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Think organic food is better for you, animals, and the planet? Think again

www-telegraph-co-uk.cdn.ampproject.org

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Re: Think organic food is better for you, animals, and the planet? Think again

#21

Post by JoeAltmaier »

rossdavidh wrote: post #18
technotony wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A challenge is that with this debate (say organic vs GMO) both sides have a lot at stake financially and you can make this argument either way. How then should one decide what to trust and read?

I tend to go by: 1) which side has more money to spend? 2) which side is introducing more foods/chemicals/conditions which are more different from what my ancestors evolved for? Which is totally not a guarantee, I freely admit.

Curiously, our ancestors evolved to eat cooked, genetically modified food. Modified by selection yes, but genetically different from anything that came before.

The odd 'paleo' diet is nothing we're equipped to handle anymore. Nobody has eaten like that for 100,000 years, and we've moved on biologically?

Re: Think organic food is better for you, animals, and the planet? Think again

#22

Post by bogle »

srj wrote: post #13

Organic food has fewer pesticides, as this article reluctantly admits. There's not enough oversight from the government as to the health of these, so for some set of vegetables/fruit where the additives cannot just be rinsed off it makes sense to buy organic.

Quite so. The article states "no robust evidence for organics being more nutritious" but that isn't really the argument many have for eating organic veg. It's the pesticides that the non-organic vegetables have been soaked in that are potentially dangerous to our health.

Re: Think organic food is better for you, animals, and the planet? Think again

#23

Post by Xeoncross »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #19
Xeoncross wrote: post #10

> "But surely organics avoid pesticides? No. Organic farming can use any pesticide that is “natural”. This is misleading. Organics do avoid pesticides - just not all of them. This is a step in the right direction. > "Conventional food, it’s true, has higher pesticide contamination. Although it is still very low, this is a definite benefit of organics. So basically, because "Organic" is still new and hasn't weeded out…

"Organics do avoid pesticides - just not all of them. This is a step in the right direction." A small sample of a large set has the same mean as the large set. IOW, limiting selection does not make things safer.

> limiting selection does not make things safer.

True if you are only concerned with the data void of any timeframe. I'm speaking about the public momentum causing the reduction in known poisons. Progress always starts somewhere.

Re: Think organic food is better for you, animals, and the planet? Think again

#24

Post by AdmiralAsshat »

Let's look at three of the things this article claims are "debunked":

  >Green tea - drunk in vast quantities it may cause a
  >condition called fluorosis, which can lead to brittle
  >bones and teeth
No one is telling you drink Green tea in "vast quantities". Most recommend an 8oz cup a day, which is perfectly safe.

  >Kale - this so-called wonder food is goitrogenic,
  >meaning it contains substances (goitrogens) that may
  >contribute to an enlarged thyroid in some people, if
  >eaten by the sackful.
Again, no one is telling you to eat kale by the sackful! Drinking a sackful of water a day might cause problems for you as well, but no one is dumb enough to try to claim that water is unhealthy.

Re: Think organic food is better for you, animals, and the planet? Think again

#25

Post by edraferi »

technotony wrote: post #12
rossdavidh wrote: post #4

I have to admit, whenever I see something like this, my immediate response is: who paid for them to write this. I am reminded of the many talking heads in finance prior to 2008 who assured us that our financial system providing more debt than ever to support home loans was good for the economy. I'm not saying it's impossible for organic to have downsides. It's not even impossible that those downsides might be substan…

A challenge is that with this debate (say organic vs GMO) both sides have a lot at stake financially and you can make this argument either way. How then should one decide what to trust and read?

Does “organic” necessarily mean non-GMO? Personally I think GMO is great but dislike massive use of fertilizer and pesticides. And really, that’s mostly for downstream effects. I want to encourage sustainable land use and reduced environmental harm. Fine with me if we need to hack some plants to enable that.

I recognize that genetic modification is sometimes used to enable greater use of these chemicals (eg roundup ready grains).

Re: Think organic food is better for you, animals, and the planet? Think again

#26

Post by alexandercrohde »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #16
alexandercrohde wrote: post #11

“Scientific studies do not show that organic products are more nutritious and safer than conventional foods.” The absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. The truth is we have no clue what the long-term effects are for the chemicals we're exposed to -- for all we know, the 50% drop in male sperm count over the last 30 years is related to pesticides. [1] Additionally, there's something a little forceful about th…

The argument is, doing pointless things and burning through $200B could be better spend doing actual things that help us. Science-denying is not helping us out, nationally or worldwide. Lets stop.

"Science-denying is not helping us out, nationally or worldwide. Lets stop."

That's exactly why I take my time to shut down articles like this. [Written by a climate-change skeptic, to point]

I've spent quite some time researching pesticides and if you're unaware of the sordid history (how large a proportion have been pulled for saftey reasons, and how long it takes to discover most pesticides aren't actually safe) then I encourage you do so yourself.

Re: Think organic food is better for you, animals, and the planet? Think again

#27

Post by [deleted] »

rossdavidh wrote: post #4

I have to admit, whenever I see something like this, my immediate response is: who paid for them to write this. I am reminded of the many talking heads in finance prior to 2008 who assured us that our financial system providing more debt than ever to support home loans was good for the economy. I'm not saying it's impossible for organic to have downsides. It's not even impossible that those downsides might be substan…

[deleted]

Re: Think organic food is better for you, animals, and the planet? Think again

#28

Post by halleym »

Xeoncross wrote: post #20
abtinf wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you apply the same standard to claims about "organic" products?

What are you talking about? Organic foods are an absence of herbicides, pesticides, and narcotics. It's not like you're choosing the lesser of two evils or something.

Organic foods are an absence of specific herbicides, pesticides and narcotics; not all of them categorically.

Re: Think organic food is better for you, animals, and the planet? Think again

#30

Post by WalterSear »

Xeoncross wrote: post #20
abtinf wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you apply the same standard to claims about "organic" products?

What are you talking about? Organic foods are an absence of herbicides, pesticides, and narcotics. It's not like you're choosing the lesser of two evils or something.

Just your assumption, unfortunately.

> The pesticides that are allowed for organic food production are typically not manmade. They tend to have natural substances like soaps, lime sulfur and hydrogen peroxide as ingredients. Not all natural substances are allowed in organic agriculture; some chemicals like arsenic, strychnine and tobacco dust (nicotine sulfate) are prohibited.

http://npic.orst.edu/ingred/organic.html

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