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

csanr.wsu.edu

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

#81

Post by dgesang »

neilsharma wrote: post #79

I haven't read the specific paper, but the press release skips over the finer nuances in the debate. First, how is the European standard of "organic" defined exactly? Both the UK's and US' seem to cover the basics (no growth hormones, limited herbicides and pesticides use, must feed the animal organic foods, etc.), but fertility and biological standards in the soil might vary. It is possible that that UK might have n…

> I'm still not convinced that organic is nutritionally superior or has levels of pesticides that prove harmful to humans.

I'm curious what convinced you that they are equally healthy in the first place?

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

#82

Post by SpoonMeiser »

dgesang wrote: post #81
neilsharma wrote: post #79

I haven't read the specific paper, but the press release skips over the finer nuances in the debate. First, how is the European standard of "organic" defined exactly? Both the UK's and US' seem to cover the basics (no growth hormones, limited herbicides and pesticides use, must feed the animal organic foods, etc.), but fertility and biological standards in the soil might vary. It is possible that that UK might have n…

> I'm still not convinced that organic is nutritionally superior or has levels of pesticides that prove harmful to humans. I'm curious what convinced you that they are equally healthy in the first place?

Surely that's the null hypothesis? It's up to proponents of organic food to prove a benefit.

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

#83

Post by jann »

neilsharma wrote: post #79

I haven't read the specific paper, but the press release skips over the finer nuances in the debate. First, how is the European standard of "organic" defined exactly? Both the UK's and US' seem to cover the basics (no growth hormones, limited herbicides and pesticides use, must feed the animal organic foods, etc.), but fertility and biological standards in the soil might vary. It is possible that that UK might have n…

Why is the difference between US and UK regulations important for the results? As far as I understood from the press release the study was conducted in the UK with UK products.

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

#84

Post by Dylan16807 »

kaitai wrote: post #71
spingsprong wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their top claim seems to be that organic food is higher in anti-oxidants. Unfortunately, the idea that anti-oxidants are good for you has always been scientifically shaky, and as more studies have been done, it's increasingly looking like anti-oxidants may be unhealthy. So, the message of this study is, avoid organic food?

Studies re: antioxidants show that large doses of isolated compounds are not so good for you. The famous vitamin E study is an example of this. Scientists decided to study vitamin E, though, because people whose diets were high in naturally-occurring vitamin E had improved mortality -- in particular, these diets were cardioprotective. A similar paradox is being seen, to a lesser degree, in comparing diets high in fis…

You're going a little bit strawman by the end there. There are many types of diets that qualify as 'balanced real food', and the questions are in why they have different health benefits and trying to find the bottleneck compounds so that you can have more benefits at once. So you would still eat real food, but for chemicals whose ideal quantities require extremely biased diets you would put some in a pill and focus your diet on filling in the rest of the concert evenly.

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

#85

Post by dgesang »

SpoonMeiser wrote: post #82
dgesang wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm still not convinced that organic is nutritionally superior or has levels of pesticides that prove harmful to humans. I'm curious what convinced you that they are equally healthy in the first place?

Surely that's the null hypothesis? It's up to proponents of organic food to prove a benefit.

Ha, yeah sure, we need to proof that natures goods are fine the way they are supposed to be, but highly manipulated goods don't. That kind of thinking is one of the reasons why so many people fear TTIP. Please stay on your side of the Atlantic.

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

#86

Post by baldfat »

dekhn wrote: post #56
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".

No I would prefer data that was validated by a secondary source. The idea that one can do science by writing a paper and just have it signing off by someone seems flawed and damaging to science and medicine.

Reason I haven't dropped this after being down voted over 5 times. Having had a son who went through the whole cancer deal and then realize that so much of the cancer research is flawed due to bad peer-reviewed papers that caused loss of years of research makes me always question "peer-reviewed." It needs to be replicated and the data needs to be open. Science and especially medical research is seriously damaged by the lack of either one of these.

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

#87

Post by maxerickson »

micro_cam wrote: post #77
maxerickson wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was more interested in your answer to the first question than the aside about how we each expect senators to behave. It'd also like more information about the university professors, I either didn't notice at the time or completely forgot about it.

Not the op but I think I can explain. In rural areas a home gardner may have more an acre garden and a high tunnel (green house) and produce more then they can use or eat so lots of people will donate/share/sell for extra money a few things. Where I live in Montana they can sell at the farmers market or roadside stands without jumping through too many hoops but for whatever reason they need to package things to sell…

Yes, I'm aware that small growers often want to sell produce. But "small local growers" were explicitly mentioned, hence the question.

"Some home gardeners end up being small local growers" is sort of an answer, but why mention them both if you are only talking about the situation where "home gardener" is (at least becoming) a stretch?

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

#88

Post by dragonwriter »

SigmundA wrote: post #26
hrvbr wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the EU it's not a vague concept. There's a strict legislation for any product sold as organic, along with a logo. Main rules, taken from the EC site: - Crops are rotated so that on-site resources are used efficiently - Chemical pesticides, synthetic fertilisers, antibiotics and other substances are severely restricted - Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are banned - On-site resources are put to good use, such…

Of course my point is this this paper is vague since it doesn't specify which country/entities formal definition of organic they followed in order to classify the data. My point of varying and changing regulation stands as well, the EU original regulation went into effect in 1993, however I am not clear on what enforcement in which countries actually occurred when. It seems it had major revisions in 2007 and took som…

> GMO is a similar issue. If genetic modification is done in a lab it's labeled GMO and bad, if it's done through breeding it's not and ok.

This is actually worse than you present it, because the "GMO" label is not applied to variously laboratory techniques like repeated exposure to mutagens followed by detailed analysis to determine which subjects have mutations of interest, followed by selective breeding, more exposure to mutagens, etc.

The actual distinction usually made with the misleading "GMO" name is between genetic modification by inclusion of specific genes from another species ("GMO") vs. all other methods of modifying a genome (not-"GMO").

This actually ties into a problem with the degree to which "organic" labelling is meaningful, since usually organic is defined as including non-GMO using the misleading definition of "GMO".

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

#89

Post by breischl »

SpoonMeiser wrote: post #82
dgesang wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm still not convinced that organic is nutritionally superior or has levels of pesticides that prove harmful to humans. I'm curious what convinced you that they are equally healthy in the first place?

Surely that's the null hypothesis? It's up to proponents of organic food to prove a benefit.

(responding to @dgesang here, because of max comment depth)

The conventionally-grown food looks similar, tastes similar, and people have been eating it for decades with no major, obvious consequences. So at first glance they are equivalent. So it seems reasonable that the burden would be on proving a difference, rather than an equivalence.

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

#90

Post by Dylan16807 »

personZ wrote: post #60
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…

Businesses don't do everything possible to minimize absolute production costs, they try to minimize relative production costs. All else being equal, if my business and all my competitors are forced to pay twice as much for components, we will all raise prices, we will probably keep similar margins, and we will all make more profit. "All else being equal" is the hard part but it's not too far from reality in some situations.
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