Higher antioxidant, lower cadmium, and lower pesticide residues in organic crops [pdf] • Hacker News Board

Re: Higher antioxidant, lower cadmium, and lower pesticide residues in organic crops [pdf]

#51

Post by SixSigma » Sat, Jul 12, 2014, 5:11 PM UTC

mark_l_watson wrote: post #13

I am generally pleased with the good availability of locally grown organic food where we live in the mountains of Central Arizona. If people don't want organic food, I could generally care less except for one thing: efforts to put legal roadblocks in the way of locally grown food. For example: A few years ago our Senator Jon Kyle, after taking large campaign contributions from Monsanto, submitted the American Food Sa…

You might choose not to eat the non-organic food but you can't avoid the Atrazine [1] in the rain, which is enough to turn the male northern leopard frog tadpoles to turn into hermaphrodites.

The families of the people who work in the factory farm system are also affected.

You can see talks [2] on both these subjects in the Edible Education course from Berkeley [3], hosted by Michael Pollan and Raj Patel. I can recommend the whole series, and the ones from previous years.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrazine

[2] http://vimeo.com/album/2192316/video/87586462

[3] http://vimeo.com/album/2192316

Re: Higher antioxidant, lower cadmium, and lower pesticide residues in organic crops [pdf]

#52

Post by SigmundA » Sat, Jul 12, 2014, 5:12 PM UTC

jqm wrote: post #19

SigmundA wrote: post #11

The problem with the term "organic" is it's broad and not well defined. It's like "agile" in our space. There are some standards varying by country some government enforced some not, and those standards have changed over time. This data seems to encompass data from many countries over a long period of time. This means how something is classified in the organic bin or not in highly inconsistent in the data set. The pa…

In the US there is an official organic certification program. You can't just call something "organic" and get away with it. It actually has legal specifications.

Unfortunately this paper isn't limited to the US or to data after the NPO was established as far as I can tell.

Re: Higher antioxidant, lower cadmium, and lower pesticide residues in organic crops [pdf]

#53

Post by saraid216 » Sat, Jul 12, 2014, 5:13 PM UTC

dekhn wrote: post #10

Like the article says, the authors didn't claim the differences they found actually have any impact on health. They just claim they measured a difference, and the difference was significant (unlikely to be explained by chance). That's fine, but this really doesn't inform consumer decision making in a valuable way. Many consumers would hear this and immediately assume that consuming organic food is safer, which isn't…

Science: clearly doesn't matter unless it informs consumer decision-making in a valuable way.

Re: Higher antioxidant, lower cadmium, and lower pesticide residues in organic crops [pdf]

#54

Post by stillsut » Sat, Jul 12, 2014, 5:14 PM UTC

When the situation is reversed: (e.g. 'Non-Organic foods are just as healthy as Organic foods') there's often ad hom's directed at the researchers and an alleged 'whoring oneself out' to Big-Agri.

I wonder if people think it's reasonable to consider the hidden incentives in study that come up positively for Organics? After all, organic is usually:

- much more expensive (ability to charge a premium / higher margin)

- suppliers can maintain a semi-monopoly by limiting who gets to use the label "organic"

These characteristics, are afterall, a business's dream, not the ability to sell a commodity in an int'ly competitive market.

Re: Higher antioxidant, lower cadmium, and lower pesticide residues in organic crops [pdf]

#55

Post by Blahah » Sat, Jul 12, 2014, 5:16 PM UTC

rdtsc wrote: post #47

mark_l_watson wrote: post #13

I am generally pleased with the good availability of locally grown organic food where we live in the mountains of Central Arizona. If people don't want organic food, I could generally care less except for one thing: efforts to put legal roadblocks in the way of locally grown food. For example: A few years ago our Senator Jon Kyle, after taking large campaign contributions from Monsanto, submitted the American Food Sa…

> If people don't want organic food, I could generally care less except for one thing: efforts to put legal roadblocks in the way of locally grown food. How do you know that locally grown food is organic unless someone checks? Local grown and sold food doesn't necessarily mean "organic" it just means locally grown. Pesticides and chemicals are available for local growers too. Unless you grow it or personally know whe…

People in this thread seem to be under the misapprehension that organic farming doesn't use pesticides or 'chemicals'. Everything is a chemical, and organic farming in particular uses some nasty ones (rotenone, copper sulfate, pyrethrins). Pesticides are not automatically bad - in fact some of them are almost unbelievably benign to humans and/or to the environment.

