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GardenRN
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Organic produce study...

---"Stanford University doctors dug through reams of research to find out — and concluded there's little evidence that going organic is much healthier, citing only a few differences involving pesticides and antibiotics.

Eating organic fruits and vegetables can lower exposure to pesticides, including for children — but the amount measured from conventionally grown produce was within safety limits, the researchers reported Monday.

Nor did the organic foods prove more nutritious."---



Really? Looks like Stanford U has some crummy Docs. I don't think it takes research and doctors and scientists to tell you that organic veggies would be better for you. Wonder who funded the study...

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Moonshadow
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I heard that on the radio this morning. I didn't expect organics to be more nutritious, per se. That is more a matter of the time between field and plate. But they really did gloss over the whole "ingesting a boat load of chemicals" thing....

Dillbert
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for the last thousand years or so, my take has been:

it's not what's in organic produce that's good for you -
it's what is _not_ in organic produce that's good for you.

before "big ag" got into organic, one could make the argument that organic stuff generally got better TLC, so the crop itself was "healthy" - so perhaps in theory the crop itself "stored" more better stuff in the bits we eat.

still applies to local growers. not likely to apply to mega-ag operations.

DoubleDogFarm
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Yeah, I also heard this on the radio this morning. Like Dillbert already mentioned, it's not what is on or in that's good for you.

I have not read their article, but I'm sure they don't even touch on the environmental issues. What are the impacts?

Eric

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GardenRN
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The study I guess was mostly in response to people coming into the Dr's office asking..."Is organic produce really better for me?" and so then it's a matter of how you decipher that question. I can see where someone would take that to mean, is this organic tomato nutritionally better for me? does it have more vitamins and nutrients?

It would be interesting to see what happened when they compared industrial hybrid with organic heirloom. I read something a couple of months ago that said that conventional ag grown hybrids had about 40% less vital nutrients than organic heirloom.

Even though of course I'm pro organic, I think it gets hard to compare apples to apples a little bit. Government organic or my standard of organic? Were the same varieties of veggies sampled? Were they grown in the same conditions? Drought, pests, disease, or over-watering could all effect the nutritional contents. There's a lot of variables that I doubt were accounted for.

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RogueRose
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I wonder who paid for this study...................Monsanto perhaps?

ruggr10
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Of course, since the govt. standards on what is or isn't organic are garbage, I either buy local organic produce or grow it myself.

Whether the study was right or wrong about nutrition value, I'll tell you that my organically produced produce (haha produced produce) tastes exponentially better than purchased produce.

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Whether the study was right or wrong about nutrition value, I'll tell you that my organically produced produce (haha produced produce) tastes exponentially better than purchased produce.
and purchased produce never slips. :roll:

Eric

sciencegal
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Here is a [url=https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/09/120903221122.htm]more detailed article on the study[/url]. It wasn't a study but a review of all the previously published studies.
For their study, the researchers sifted through thousands of papers and identified 237 of the most relevant to analyze. Those included 17 studies (six of which were randomized clinical trials) of populations consuming organic and conventional diets, and 223 studies that compared either the nutrient levels or the bacterial, fungal or pesticide contamination of various products (fruits, vegetables, grains, meats, milk, poultry, and eggs) grown organically and conventionally. There were no long-term studies of health outcomes of people consuming organic versus conventionally produced food; the duration of the studies involving human subjects ranged from two days to two years.
They did address the environmental issues as well as other important issues.
"If you look beyond health effects, there are plenty of other reasons to buy organic instead of conventional," noted Bravata. She listed taste preferences and concerns about the effects of conventional farming practices on the environment and animal welfare as some of the reasons people choose organic products.
The researchers and their affiliations are noted at the bottom of the article. It also states that they received no outside funding.

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rainbowgardener
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Thanks science gal. The reason I think organic is important isn't so much about my health, it's about the health of the environment. We know that most of the pesticides used are long term persistent, end up distributed all over the planet, are toxic to honeybees and other beneficial insects, fish, frogs, often birds, and have numerous consequences to our intricate web of life, most of which we probably are not even aware of yet.

Remember when we almost lost the bald eagles, because widespread use of DDT decalcified their eggshells? Not something anyone anticipated at the time.

Anyone who isn't sure about the dangers of pesticides, should go back and read Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson, who was the first to really bring it to public awareness.

So the study means nothing to me. Just another example of our me-first orientation. If it doesn't directly threaten me, then it's ok.

