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]

Wikipedia, in the entry on Haidt, says

Sanctity/degradation, avoiding disgusting things, foods, actions. (He also referred to this as Purity.)

That's if you trust Wikipedia, though.

I think he would put property rights under 'fairness'.

[avram]

I know Haidt's revised his categories at least once.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

The trouble with that is that for a lot of people's intuitions, it seems that fairness not only permits but actually requires setting aside property rights. I'm not sure having a conflict between two interpretations of a basic moral value fits into Haidt's ideas; he seems more focused on conflicts between two different basic moral values.

Of course, you can take respecting other people's property rights as avoidance of harm. That might be a better fit. But then you have the opposed view that to retain your property when it could be taken from you and given to someone poorer is to harm the poor person.

I think the categories would really be simpler if "mine and thine" were recognized as a basic category.

[st-rev.livejournal.com]

Well, but people also have radically different notions of what is sacred and what is disgusting. Property is part of fairness/justice in some cultural contexts, and an offense against fairness and justice in others. You may think the latter contexts to be objectively wrong (and I'd probably agree) but I'm not sure that's relevant. I think considerations and judgements regarding property probably ought to fall into the 'fairness' category, that's all.