[prakruti] Is Organic Food Really Healthier? yes far more healthier than you imagined

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At 12:10 AM 4/29/08, you wrote:

 

 

 

Is Organic Food Really Healthier?

 

By Deborah Rich, Earth Island Journal

Posted on April 23, 2008, Printed on April 28, 2008

http://www.alternet.org/story/81773/

Don't ask the US federal government whether there are any health benefits

to eating organic food. It won't tell. No mere coincidence, then, that no

pictures of farmers or farms (or fertilizers or pesticides) appear in the

USDA food pyramid logo. The federal government encourages the consumption

of more fruits, vegetables, and grains, but stops short of evaluating the

farming systems that produce these same foods. An apple is an apple

regardless of how it has been grown, the USDA food pyramid suggests, and

the only take-home message is that we should all be eating more apples

and less added sugars and fats.

But this message may be too simplistic. Over the past decade, scientists

have begun conducting sophisticated comparisons of foods grown in organic

and conventional farming systems. They're finding that not all apples (or

tomatoes, kiwis, or milk) are equal, especially when in comes to nutrient

and pesticide levels. How farmers grow their crops affects, sometimes

dramatically, not only how nutritious food is but also how safe it is to

eat. It may well be that a federal food policy that fails to acknowledge

the connection between what happens on the farm and the healthfulness of

foods is enough to make a nation sick.

The Results Are In

 

In the late 1990s, researcher Anne-Marie Mayer looked at data gathered by

the British government from the 1930s to the 1980s on the mineral

contents of 20 raw fruits and vegetables. She found that levels of

calcium, magnesium, copper, and sodium in vegetables, and of magnesium,

iron, copper, and potassium in fruit had dropped significantly.

The 50-year period of Mayer's study coincides with the post World War II

escalation of synthetic nitrogen and pesticide use on the farm. These

powerful agri-chemicals allowed farmers to bypass the

management-intensive methods of maintaining soil fertility by

replenishing soil organic matter with cover crops, manure, and compost,

and of controlling pests with crop rotation and inter-cropping. Reliance

on chemical fertilizers and pesticides became a defining characteristic

of conventional farming, while farmers who eschewed the use of

agri-chemicals came to be considered organic.

In 2004, Donald R. Davis, a research associate with the Biochemical

Institute at the University of Texas, Austin, published a similar

analysis of data collected by the USDA in 1950 and again in 1999 on the

levels of 13 nutrients in more than 40 food crops. Davis found that while

seven nutrients showed no significant changes, protein declined by six

percent; phosphorous, iron, and calcium declined between nine percent and

16 percent; ascorbic acid (a precursor of Vitamin C) declined 15 percent;

and riboflavin declined 38 percent. Breeding for characteristics like

yield, rapid growth, and storage life at the expense of taste and quality

were likely contributing to the decline, Davis hypothesized. The

" dilution effect, " whereby fertilization practices cause

harvest weight and dry matter to increase more rapidly than nutrient

accumulation can occur, probably also played a role, Davis

suggested.

Meanwhile, researchers at the Rodale Institute in Pennsylvania were

seeing a tradeoff between use of synthetic fertilizers and food nutrient

values in the Institute's Farming System Trial (FST). The FST is the

longest-running side-by-side comparison of organic and conventional

farming systems in the US.

" We looked at the major and minor nutrients of oat leaves and seeds,

grown after 22 years of differentiation under conventional and organic

systems, " says Paul Hepperly, research and training manager at the

Institute. " The organic matter in the conventional system did not

change over the 22 years, but we got about a one percent increase in

organic matter over the baseline every year in the organic system. We

found a direct correlation between the increase of organic matter and the

amount of individual minerals in the oat leaves and seeds. The increase

in minerals ranged from about seven percent for potassium, up to 74

percent for boron. On average, it was between 20 and 25 percent for all

the elements we looked at, and we looked at nitrogen, phosphorous,

potassium, calcium, magnesium, sulfur, iron, manganese, copper, boron,

and zinc. The production practices used on these oats was completely the

same the year they were planted -- the plots varied only by the legacy of

what had happened to the soil as a result of the previous farming

practices. This showed how dramatic the soil change had been and its

effect on the nutrient content of the plant. We've done these tests not

only on oats but also on wheat, corn, soybeans, tomatoes, peppers, and

carrots, and we consistently find that the organic heritage improves soil

and improves the mineral content of the food products. "