However, I expect when most of those studies look for health outcomes, they look for major events in short periods of time ("two days to two years"). But the health outcomes in human beings are likely to be more subtle and more related to long term exposure (pesticides accumulate in tissues). Read the Wiki article on endocrine disruptors:

"Endocrine disrupting compounds encompass a variety of chemical classes, including drugs, pesticides, compounds used in the plastics industry and in consumer products, industrial by-products and pollutants Some are persistent organic pollutants (POP's), and can be transported long distances across national boundaries and have been found in virtually all regions of the world, and may even concentrate near the North Pole, due to weather patterns and cold conditions effects of endocrine disruptors on “male and female reproduction, breast development and cancer, prostate cancer, neuroendocrinology, thyroid, metabolism and obesity, and cardiovascular endocrinology ... early puberty; brain and behavior problems; impaired immune functions" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endocrine_disruptor

Just in case you would like something else to worry about:

"Schindler reported in a paper given at the AAAS annual meeting that persistent organochlorine contaminants that had been deposited in glacial snow are being liberated by melting. The implication of this work is that as climate disruption warms the Earth, rising temperatures will volatilize contaminants that had been trapped in what amounted to cold storage. These compounds are thus more likely to enter the food chain."

[pesticides are persistent organochlorines]

Schindler, DW. 2000. Trends in usage and global redistribution of pesticides (Abstract A41). In Science in an Uncertain Millennium, R. Paulson, ed. Washington, D.C. 2000 Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Washington, DC. February 2000.

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Cynic that I am, my knee jerk reaction is -- it's all word crafting. Most news media are simply going to quote the article in the same way as the OP (original post) of this thread. They can choose to ignore the "but this" and "but that" within the report and completely change the slant. While pro-organic WILL focus on what was NOT done or mentioned.

Pfft! to "our aim". Healthy adults my foot. What about pregnant women (and influence on the growing fetus?) Almost any diet guidelines make a special mention but they don't seem to do so here.

I did note the making effort to eating more fruits and vegetables is more important than whether they are organically or commercially grown implication and that much I agree with, especially given limited choice.

Without knowing the funding for each of the researches they looked at, there's no way to tell how reliable the result of comparing them is either... But it's a quotable reference now. :roll:

Oh, rainbow got hers in before I finished writing :D
Yep the environmental effects was only an one sentence side remark. How foolish is that?

Um... I'll stop now, I knew I'd end up ranting if I replied. :oops:

sciencegal
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applestar wrote:Cynic that I am, my knee jerk reaction is -- it's all word crafting. Most news media are simply going to quote the article in the same way as the OP (original post) of this thread. They can choose to ignore the "but this" and "but that" within the report and completely change the slant. While pro-organic WILL focus on what was NOT done or mentioned.
This is very true. I love [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1RXvBveht0]this lecture[/url] on how research results can be manipulated to say anything someone wants them to say. It's entertaining and funny, too.

applestar wrote:Yep the environmental effects was only an one sentence side remark. How foolish is that?
The article was only a review of the review article. Review articles are usually very long. There is probably much more in the original, plus it would have all the references of the articles that were looked at. Unfortunately you have to [url=https://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=1355685]buy it to read it[/url].

ruggr10
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Actually the whole Silent Spring issues with DDT have been proven false. Not that I'm wanting widespread spraying of pesticides.. but it was found the the data was "fudged" but Rachel in her studies.

Google it and you'll find plenty of the studies.

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applestar
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OK I googled it "Rachel Carson debunked" and found this:
https://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2428/was-rachel-carson-a-fraud-and-is-ddt-actually-safe-for-humans

And this:
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/randall-amster/silent-spring-has-sprung_b_507565.html

Generally skimming, I found harsher RC criticisms closer to early 70's.

I shudder to think what might have happened had Silent Spring not been so popularized, though.

sciencegal
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applestar wrote:I shudder to think what might have happened had Silent Spring not been so popularized, though.
What actually did happen is that cases of malaria (and other insect born diseases such as yellow fever, dengue fever, river blindness) rose more than 10 fold since DDT was banned. 2 million people a year die from malaria alone.

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rainbowgardener
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Stay tuned... I have to go to work, so more later. This is really interesting. I had not heard any of the criticisms of Carson, so I also did go looking. It is an interesting case study of how hard it can be to find the truth and how hard to have a reasonable, unpolarized, nuanced discussion.

