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Organic has no health benefits

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Re: Organic has no health benefits

#131

Post by rjurney »

raintrees wrote: post #127
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…

Maybe I have been misinformed. I had it in mind that monocultures were only good for the first couple of years, then they failed miserably due to too much soil depletion for that specific crop, insect over-predation as insects exploited an abundant food source and overpopulated, and too disease prone, as there is less diversity to keep unwanted organisms out of the system... I have been taking the easy (read lazy) wa…

BTW - regarding monocultures you DEFINITELY have it wrong. They were responsible for a many times multiplication of agricultural output. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution

Re: Organic has no health benefits

#132

Post by rjurney »

jamroom wrote: post #126
rjurney wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And all of that is less important from a health perspective than a reduction in Vitamin D. Its a net loss.

The Organic milk I buy is both Vitamin A and D fortified, so that's real not an issue.

They add chemicals, and you think thats an improvement?

Re: Organic has no health benefits

#133

Post by teilo »

rjurney wrote: post #94
teilo wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and in any given season, all things being equal, organic food tastes better. You are just telling yourself what you want to believe.

No, I grow both organic and non organic vegetables, so I actually know what I'm talking about. How about you? ;)

Ditto.

Re: Organic has no health benefits

#134

Post by netsp »

lutorm wrote: post #43
omouse wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

I interesting benefit of GMO is (or rather will be), setting a benchmark. Better example then GMO is artificially fertilisers & pesticides.

An organic farming technique is always compared to one using those artificial methods. Once the benchmark is there and there is a market for organic, it's a good recipe for improving organic farming technology.

Re: Organic has no health benefits

#135

Post by igrekel »

callmeed wrote: post #56
biohacker42 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Avoiding pesticides is half of why I go organic the other is just plain taste. I don't know if that's because the plant varieties are different, or the method or whatever, but I've blind tested myself (no, it's not scientific, more like Mythbusters's level science) and I can easily tell the produce apart. That it tastes better may just be in my head, but I can definitely tell them apart just by taste.

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.

Actually, we have tried this with my mother in law (not that I want to pick on her) who was convinced that organic bananas tasted better. We made her taste the bananas blindfolded and she couldn't tell the organic and non-organic bananas apart.

We were however capable of telling the difference between organic and non-organic chicken tough.

Re: Organic has no health benefits

#136

Post by igrekel »

Femur wrote: post #67
michael_h wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a risk/benefit problem. If things go wrong, we're talking about serious and permanent damage. What if roundup-ready plants end up messing with the bee population (or whatever)? What will happen to species down the food chain? What affects will arise after a while from bio-magnification? Point is, nobody yet knows. GMOs are fine, but you had better be 100% sure of what the consequences are.

GMOs significantly increase crop yields and are helping feed a growing world population. I think most of the world is willing to take the risk of a few genes getting loose for the benefit of keeping the world fed.

Hem... maybe I am mistaken but most gmos are not to increase yield, better taste or better nutritional qualities.

Usually, if we look only at the ones who are actually available on the market, is to enable the use of mass herbicide or resists specific pests. A lot of them look more motivated by marketing factors to create vendor lock-in.

I see GMOs in food as a temporary escape for monocultures. Ultimately I think we'll need to abandon this practice.

Re: Organic has no health benefits

#137

Post by igrekel »

meta wrote: post #21
igrekel wrote: post #4

Strange how the study doesn't address the main reasons why I would tend to favor organic foods: less pesticides, its the only way (at least in Canada) to control GMOs in what you eat. Of course there would be other environmental reasons as well, but it still remain based on monocultures.

I was under the impression that "Organic" in Canada is mostly a meaningless title. It isn't enforced and can be applied to a wide swath of products that most people would not consider Organic. I checked Wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_certification#North_Ame... ) and it says that the Government has published a set of Guidelines but applying organic labels is up to "Private Sector"... However, doing s…

You are right. Actually, I shouldn't have said Canada, I should have said Quebec.
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