Posted on 04/05/2014 3:41:07 AM PDT by markomalley
Comment One of the primary drivers of the growth in organic food sales over the last couple of decades is the perception that organic food is healthier than conventionally farmed food.
It stands to reason, doesn’t it? After all conventional crops depend on chemicals and organic food doesn't.
And we all know that chemicals, in this case mainly pesticides, are bad for you. Ergo organic food should be healthier, and the strong growth in organic food sales (up 2.8 per cent last year, after a few years of downturn during the recession) attests to how popular opinion has accepted this assertion.
This is why the results of a new UK study that looked at cancer risk and the consumption of organic food is so damned inconvenient. Where organic food advocates have pushed organics as a way of reducing cancer risk, the study shows that it makes little difference one way or another. Hence uncomfortable headlines from the likes of the Daily Mail: Eating organic foods does NOTHING to reduce the cancer risk among women, says new study.
6,000 eaters probed
The study in question appears in the latest edition of the British Journal of Cancer and is by Oxford University cancer epidemiology boffin Dr Kathryn Bradbury and co-workers. Part of the Million Women Study funded by Cancer Research UK and the Medical Research Council, this particular bit of research tracked 623,080 middle-aged British women for almost 10 years and looked at their pattern of organic food consumption and the incidence of 16 different cancer types, as well as overall cancer incidence.
Based on their reported eating habits the women were put into three groups: never, sometimes, or usually/always eating organic food. The headline result showed that eating organic food was not associated with overall cancer incidence one way or another (in fact there was a tiny increased overall risk of about 3 per cent, but it’s the sort of noisy result one can ignore). Look at the specific cancer types and the results are mixed, with some showing increased or decreased risks, but again nothing to be alarmed (or pleased) about.
Of course this has upset some, especially the British Soil Association, the guardian of all things organic in the UK (including being the premier organic certification body in the country).
According to Peter Melchett (aka Lord Melchett or the 4th Baron Melchett, ex-Greenpeace head honcho and now Policy Director at the Soil Association) the study is flawed because certain confounding variables weren’t addressed and because, according to him, the authors don’t understand what pesticides are found in food or how they get into food.
However, he was quick to pick out one of the results for particular attention – the numbers show that there is an apparent 21 per cent decrease in non-Hodgkins lymphoma risk among the women who reported "usually or always" eating organic food.
However, there were other numbers that were not picked out by the Soil Association, the most alarming of which was the apparent 9 per cent increase in the risk of breast cancer. This was a result that the study authors subjected to a series of additional tests and the results still stood. More alarming still was the 37 per cent increase in the risk of developing a soft tissue sarcoma, a form of cancer which is rare and hard to treat. Why no mention of those figures at the Soil Association?
It's all relative
Of course the fact is that all of these figures are dealing with relative risk, which is standard practice in epidemiological studies. To get some perspective, the chances of getting non-Hodgkins lymphoma is about 2.1 per cent, so if the results of this study hold true, then sticking to an always organic diet will reduce that to 1.66 per cent.
The figures for breast cancer are around 12.3 per cent life-time risk, and this will be increased to 13.4 per cent if you go the all organic route. And if you really want to trade punches with the proponents of organic, you can point out that a high-organic diet will lead to more cancers as the incidence of breast cancer is much higher than the incidence of non-Hodgkins.
However, it’s unlikely that this finding is going to do much to dissuade the faithful that the benefits of organics have been over-sold. After all, this is not the first negative study when it comes to organics and health. A systematic review published in the Annals of Internal Medicine in 2012 found that: "The published literature lacks strong evidence that organic foods are significantly more nutritious than conventional foods".
There were differences reported to do with pesticide residues but nothing to cause alarm. In terms of nutrient content, there was one statistically significant nutrient where organics outdid conventional produce: phosphorous. Now, if you’re starving, then eating organic is the better choice, but if you’re not, then increased phosphorous is pretty much irrelevant as it’s abundant in the diet no matter where it comes from.
Of course it’s the pesticide residues that ultimately drive the idea that organics are better for us. This ignores the fact that even organic food uses pesticides, for example rotenone and pyrethrin, some of which are considered carcinogenic or otherwise hazardous to health.
And, just to throw in some numbers, a study by the United States Department of Agriculture in 2012 found that 4 per cent of organic food samples had pesticide residues above the 5 per cent EPA limit, which technically meant they would have failed the organic certification they carried.
But leaving that aside, the chemophobia of much of the population is stoked by the use of in vitro studies which show that certain pesticides are carcinogenic. However, there is a huge difference between the inside of a petri dish and the inside of a human.
Pesticides are amongst the most heavily regulated chemical agents in the world, and if there was a link to cancer incidence then we would expect to see it in studies such as this one, and in studies that looked at farm workers and others who have greater exposure to pesticides.
One recently published paper looked at the incidence of cancer in agricultural workers in France during the period 2005 – 2009 (the AGRICAN study). It reported that overall agricultural workers were healthier than the general population, with reduced cancer incidence compared to the general population in the same areas. So where are the bodies (so to speak)?
There are, of course, problems with this new study in the UK. For one there was no stratification by type of organic diet – so, for example, we don’t know whether the lymphoma result was skewed by an excess of vegans or carnivores.
And the categories of "never", "sometimes" and "usually/always" are by necessity coarse and difficult to quantify – for example how can you tell how much non-organic food the "usually" group eats?