Very short version. Dr J Gordon Edwards was one of her most ardent critics. He was not a bad guy, Sierra Clubber, mountain climber, etc. He died a few yrs ago at the age of 84 (or 85 depending on your source) of a heart attack while mountain climbing, after having in earlier years allegedly eaten DDT by the tsp full to disprove its harmful effects. (Which as noted above has nothing to do with either environmental effects or long term subtle effects in populations).

His issue was that the DDT ban was a bad thing, because it allowed comeback of malaria which is indeed a scourge of the developing world to this day.

So prior to Carson we had indiscriminate use of DDT sprayed by the ton from airplanes over vast swaths of the landscape. Then we had a total ban allowing return of malaria (and bedbugs, but they are not really known to cause disease, just itching and gross-out). So could there possibly be some middle course?

Stay tuned, but thanks ruggr for alerting me to this interesting controversy. Lets all try not to rant, because ranting and polarization and disregard for other people ideas, for subtlety and complexity, is a lot of what has gotten us in the mess we are in.

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GardenRN
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Grrrr..I hate bedbugs. The percentage of my patients that are coming with bites or the bugs themselves is rising seemingly every month. Some of the owners of the group homes should have criminal charges because of the way they run things at these homes. Of course many of the patients aren't of the mindset to complain, and don't know what their resources are. (mental health patients) And if all the homes get closed down, they'd be on the street. The goven't, either local of federal needs to crack down on this with heavy fines. It's ridiculous.

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RogueRose
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This is what non-organic corn makes...sure it may be healthy to eat, but what impact does it have? https://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/09/05/796781/genetically-modified-corn-gives-rise-to-superworms-as-agribusiness-lobbies-against-gmo-labeling/

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GardenRN
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Thanks for amping up my paranoia Johanna! Geez. This place is going to hell in a hand basket. (not HG, the friggin WORLD!)

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rainbowgardener
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We have a whole separate thread going somewhere about GMO. Non-organic doesn't have to be GMO; farmers were using chemical pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers decades before the GMO technology was even possible.

So back to the Rachel Carson controversy. So yes, Rachel Carson was a pioneer and her book was published 50 years ago. Think of the science and technology that was available 50 years ago, pre computers, electron microscopes, etc etc. And yes, the book was written out of fear of what was happening, to alert the general public to the dangers, not written for scientists. So when we look at it now there are inaccuracies. That does not mean the thesis of what she was saying was wrong. She helped create the whole environmental movement and made us aware that there was a whole eco-system out there that we were trampling on without paying any attention.

I looked at Dr Gordon's article "The Lies of Rachel Carson" from 1992. https://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/articles/summ02/Carson.html
Obviously from the title he is as much a polemicist as she was, with his own axe to grind.

He starts by saying her use of a quote from Albert Einstein in the dedication ‘Man has lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall. He will end by destroying the Earth.' is a lie because Einstein was talking about nuclear weapons when he said that. That shows the level Dr Gordon is working on. We apply quotes in other contexts all the time. Because Einstein wasn't talking about pesticides doesn't make his quote inapropos or make her use of it a lie.

Then he goes through page by page with things like this:

"Page 16. Carson says the pre-war insecticides were simple inorganic insecticides but her examples include pyrethrum and rotenone, which are complex organic chemicals."

At worst this is a mistake by Carson, but mistakes are not the same as lies. I haven't gone back to check the source, but I'm guessing it may not have even been a mistake but an example of somewhat sloppy writing. One of those things where you say in general the pre-war insecticides were simple inorganics. Then a sentence or two later you list the pre-war insecticides and include some that aren't inorganic. But even if she didn't know the difference, that doesn't make it a (deliberate) lie, and it has little or nothing to do with the central thesis she was putting forward.

"Page 18. Referring to chlorinated hydrocarbon insecticides (like DDT) and organophosphates (like malathion), Carson says they are all “built on a basis of carbon atoms, which are also the indispensable building blocks of the living world, and thus classed as ‘organic.’ To understand them we must see how they are made, and how they lend themselves to the modifications which make them agents of death.â€

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GardenRN wrote:Thanks for amping up my paranoia Johanna! Geez. This place is going to hell in a hand basket. (not HG, the friggin WORLD!)
Isn't that scary? And the fact that they've found pesticides in fetuses and umbilical chords? Traces of the toxic pesticide were found in 93% of pregnant mothers and 80% of the umbilical cords. Headed by Monsanto, the GM food industry has long asserted that these destructive pesticides would simply pass through the body without harm

Read more: https://naturalsociety.com/toxic-genetically-modified-crop-pesticides-found-in-unborn-babies/#ixzz25kQbC6Sv



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