Re: Higher antioxidant, lower cadmium, and lower pesticide residues in organic crops [pdf]

#56

Post by dekhn » Sat, Jul 12, 2014, 5:16 PM UTC

baldfat wrote: post #25

Scary! "is based on data from 343 peer-reviewed publications" Have we not learned that "peer-reviewed publications" are of questionable value due to the on going debate on peer-reviews. http://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/scibytes/the_debate_abou... http://time.com/81388/is-the-peer-review-process-for-scienti...

Would you prefer they used non-peer-reviewed publications?

Also, it was a metastudy, which can address non-systematic variation in poor studies (it wouldn't necessarily protect you against systematic variation, for example if "all peer reviewed studies were flawed in the same way".

Re: Higher antioxidant, lower cadmium, and lower pesticide residues in organic crops [pdf]

#57

Post by jqm » Sat, Jul 12, 2014, 5:21 PM UTC

alrs wrote: post #50

How well paid are the people who jump in to these threads to astroturf on behalf on a lobby? Are they on-call to deal with weekend work? Is it the same players that have been doing this since the 80s, or is there someone disrupting the industry?

I highly doubt the "lobby" cares enough about what a few thousand hackers think about organic food to plant astroturfers.

Sometimes there simply isn't a conspiracy...sorry.

(Now if it were Microsoft on the other hand:)

Re: Higher antioxidant, lower cadmium, and lower pesticide residues in organic crops [pdf]

#58

Post by MrQuincle » Sat, Jul 12, 2014, 5:21 PM UTC

There is publication bias with respect to publishing something that shows a difference between organic and non-organic food. I think a meta-analysis will only amplify this tendency.

I'd be happy if they actually put hypotheses out there why organic food would be better, come up with a possible mechanism, and test that.

Cadmium (which they state as the one metal that comes with lower concentrations for organic food), for example, can be part of certain fertilizers. Cadmium also depletes anti-oxidants. So, it might just be the case that getting rid of these fertilizers, would get rid of the differences between organic and non-organic food...

Without studying the underlying mechanisms of uptake and use, we will never know.

Re: Higher antioxidant, lower cadmium, and lower pesticide residues in organic crops [pdf]

#59

Post by ertdfgcb » Sat, Jul 12, 2014, 5:23 PM UTC

CR45H wrote: post #49

Likely a shit study like all the others that try to do this. The reality is that there no real difference. This has been proved over and over again; but these idiots have an agenda and will never quit.

I know you're probably a troll, but this is science: nothing is ever "proven", nothing is ever 100% certain, and they mentioned in the press release why this study is better than the previous ones that show no difference between organics and non-organics (basically, it used way more data and it's newer).

Re: Higher antioxidant, lower cadmium, and lower pesticide residues in organic crops [pdf]

#60

Post by personZ » Sat, Jul 12, 2014, 5:29 PM UTC

stillsut wrote: post #54

When the situation is reversed: (e.g. 'Non-Organic foods are just as healthy as Organic foods') there's often ad hom's directed at the researchers and an alleged 'whoring oneself out' to Big-Agri. I wonder if people think it's reasonable to consider the hidden incentives in study that come up positively for Organics? After all, organic is usually: - much more expensive (ability to charge a premium / higher margin) -…

There are "hidden incentives" in virtually every study, and one should always remain highly skeptical. One of the biggest perversions of science is the probability of wide publication (essentially the virality of a finding), vastly increasing the likelihood of finding the desired outcome.

However to your "business's dream", organic products are more expensive to buy because they're much more expensive to produce. If we actually look at businesses in operation, the vast majority seek to minimize selling price by doing everything possible to minimize production costs, which is the opposite of your claim.