As I scanned the nutrition headlines this week I was annoyed by a Reuters Health article: “No Evidence Organic Foods Benefit Health: Study.”The article reports on a recent review published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition by a team of British researchers. The researchers pored through all of the scientific articles published in the past 50 years related to organic food and health. Apparently they found nothing to suggest organic is “healthier” and in the final evaluation only 12 of the 162 articles met their criteria as acceptable studies.
The part about this article that annoys me is that headlines like this take our attention away from some really important issues related to organic foods and overall health. In fact, the final two paragraphs of the article are probably the most important information and didn’t make headlines. This is where the researchers point out that both people and the environment may benefit from organic foods because these foods are made without the use of conventional pesticides, synthetic fertilizers, antibiotics or hormones. The current study did not look at the possible health benefits of “reduced exposure to those substances.” This begs the question – why are we giving so much attention to studies that aren’t investigating the most important questions?
There are studies that compare organic versus conventional foods and find higher levels of specific nutrients and beneficial plant compounds in the organic foods. But now that organic foods have gone main stream there is likely a difference in the nutrient content of organic foods that come from large scale production and have a long journey to your table, compared to the produce you get from your local organic farmer. In fact even local conventional produce will likely have higher levels of these nutrients than its jet-setting counterparts. However, the comparison of specific nutrients still misses some key points in the “organic vs. conventional for best health” discussion.
First, we are slowly learning about some individual chemical compounds that may cause or contribute to the development of cancer, interrupt the work of important hormones, or mess with our immune cells. We don’t know the long term health impacts of the chemical cocktail we are currently exposed to from combined food, air, and water, and frankly we may never know. Think about it. How would you begin to design a study that looks at what each of us gets from all of these areas? (Not to mention confounding factors like exposure to nasty off-gassing from carpeting, new car upholstery, passing traffic on our daily lunchtime walk,…it is overwhelming to think about!)
I have observed that many people who are concerned about the health of humans and the planet shift towards eating more organic foods. Lately the trend has expanded to include more locally produced food when it’s available and this food may or may not be USDA-certified organic. Movies like Food, Inc. and books by popular authors like Michael Pollan, Barbara Kingsolver, Marion Nestle and Alice Waters have raised the general consciousness related to our industrialized food system. Though “organic food” no longer solely represents the radical minority of counter culture hippies and tree-huggers it still represents change.
When you buy organic, especially in a depressed economy, you need to really think about your food choices because it is generally more expensive to buy these foods. The upside to this switch from a nutritionist’s perspective is that spending more money on organic foods can leave less money for the junk food that truly endangers our health. Sure there is organic junk food too but even those purchases may help behavior if the added cost of choosing organic chips or cookies means you eat fewer of them or eat them less often. These are observations I’ve made based on both clients in my practice and customers I’ve spoken with at the Grocer – there is no research to back me up on these benefits but to dismiss the possibility of these health benefits is a mistake.
Finally, we really need to break away from our nutrient focus when it comes to food. Yes, Medical Nutrition Therapy used to manage specific diseases or conditions does evaluate nutrients to make sure people get enough of some and not too much of others. But in general, as Michael Pollan and others so eloquently point out, we eat food not nutrients. We need to think about the quality of the food we eat and how it is grown or raised. We need to think about where it comes from and the resources needed to get it from farm to fork. Our health depends on a much broader view of nutrition than inflammatory headlines like the one that started this rant depict.
The good news is that there are a lot of people who aren’t waiting for the double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical studies to tell them what to eat. They are choosing food based on this broader notion of collective health for humans and the environment (in addition to taste and enjoyment of course!). Choosing organic foods does not guarantee we will be healthier but it certainly demonstrates that we are at least thinking more about what we eat.
