Organic vs Conventional foods: Part 2 – Healthier for you?

In the first part of this blog (3) we looked at the argument over the Stanford study (1) on whether organic foods are healthier or safer for you than their conventional alternatives. You will recall there were four key claims made:

1. Organically produced foods are no more nutritious for you than those produced using conventional agricultural methods.
2. Organically grown produce does have higher levels of certain nutrients than conventionally grown foods.
3. Organic produce has less pesticide contamination than conventionally grown crops.
4. Organic foods contain less antibiotic-resistant bacteria than do conventionally grown foods.

In this blog we will look at the first of these categories: Healthier for you.

For this discussion, healthier for you means the nutritional content of organically grown food compared to those grown using conventional methods. These are points 1. and 2. on the above list.

In the Promoting Good Health publication “Organic Food: A Guide for Consumers“, we discuss how difficult it is to come to a sensible conclusion on whether organic food is more nutritious for you (2). Given the media flurry over the Stanford study, we need to again discuss why this seemingly simple question is very difficult to answer.

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