Studies find little health benefit in organic food

| 04/09/2012

organic-615.jpg(BBC): Eating organic food will not make you healthier, according to researchers at Stanford University, although it could cut your exposure to pesticides. They looked at more than 200 studies of the content and associated health gains of organic and non-organic foods. Overall, there was no discernible difference between the nutritional content, although the organic food was 30% less likely to contain pesticides. Critics say the work is inconclusive and call for more studies. The research, published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, looked at 17 studies comparing people who ate organic with those who did not and 223 studies that compared the levels of nutrients, bacteria, fungus or pesticides in various foods – including fruits, vegetables, grains,meats, milk and eggs.

None of the human studies ran for longer than two years, making conclusions about long-term outcomes impossible. And all of the available evidence was relatively weak and highly variable – which the authors say is unsurprising because of all the different variables, like weather and soil type, involved.

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  1. Anonymous says:

    but, we know for sure that it is detrimental to ones health to eat  <a title="Fast Food" href="http://www.fastfoodforum.co.uk">Fast Food</a>

  2. SleeplessinCayman says:

    Another example of rather stupid and pointless research. Is saying that "eating organic food will not make you healthier…" the same thing as [employing the double negative] "…eating nonorganic food will not make you unhealthier"? I don't think so, if for example pesticides are proven to be a factor in disease. People will derive what they want to hear from this nearly useless information. I think I will take my chances avoiding pesticides if I can and wasn't under the illusion that organic food had more nutrients anyway! Reporting only two years of research results on factors that may only be statistically significant in the long term is downright irresponsible.