Organic food. Better for you?

Is organic food all it’s cracked up to be?

Organically grown food is defined as food which is grown without chemical pesticides or synthetic fertilisers. The organic food industry was estimated to be worth £29 billion globally in 2007, some £2 billion in the UK.

The point that I’m going to look into over organic food is whether it has any greater nutritional benefit.

Basically there is very limited scientific evidence that organic food has any more nutritional benefits than conventional food. Googling ‘Is organic food better for you’, brings up some interesting results. The first result is a BBC news article with the headline, ‘Organic produce ‘better for you’’. For the layman that’s surely the question solved isn’t it? Organic food is better for you so buy it if you can. Someone who was questioning the benefits of organic food need go no further. The very real danger however is cherry picking this story. By that I mean picking out the stories, or more importantly scientific trials, that back up your point of view without considering the evidence to the contrary.

The amusing thing on that google search was the combination of search results. After the first result brought up the BBC article the second result brought up a story claiming the complete opposite. From the NHS choices website, it was an article with the title, ‘Organic food is no nutritionally better for you than regular produce’. Who to believe? To get the real results you’ve got to do a bit of digging.

The BBC article covers the publishing of a study funded by the EU at Newcastle University which claims to show higher levels of antioxidants and lower levels of fatty acids in organic food compared to conventional food. There are some issues with this study. Sourcing the original paper I found that the study was run by an organization called QILF, Quality low input food. I wouldn’t go as far as saying that QILF are a pro- organic food lobby but they clearly state their objective to investigate further into organic food as a means of future extensive farming use. This could show a possible element of researcher bias, these guys are actively involved in researching organic food and are possibly searching for the results that they need. It would be nice for the study to be independent but that is incredibly rare these days. The BBC article also stated that the results showed ‘significant variations’. What is also quoted in the article is the hits of the study. For example the most impressive numbers, that levels of antioxidants in cows milk can be up to 80% higher than normal milk, are plonked right at the head of the article. The data seems to suggest that only fluctuations in fatty acids and antioxidants were noticed. Other nutrients may have seen no fluctuation, but that isn’t reported because it simply doesn’t make good news. I’m being speculative here but who cares.

It seems the reality on the issue however is different. The wealth of studies shows that organic food has little or no nutritional benefit over conventionally produced food. This position has been held by the Food Standards Agency for many years, having continually rebuked ‘evidence’ which claims to show nutritional benefits. The most impressive evidence to back this is up is a meta- analysis conducted by researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. A meta- analysis involves basically summing up all the previous trials, studies, data etc, on the topic, in this case organic food, and seeing what the results tell you. The ‘systematic review’ aimed to ‘quantitatively assess the differences in reported nutrient content between organically and conventionally produced foodstuffs’. So no research bias there then. The wealth of data that these guys went through was extraordinary. They gathered 52,471 articles on the topic and looked into a range of over 450 nutrients. Big numbers. They took just 55 studies forward, and organised the range of nutrients in 11 categories. 8 of the 11 categories saw no statistical difference in nutrient content between organically and conventionally grown crops. The 3 categories which saw significant statistical differences between the two groups were where; Organically produced food was higher in phosphorous levels and titratable acidity (a measure of a fruits ripeness at harvest) while conventionally produced food was higher in levels of nitrogen.

This is what the researchers concluded, ‘On the basis of a systematic review of studies of satisfactory quality, there is no evidence of a difference in nutrient quality between organically and conventionally produced foodstuffs. The small differences in nutrient content detected are biologically plausible and mostly relate to differences in production methods.’ 

So although it may taste nicer, be better for the environment, or warm to your ethical values, consider that it doesn't have any nutritional benefits.

If that doesn’t answer your question on nutrition levels in organic/conventionally grown foods then I have no idea what will.

