Top 5 Essential Organic Food Facts

Many people think organic farming is relatively new practice, but as long as there has been industrialized agriculture, which is nearly 100 years, there have been farmers who resisted it. In 1939, a pesticide called DDT was created, and chemical pesticides slowly became the norm. In the decades that followed organic farming methods spread from Europe to Australia and North America, where in 2002, the US Department of Agriculture created their first organic certification program. Many now feel that typical organic certifications don’t go far enough in ensuring that agriculture is done in a manner that is sustainable, and that delivers the healthiest, safest produce to consumers. Practices like permaculture, and Community Supported Agriculture have been born out of these concerns.

Nutritional science is extremely complex, and so a simple question like “which is better?” can be answered a hundred different ways. There have been multiple studies that have found organic foods are not higher in various vitamins and minerals than conventional foods. In 2014, however, the largest study ever published on organic foods concluded that they contain far more antioxidants, phenols, and polyphenols than non-organic foods. These substances might be incredibly useful for staying healthy, or they may not be–the jury is out on that too. What it is hard to argue with though, is that pesticides are harmful to human health, and research shows that organic fruits and vegetables have little to none of them.

Food safety experts have been ringing alarms over the amount of inorganic arsenic found in brown rice for some time. Arsenic, particularly inorganic arsenic, is highly toxic to humans and is associated with a higher risk of many kinds of cancer. In 2012, researchers from Dartmouth College discovered that organic brown rice syrup–a common sweetener in many organic food products– had unhealthy, even dangerous levels of inorganic arsenic. The products they tested included cereal bars, energy gels, and toddler formula. The toddler formulas they tested that contained organic brown rice syrup had 20 times more arsenic in them than those without the sweetener. Apparently organic standards don’t always include being free of toxic amounts of heavy metals.

Researchers from Cornell University conducted an experiment where they gave 115 volunteers 2 samples of potato chips, yogurt, and cookies. One sample of each pair was labeled “organic,” and the other “regular.” In actuality, both samples were identical. Nevertheless, volunteers’ estimations of the food varied greatly depending on the label. They thought the organic cookies and yogurt had fewer calories, and that the chips were more nutritious. They liked the taste of the organic yogurt and chips better, though they thought the regular cookies were tastier–because who wants healthy cookies, right? Most interesting to marketers though, was that the participants also said they were willing to pay up to 23% more for the organic products.

In 2011 The Rodale Institute released an unprecedented report in which they compared side-by-side plots of land growing conventional and organic crops over the course of 30 years. They discovered that overall the yield from conventional and organic crops were roughly the same, but the cost of growing the organic crops was actually almost 10% lower on average. Granted, the Rodale Institute is a group dedicated to promoting organic farming, so they are not impartial, and some organic farmers, particularly in the UK, actually report that their costs are significantly higher. But if growing the stuff is often cheaper then why does it cost so much? The simple answer is supply and demand. The demand for organic food in relation to its supply is much higher than that of conventional food.

Did any of these facts surprise you? What do you think of organic foods? For more chemically fertilized Top 10s and might-be-better-for-you-but-probably-not Top 5s, be sure to subscribe to WatchMojo.com.