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

[kiya]

My brother's celiac disorder basically cleared up when he went on a strict all-organic diet. He commented that his epidemiology classes explained this: that the immune system requires multiple triggers to flip out, and wheat gluten is a common trigger. Pesticides are also common triggers. When he stopped combining the two, he started to be able to have a beer again.

When his celiac was full-bore he basically looked like a somewhat animated skin-coated skeleton. Now he doesn't even reliably test out as having the gluten sensitivity blood test marker.

For your anecdotal level.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Thank you. That's literally the only specific answer I've gotten so far.