Monday, March 14, 2016

Benefits and Drawbacks of Organic and Conventional Foods

I often confused the words "healthy" and "nutritious". I now understand that"health" refers to well-being of an individual while "nutrition" refers to the content of vitamin and minerals in a food product. From my research, I read an article that credited Stanford University for finding that organics were not anymore nutritious than its conventional counterpart. Does a strawberry grown organically have more vitamin C than an apple grown by the means of efficiency? It's not, but the processed strawberry would cost much cheaper in markets due to government subsidies. The researchers did admit that the organic fruit contained more antioxidants and phenols which reduce the risk of some cancers. Otherwise, they concluded that there were no meaningful difference between the two foods that are produced differently since the extra nutrients that organics fruit had were not essential. People who preferred organic farming would say that the researchers failed to appreciate the advantages that organics have over regular foods. In addition to the higher amounts of antioxidants and polyphenols that organic food has, it also contains two key flavonoids, quercetin and kaempferol would then be the nutritional advantages. Conventional farming does use pesticides, but the traces found in the food products are apparently in amounts that are "within safety limits". But what are the boundaries and who decides them? Organic foods are regulated so they do not contain synthetic pesticides, hormones and additives. If you want to be completely confident that you are not putting yourself at risk, then organic is the way to go. The extra cost of it is to ensure your safety. It's like paying more for an extended warranty. But are organic foods really worth it?

1 comment:

  1. All this talk about how processed food are bad for you really have me concerned. I want to improve my diet but I don't know where to start. Posts like these help inform me on what I'm putting in my body. Eventually I will take action and start going organic. Thanks Caleb. You rule.

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