But for all that, this is study with a large sample size and if there was a positive signal that eating organic protects against cancer you’d expect to see it.
The upshot? It’s probably true to say that spending the pennies (or pounds) you save by eating non-organic on eating MORE fruit and veg is a healthier bet than forking out the extra for "organics". ®
Makes your vegies taste better too.
Last time I bought broccoli in a store they had used so much sulfur in the soil it tasted like I was eating a match and it just plain stunk.
There is clearly reason for concern though in that some POPs disrupt the endocrine and reproductive systems, affect intelligence and the nervous system, can be found at high levels in tumors and diseased tissues of other types, and have harmful impacts on wildlife. Such associations and the epidemiological evidence suggest that POPs have a role in some human disease processes and may otherwise impair health and normal development.
Eating organic food goes only so far in avoiding POPs. Plastic and plastic lined food containers are also a problem, especially if they are heated or used in cooking. Similarly, furniture, floor coverings, and clothes have and emit a wide range of chemicals, some of which are already established as problematic.
Most likely, as the science advances in the next few decades, more and more of the chemicals that we routinely put into the environment and our bodies will be called into question and substitutes developed. For now, eating organic and otherwise trying to avoid POPs will be difficult, expensive, and incomplete, and may -- or may not -- be worthwhile.
“We live next door to a 1200 head dairy. Tons to manure to deal with. I’ll give you three guesses what we fertilize our garden and hay pastures with and the first two guesses don’t count.
Best fertilizer there is.”
So you are growing your vegetables in anti-biotic, growth hormone laden soil.
(grin)
Composted animal poop isn’t nearly as likely to make you sick as fresh human poop.
Problem is a lot of people have gone to the extreme of not only washing their food but sterilizing it with some kind of sanitizer like bleach.
Their system can’t take it anymore if their is some type of bacteria on their food.
I’ve got nothing against using pesticides if I need to, but I prefer not to if I don’t have to.
http://www.food.com/recipe/rosemary-olive-oil-bread-506940
http://www.food.com/recipe/basic-bread-sponge-from-amy-506938
I came of age in the ‘70s too, on a working farm, so I’ve seen plenty of toxic stuff that was perfectly acceptable—until it was found out it wasn’t.
I sure do.
Yes, it’s not as as nasty as carnivore or omnivore poop. Recycled grass, basically.
Exactly.
Actually Ive found that while Rosemary is hard to kill on e it’s started, it’s really hard to start. But some herbs like parsley are easy to grow in pots at home, even in an apartment. But that’s really for the garden thread, which I recommend.
“yeah, well when I buy organic I have meal moths in my cabinets”
That’s probably not from the way it’s raised but from how it is processed and what is added during the process, not only to kill the bugs in it but to keep bugs out during storage.
Didn’t need to take a trip to Vietnam to get covered in “Agent Orange” back then did we.
I’m quite sure I lost an uncle early to the stuff we put in the fields.
Yes , I am a great believer in people, especially children getting normally dirty and exposing themselves to germs. Most people aren’t served by the germaphobe lifestyle, sanitizing everything, etc.
Actually eating microbes with your food is very healthy! Check out about what is being found about gut health and its effect on immunity. BTW, in organic gardening the poop is always decomposed in compost with other plant matter and is NEVER applied fresh directly to the soil or plants.
The method of modern monoagriculture (growing only one species in large areas without domestic animals) and industrial fertilizers and herbicides sterilize the soil so that it destroys its structure and composition. Also growing large areas of one species of plant encourages the pests that prey on that plant to multiply in that location. Anyone who has done even the least bit of organic gardening knows the amazing changes that happen in their soil in its ability to retain moisture and grow healthy plants. Why do you think the DOA is recommending no-plowing techniques now where machines poke seeds into the ground rather than turning over the soil each crop? It has finally been recognized that deep plowing destroys the soil so it won’t grow anything, no matter how much fertilizer is put in it. No amount of disinformation will convince an organic gardener that his/her methods are not working. They see the positive results right before their eyes every year.
As for bugs in your garden, many of them are supposed to be there for the health of the plants! You always need to fight against the bad ones, but that is because we do not live in Eden anymore. While sometimes certain insecticides are necessary, I’ve found that choosing plant species carefully and inter-planting various plant families rather than grouping in classic rows is a far more effective method of controlling insect damage. My gardens have been organic for more than 10 years and I rarely use herbicides or insecticides. Not because I do not have pests or weeds, but because I’ve found other means to control them in my garden.
Again, I am not claiming that organic gardening is perfect, but organic gardening methods have proven themselves for centuries and they will be continued to be used until the government outlaws them.
Probably didn’t spray any fields with it, but if he had brush to kill and he sprayed it to kill it, it was probably Agent-Orange he sprayed it with.
Organic might make a difference with meal moths—I haven’t heard that, but I think it’s mostly from storing things in bags instead of tight metal, glass or plastic containers, having traces of spilled food on shelves and just saving things too long. Also one contaminated thing that somebody gives you can spell trouble. I’m lucky that my best friend is an entomologist though.
I am a POP offender. I microwave food in plastic sometimes. And above I recommended that a poster put his food in plastic containers.
Actually I don’t microwave in plastic that much, unless you count Saran Wrap. If available, I still heat food with the conventional stove or oven a lot or microwave on glass.
Why would you have that, do you have a calf to feed or something? Besides, where would you get synthetic milk?
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