Posted on 05/24/2010 4:24:51 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Consumers who opt for organic foods often believe they are improving their health, but there is currently no strong evidence that organics bring nutrition-related health benefits, a new research review finds.
A "disappointingly small" number of well-designed studies have looked at whether organic foods may have health benefits beyond their conventional counterparts', according to the review, by researchers with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Health in the UK.
Moreover, they found, what studies have been done have largely focused on short-term effects of organic eating -- mainly antioxidant activity in the body -- rather than longer-term health outcomes. And most of the antioxidant studies failed to find differences between organic and conventional diets.
The review, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, adds to findings reported last year by the same research team.
In that study, the researchers combed through 162 articles published in the scientific literature over the last 50 years, and found no evidence that organic and conventional foods differ significantly in their nutrient content.
For the current review, the researchers were able to find only 12 published studies that met their criteria for evaluating the health effects of organic foods.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Thanks for the advise and well digested.
My own garden is mostly organic, but it is mainly because I have a lot of citrus and like citrus butterflies...so I can't even use the biologically approved organic pesticides, like Bt, because they will kill caterpillars. Also, we have a lot of honey bees, and I don't want to harm them.
There are a number of approved pesticides you can use and still be organic, but if you want the beneficial insects, you cannot even use many of approved organic insecticides.
Excuse me. Weren’t you talking about what a great vegee you are?
Care to tell us why you chose to land here with your obvious combat training?
You are a troll and you need to leave. We don’t need your kind here.
A person who does nothing but come to FR and immediately start jackbooting members is a troll. You have done nothing but insult members of FR with your smart aleck comments.
Mounting evidence proves there are health benefits for consuming organic foods. In fact, studies linking non-organic practices to increased health risks are beginning to prove more conclusively the many benefits that organic agriculture has to offer farmers, the land, our water supplies, air, and ultimately, the health of the planet and those living on it. The U.S. President’s Cancer Panel report released in May exhorts consumers to choose food grown without pesticides or chemical fertilizers, antibiotics, and growth hormones to help decrease their exposure to environmental chemicals that can increase their risk of contracting cancer. Also, a study published May 17 in Pediatrics concluded that exposure to organophosphate pesticides—prohibited in organic production—at levels common among U.S. children may contribute to the prevalence of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in these children. This latest study authored by London School of Hygiene and Tropical Health researchers looks at the paucity of data now available concerning the nutrition-related health effects of organic foods, and points out the need for better designed studies to answer this question in the future.
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