From: Brian D Williams (talon57@well.com)
Date: Thu May 02 2002 - 13:22:28 MDT
>From: Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com>
>> (Brian D Williams <talon57@well.com>):
>
>> This is incorrect, produce raised organically is higher in
>> nutritional content. Maybe not significantly enough for you
>> however.
>Such a sweeping claim is absurd. In fairness, so is the sweeping
>claim that organics don't have any nutritional benefit. The
>truth is much more complicated and contentious. Studies have
>shown advantages on both sides: some have even shown that frozen
>vegetables are more nutritious than either fresh conventional or
>fresh organics. You know the evidence must be pretty thin when
>the current darling study of the pro-organics crowd is one that
>shows that canned organic soups are high salicylic acid, which
>can reducethe risk of heart attacks (and make your ulcers bleed,
>and give your kids Reyes syndrome, which they conveniently omit).
I was very surprised to see how little web available objective
evidence there is either way. Organic sites have plenty of papers
related to their opinion/tests but little independent work.
Probably one of the most reputable labs, Consumer Reports, flat out
refused to do a nutritional analysis.
I could not find a reputable study claiming frozen vegetables were
more nutritious than fresh, but did find one claiming another study
errored in that the frozen vegetables has less water, therefore a
greater quantity was measured since it was done by weight. On a
related note, canned pumpkin is more nutritious than fresh because
it is concentrated.
>The bacterial contamination issue is probably a red herring,
>despite the infamous John Stossel piece. But the fact remains
>that promoters of "organic" produce make the term meaningless,
>because they don't even consider nutritional benefit in their
>definition of the term. Golden rice, for example, will never be
>labeled organic even if grown with natural methods, simply
>because it has had vitamin A added genetically.
Genetically modified is not "organic" by definition. I found large
amounts of material on the USDA's attempts to redefine "organic" to
include genetically modified plants, nuclear irradiation, and bio-
solids, to benefit agribusiness.
Rather than try to capitalize on someone else terms, agribusiness
should create new terms of it's own.
Brian
Member:
Extropy Institute, www.extropy.org
National Rifle Association, www.nra.org, 1.800.672.3888
SBC/Ameritech Data Center Chicago, IL, Local 134 I.B.E.W
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