Sources-

BBC article - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7067100.stm

NHS choices article - http://www.nhs.uk/news/2009/07July/Pages/OrganicFoodIsNoBetter.aspx

QLIF - http://www.qlif.org/

London school of trop. med. Press release - http://www.lshtm.ac.uk/news/2009/organicfood.html

The report itself - http://www.ajcn.org/content/early/2009/07/29/ajcn.2009.28041.abstract

Looking back

The year 2511, 500 years from now. Reckon we’ll still be alive? I’m going to be writing envisaging what someone like me would think looking back at the time we are living in today. I had the idea to write this article a while ago but I was reminded of the topic recently over a story published on the BBC News website. The title was something along the lines of ‘Scientists predict a limit to the extent of human intelligence’. The main thrust of the story was that scientists had predicted a kind of intelligence plateau, a limit to the extent our brain can understand the world around us. I don’t know whether to find this incredibly depressing or enlightening. Wouldn’t it be depressing if our brain limited us from continually expanding and researching into the many grey areas of science that we still don’t fully understand? Or is it enlightening in the idea that reaching this intelligence plateau would lead us to some sort of monumental consciousness raising event where we would finally conquer the previous questions of our existence all together. Maybe the plateau is so high that by the time we have reached it they will be nothing else to know or that needs explaining, a scary thought, for me at least. 

I was naturally sceptical of this story from the moment I read the headline. If this sort of intelligence plateau does exist then wouldn’t there be ways around it? Firstly if scientists themselves have predicted this sort of event happening and know what it will consist of then they will surely be able to work around it? Surely if they can identify this plateau then they will be able to recognise the sorts of ways in which we could work around it. Or maybe I’m just being naive. 

This idea of a limit to human’s intelligence fits in quite nicely with the principal of singularity. This is the idea that one day the AI, (Artificial Intelligence), that we have created will reach the same level of intelligence as us, or even surpass our levels of intelligence. Is this not another way of crossing this barrier? If we can create intelligent machines that learn from the environment around them and are able to advance their own intelligence without consistent human intervention, will these superior machines, not limited by the supposed constraints of the human brain, be able to relay information back for humans to decipher? Would this thus give humans information from beyond the pale and therefore possibly advancing ourselves beyond this barrier?

A thing that worried me about this story was the ammunition it could provide for theists. Doesn’t it sound like perfect evidence to back up the God Hypothesis? If there is a limit to human intelligence then surely that is what God has designed us to be like. He/She/It has put a ceiling on the human mind. I imagine anti-evolutionists would also go along this route. ‘Surely if we are always evolving then there should be no limits to our intelligence?’ I imagine they would argue that the something beyond this plateau would be an almighty God figure who would no doubt be capable of designing humans and putting a limit to their natural curiosity.     

Homeopathy

Thought I’d write a blog post on this brilliant magic alternative medicine called homeopathy. Homeopathy is an alternative medicine which has been around for a couple of hundred years. You’ll probably be able to find it in most chemists and it's likely there will be a couple of homeopaths working their magic in your local area. To put it bluntly I am completely and utterly against homeopathy. It is not brilliant, magic or efficacious. I would try to be neutral here but the sheer weight of evidence that homeopathy doesn’t work somewhat clouds my neutral stance.

Homeopathy is based on two main principles. The ‘law’ of like cures like, and the ‘law’ of infinitesimals. Like cures like works as it sounds, if a patient is suffering from symptoms such as a fever and a headache a homeopath will diagnose the patient with a substance such as Belladonna which would in a healthy patient induce a fever and/or headache. This may seem a little weird I know but just go with it for the moment. Obviously if a homeopath was to give a patient a substantial amount of Belladonna then mortality would probably occur, which wouldn't be in their best interests. Thus to combat the normal poisonous effects of substances such as Belladonna, the substance is diluted. This brings us to the second law, the law of infinitesimals. When I say that homeopathic concentrations are diluted I mean really diluted, diluted to the point that there are no active ingredients left in the substance. However homeopaths believe that even when the original active ingredient has been diluted to the point where it no longer exists they believe that the water still holds some memory of the substance.

So how dilute are homeopathic concentrations? The sheer amount of water that homeopathic concentrations are diluted in makes it very hard to visualise or even be able to imagine any active ingredients in homeopathic concentrations still existing. Imagine one drop of substance A in all of the world’s oceans, then taking one drop of that mixture and putting it into a homeopathic sugar pill. You’d think that would be pretty dilute right? But that is strong in terms of homeopathic remedies. There are many homeopathic concentrations that operate at 30C, which is the equivalent of one drop of substance A in 100^30 parts of water, 100 multiplied by itself 30 times.  This is the equivalent of one molecule of the original substance A in a container of water that is 30,000,000,000 larger than the Earth. Thought that was dilute? It goes further and gets more and more ludicrous as the dilutions gets weaker and weaker. How about Oscillococcinum?  This is a homeopathic ‘remedy’ to treat symptoms of flu and the common cold. So what concentration are we talking about here then? Oscillococcinum has a concentration of 200C. This is equivalent to one part of substance A in 100^200 parts water. This is impossible to visualise. Imagine one molecule of the substance in a container as large as you can possibly imagine, times that by 82, add 62 billion, then square it, then you might be getting close.

