In Defence of Food!
August 07 2009 at 4:01 pmBy Darren Grant: Managing Director of Ireland’s largest online and in-store retailer of organic food. – Main Street, Blackrock, Co Dublin, 01 2781111 http://www.organicsupermarket.ie/
Since the report commissioned by the FSA in England was recently release, our store has been inundated with what can only be described as ‘organic bashing’, as people struggle to understand what has been said in the media of late.
The report stated “there is no evidence of a difference in nutrient quality between organically and conventionally produced foodstuff”. The following is our reply to an utterly misleading and infuriating report.
Firstly, the report by the National Centre for Biotechnology Information are not new findings. It was simply a review of old research documents dating from 1958-2008. Out of this they examined 55 documents and came to the conclusion that past findings (that can be 50 years old) showed that nutrition levels were the same in food that is produced organically and non-organically.
The key word here that is causing the issue is “nutrition” levels, that is, the amount of nutrients the plants hold to support life. The report has been misconstrued so that people are saying organic food is just has healthy as conventional food. This report is deeply flawed, as it fails take into account the levels of pesticides, hormones, fertilisers, antibiotics etc, that are contained within your food. This is where the real question of “health” differences comes in.
The report does acknowledge higher levels of some beneficial nutrients in organic compared to non-organic food (which seems to have been omitted from general publication). Recording 53.2% more beta–carotene (which is believed to help prevent cancer and heart disease), as well as 38% more flavonoids, 12.7% more proteins and 11.3% more Zinc.
The report also excludes recent EU research by Carlo Leifert Professor (University of Newcastle) whom presented his conclusive findings at last year’s National Organic Conference that organic milk contained 60% more antioxidants and healthy fatty acids then normal milk.
The report omits that nutrients deplete over time from time of harvest. So, surly carrots from Wicklow delivered the next morning to a local shop, are nutritionally higher then carrots flown in from Israel.
These omissions are strange on what seems to be a bias attack on a growing food revolution. It harps back to the days of sponsored reports from tobacco and alcohol industries insisting their products were harmless, if not even healthy for you. The giant supermarkets simply don’t what to stock organic food, why? As it is highly perishable, therefore leading to lack of profits. Remember a red pepper dowsed in preservatives will last a week, alas, a simple organic one only three days. It’s about profit, not health.
So what is the health benefit of organic if we have conflicting reports on “nutrient levels”? Well eighty years ago the entire globe ate organically and our societies have been doing so for tens of thousands of years. Food has changed more in the past 20 years than ever before, food has become a chemical cocktail with the end goal, not being health or nutrition, but profit. This change in one generation is historically unprecedented – and dizzying!
Parking the nutrition benefits of our vegetables, let’s take a moment to look at other organic food versus non-organic food. Our daily bread. We have been making it for all recorded history, yet we have changed its very essence in the past 20 years. Here are the ingredients of organic bread as listed on the package “unbleached wheat flour, water, yeast, sea salt”. Here are the ingredients of one of our nation’s best selling daily breads “Wheat flour, Water, Yeast, Salt, Vegetable Fat, Soya Flour, Preservative Calcium Propionate, Emulsifiers, Mono & Di- Acetyltartaric Esters of Mono- & Di- Glycerides of Fatty Acids, sodium Stearoyl Lactylate, Dextrose, Flour Treatment Agent Ascorbic Acid.” Whoever thinks the later produces a healthier return for their body needs their head examined.
We need to look at the bigger picture of food, organics is not just about fruit and vegetables, it is about what we are mass consuming. We are the first generation to be obese and malnourished at the same time. We have become disconnected from food. Ask yourself have you ever met the farmer that grows your food? When you cook for yourself at home, you seldom find yourself stretching for the e-numbers, nitrates and trans-fats. Organic food is about returning to healthy basics.
Strict organic guidelines prevent the use of pesticides and artificial fertilisers. Instead pests and diseases are controlled using wildlife and, typically, clover is grown to boast nitrogen in the soil in place of fertilisers.
Genetically modified organisms or crops are not allowed under organic standards. About 99% of non-organic farm animals are now fed GM soya. Common sense says that organic is safe food.
We do not fully understand the effect herbicides and pesticides are having on our health. Only 20 years ago we were told by the experts that all fats where bad so a western society swapped butter for margarine and this new man made substance called trans-fat was introduced. A few years later we discover trans-fat is possible one of the worst manmade food additives and the world reverts back to butter. Experts can be wrong.
These chemicals do not undergo full human trials and they have metabolites that are more dangerous than the licensed chemical. All we do is test them on animals and dilute the dosage below the “safe” toxic levels. What about synergistic and long term effects? What about the constituents these chemicals break down to in e.g. hydrolysis/photolysis? Simply put, many of these chemicals are definite carcinogens, neurotoxins, etc. That should be a good enough reason for Organic to be healthier. Organic produce is not covered in a cocktail of poisonous chemicals. The average conventionally grown apple has 20-30 artificial poisons on its skin, even after rinsing.
Organics has very strict controls over antibiotics use in animals. The problem with conventional food is we now feed our animals on grain (which is sprayed with pesticides (poisons) and chemically enhanced soil), no longer on grass. Consequently our animals get sick so we pump them with antibiotics. Is it any wonder that mad cow disease, avian flu and more recently swine flu are becoming everyday occurrences? This is a time bomb waiting for the next generation.
Organic farming has strict controls over environmental issues. In non-organic farming Global subsidised crops of soya and wheat are converting diverse local farms into global industrial fields void of once natural wildlife.
The trillions of dollars spent supporting farmers with subsidies in rich countries have led to higher taxes, worst food (highly processed), intensively farmed monocultures of a few cereals mostly fed to animals and huge over production that has lead to plunging world prices that wreck the lives of poor farmers in the emerging world often creating slave like conditions and leading to a third of the world’s population now living in slums having been driven off the land by industrialisation and cheap imports.
Organic farming creates less pollution from sprays and produces less of the global warming gas carbon dioxide. Also organic farming support local food, which eliminates air miles.
The issue of expense has been brought up again and again in organic food. Claims of 60% more expensive are utterly inaccurate. If you single out fruit and vegetables, there are now marginal differences, in fact our store can be cheaper than non-organic versions of the same food.
If your family is spending €30 a week on fruit and vegetables, and there is a 10% difference in organic food. That €3 is a wise investment, one less pint in the local at the weekend. Organic food prices are dropping, the more we buy the cheaper it becomes. We eliminate transportation cost by buying direct from farmers and we cut out the middle men. At the moment only 1% of Irish farms are organic, can you imagine how cheap it would be if 50% of farms where organic?
We have lost the true value of food. In the 1950s, a chicken was a luxury to be enjoyed by most families only on special occasions. Now it’s expected to be cheap and available as a daily or weekly part of our diet, but at what cost to our health and the animals welfare?
Finally there is the issue of taste. Organic food tastes the way nature intended. Our generation has become accustomed to e-number enhanced food. People are unaware that the majority of your strawberries and tomatoes in fact are grown in nitrogen bags and drip fed a cocktail of chemicals, as the chemists grow your food, not the farmer. Organic food is grown in soil (imagine that), see for yourself taste the difference or at least as your grandparents what real food tasted like.
This is the start of the food revolution, try as they may, to quell it with diversionary and arbitrary reports such as this, but they will not defect the movement. The war on diabetes, obesity and malnutrition in children has begun and we will not go down without a fight!
By Darren Grant
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