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Organic has no health benefits

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Re: Organic has no health benefits

#111

Post by calambrac »

omouse wrote: post #34
jff wrote: post #31

If you want bruised, overpriced fruit and vegetables, head on down to the local organic market! Spend 10 minutes to sort through a basket of tomatoes at the hippie organic market on Maui (the only store in the village) to find the four or five that aren't bruised to hell and back, then pay double price for the privilege. And then there's the sustainability and economic problems. Can the farms near NYC produce enough…

You're absolutely right. It's amazing how many people have jumped on the organic bandwagon when they have reaped the benefits of GMO crops and efficient farming. It's like climbing up a ladder and then kicking it away once you're at the top.

GMO crops have only been around since, at the very earliest, 1986, so it's pretty hard to say that people at the top of the ladder are there because of them. Lumping "efficient farming" in with GMOs to make that argument is wholly disingenuous - efficient farming could have nothing to do at all with GMO crops (see: Polyface Farm).

Re: Organic has no health benefits

#112

Post by calambrac »

philwelch wrote: post #108
lutorm wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand your point. What are the supposed benefits of GMO grops that makes it easier for me to eat organic? Are you talking about global food supply? If so, there are many other issues we can bring up, one being that most food grown in the US goes either to animal feed or to plants that make HFCS and a slew of other things that don't really count as "food" to me.

If we all ate organic, a third of the world population would have to starve to death from sheer shortage of food. Don't talk about animal feed, either--we'd have to raise more cattle just for the manure if we didn't use chemical fertilizers.

That's a mighty strong statement of fact to throw out without any kind of citation. Care to share a couple?

Re: Organic has no health benefits

#113

Post by calambrac »

omouse wrote: post #73
oz wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but efficient farming is having a negative impact on the biosphere. Like with most issues, the question is "Where do we draw the line?" More info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_farming#Productivity_an... http://www.cnr.berkeley.edu/~agroeco3/modern_agriculture.htm...

Those list just a few studies and it looks like they are conflicting? I can't discuss this issue properly because I don't know enough about it. I would prefer whichever method is both efficient and environmentally-safe. I'm just annoyed by the currently fashionable knee-jerk reaction of people that assume organic farming is better.

If you don't know enough about the issue to discuss the it properly, then on what are you basing the assumption that people's claims to the superiority of organic farming is knee-jerk?

Re: Organic has no health benefits

#114

Post by philwelch »

calambrac wrote: post #112
philwelch wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we all ate organic, a third of the world population would have to starve to death from sheer shortage of food. Don't talk about animal feed, either--we'd have to raise more cattle just for the manure if we didn't use chemical fertilizers.

That's a mighty strong statement of fact to throw out without any kind of citation. Care to share a couple?

I've attributed these claims to statements by Norman Borlaug elsewhere in the thread. Here specifically: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=730793

Re: Organic has no health benefits

#115

Post by calambrac »

rjurney wrote: post #95
raintrees wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am sorry I rambled without answering that... I guess I have yet to learn of a GMO product that I want to consume. Breeding for traits, as I understand has been done for many, many years would seem to offer natural selection a way of killing of the inappropriate strains, in addition to giving humans time to consume, then observe any possible negative reactions (Don't eat the mushrooms with the red tops - bad!) Havin…

This year I lost every single one of my potatoes to scab. Imagine I planted those just after a civil war in central Africa. I need as much food - now, as I can get, right? Potato scab could seriously fuck me up. Therefore GMO potatoes sure seem like a great idea to me - if they're immune to scab. Before 'monocrops' were engineered, nations went to war over food because it was scarce. Disease killed entire crops. Sinc…

Gosh, you really want to grow some crops, I see. Well, I've got these seeds that are completely resistant to disease, only they cost 10x more than regular seeds and they're engineered so that you don't get any more seeds from the results. But you'll get a huge yield, we promise, more than enough to keep coming back to us and buying.

...One year later...

Oh, you say your crop failed? We didn't mention they needed twice as much water? That maybe they weren't as resistant to disease as we said? That there's another disease we hadn't engineered against? That the pesticides they were engineered to work in conjunction with will ruin your soil for everything else? Now you have no money left? Hmm, well... that sucks for you. Thank your government for our lucrative subsidies, though. When you commit suicide, I'm sure we'll be able to find a large corporate farming operation to come in and take over.

