Organic food, conventional food

All the reliable literature I have read says that:

a) Conventional produce and organic produce are nutritionally equivalent

b) Organic produce is more prone to rancidity as fewer preservatives are used

c) Organic produce will make you popular with people who wear glasses with no lenses

My understanding is that many kind of pesticide and herbicide were proven to have adverse health effects, like cancer. But not all of them.

In the lack of information of which specific pesticide/herbicide/... was used on a given piece of "conventional food", and in-depth knowledge of the toxicity of each of them, I consider the "chose organic when possible" to be a reasonable safety measure. Some of the "conventional food" will not be any worse than the organic, some will be worse, and since I can't tell them apart, I consider "non-organic" to be weak evidence towards "slightly toxic".

The other point is, regardless of the effect of the food itself, some of the "conventional farming" does damages to the ecosystem - there is evidence it does pollute underground water, kill bees, ... Not all of it, but once again, I lack the ability to tell apart a "low-impact" conventional product from a "high impact" one, so I tend to chose organic also because of the effects not to me when I eat it, but to the everyone when it's produced.

Both of them are relatively weak reasons, but buying organic when possible only has a weak cost (it's not that much more expensive, and I can afford it).

I've been wondering whether there's any solid evidence that organic food is healthier than conventionally produced food

Shouldn't we equally be asking whether there's solid evidence that it's less healthy? It seems to me that if there's a substantial difference it could easily go either way.

(I eat a lot of organic food, but my main reason -- aside from whatever signalling nonsense the less-conscious bits of my brain may be inflicting on me -- is that I think organic is a not-totally-useless proxy for "produced by people who care about something other than profit margins" which in turn is a not-totally-useless proxy for "tastes better". And maybe also for "produced in ways with less adverse environmental impact" and, for meat, "prepared with more attention to animal welfare".)

Conventional produce is covered in a good deal of pesticides, the best way to remove them is peeling.

http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2010/06/pesticides_and_fruit.html

The link doesn't establish that pesticides are actually harmful, only that there's lots of them on conventional produce. However it is entertainingly written. :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxE9sYatPAs

It's difficult to determine the health impact of pesticides due to factors like long latency periods as described here. An absence of evidence for the harm of pesticides in fruits and veg isn't evidence of absence.

In the United States, pesticides costs several billion in public health, groundwater contamination, crop loss and pesticide resistance according to Wikipedia. I am interested in the intersection of cognitive epidemiology with agricultural pollution and diet in particular and pesticides cause cognitive dysfunction and contribute to Dementia and Parkinsons risk. What does this mean in terms of choosing to grow or eat organic produce?

Importantly, I have significant private knowledge of non-reporting of adverse effects from pesticides in agriculture in university's for studies sponsored by pesticide manufacturers and associations affiliated with pesticide manufacturers. THIS is my strongest reason for only eating produce with a skin I can peel, since I'm not confident in the process seperating organic from non organic produce or their availability.

Note, there are also studies indicating city pollution gives dog's a degree of brain damage. I'd stay away from cities too.

Although Wikipedia, (and I haven't searched google or research databases on this question), doesn't say insect repellant is harmful, I would hypothesise and assume from the mechanism of action that its terrible.

In fact, this worry is one of the only reasons I don't travel to those countries where one 'ought to wear' insect repellant constantly to avoid dengue fever and such, despite many attractions like altitude, culture, cheap cost of living, new langauge, new people and cheap hookers.

Spare a thought for the farmers. If pesticides became less dangerous, farming would be even less profitable. Rates of illness associated with pesticide and herbicide use in agricultural workers is obscene, but farming simply isn't a competitive business without non-'organic' pest and weed control, except in exceptional crop types/strains, highly biosecure regions, in very-pro organic markets, where there is minimal market access by competitive foreign exporters.

The other day I attended a seminar on market gardening in my state and got some notes. Doesn't seem like small scale farming is that sensible.

A new study just came out that seems relevant: Long term toxicity of a Roundup herbicide and a Roundup-tolerant genetically modified maize

From a press release:

The study involving 100 female rats and 100 male rats were split into groups and fed different amounts of either Roundup-resistant corn, Roundup herbicide or both, over two years. There was also a control group, which was fed regular corn a nd plain water.

Up to 50 per cent of males fed GM corn or Roundup and 70 per cent of females died prematurely, compared with only 30 per cent and 20 per cent in the control group, the study found. And overall, rats fed GM corn or Roundup developed two to three times more tumours.

Full text of the study can be found here: http://xgmo.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/toxic-gmo-maize-roundup-final-paper.pdf

I have done a lot of reading, testing and visiting of farms for my own small farm. The promises of safe, healthy food at higher yields than conventional conventional farming sounds great.

I have researched 4 types of farming

1. Classic conventional
2. Modern Conventional
3. Organic
4. Permaculture

Unfortunately i will not be able to provide links to scientific studies or books at this time.

The differences between these 4 types are basically:

1. : high crop yield, moderate to heavy use of synthetic pesticides, low crop rotation, high quality crop
2. : Extremely high crop yield, low to moderate use of synthetic pesticides, high crop rotation, extremely high quality crop
3. : Low crop yield, moderate to heavy use of classic pesticides, high crop rotation, low quality crop
4. : Medium to high crop yeild, no use of pesticides, no crop rotation, medium quality crop

Because organic farming relies on classic pesticides the farmers are often forced to use dangerous types that are dangerous to humans and wildlife.

Because modern conventional farming has advanced techniques for choosing crop types and protecting them from pest they can get away with using very little synthetic pesticides. Unlike classic pesticides synthetic ones have to pass a lot of safety testing before they can be used. Rule of thumb: modern synthetic pesticides are safe

Finally due to the options modern conventional farming has, the crop will usually end up being better tasting, prettier to look at, bigger in size and cheaper to produce.

In the organic vs conventional discussion a lot of people fail to realize or mention that modern conventional farming is at a "space age level", near my home there is a tech research company that designs cutting edge farming machines. These things are basically huge robots that can run a farm almost on their own. Almost all of the farming here occurs in greenhouses that have full climate control with pests being naturally dealt with through the use of wasps and ladybugs, note that these are not organic farms.

I'm also interested in any research on GMO's people have done.

Here is a pretty thorough discussion: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3138025

The authors do mention what was mentioned below, just because pesticides are not synthetic doesn't mean they are necessarily safer:

One such alternative is so called “natural pesticides” that are not synthetically produced, but are derived from nature such as botanicals pesticides (pyrethrum, limonene, and many others), microbial/biological agents (microbes, parasites) and inorganic minerals (boric acid, limestone, diatomaceous earth). These solutions are generally assumed to be less toxic for human health than synthetic pesticides and could represent an interesting alternative. But their usefulness is actually questionable because some such pesticides are not potent enough to control pests but at the same time do exhibit adverse effects for human health (i.e. “natural pyrethroids”).

Another study discusses how exposure to a chemical called Atrazine (ATZ) causes mitochondrial dysfunction & insulin resistance: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2664469

ATZ treatments led to weight gain

ATZ increased visceral fat and intracellular fat content

ATZ treatment worsened insulin levels and HOMA-IR values

ATZ induced insulin resistance

ATZ changed the ultrastructure of mitochondria

ATZ exposure decreased energy metabolism

ATZ impairs mitochondrial OXHPOS through direct action

ATZ treatment blocked the insulin-Akt signaling pathway