Saturday, August 22, 2009

Organic Food Controversies

In the perfect world, the media would be objective, and journalists would know what the heck they are talking about. Evidence that we are not in the perfect world, as far as organic food is concerned, was apparent a few weeks ago, when everyone suddenly became aware of a study by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Readers came away from most articles about this study thinking that organic food was just the same as non-organic food. But what the study actually said is this: “Our review indicates that there is currently no evidence to support the selection of organically over conventionally produced foods on the basis of nutritional superiority.”

Just to clear things up: people who eat organic food do so not because they believe it has nutritional benefits over ordinary food, but because they want to eliminate/minimise their exposure to toxic chemicals and pesticides in their food. It is not a “nutritional” issue, it is a “not eating poisonous crap” issue. So this study, as far as I’m concerned, is completely pointless. Stop making a big deal about it!

I’m personally much more concerned by the lack of oversight regarding what gets labelled as organic.

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