Probably due in part to a fertilizer effect, and partly because the use

of chemical pesticides dampens the mobilization of a plant's own

defenses, conventionally grown whole foods also often have lower levels

of antioxidants and other beneficial phytochemicals than the same foods

grown organically.

Charles Benbrook, chief scientist at the Organic Center and former

executive director of the Board on Agriculture of the National Academy of

Sciences, maintains a database of all the studies published since 1980

that compare the nutrient levels of organic and conventional foods.

Benbrook screens the trials based on criteria for experimental design,

agronomic practices, and analytical methods, eliminating those he deems

not sufficiently rigorous. His analysis of food comparison studies shows

that, on average, conventionally grown fruits and vegetables have 30

percent fewer antioxidants than their organically grown counterparts.

This makes enough of a difference, says Benbrook, that " consumption

of organic produce will increase average daily antioxidant intake by

about as much as an additional serving of most fruits and

vegetables. "

The public health implications of farming methods that restore food

nutrient density are tantalizing. Several studies released in 2007

suggest that moving US agriculture toward organic practices could help to

reduce the incidence of some of our nation's most debilitating and costly

chronic diseases.

At the University of California at Davis, researchers compared organic

and conventional tomatoes grown in Davis's long-term farming trial. They

found that 10-year mean levels of quercetin were 79 percent higher in

organic tomatoes than in conventional tomatoes, and levels of kaempferol

were 97 percent higher. Quercetin and kaempferol are flavonoids, which

epidemiological studies suggest offer protection from cardiovascular

disease, cancer, and other age-related diseases.

Another UC Davis study compared the nutritional profiles of organic and

conventional kiwis at harvest and during extended cold storage. The

researchers found that " all the main mineral constituents were more

concentrated in the organic kiwifruits, which also had higher ascorbic

acid and total phenol content, resulting in a higher antioxidant

activity. "

Similarly, in a greenhouse study in Spain, researchers not only found

higher mineral levels in organically grown sweet peppers compared to

conventionally grown peppers, but also that the organic sweet peppers had

more than 1.5 times the level of carotenoids found in the conventional

peppers. Epidemiological studies indicate that consumption of

carotenoid-rich fruits and vegetables reduces the risk of cardiovascular

disease and some cancers, and helps to slow the development of

age-related macular degeneration and cataracts.

A study led by Lukas Rist, head of research at the Paracelsus Hospital in

Switzerland, demonstrated how farm practices affect health even several

levels up the food chain. Rist analyzed milk samples from 312

breastfeeding mothers. He found that mothers consuming at least 90 per

cent of their dairy and meat from organic sources have 36 percent higher

levels of rumenic acid in their breast milk than mothers eating

conventional dairy and meat. Rumenic acid is one of a group of compounds

that nutritional research suggests have anti-carcinogenic, anti-diabetic,

and immune-modulating effects, and that favorably influence body fat

composition.

Hay Belly Nation

 

Eager as we are to connect the dots between specific nutrients and

specific health benefits, we're still a long way from being able to

understand or predict the effect of raising or lowering nutrient levels

in one food or another. As Michael Pollan writes in his new book In

Defense of Food, " Even the simplest food is a hopelessly

complicated thing to analyze, a virtual wilderness of chemical compounds,

many of which exist in intricate and dynamic relation to one another, and

all of which together are in the process of changing from one state to

another. "

Long-term human feeding trials, meanwhile, are notoriously difficult to

control, and, though epidemiological studies show a correlation between

eating fruits and vegetables and decreased incidence of disease, these

studies don't identify which compounds in the fruits and vegetables

correspond with which health effects.

