Posted on 08/03/2009 2:23:40 PM PDT by nickcarraway
The FSA ignored pesticides, the main health issue, in its report on organic food, says Geoffrey Lean.
What's with the Food Standards Agency and organic food? It just can't leave it alone. Not, of course, in the sense of wanting to wolf it down, but in trying to persuade the us not to do so.
The agency says it stands for "safer food". But while it has a mixed record on additives that cause hyperactivity, toxic dyes, illegal GM foods, or pesticides, it has, from the start, campaigned against organic food, which no one claims to be dangerous. Indeed, in 2005, its performance review showed that this – and its vigorous support of GM foods – had undermined confidence in its impartiality, and led to calls for it to "revisit both areas". Well, I suppose it has revisited organic food – though not as the review intended. It spun its new report as showing that it had no health benefits over conventional produce. But the report only looked at the weakest part of the case for organics, that they have better nutritional content.
Then, though it merely reviewed other studies, it excluded the most comprehensive one, which showed that organic produce has significant nutritional advantages in fighting cancer.
Above all, the FSA ignored pesticides, the main health issue. But then, it has always been gung-ho about chemicals: it recommended scrapping the long-standing official advice – designed to protect small children – that fruit and vegetables should be peeled before being eaten to cut down pesticide consumption.
It reminds me of a minister who used to complain that there was a "myth" that pesticides were "toxic". What, I asked him, would be the use of one that wasn't? Answer came there none.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
The only danger in organic foods is that YOU CAN’T FEED A PLANET WITH IT.
The output of non-organic crops is far higher, enabling greater output with lesser acrage.
Let people start starving and we’ll see how it goes.
That’s right! No more Whole Foods that caters only to elitist liberals! It’s just not fair to the people who can’t afford to shop there.
Anybody who wants to shop at Whole Paycheck is free to do so.
But, pushing farmers towards organic foods, especially LEGISLATING such activity, is suicide.
I’m always willing to let people blow their own cash, but when they try to get libby with my wallet, I draw the line.
It’s amazing how this issue turns normally conservative people into redistributionist, pro-illegal immigration, anti-free market, anti-technology social utopians. I’ve never understood why.
When people want me to subsidize their groceries by paying for the illegal immigrants who farm it, I consider that getting libby with my wallet, too.
organic food and related gm arguments are destroying the world and the environment.
Hemlock is organic.
Mercury is organic.
Yummmmmmm!
Whole Foods is a great store, but there's also Trader Joe's, Farmer's Markets etc... and most mainstream grocery stores have an organic section now. I've been shopping at Whole Foods for over 15 years and love it. It's our neighborhood market and my neighbors who shop there are anything but liberal.
The biggest health risks related to food are all biological in origin. What we should be concerned about is eating insect waste, funguses, and bacteria - the very things that pesticides and herbacies help protect us from. Only an irrational and exaggerated preoccupation with “chemicals” can explain the organic food fanatics insisting on eating food that’s more dangerous, more expensive, no more nutritious, and undeniably worse for the environment (as organic types tend to be the same people that worry about the environment - another irrational preoccupation).
That’s basically what Penn & Teller said on their BS show regarding organics. I watched it last night. Three part you tube. I don’t know if the foul language has been bleeped in these videos.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWxl05cCA88
“Then, though it merely reviewed other studies, it excluded the most comprehensive one, which showed that organic produce has significant nutritional advantages in fighting cancer.”
No such benefits exist; the best scientist doesn’t know conclusively what the most comprehensive study purports to discover at this point.
“Organic” foods are feel-good measures, like saving the planet and working for world peace.
Didn’t see it. I suppose P&T can be right about some things every now and then. John Stossel had a special saying much the same thing, I didn’t see it either but I remember reading about it in his book.
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