Organic Food - Costs More - Better For You?

In our last post, we examined the declining nutritional value of the fruits and vegetables you find on the market shelves.  How a variety of factors, including the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, has led to modern produce that is anywhere from 5% to 40% less nutritious than the fruits and veggies grown thirty or so years ago.

What about fruits and veggies grown using organic farming techniques?  Are they more nutritious than the produce being grown using  conventional modern farming practices?  If so, is that difference worth the higher price tag typically attached to organic fruits and vegetables?

These days when you shop at your local grocer for produce, you have aisles of apples, carrots, broccoli, and other fruits and veggies.  Then you have that one section, typically small, labeled ‘Organic’ where you find carrots, broccoli, and tomatoes that look pretty much the same as their non-organic counterparts.

But they do cost more.

So, what’s the difference between organic and standard fruits and vegetables?

It all comes down to farming techniques.  The term ‘organic’ refers to the way farmers cultivate and process their agricultural products, including grains, meat, dairy, and fruits and vegetables.

Some key differences between conventional and organic farming include:

Fertilizers

Conventional farming utilizes chemical fertilizers to promote growth.  Organic is all about natural fertilization utilizing manure, compost, and other natural byproducts.

Pest Control

Conventional farmers use chemically based insecticides to control pests and disease.  Organic techniques avoid chemicals and rely on varmint traps and pest mating cycle disruption to manage destructive pests.

Weed Management

Conventional farming utilizes - you got it - chemical herbicides to control pesky weeds.  Organic farmers use crop rotation, mulch, and spending alot of time hand tilling the soil to control weeds.

Can you trust that organic label?

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has established a certification program that requires all organic foods to meet strict standards.  These standards revolve around growing techniques, handling practices, and processing steps.  So, if you see the USDA organic label, you can be pretty sure that apple was grown and processed in a chemical free environment.

But don’t confuse the USDA organic label with other labels you might see, such as “free range”, “hormone-free”, or “all natural”.  These labels may be important to you in choosing the foods you buy, but they are not regulated, or even necessarily accurate.

Okay, chemical free is great, but are organic fruits and vegetables more nutritious than their conventional counterparts?

The use of all natural growing and processing practices may be enough for you to justify the extra cost associated with organic produce.  Why the extra cost?  Because, when you take pesticides, chemical fertilizers, and preservatives out of the process, you end up with plants that require more manual attention and lower crop yields due to disease.  Couple this with the costs associated with obtaining the USDA organic standard, and you begin to see why those identical looking apples and carrots are more expensive.

But more nutritious?  No.  There is currently no authoritative evidence that indicates that organic produce is any more nutritious than the produce grown and processed in conventional environments.  The USDA, while certifying food as organic, makes no claims as to that food being safer or more nutritious.

So, if you are concerned about the use of chemicals on your fruits and vegetables, buy organic.  Do remember that most experts agree that the quantity of pesticides found on produce grown via conventional methods is miniscule and poses little to no health risks.

If you’re concerned about the environment, buy organic.  The chemical free organic growing practices do cut down on the world’s pollution footprint and encourage the replenishment of our growing soil.

But if you’re looking to beef up your nutritional intake, save your money and buy conventional fruits and vegetables.  Just eat more of them.

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Grandpa Grew Better Vegetables

There is a common belief that modern farming practices have resulted in bigger and more nutritious fruits and vegetables. That science has progressed and made our good foods even better.

Nope.

For one, the “fresh” vegetables and fruits we get at our local Sprouts or Fresh Market don’t look or taste nearly as succulent as the produce I used to eat at my grandparent’s farm. The corn that we bring home today is not as yellow or as crunchy as the ears we picked right from the fields 35 years ago. The blackberries that we buy at our local farmer’s market aren’t nearly as full and firm as the ones I used to pluck right off the bush back in the day. And don’t get me started on the current state of store bought tomatoes.

Turns out the fresh fruit and veggies we find in the stores today not only don’t taste as good, but they are also less nutritious.

According to an article in the February issue of the Journal of Hortscience, the typical vegetables found in your local market are anywhere from 5% to 40% lower in vitamins and minerals than those that were harvested 30-35 years ago. The nutrients that have been depleted over the years include iron, calcium, zinc, magnesium, and other dietary goodies.   Studies have shown that at least six of the thirteen major nutrients typically found in most vegetables have shown these drastic declines.

In addition, much is made of how modern farming techniques have enabled growers to produce larger, more “robust” fruits and vegetables.  This results in the jumbo sized tomatoes, peppers, etc, that you find in “premium” produce markets.

Bigger fruits and vegetables means more nutritious fruits and vegetables, right? More food equals more content, including vitamins and minerals, doesn’t it?

Again, nope.

According to Donald R. Davis, a former researcher with the University of Texas’s Bichemical Institute and author of the Hortscience article, today’s fruits and vegetables suffer from the “dilution effect”. They may be larger, but today’s jumbo produce actually contains more filler, or “dry matter”, than anything else. This filler actually serves to dilute the vitamin and mineral content.

Turns out that this dry matter is actually made up of starchy carbohydrates, empty of vitamins and minerals. But, guess what?

It does increases the size and therefore the yield of the harvested produce.

And how do farmers get paid?  By the yield of the harvest. Bigger fruits and veggies means more money to the grower, more weight on the scale, and more cost to the consumer.

So, you’re actually paying more money for less nutrition.

Genetic dilution is largely to blame for this. Selective breeding for purposes of increasing crop yield (remember, more yield, more money) has led to substantial declines in the percentage content of vitamins, protein, and amino acids in today’s farm fresh produce.

Another factor in the declining nutritional value of our fruits and veggies is agriculture industrialization. The increased use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers has led to crops that are being grown and harvested much faster than in the past.

Get them in. Get them out. Send them to market.

Great for the farmers, but the quick and early harvests mean that the plants spend less time in the ground. Less time in the ground means less time to absorb nutrients from the soil and less time to create them via growth processes, such as photosynthesis. In addition, many of the chemical fertilizers interfere with a plants ability to absorb particular nutrients from the soil.

Other modern farming processes, such as monoculture planting, where a single crop is grown in the same area year after year, have led to the severe depletion of nutrients in the soil.

So, we have genetic dilution that, via selective plant breeding, actually encourages the growth of produce that is larger in volume but less in nutritonal value. We have harvest cycles that rush the growing process and curtail the ability for plants to absorb nutrients from the soil and the sun. And we have modern farming practices that are not allowing our soils to replenish their supply of healthy minerals required for healthy produce.

And even though genetic dilution seems to be more severe in vegetables than fruits, the combination of all these factors means that we just aren’t getting the same quality of produce as what prior generations were consuming.

Now this certainly doesn’t mean you should give up on fruits and veggies in your diet.  Even with the reduction in healthy nutritional content, they are still the best source of the stuff that keeps us going.  Just means you may need to eat more of them.  Or maybe it just means being a little more selective in the quality of the produce you buy.

Which brings us to our next topic.

How does organically grown produce play into all this? Is it worth the extra cost at the market? That’s for our next column.  You can read it here.

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