Organic foods have made the headlines again last week, as Which? published a study suggesting that Organic food may not taste better or contain as many nutrients as conventionally grown food. The Telegraph reports: click here. You’ll probably remember that organic food was “debunked” in 2009 when a review of studies concluded that organic food had no nutritional benefit – and the FSA agreed. While these kinds of headlines are apparently delicious for a certain kind of person, they can leave a bitter taste for the rest of us. Have we been duped? Is “organic” just another premium pricing tool? Read on to get to the bottom of these studies and make an informed decision about your food.
What Does Organic Mean?
To qualify for organic status, farmers must adhere to strict limits on artificial fertilisers and pesticides. Instead of using these, pests and diseases are controlled using wildlife. For example, clover is grown to boost nitrogen in the soil in place of fertilisers. In the case of livestock, high standards of animal husbandry must be adhered to and all poultry must be free-range. Drugs, antibiotics and wormers are allowed only in emergencies and genetically modified animal feed is banned. This is all monitored by – and producers are licensed by – The Soil Association.
Historically, this is how food has been produced – there was no need for the differentiation indicated by the “organic” label before intensive industrial methods and artificial chemicals made their way into food production. Only in the later part of the 20th century did farmers start regularly using new, and often untested, synthetic chemicals to increase crop yields. In the 1980s, as public interest grew over animal welfare and the use of chemicals, demand grew for a return to a more ecological style of farming. Since then, organic food production has increased by about 20% a year – a rate of growth way ahead of the rest of the food industry. In the past five years sales of organic food in Britain almost doubled, from less than £900m in 2003 to about £2 billion last year (although they are believed to have dipped in the recession).
This does come with a note that some foods of compromised quality can still be called “organic”. Of course, as the market has grown, large scale producers have found ways of working within the rules while defying the spirit – now some organic vegetables and salads are not grown in soil at all; and some are compromised due to transportation.
The Food Standards Agency – Acting In Our Interests?
The Food Standards Agency (FSA) was set up by the Government in 2000 as an independent department with the objective of protecting public health and the consumer’s interests in food. The first chairman, Sir John Krebs, was supportive of the biotechnology lobby and clearly keen to promote GM as the future of farming. On the day that it was announced that he would become the first head of the FSA, Krebs endorsed GM food in a radio interview, saying all GM products approved for sale in the UK ‘were as safe as their non-GM counterparts’. He then appeared on BBC TV in August 2000, stating that consumers who were buying organic food were “not getting value for money, in my opinion and in the opinion of the FSA, if they think they are buying extra nutritional quality or extra nutritional safety, because we don’t have the evidence.” A month later, the chief executive of the Irish counterpart agency, the Food Safety Authority of Ireland (Dr Patrick Wall), dismissed Kreb’s views as extreme and reminded people to buy organic food because it was more ‘environmentally friendly, more wholesome, and better produced’.
In March 2002, Krebs was again criticized over the organic food issue, this time by John Paterson (a biochemist at Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary), for having attacked organic agriculture “on the basis of very little information”.
Krebs also aligned himself with the Social Issues Research Centre (SIRC), which gets part of its funding from large food companies as well as front organisations for the drinks and pharmaceutical industries. When the science correspondent for Channel 4 News contacted Sir John to query the appropriacy of his involvement with an organisation that had such links, Sir John denied any knowledge of the SIRC’s links and refused to make any comment to camera. You can read more about Sir John Kreb’s background – which includes a healthy dose of badger slaughter – here.
One early review of the FSA’s work, by the Labour peer Baroness Brenda Dean, warned there was a risk of the Agency losing its ‘objectivity’ and ‘rigour’ in its support for GM crops and its opposition to organic production. The departure of Sir John Krebs in 2005 did not bring any change in policy. It’s important to note that it’s worth supporting non-GM food for political reasons. The GM seed market is dominated by one powerful company with aggressive expansion strategies, regarded by many as ruthless. GM seeds are not reusable, so there is the potential for GM seed companies to take control of world food production.
