While on our little mini-vacation in Georgia this past week, we spent one of our mornings browsing around a local Barnes and Noble. We had a $25 gift card from one of Stuart's students (Christmas present!) and thoroughly enjoyed cruising around the book store figuring out how to spend it.
Normally, I don't spend the Barnes and Noble gift cards because I know how much Stuart loves them (he is a book hoarder…by the time we're thirty, I'm pretty sure we'll have a collection the size of a small county public library). This trip to Barnes and Noble, however, I ran across a cooking magazine that I thought would be perfect for eating up some of the mindless driving time on our way home.
Get it? Eating up? Cooking magazine?
Never mind.
Anyway, in my normal inpatient way (realllllly trying to work on this), I decided to flip through a few of the pages a little early. Because I'm bizarre and read magazines from back to front, I ran across this incredible magazine right off the bat. They shouldn't have hidden this gem of an article in the back. They should have put it smack dab on the front cover, man.
I think it makes such a great point about organic food being just about as much what it is as what it is not. So, I thought I'd share.
Go Ahead, Ask Me Anything!
Is organic food a waste of money?
Jonny Bowden, PhD, CNS
Q: A recent study sparked headlines saying organic foods are no better for you than conventional foods. What's the deal, Jonny?
A: The new study you're referring to was done by researches at Stanford University. They looked at 240 studies that each conducted nutritional comparisons of organically and conventionally grown food. After analyzing the studies, Stanford researchers concluded that organic foods didn't offer significant nutritional benefits over conventionally grown foods. The media jumped right on it with headlines such as ‘Organic Food Has No Benefit Over Conventional Food' and ‘Is It Worth Buying Organic? Maybe Not'.
But the devil is in the details.
So perhaps organic foods dodn't always contain more nutrients than their conventional brethren – I'm not sure that's always true, but let's go with it for a moment. Now, let's remember why we buy organic in the first place.
For example, I buy organic strawberries, not because I think they have a couple of milligrams more vitamin C than the sprayed kind. I buy them because of what they don't have – potentially carcinogenic chemicals and pesticides.
“Pesticides are neurotoxins that persist in our bodies only slightly less than forever,” says Alan Gaby, MD, author of the textbook Nutritional Medicine (Fritz Perlberg, 2010). Therefore, we choose to eat organic because we're trying to avoid these toxins.
So, comparing organic and non organic foods just on the basis of nutrients misses the point.
Even if they were totally equal as far as vitamin content, they would still be quite unequal in terms of chemical residues. And indeed, the Stanford study noted that only &% of the organic produce contained detectable residues of pesticides compared with 30% of conventional produce, although the media barely commented on that important finding.
Even the argument that organically and conventionally grown foods are nutritionally equivalent is a bit suspect, as a number of other studies on organic food have reached the opposite conclusion.
Researches do the best they can with comparisons of the ‘big guns' like vitamin C, but remember that there are over 4,000 plant chemicals (like flavonoids, for example), and no one tests all these.
However, the Stanford study did find that organic produce contained significantly more phenols (plant chemicals known to have anticancer properties) than conventional produce.
Researchers also found that organic milk and meat may have more omega-3 fatty acids and fewer hormones (such as bovine growth hormone), antibiotics and steroids than non organic dairy and meat, and even found that organic meat contained significantly lower levels of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Although these are all clear and important differences, their findings received little attention in the press.
All in all, I recommend you buy organic food judiciously. Obviously, it's more expensive, and in some cases the expense may not be justified. I'm not sure, for instance, that I'd spend the extra cash on organic pineapples or bananas, as they have pretty thick skins and aren't known to be highly contaminated fruits. On the other hand, strawberries consistently make the Environmental Working Group's Dirty Dozen list (check it out at ewg.org/foodnews), which monitors foods for pesticide exposure. I'd buy those types of produce organic!
Isn't that a great article? I remember hearing about this study's results and thought the exact same thing – I primarily buy organic produce to avoid the chemicals and pesticides they have been sprayed with, secondly it is to get more vitamins and goodies out of the same produce. All in all, buying organic produce is a win-win.
Not to mention, organic farming has been shown to be significantly better for our soils and farmland. So actually, it's a win-win-win.
Oh, and just in case you were wondering, here is the current ‘dirty dozen' list. If at all possible, to avoid the most chemical residue, always buy these products organic:
The Dirty Dozen
1. Apples
2. Celery
3. Bell peppers
4. Peaches
5. Strawberries
6. Nectarines
7. Grapes
8. Spinach
9. Lettuce
10. Cucumbers
11. Blueberries
12. Potatoes
And here is the ‘clean dozen' list – a list of the vegetables and fruits with the least amount of chemical residue. If you need to cut cost, go ahead and buy these conventional instead of splurging for extra on organic.
The Clean Dozen
1. Onions
2. Sweet corn (though unless this is organic, you can assume it will be genetically modified corn)
3. Pineapples
4. Avocado
5. Cabbage
6. Sweet peas
7. Asparagus
8. Mangoes
9. Eggplant
10. Kiwi
11. Cantaloupe
12. Sweet potatoes
In short, is organic food a waste of money?
No way, Jose.
Noël McNeil
Wonderful post! Thanks for the lists, I’ve been wondering what are the worst considering pesticides. Hopefully, our garden will be abundant this year and we won’t have to buy too much from the store. Here’s to hoping!
Heidi
Thanks for the list! I’ve been wondering about that recently. Hopefully soon I’ll be able to afford organic produce…for now I just try to make sure we’re eating lots of fresh fruits and veggies and avoiding the canned/processed stuff. That, at least to me, is a step in the right direction. 🙂
Jeanette Prince
My husband and I were doing the same this weekend at B and N, also with a giftcard (without a gift card I’m a fan of the second hand bookstores, more books same $).
A note about organics I’d like to add, I wish people would realize that it isn’t just about the consumer’s health. We tend to think about things in how the will benefit or not ourselves. I don’t want to support conventional farming especially because of the workers who work there. Those workers have a much higher health price to pay inhaling the fumes of what they work with then I do eating a tomato with residue on it. Tomatoland is a great (well depressing) book that even runs down to the details of the birth defects that the children of women who work in these fields endure. Its so sad
From – your occasional blog stalker, Jeanette
Shaye Elliott
How true. They’re like modern dale coal miners. I’ll have to read that book!
Melissa
My favorite part about Stanford’s “unbiased” study: “…Cargill, the world’s largest agricultural business enterprise, and foundations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which have deep ties to agricultural chemical and biotechnology corporations like Monsanto, have donated millions to Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute, where some of the scientists who published this study are affiliates and fellows.” (The Cornucopia Institute) DUH!
My husband and I farm organically and can’t imagine growing anything conventionally, because of the poisons inputted into the food. We just relocated to Savannah, GA after our SC farming neighbors were spraying their crops on a weekly basis. Our skin and eyes would burn after the chemicals were poured out. Oh and toxins that have been genetically engineered into plants are not broken down in the body, but are absorbed into the bloodstream. YUCK. I’ll get off my high horse now. Hope you and the littles are doing great!