Organic Food is Nutritionally Superior, Scientists Say

[mrt144]

is it worth the cost? for anglos that make the money yes, for everyone else, no.

 

[Narz]

Switch to organic crops could help poor

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070505/ap_on_re_eu/un_organic_food

Organic food has long been considered a niche market, a luxury for wealthy consumers. But researchers told a U.N. conference Saturday that a large-scale shift to organic agriculture could help fight world hunger while improving the environment.
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Crop yields initially can drop as much as 50 percent when industrialized, conventional agriculture using chemical fertilizers and pesticides is converted to organic. While such decreases often even out over time, the figures have kept the organic movement largely on the sidelines of discussions about feeding the hungry.

Researchers in Denmark found, however, that food security for sub-Saharan Africa would not be seriously harmed if 50 percent of agricultural land in the food exporting regions of Europe and North America were converted to organic by 2020.

While total food production would fall, the amount per crop would be much smaller than previously assumed, and the resulting rise in world food prices could be mitigated by improvements in the land and other benefits, the study found.

A similar conversion to organic farming in sub-Saharan Africa could help the region's hungry because it could reduce their need to import food, Niels Halberg, a senior scientist at the Danish Research Center for Organic Food and Farming, told the U.N. conference on "Organic Agriculture and Food Security."

Farmers who go back to traditional agricultural methods would not have to spend money on expensive chemicals and would grow more diverse and sustainable crops, the report said. In addition, if their food is certified as organic, farmers could export any surpluses at premium prices.

The researchers plugged in data on projected crop yields and commodity prices until 2020 to create models for the most optimistic and conservative outlooks.

Alexander Mueller, assistant director-general of the Rome-based U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, praised the report and noted that projections indicate the number of hungry people in sub-Saharan Africa was expected to grow.

Considering that the effects of climate change are expected to hurt the world's poorest, "a shift to organic agriculture could be beneficial," he said.

Nadia El-Hage Scialabba, an FAO official who organized the conference, pointed to other studies she said indicated that organic agriculture could produce enough food per capita to feed the world's current population.

One such study, by the University of Michigan, found that a global shift to organic agriculture would yield at least 2,641 kilocalories per person per day, just under the world's current production of 2,786, and as many as 4,381 kilocalories per person per day, researchers reported. A kilocalorie is one "large" calorie and is known as the "nutritionist's calorie."

"These models suggest that organic agriculture has the potential to secure a global food supply, just as conventional agriculture today, but with reduced environmental impacts," Scialabba said in a paper presented to the conference.

However, she stressed that the studies were only economic models.

The United Nations defines organic agriculture as a "holistic" food system that avoids the use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, minimizes pollution and optimizes the health of plants, animals and people. It is commercially practiced in 120 countries and represented a $40 billion market last year, Scialabba said.

 

[shortguy]

I'd need more information on it specifically to make a comment. I imagine the smaller the farms the more efficiently they can be run in any case.

That's a howler, Narz. Not paying much attention to the economic trends of the past couple hundred years, eh?

 

[Bast]

Where do you buy organic meat?

 

[StarWorms]

What food isn't organic?

Seriously I so don't like labelling this as "bio" or "organic" food like the rest was made from toxic waste and this was the only food that is healthy.

I hate it too. It's as if any other type of food is made of salts or something.

 

[Narz]

That's a howler, Narz. Not paying much attention to the economic trends of the past couple hundred years, eh?

Care to elaborate?

Where do you buy organic meat?

Health food store and/or farmer's market.

 

[Narz]

By the way, I also think the "organic" label isn't the best choice of names. Really it's organically grown (which makes more sense) but the shortened version is a bit nonsensical.

 

[Leonel]

So I just wanna understand something about the difference between Organic foods and "Inorganic" foods (I suppose that name would work).

For the sake of example, organic mac and cheese would have the ingredients listed as "Pasta, Powdered white cheese, Salt" where as inorganic mac and cheese would have listed "Type 4 Pasta, Sodium Benzonate 45, Food Coloring 823, Carbon Biomonoxygonite, Sulfuritic Uranium, Food Flavoring A84, Bioplasmic Industrial Salt" and a whole list of chemicals?

 

[Narz]

Sulfuritic Uranium

A processed product can be called organic, AFAIK, if 95% of it's ingredients are organic (in Mac & Cheese it would mean the wheat & cheese would be organic. Regardless of labels it pays to read the packaging.