Proving That Organic Is Nonsense…
With this in mind, let’s look at the study. The Food Standards Agency (FSA) published a report, claiming that a comprehensive review of scientific evidence had shown that people who believe organic food is healthier are wasting their money. “There is no evidence of additional health benefits from eating organic food,” declared Gill Fine, the FSA’s director of dietary health.
Led by Alan Dangour (a public health nutritionist from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine), researchers sifted through 50 years of studies into organic food, analysing nutritional reviews of fruit, vegetables, dairy products and meat. Dangour’s analysis was narrower in scope than it first appears. The FSADangour concluded that these results were irrelevant.
Peter Melchett, policy director of the Soil Association, said: “I’ve read the report and the devil is in the detail. The detail clearly shows there are real differences in nutrition.” The research recorded that organic vegetables had 53.7% more beta-carotene – which is believed to help protect against heart disease and cancer – as well as 38.4% more flavonoids, 12.7% more proteins and 11.3% more zinc. These records have been ignored by the FSA on the grounds that they are not relevant, “due to the overall level of statistical error in the research”. Melchett points out that “they included ‘shopping basket’ studies, which are very variable and unreliable… If you include such studies, you get lots of variation, allowing you to declare the whole thing statistically insignificant. It is supposed to be a report, not an opinion piece. But it is designed in a way that almost guarantees they are able to claim there is no difference.”
One significant study that Dangour excluded from his report is an EU-funded four-year study by Carlo Leifert, professor of ecological agriculture at Newcastle University. Leifert’s study, which involved 31 research and university institutes and was peer-reviewed, found that organic milk contained 60% more antioxidants and healthy fatty acids than normal milk. Results from his crop studies suggest vitamin levels are up to a fifth higher in organic tomatoes, wheat and onions. It was also found that while nutritionally desirable compounds, such as antioxidants and vitamins, were higher in organic crops, and levels of nutritionally undesirable compounds such as toxic chemicals, mycotoxins and metals such as cadmium and nickel, were lower in organic crops.
Leifert himself has claimed that the FSA study was misleading, stating that “they have ignored all the recent literature as well as new primary research which shows the heath advantages of organic… They admit in their own research that some compounds are 50% higher in organic. How can you call that a non-significance?”
The FSA’s study looked purely at the nutritional content of organic foods; and even then it had to sneak its way out of evidence that was contrary to its cause. The Which? study is just as questionable. Like the FSA’s study, it ignored a host of key benefits of organic food and focused primarily on taste. It was an extremely small and narrow study, which ignored countless variables. Anyone can construct a test to show organic tastes no better than conventional, if they want to, just by selecting the right produce. And although taste isn’t the beginning or the end of the story, we know that our Riverford vegetables taste a whole lot better than what’s on supermarket shelves.
So What Should We Make Of This?!
In the face of the soaring popularity of organic produce – and a general increase in public interest in health and the environment – the food industry, along with pharmaceutical and large biotechnology companies, has been fighting harder than ever to convince the public that mass-produced, chemically-assisted and intensively-farmed products are just as good as organic foods. They propagate the portrayal of organic foods as a fad amongst neurotic consumers.
Even if these studies were reliable, they would still be a distraction from the two key reasons that people eat organic food: uncertainty over pesticides and chemicals; and environmental responsibility. Simon Wright, a food consultant for Organic Fair Plus, says that one of the main reasons that people buy organic is because of concern over chemicals and long-term health. “It’s a cocktail effect,” he said. “A variety of pesticides and other chemicals are applied at legal levels but interacting in a way that’s impossible to predict.” Studies do exist showing that these chemicals have an effect on people but there is no clarity on the full long-term impact. Nobody wants to fund research.
