Organic Food, Conventional Food

[nancylebov]

Over at Less Wrong, I raised the question of whether there's evidence that organic food is better for health than conventional food, and asked for anything from anecdotes to studies.

Less Wrong being Less Wrong, someone raised the question of whether conventional food might be healthier.

In any case, they turned up nothing in the way of evidence, as distinct from heuristics or very vaguely related experiments. (Strange but true: food from plants which have to fight off insects for themselves is more mutagenic than food from plants which are protected with pesticides. Or at least sort of true-- I don't know how many mutations or species of bacteria this was tested on.)

So I'm asking a (mostly?) different bunch of people here. Have you heard or tried anything comparing the health effects of organic vs. conventional on people? Mammals? Multi-cellular organisms of any sort?

Comments

[st-rev.livejournal.com]

Strange but true: food from plants which have to fight off insects for themselves is more mutagenic than food from plants which are protected with pesticides.

Plants can't defend themselves against predators by running away. Their main options for self-protection are armor (bark, shells, thorns, etc.) or poison. Many plants secrete poisons in response to attack, sort of like an immune response. For example, blackened/wounded sections of potatoes are much richer in alkaloids than unbruised sections. This is also why chopping onions can irritate the eyes: the onions are literally creating a cloud of poison gas in response to trauma.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

The second paragraph doesn't follow from the first. The first is bullshit, the second is irrelevant to the discussion.

Food grown in IPM or organic farms doesn't mean potatoes with black spots.

[st-rev.livejournal.com]

...The first sentence is taken directly from the original post. Take it up with nancylebov.

The second paragraph is my attempt to describe why, to the extent and in the circumstances in which the preceding claim may be true, it may not be so strange. As it directly addresses a claim from the original post, I think 'irrelevant' is perhaps harsh.

[st-rev.livejournal.com]

Just to clarify, I can think of a few cases where the 'strange but true' claim probably is valid--potatoes and celery in particular--but I doubt it's generally true. At the very least, it requires a lot more specificity as to which plants, which pests and which pesticides.