Review of Nutrient Content in Organic vs. Conventional Foods

There is interesting coverage of a new (and controversial) study from Britain's Food Standards Agency in the popular press (as well as a press release from the FSA). In a review of peer-reviewed studies dating from 1958 - 2008 (the study looks scarily long, but the main body is only 30 something pages; the rest is references), researchers compared the nutrient value of organic and conventional foods and determined that for the majority of nutrients, there were no significant differences between the two. Further, for the few nutrients where differences were found, the amount of the difference was considered to be too small to have an effect on health. It is also unclear that all these differences were in the favor of organics anyway, since organic produce was higher in sugar and organic meat was higher in trans fats, for example. However, conventional products were shown to have higher levels of nitrogen, on average (a bad thing, though how bad, I don't know).

By design, the study did not purport to assess other dimensions along which organic and conventional food may differ, such as pesticide residue, effect on the environment, or animal welfare. However, this did not stop many organic food advocates from challenging the researchers for excluding these other issues and attempting to invalidate the study in the minds of the public on this basis. Of course, I truly relished reading this paragraph in the Yahoo article:

"Now the healthful-eating crowd is up in arms. Not only did researchers reach the wrong conclusion, advocates say, they didn't even ask the right questions. Such as: Why, exactly, do people buy organic?"

How sad it is that no one is doing this kind of research...well, almost no one. Ahem. But consumer perceptions are not the same as scientific reality. So knowing why people buy organic does little to answer questions about biology, which is the brief of nutrition and public health researchers.

Apparently these findings contradict those of an earlier study from The Organic Center, which found some nutritional differences, and it appears that organic advocates are choosing to place more importance on those results. What's interesting about that, to me, is not that they are more inclined to believe research that supports the position they already have; it's the hypocrisy of valuing research conducted by an interested party over that of a government agency (research which is being published in a peer-reviewed journal) in this case while so often lambasting research funded by "corporations" and other partial groups. To me, the salient difference here is how invested the researchers (or their funding source) are in getting a particular result, not whether the researchers involved are on the "good" side versus the "bad" side of the issue.

(One obvious difference between the Organic Center study and the FSA study is the timeframe involved. It could be the case that conventionally grown food used to be higher in nutrients than it is now, and that the non-significant findings in the current study could arise from lumping "old" conventional products with "new" and inferior products. However, on page 16 of the report, the researchers show that very few of the studies included in the review dated before 1989 and 74% were from 2000 or later. To me, this mitigates somewhat against the possibility.)

As for this person's response, though I was not actually surprised that she believed it, I was surprised that she said it, though I shouldn't be: "I don't see it as a matter of taking sides," [Diana] Crane [of PCC Natural Markets] added. "I see it as being informed, knowing what's reputable, and in some cases what just makes common sense. ... Organic has intuitively to be better for you."

The idea that things that are natural "must be" better for a person is extremely common, and people habitually use a sort of "intuitive" reasoning without facts (or, indeed, in the face of facts) that relies heavily on heuristics. Yet this is all disreputable to me to the extent that I feel like her willingness to admit this publically, as the spokesperson for her organization, should be embarrassing for her and her company. It's one thing for consumers to use this kind of reasoning in making their own purchase decisions (we all do for various things, if some people more than others), but I guess I expect more rigor from someone who is playing the role of an expert or influencer of others. This expectation is itself pretty much unreasonable, of course.

I basically find the whole organic vs. conventionally grown food argument endlessly interesting because it touches on so many issues that are near and dear to me yet I don't have a strong personal commitment to believing specific things about these food products nor do I tend to favor one over the other in general.

I do, however, believe that people should (i.e. would be better off individually and as a society) eat more fruit and veg than they do, full stop. Organic, conventional, fresh, frozen, whatever. I am extremely turned off by that segment of the pro-organic movement (activists, organizations; it does not seem to me to be individual people) that wants to demonize conventional produce, portray it as the next thing to poison, etc., so as to increase the demand for organics.