When it comes to the study of the impact of recent developments, impartial science cannot keep up. The industry that creates processed and GM food aims to manipulate nature in ways that usually target a particular simple objective like ‘yield per acre’. Multinational chemical companies do not care about our health. All the time that they push toward their objectives, we must be conscious that we have a different objective – to stay healthy. Can anyone possibly say that ingesting cocktails of chemicals and food that’s been tampered with is safe in the long-term? If so, at what levels? The truth is that best they can do is to indicate that no links with health problems have been made… yet.
Often we will sense by intuition or taste that a food (or our medical treatment or any other issue like this) is not working well for us, yet it will be much later that science recognises or acknowledges that there has been a negative impact. In our view, sense on this matter says: if we choose to use farming methods that work as much in harmony with nature as possible, we are most likely to have food that tastes good, is well suited to our bodies and gives us a sustainable agriculture.
Our advice, if you want the best food, is to know the source (as much as possible) of your organic food; and to buy seasonal produce.
Saving Money on Organics
All of this information comes with a small note that not ALL Organic food represents good value. One issue that's already been identified is that creation of the "Organic" label has given some cynical retailers the opportunity to charge more for produce that is not in the spirit of Organic Food but does comply with the rules. Another thing to watch out for is foods that have been labelled "Organic" when it really doesn't make a difference. People who trust in Organic food can sometimes find themselves spending more money than they have to.
If you'd like to save on your shopping bill, you'll be glad to hear that you do not need to buy any of these things from an Organic producer, according to a report from the Environmental Working Group (full list in "Further Reading"):
What Does Organic Mean?
To qualify for organic status, farmers must adhere to strict limits on artificial fertilisers and pesticides. Instead of using these, pests and diseases are controlled using wildlife. For example, clover is grown to boost nitrogen in the soil in place of fertilisers. In the case of livestock, high standards of animal husbandry must be adhered to and all poultry must be free-range. Drugs, antibiotics and wormers are allowed only in emergencies and genetically modified animal feed is banned. This is all monitored by – and producers are licensed by – The Soil Association.
Historically, this is how food has been produced – there was no need for the differentiation indicated by the “organic” label before intensive industrial methods and artificial chemicals made their way into food production. Only in the later part of the 20th century did farmers start regularly using new, and often untested, synthetic chemicals to increase crop yields. In the 1980s, as public interest grew over animal welfare and the use of chemicals, demand grew for a return to a more ecological style of farming. Since then, organic food production has increased by about 20% a year – a rate of growth way ahead of the rest of the food industry. In the past five years sales of organic food in Britain almost doubled, from less than £900m in 2003 to about £2 billion last year (although they are believed to have dipped in the recession).
This does come with a note that some foods of compromised quality can still be called “organic”. Of course, as the market has grown, large scale producers have found ways of working within the rules while defying the spirit – now some organic vegetables and salads are not grown in soil at all; and some are compromised due to transportation.
The Food Standards Agency – Acting In Our Interests?
The Food Standards Agency (FSA) was set up by the Government in 2000 as an independent department with the objective of protecting public health and the consumer’s interests in food. The first chairman, Sir John Krebs, was supportive of the biotechnology lobby and clearly keen to promote GM as the future of farming. On the day that it was announced that he would become the first head of the FSA, Krebs endorsed GM food in a radio interview, saying all GM products approved for sale in the UK ‘were as safe as their non-GM counterparts’. He then appeared on BBC TV in August 2000, stating that consumers who were buying organic food were “not getting value for money, in my opinion and in the opinion of the FSA, if they think they are buying extra nutritional quality or extra nutritional safety, because we don’t have the evidence.” A month later, the chief executive of the Irish counterpart agency, the Food Safety Authority of Ireland (Dr Patrick Wall), dismissed Kreb’s views as extreme and reminded people to buy organic food because it was more ‘environmentally friendly, more wholesome, and better produced’.
In March 2002, Krebs was again criticized over the organic food issue, this time by John Paterson (a biochemist at Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary), for having attacked organic agriculture “on the basis of very little information”.