But even granting the many gaps in our knowledge of nutrient and health

interactions, reducing the nutrient density of our whole foods seems a

poor public health gamble. Americans already have trouble consuming the

recommended daily amounts of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains.

Diminishing the nutrient levels in the servings we do eat would seem to

only compound our dietary problems.

Brian Halweil, senior researcher at the Worldwatch Institute, says that

based on data from the Centers for Disease Control, " Thirty percent

or more of the US population ingests inadequate levels of magnesium,

vitamin C, vitamin E, and vitamin A, all nutrients we get from

plants. "

Doctors don't see many patients walk into their clinics with obvious

deficiency-related illnesses like scurvy, says Dr. Alan Greene, attending

physician at Stanford University's Lucile Packard Children's Hospital.

But doctors are, he says, seeing a lot of suboptimal intake of nutrients.

" For instance, a huge percentage of the population doesn't get its

recommended levels of calcium. Pregnant adult women should be getting

1000 milligrams of calcium. By the time a healthy baby is born, the baby

will have about 30,000 milligrams of calcium in its body, and all of that

has to come from mom's diet or mom's body. The average mom is only

getting about 700 milligrams a day during pregnancy, so that gap is

mostly coming out of her bones, and is related to the osteoporosis we're

seeing later. "

Greene encourages patients to include fresh produce in their diets and to

eat organic as much as possible. " I'll talk about how fruits and

vegetables are really important, and that when you choose organic you're

getting more of the great stuff, less of the bad stuff. "

Unfortunately (or fortunately for those of us who like to eat), we

haven't yet been able to design nutrient supplements that provide the

same benefits as eating whole foods. " In all well-designed dietary

intervention trials, where a carefully monitored amount of nutrients --

vitamin C, vitamin E, antioxidants, etc. -- were delivered to the animals

or people in the form of fresh whole foods versus the same levels in the

form of supplements, the animals or people who ate the whole foods

universally responded better and were healthier, " says Benbrook of

the Organic Center.

Ironically, less nutrient dense foods may be partly why we're eating more

and more. Phytochemicals contribute to the satisfaction we derive from

foods. Some contribute to foods' flavor profiles, while others, like

resveratrol, help trigger satiety. It could even be that that second

helping is an instinctive attempt to secure sufficient

micronutrients.

" In cattle and animals, this is known as hay belly, " says

Hepperly at the Rodale Institute. " If your hay gets rained on, you

wind up with very low quality hay because the water leaches out all the

nutrients. You'll see animals eating more of this hay than they normally

would. They get these big bellies, and they're unhealthy, but they're

just trying to get their nutrients. Ranchers know that if they have

animals with hay belly, they have poor quality food. What we've done with

the erosion of nutrient content in our foods -- what we've done with

additives, processing, and artificial production methods -- is that we

have basically produced a hay belly nation. "

Pesticides for Breakfast

 

The toxicity of many of the chemical pesticides used by conventional

farmers is of little dispute. Indeed, the EPA's pesticide registration

process is based upon identifying a level of exposure that is acutely

toxic to lab animals, then working backwards to identify an exposure

level that the EPA feels poses an acceptable threat to human and

environmental health.

As our understanding of the body's intricate biochemistry advances,

however, EPA-sanctioned levels of pesticide exposure are becoming harder

to swallow.

Caroline Cox is the research director for the Center for Environmental

Health based in Oakland, California. One of her favorite examples of the

complex interactions of pesticides with bodily functions comes from a

study undertaken by Texas Tech University researchers.

" The researchers were looking at possible hormonal effects of the

herbicide Roundup, and they looked at the production of male sex

hormones, " Cox says. " Before a sex hormone can be made,

cholesterol has to be carried by a special 'dump-truck' molecule from the

blood vessel to the place in the cell where the hormone is synthesized.