GMO isn't the problem (that we know of). Abuse of GMO, for the purpose of locking farmers in, that's the problem.

Re: Organic has no health benefits

#116

Post by dasil003 »

billswift wrote: post #96
dasil003 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you suggesting that we should do anything unless we can prove it's a bad idea? I'm all for science, but it is not wild superstition to think that the effects of eating trace amounts of pesticides in all our food over the course of decades might be bad for our health. Now certainly this should be studied, but how long will it take to achieve results, and how possible is it really to isolate the variables? In the m…

Yes it is wild superstition. There is no evidence that most modern insecticides harm humans at all (some do but they are less commonly used, mostly only for specific classes of pest). DDT for example had no deleterious effect on human health, until the environmentalist idiots got it banned and malaria started killing millions again in tropical regions. The most dangerous insecticides were phased out long ago, first t…

Wrong. There is plenty of evidence. Now clearly an argument can be made that the consequences of malaria are far worse, but to say "there is no evidence" reveals that you have some sort of idealogical bone to pick with environmentalists and you are not 1/10th as objective you'd like to think.

Re: Organic has no health benefits

#117

Post by tokenadult »

hachiya wrote: post #65
jacoblyles wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Got any proof? If not, enjoy your placebos.

I'd suppose I could drink a bottle of pesticide and tell you how I feel, but I would feel rather stupid proving the obvious.

Dosage matters. You eat plants that include chemicals that would be harmful in large doses every time you eat plants, but you don't give up eating just because of that risk.

Re: Organic has no health benefits

#118

Post by tokenadult »

biohacker42 wrote: post #71
callmeed wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That it tastes better may just be in my head, but I can definitely tell them apart just by taste. It would be interesting to do a blind taste-test between organic and non-organic produce ... Pepsi Challenge style.

Interestingly enough that has been done with rats: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/03/dining/03curi.html And the rats preferred organic.

Thanks for this very interesting link, by an author whose writings I like a lot. (He is a chemist who writes about food, a good background to have for this thread.)

It is a puzzler that he mentions one small sample of rats

http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html

that doesn't show the same result (indifference to whether or not food is "organic") shown in many human studies he mentions in his article. This kind of study needs a bigger sample size and a great deal more replication.

Here's another problem: how do we know that either human beings or rats prefer what is best for them? Preferences for smells and tastes may have evolutionary origins that are then exploited by adaptations of food organisms in ways that are not beneficial to the eater.

Re: Organic has no health benefits

#119

Post by tokenadult »

dasil003 wrote: post #116
billswift wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it is wild superstition. There is no evidence that most modern insecticides harm humans at all (some do but they are less commonly used, mostly only for specific classes of pest). DDT for example had no deleterious effect on human health, until the environmentalist idiots got it banned and malaria started killing millions again in tropical regions. The most dangerous insecticides were phased out long ago, first t…

Wrong. There is plenty of evidence. Now clearly an argument can be made that the consequences of malaria are far worse, but to say "there is no evidence" reveals that you have some sort of idealogical bone to pick with environmentalists and you are not 1/10th as objective you'd like to think.

There is plenty of evidence.

Where is the evidence of direct DDT harm to human beings? I don't recall that ever being mentioned when DDT was banned in the United States (within my lifetime, so I remember the contemporary news reports on the issue). If there is a harm, how does it compare to the harm of insect-borne diseases?

Re: Organic has no health benefits

#120

Post by rjurney »

calambrac wrote: post #115
rjurney wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This year I lost every single one of my potatoes to scab. Imagine I planted those just after a civil war in central Africa. I need as much food - now, as I can get, right? Potato scab could seriously fuck me up. Therefore GMO potatoes sure seem like a great idea to me - if they're immune to scab. Before 'monocrops' were engineered, nations went to war over food because it was scarce. Disease killed entire crops. Sinc…

Gosh, you really want to grow some crops, I see. Well, I've got these seeds that are completely resistant to disease, only they cost 10x more than regular seeds and they're engineered so that you don't get any more seeds from the results. But you'll get a huge yield, we promise, more than enough to keep coming back to us and buying. ...One year later... Oh, you say your crop failed? We didn't mention they needed twic…

From your hypothetical, you don't sound like you know a single farmer, but I'll agree with you: GMO patents are wrong and should not be allowed.

GMO For the People.

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