Krebs also aligned himself with the Social Issues Research Centre (SIRC), which gets part of its funding from large food companies as well as front organisations for the drinks and pharmaceutical industries. When the science correspondent for Channel 4 News contacted Sir John to query the appropriacy of his involvement with an organisation that had such links, Sir John denied any knowledge of the SIRC’s links and refused to make any comment to camera. You can read more about Sir John Kreb’s background – which includes a healthy dose of badger slaughter – here.
One early review of the FSA’s work, by the Labour peer Baroness Brenda Dean, warned there was a risk of the Agency losing its ‘objectivity’ and ‘rigour’ in its support for GM crops and its opposition to organic production. The departure of Sir John Krebs in 2005 did not bring any change in policy. It’s important to note that it’s worth supporting non-GM food for political reasons. The GM seed market is dominated by one powerful company with aggressive expansion strategies, regarded by many as ruthless. GM seeds are not reusable, so there is the potential for GM seed companies to take control of world food production.
Proving That Organic Is Nonsense…
With this in mind, let’s look at the study. The Food Standards Agency (FSA) published a report, claiming that a comprehensive review of scientific evidence had shown that people who believe organic food is healthier are wasting their money. “There is no evidence of additional health benefits from eating organic food,” declared Gill Fine, the FSA’s director of dietary health.
Led by Alan Dangour (a public health nutritionist from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine), researchers sifted through 50 years of studies into organic food, analysing nutritional reviews of fruit, vegetables, dairy products and meat. Dangour’s analysis was narrower in scope than it first appears. The FSADangour concluded that these results were irrelevant.
Peter Melchett, policy director of the Soil Association, said: “I’ve read the report and the devil is in the detail. The detail clearly shows there are real differences in nutrition.” The research recorded that organic vegetables had 53.7% more beta-carotene – which is believed to help protect against heart disease and cancer – as well as 38.4% more flavonoids, 12.7% more proteins and 11.3% more zinc. These records have been ignored by the FSA on the grounds that they are not relevant, “due to the overall level of statistical error in the research”. Melchett points out that “they included ‘shopping basket’ studies, which are very variable and unreliable… If you include such studies, you get lots of variation, allowing you to declare the whole thing statistically insignificant. It is supposed to be a report, not an opinion piece. But it is designed in a way that almost guarantees they are able to claim there is no difference.”
One significant study that Dangour excluded from his report is an EU-funded four-year study by Carlo Leifert, professor of ecological agriculture at Newcastle University. Leifert’s study, which involved 31 research and university institutes and was peer-reviewed, found that organic milk contained 60% more antioxidants and healthy fatty acids than normal milk. Results from his crop studies suggest vitamin levels are up to a fifth higher in organic tomatoes, wheat and onions. It was also found that while nutritionally desirable compounds, such as antioxidants and vitamins, were higher in organic crops, and levels of nutritionally undesirable compounds such as toxic chemicals, mycotoxins and metals such as cadmium and nickel, were lower in organic crops.
Leifert himself has claimed that the FSA study was misleading, stating that “they have ignored all the recent literature as well as new primary research which shows the heath advantages of organic… They admit in their own research that some compounds are 50% higher in organic. How can you call that a non-significance?”
The FSA’s study looked purely at the nutritional content of organic foods; and even then it had to sneak its way out of evidence that was contrary to its cause. The Which? study is just as questionable. Like the FSA’s study, it ignored a host of key benefits of organic food and focused primarily on taste. It was an extremely small and narrow study, which ignored countless variables. Anyone can construct a test to show organic tastes no better than conventional, if they want to, just by selecting the right produce. And although taste isn’t the beginning or the end of the story, we know that our Riverford vegetables taste a whole lot better than what’s on supermarket shelves.
So What Should We Make Of This?!
In the face of the soaring popularity of organic produce – and a general increase in public interest in health and the environment – the food industry, along with pharmaceutical and large biotechnology companies, has been fighting harder than ever to convince the public that mass-produced, chemically-assisted and intensively-farmed products are just as good as organic foods. They propagate the portrayal of organic foods as a fad amongst neurotic consumers.