To elaborate on the article I posted above (which I found in good timing because it directly spoke to the post above it), a guy on another forum steam cannon) recommended I post a summery (for those without the time or inclination to read the whole thing). So, to save my own time I will steal his synopsis (which I agree with) :

"Article summary (Stuff I though was important...)

Industrial Farming
* Industry owned farms produce more food.
* Displaced farmers often cannot afford food and starve.

Personal Farming
* Personally owned farms produce less food.
* Personal farmers have food.

Industrial farming causes personal starvation due to people being unvaluable to industry and thus not having money from an industry job to buy food. What an American with an office job doesn't understand is, in some parts of the world land was confiscated from farmers for industrial farming. These ex-farmers have no office job and are now starving while industrial farms export food.

Industrial farms will sell food for fueling cars over feeding people, hence price competition and high food prices. Personal farms in Ukraine, Mexico, Cuba, Arkansas... Protect people from starving due to high food prices."

 

[Urederra]

Care to elaborate?

A quick search over the internet looking up for green revolution renders this:



There are better graphs around, I just picked up one that is clear enough.

this one is also self explanatory:


(US Corn Yield Estimates)
Take into account that the Y-axis is logarithmic.

Source

 

[Narz]

More Research (recent)

 

[El_Machinae]

I'm really enjoying this year's AAAS meeting, because I'm getting podcast reports of various lectures. I normally didn't pay attention to this meeting.

Here's the meat of Narz's link

Her team compared identical cultivars grown on certified organic plots versus those where standard fertilizers and pesticides were being applied. And as a rule, organics far surpassed their conventionally grown kin for vitamins and beneficial micronutrients, such as the antioxidant flavonoids quercetin and kaempferol, Mitchell reported

She also thinks she knows why that is. Plant nutrients tend to fall into two broadly defined categories: primary and secondary plant metabolites. We know the first category better. It includes fats (or oils), carbohydrates, amino acids and simple sugars. The second group includes the phenolic acids, flavonoids, alkaloids and terpenoids.

Conventional farming has optimized its practices and crop amendments to maximize a plant’s production of the primary metabolites. These are the ones listed on food labels. However, plants normally have a fairly balanced ratio of both primary and secondary metabolites: the primary ones don’t dominate.

And that makes sense, Mitchell points out, since many of the secondary metabolites are defense compounds — essentially a plant’s natural pesticides or sun screens, for instance.

When plants aren’t stressed, they produce fewer of these compounds. But the relative paucity of plant-protective agents available to organic farmers means that crops on their farms tend to suffer more damage from pests and the weather. And they respond by revving up production of defensive secondary metabolites.

 

[Shekwan]

I thought it was obvious that organic food is better for you.

The real question is how bad the mass produced stuff is.

 

[negZero]

Narz we already went though this couple months ago. Do I really need to sink the topic again?

 

[Narz]

Narz we already went though this couple months ago. Do I really need to sink the topic again?

We've established organic is generally nutritionally superior so I bumped a further study theorizing why this is so.

 

[negZero]

We've established organic is generally nutritionally superior so I bumped a further study theorizing why this is so.

No way in hell would I have done that and no it isn't (wait couple months and see what kind of standing this study has).

 

[uppi]

I just read the original post and stumbled over this:

"This research shows there are benefits," said Dr Kirsten Brandt of Newcastle University, which led the research. "The reason why it's such a grey area is because it's extremely difficult to measure the health benefit in any food, but we can say that if you eat 400g of fruit and vegetables per day you would get 20 per cent more nutrients in organic food."

So this basically says, that "organic" food has 20% more "nutrients". As the price difference "organic" food is usually more than those 20%, I am still better off, if I simply eat more of the "normal" food.

 

[Berzerker]

we drink organic milk and eat buffalo produced locally...mm..mm..mm..good

I can tell a big difference between "conventional" milk and the organic stuff

 

[Bill3000]

I thought it was obvious that organic food is better for you.

Nope. Appeal to nature. It's not necessary any better for you because it's "natural" any more than viruses are better for you because they're part of nature.

For example, despite being only 1% of the total market, organic food is responsible for 8% of all E. coli cases.

The real question is how bad the mass produced stuff is.

Not bad at all.

 

[Kerozine]

It's not very cost effective, being upwards of ~70% more expensive for organic (read this somewhere) for only 20% more nutrients.. it may as well be considered a luxury to be able to [regularly] afford organic produce.

This aside, it remains far more important for a person to meet his recommended daily intake of 6-8 portions of fruits & veggies than to consider organic over conventional produce.



(Noticed this thread was a necro, sorry if this has already been brought up before.)