This is the title of my latest HND piece, and it summarizes the bravura work done by Dr. Alan Dangour and team in the UK.
Dangour and associates looked at an incredible 50 years of literature, to find articles that did nutritional comparisons between organic and conventionally produced produce and livestock. More than 50,000 articles were examined, and were screened for relevancy and quality.
For produce, 23 nutrients were compared, and for 20 of them there was no difference between organic and conventionally produced. Moreover, for the three nutrients in which there was a difference, this was deemed not to be relevant to health. Similar results were obtained for livestock on the ten nutrients studied.
The reaction of the organic community has been to either condemn the study or to shift the focus to the dangers of pesticides, but there are problems with either approach.
It is quite unlikely that a more fair, balanced, and exhaustive protocol could ever be envisioned for a literature search and evaluation. If the best the organic side can do is complain that some papers favorable to their side were eliminated in the culling out process of tens of thousands of papers, they should abandon that line of argument.
As to pesticides, this is an emotional appeal at best, with no scientific support. Indeed, the most they can muster is some now pretty much discredited work on endocrine disruptors. As it is, there have been numerous studies looking at cancer rates and other parameters for people who were exposed to huge amounts of pesticides, and their health was no worse than the rest of the population.
Heck, in one study [Alavanja MCR, Sandler DP, Lynch CF, Knott C, Lubin JH, Tarone R, Thomas K, Dosemeci M, Barker J, Hoppin JA, Blair A. Scand J Work Environ Health, 31 (S1): 39-45 (2005)] the cohort examined actually had lower overall cancer rates than the rest of the population. "The overall cancer occurrence among farmers and their spouses in the Agricultural Health Study (AHS) is significantly less than that expected compared to other men and women of the same age living in Iowa and North Carolina."
Save your money and buy conventional ag goods!
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