels when shopping for groceries or buying a meal in a restaurant or canteen.

Studies estimate that the market for organic products is growing by 10-15% a year.

http://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/organic/or...what-organic_en

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Like stated in this thread, Organic is simply there for the lack of pesticides/chemicals/perservitives.

Personally I have lived all my life without any issue from non organic food.

I will continue to eat non organic food. Its cheaper....I'm not made of money you know.

Don't get me wrong, if I see the same food that is organic for cheaper or same price, I will buy the organic one. but personally Its not a big deal to me.

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I am not that big in organic, but I did recently start reading labels for the presence of High Fructose Corn Syrup. I was pretty shocked to see it in my ketchup and peanut butter. The organic counterparts don't have HFC in them.

I suggest everyone take up hunting if you want truly organic and free range meat. :p

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Being raised in an open field is NO guarantee of a healthy animal!

Of course not, that alone doesn't guarantee that the animal is healthy.

Open field animals:

On the other side of the "field":

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Source (vegvideo) yep just another non biased source you've got there

That video is not altered nor manipulated. That is the way that any intensive pig farm works. It is a fact.

Are you questioning that?

Nice move, posting videos of Penn & Teller to make believe that other people's opinions backed up with factual data aren't valid.

You sir are full of bull.

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