What the researchers found was that one of the ingredients in Roundup

interferes with the production of that dump-truck carrier molecule. You'd

have trouble dreaming up something so complicated. It's no wonder that it

has taken us decades to identify effects like that. "

Cox and other toxicology experts disagree that " the dose makes the

poison, " the rationale underlying the EPA approach to regulating

pesticides. It may be that there is no safe dose for many of the

pesticides we are regularly exposed to.

" If you think of pesticide use starting right around World War II,

since that time science has progressed and researchers have gotten more

and more sophisticated in the kinds of science that they can do, "

she says. " And what they are doing is identifying effects of

pesticides at lower and lower exposure levels. For example there are

studies on amphibians that find effects from atrazine [used to control

weeds in almost two-thirds of all US corn and sorghum acreage] at the

tenth of a part per billion level, which is such a tiny amount that it is

almost impossible to grasp just how small an amount that is. That was a

study done at UC Berkeley, and what they found was this condition called

intersex in the frogs, meaning that the frogs had both male and female

sex organs. "

A glance at the data gathered for the USDA Pesticide Data Program reveals

that even at breakfast we consume several servings of pesticides. In

2005, 88 percent of apples, 92 percent of milk samples, 52 percent of

orange juice samples, 67 percent of wheat samples, and 75 percent of

water samples were contaminated with pesticides ranging from herbicides

to post-harvest fungicides. None of these pesticides we eat for breakfast

gets a clean bill of health. The EPA lists some as probable carcinogens,

and others as affecting reproductive and nervous systems.

Exactly how each of us tolerates daily low doses of pesticides will vary

according to our genetic heritage, the other industrial toxins we're

exposed to, our health, and our age. The very youngest and oldest of us

will probably suffer the most damage from pesticide exposure. " At

particular moments of development, the immune and neurological systems of

infants are profoundly vulnerable to exposure to chemicals, " says

Benbrook at the Organic Center. " And in the case of the elderly,

their livers don't work as well at detoxifying chemicals as they did in

the middle part of their lives, and they often have weaker immune

systems. "

Logically, the more often we can eat food grown without pesticides, the

fewer pesticides we'll consume. The connection between food choices and

pesticide consumption was demonstrated in a 2006 study led by Chensheng

Lu of the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University. Lu

measured the metabolites of organophosphorus pesticides in children's

urine as the children alternated between eating conventional and organic

diets for five days at a stretch. (Organophosphorous pesticides account

for about 70 percent of insecticide compounds applied in the United

States, and are known to interfere with the nervous systems of insects,

animals, and humans.) Results of the study showed that metabolites of two

organophosphorus pesticides commonly used in agriculture decreased to

nondetectable levels when the children's diets were switched to organic

and quickly escalated to detectable levels when the children returned to

their normal conventional diets.

Daily doses of pesticides are particularly unappetizing given the

existence of a highly productive model of farming that doesn't need these

toxic chemicals. " If you could give me a magic wand and I could make

any changes that I want, I would have the EPA researching, developing,

and helping farmers implement sustainable agricultural processes so they

don't need pesticides, " Cox says. " There are better ways to

manage pests. Organic is a great example that it can be

done. "

200,000 Farmers Needed

 

Cox's wish hints at what official acknowledgement of the interaction

between farming practices and the healthfulness of our food could mean.

As a country, we're stuck in the mode of regulating and mitigating the

negative effects of conventional farming. We could, instead, be spending

our time and resources expanding and improving upon the organic model of

food production and removing the structural barriers that limit regular

access to organic food to a geographic and economic elite.