Even if these studies were reliable, they would still be a distraction from the two key reasons that people eat organic food: uncertainty over pesticides and chemicals; and environmental responsibility. Simon Wright, a food consultant for Organic Fair Plus, says that one of the main reasons that people buy organic is because of concern over chemicals and long-term health. “It’s a cocktail effect,” he said. “A variety of pesticides and other chemicals are applied at legal levels but interacting in a way that’s impossible to predict.” Studies do exist showing that these chemicals have an effect on people but there is no clarity on the full long-term impact. Nobody wants to fund research.
When it comes to the study of the impact of recent developments, impartial science cannot keep up. The industry that creates processed and GM food aims to manipulate nature in ways that usually target a particular simple objective like ‘yield per acre’. Multinational chemical companies do not care about our health. All the time that they push toward their objectives, we must be conscious that we have a different objective – to stay healthy. Can anyone possibly say that ingesting cocktails of chemicals and food that’s been tampered with is safe in the long-term? If so, at what levels? The truth is that best they can do is to indicate that no links with health problems have been made… yet.
Often we will sense by intuition or taste that a food (or our medical treatment or any other issue like this) is not working well for us, yet it will be much later that science recognises or acknowledges that there has been a negative impact. In our view, sense on this matter says: if we choose to use farming methods that work as much in harmony with nature as possible, we are most likely to have food that tastes good, is well suited to our bodies and gives us a sustainable agriculture.
Our advice, if you want the best food, is to know the source (as much as possible) of your organic food; and to buy seasonal produce.
Saving Money on Organics
All of this information comes with a small note that not ALL Organic food represents good value. One issue that's already been identified is that creation of the "Organic" label has given some cynical retailers the opportunity to charge more for produce that is not in the spirit of Organic Food but does comply with the rules. Another thing to watch out for is foods that have been labelled "Organic" when it really doesn't make a difference. People who trust in Organic food can sometimes find themselves spending more money than they have to.
If you'd like to save on your shopping bill, you'll be glad to hear that you do not need to buy any of these things from an Organic producer, according to a report from the Environmental Working Group (full list in "Further Reading"):
| Onions | Avocados | Watermelon |
| Pineapple | Mango | Frozen sweet peas |
| Asparagus | Kiwi | Cabbage |
| Eggplant | Cantaloupe |
Frozen sweet corn is also on the list but I've removed it to avoid confusion. I don't recommend consuming non-organic corn and even organic corn should be consumed sparingly.
The foods that you really should by Organic are foods that have permeable or edible skins, and/or that are conventionally grown with higher amounts of pesticides.According to the EWG's report, the top twelve foods to buy Organic are:
Further Reading:
The Environmental Working Group Report - 49 common vegetables and fruits in order of toxin content. This will help you prioritise your shopping.
Riverford Organics – UK grower of organic vegetables and distributor of organic veg’ boxes.
The Soil Association Website – full of information on organic foods, techniques and producers; as well as information on supporting organic food production.
The Organic Farmers and Growers Website – more information on organic foods, techniques and producers; as well as information on supporting organic food production from another organic certification body.
WikiLeaks Cables on GM Seeds – a report on WikiLeaks cables pertaining to the use of GM seeds in Europe.
| Grapes | Potatoes | Kale / Collard greens |
| Cherries | Spinach | Sweet bell peppers |
| Nectarines | Blueberries | Apples |
| Strawberries | Peaches | Celery |
Further Reading:
The Environmental Working Group Report - 49 common vegetables and fruits in order of toxin content. This will help you prioritise your shopping.
Riverford Organics – UK grower of organic vegetables and distributor of organic veg’ boxes.
The Soil Association Website – full of information on organic foods, techniques and producers; as well as information on supporting organic food production.
The Organic Farmers and Growers Website – more information on organic foods, techniques and producers; as well as information on supporting organic food production from another organic certification body.
WikiLeaks Cables on GM Seeds – a report on WikiLeaks cables pertaining to the use of GM seeds in Europe.
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