When homeopathic concentrations go past a certain number the chance of that molecule actually existing in the concentration rapidly declines. This number is called Avogadro’s number, equal to 6.023*10^23. So when homeopathic concentrations go past the barrier of Avogadro’s number, between 23 and 24C the chance of even a single molecule being present becomes less and less likely.

Although so far I’ve been bashing the science behind homeopathy maybe there’s a chance that it still works to treat disease. The fact that the possibility of there being any active ingredients in these pills is next to none is irrelevant if these pills work. However, unfortunately they don’t. There is no scientific evidence that homeopathy works. Hundreds of scientific clinical trials over the years have all shown the same thing, that homeopathy is no more effective than placebo. However there are a few scientific trials which claim to show homeopathy having a positive effect. But if you track down these clinical trials then you will see that they are bogus. The large majority break the scientific norms which one should see in all scientific trials. Many of these trials are not sufficiently blinded or randomised. Some don’t contain a placebo, or when they do it is not controlled for. Some simply don’t have controls put in place so the positive effect that is supposedly being shown is the cause of a drug that the patient was taking at the same time as they were participating in this clinical trial. Others use subjective test results rather than objective ones, for example, in a test where a homeopathic remedy is claimed to cure insomnia, patients are asked to mark how well they slept out of ten after taking the remedy or a placebo. This makes all of the results extremely vulnerable to human error.

So I’ve established that I believe that homeopathy does not work. However why should I so vehemently reject homeopathy if it is up to the individual themselves? After all is it not the patients right to choose? Even if homeopathic remedies have no more effect than placebo then does that not matter if patients are thinking they are feeling better?

Firstly, patient choice. I believe this argument to be completely flawed. Yes of course patients have a right to choose but they should have the right to choose between a drug that is proven to work rather than a homeopathic sugar pill which has no evidence of efficacy. Imagine you decide to build a brand new house. You hire a builder who asks you a very weird question. ‘So Sir/Madam, would you like me to build your house out of bricks and cement or jelly and jam?’ Sounds absurd doesn’t it? Is it not the right for the client to choose? Again the same principle applies. Yes they do have a right to choose which materials their house is built out of. But surely they also have the right to choose between materials which actually work and those which are plain stupid. Homeopathy is simply that. Plain stupid. Did you know there are homeopathic hospitals around the country? 5 in fact. Homeopathy is also provided on the NHS. This absolutely stuns me. How can a medicine which has no proof of efficacy be being funded by the taxpayer?

I could continue to ridicule homeopathy further but I shall leave it there for the moment. So if you ever come across homeopathic ‘remedies’, or just homeopaths in general, challenge them. Remember that homeopathy has been scientifically proven to be no more effective than placebo.

Greetings

Hello Everyone,

My name is Dan, I'm 18, and I'd thought i'd set up a blog.

Simply, I'm going to be blogging about the sort of stuff that I'm interested in. Stuff that will be insightful and hopefully interesting at the same time. I imagine i'll be writing on topics such as Politics, Current Affairs, Sc(k)epticism, History, Philisophical Ideas, the Environment, and general other trends which will hopefully appear if I catch the blogging bug.

To give you a bit of taster of what sort of things i'll be writing about here's a few topics which i've duly plastered on my wall in the form of postlit notes;
The Front Nationale, a right wing party in France,
Homeopathy,
The current state of the Belgian Parliament,
The Singularity principle, ( The idea that one day human intelligence will be matched by artifical intelligence, nerdy but also very cool)
How Polticians are judged today,
Turnout at elections,
Riot Policing, should it be more severe or more lenient,
Probing into some Daily Mail, (Daily Fail) articles,
The cons of cherry picking data,
Reducing our carbon emissions by 80% by 2050,
Looking back at religion from the future, will it be seen as a force for good?
The recent decision to ban nuclear power in Germany.

Hopefully i'll get a chance with all my free time over the summer to write posts on ideally all of these topics, although that may be being a little optimistic!

Please do leave suggestions if you have any.

Dan