" Organic will be five to eight percent of the US food economy in the

next couple of years, " says Bob Scowcroft, executive director of the

Organic Farming Research Foundation (OFRF). " But to go from five

percent to 40 is another story. That will involve policy work and

institutional change. "

For starters, the nation's agricultural colleges will need to develop the

capacity to train tens of thousands more organic farmers. " Organic

systems are more complex and biologically intricate compared to a

conventional agri-chemical based production system, " says Hepperly

of the Rodale Institute. " Right now, the official number of organic

farmers is approaching 20,000 in the United States. If we were going to

have 30 percent of US agriculture in organic, we'd have to have 200,000

organic farmers. We're talking an enormous ramp-up in our education

system. "

For that to happen, Congressional action is sorely needed to redirect the

Farm Bill away from status quo conventional farming and toward farm and

food healthfulness. " We need growing and eating organic to become a

matter of public policy because, right now, we are publicly funding the

other direction: primarily corn and soybeans -- and the atrazine, the

genetically modified organisms, and the organophosphates that go along

with those crops, " Dr. Alan Greene says.

" Overall, the USDA has been spending about $2 billion per year on

research, extension, education, economics and statistics. Less than one

percent is specifically directed at the needs of organic production,

processing, and marketing, " Mark Lipson of the Organic Farming

Research Foundation testified before the newly formed House Agriculture

Subcommittee on Horticulture and Organic Agriculture in April

2007.

The list of structural barriers goes on. Because there isn't good

regional market and pricing data for organic crops, organic growers pay a

five percent penalty surcharge on crop insurance premiums. When organic

growers incur an insured loss, they are repaid at conventional crop

prices even though conventional prices are usually far lower than organic

prices. And without solid third party data to back up their estimates,

organic farmers have difficulty convincing loan officers that their

projected yields and revenues are reasonable.

Many regions lack the distribution infrastructure even to supply organic

farmers with compost. " Organic is highly geocentric, " says

Steve Diver, who worked for 18 years for the National Sustainable

Agriculture Information Service (ATTRA). " The organic infrastructure

sucks to hell for most of the heartland of the country. " In

California, Diver says, farmers can pick up the phone and order whatever

soil amendments they need, in whatever quantities, from a local dealer

who will deliver the goods right to the farm. But in many parts of the

South, five to six farmers have to band together, order a 22-ton

semi-truck load from out of state, then off-load the product into their

own vehicles and truck it home.

Organic meat producers lack access to slaughterhouses. " You can't

sell meat unless it's been slaughtered by USDA packing houses, and these

slaughterhouses are mostly at CAFOs [concentrated animal feeding

operations], " says Scowcroft. CAFO slaughterhouses generally won't

deal with the smaller numbers of animals that most organic meat producers

are slaughtering at any one time. Even when they do, the CAFO

slaughterhouse has to first be steam-cleaned and sterilized before

animals can be slaughtered there for the meat to still qualify as

certified organic. " And even then, " says Scowcroft, " there

are a lot of chemicals used in the sterilization and the cleaning

process, so what you really need are dedicated certified organic

slaughter rooms. "

You Can Ask, But They Won't Tell

 

Try to get guidance from the federal government on the potential health

benefits of eating organic, and you'll find your questions quickly and

politely deflected. The US Department of Health and Human Services will

defer to its Food and Drug Administration (FDA). FDA spokespeople will

say that " organic " is a term used by the USDA, not the FDA, and

that the FDA has no policy on organics. The USDA will say that its

mandate does not extend to passing judgement on the relative safety and

nutritional benefits of organic versus conventional foods, and that the

USDA's task is simply to regulate use of the " certified

organic " label.

With that passing of the apple, the federal government excuses itself

from exploring whether conventional farming practices compromise the

nutritional benefits of whole foods, and whether modern organic farming

offers a model of food production that conveys significant health

benefits. It's anyone's guess how many more studies will be needed before

the relative merits of foods produced in different farming systems can

become a topic of discussion among federal food and health officials.

Agri-chemical companies led by the Monsanto will certainly use their

considerable influence to delay that day as long as possible.

In the meantime, we will keep eating -- but we need to ask just how well?

 

Deborah Rich raises olives and two children in Monterey County,

California, and frequently writes about the interaction of human nature

and nature for the San Francisco Chronicle.

 

© 2008 Earth Island Journal All rights reserved.

View this story online at:

http://www.alternet.org/story/81773/

 

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