Organic Panic: A Dietary Dilemma

We all build our new bodies out of the foods we eat, so why not obtain the best building materials we can afford? It's a reasonable thought, but the concept of "organic food" is often confusing. In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Christian look to see what science has to say about organic and conventional foods.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how stork
dot com. Say you're welcome to stuff to blow your mind.
My name is Robert Lamb, and I am Christian Seger.
And today we are talking about something that seems like
it wouldn't blow your mind, but it is really interesting

(00:23):
and really controversial. Yeah, this is in a way, we're
kind of walking into a trap here because this is
a topic that a lot of people have definite opinions on.
You can even say you have. There's there's a certain
amount of faith and worldview wrapped up in this topic. Identity. Yeah,
your identity, how you fit into the world. Uh. And

(00:43):
also though we have studies a kind of pointing to
both sides of the argument, the argument of organic foods. Yep,
we are going to talk about organic food in particular.
We're gonna look at the scientific studies into its nutrition value,
also it's effect on the environment and whether pesticides do
anything to us or not. Yeah, and we're approaching this

(01:05):
from a you know, a middle path standpoint here. So
again we're probably gonna piss off everybody. I have a
feeling that like, if you are hard line in any
one of those camps you're going to be disappointed. But
if you're just kind of like I was, approaching this
like I'm like, you know, I go to the grocery
store and I see organic and I go, yeah, maybe,
but you know, I also have to like weigh my

(01:26):
concerns about costs. Uh. This is maybe going to be
a better episode for those people, people who haven't made
up their mind yet and are just kind of generally
curious about the science behind agriculture in the United States. Yeah,
and if nothing else, again, we're gonna approach it with
an open mind and it can be a conversation starter.
I'm sure everyone will have some feedback on this because

(01:47):
if nothing else, everybody eats, that's what we all do
every day. Well, we have to pick out new foods
with which to essentially construct our new bodies. Were to
try and put kind of a weird sci fi spin
on it, we're all kind of we're like that mad
scientist who's lost his body and it's a brain and
it's a brain in a jar and he has to go, oh,

(02:07):
I need a new body. What am I gonna do.
I'm gonna build it out of corpses, and I'm gonna
build it out of machine parts or some sort of
energy force field. We have that similar situation, except we
have to choose more These carrots are those carrots? Do
I do? Do I do? Meet? Do I do? Um?
You know? Sweet? What am I building my new body
out of tombstone pizzas? I don't know? Uh? Yeah, I'd

(02:28):
say a good like percent of my body is maybe
tombstone and red barren um. And so okay, we recognize
that you may have some strong feelings about this, so
we figured this is a good point for us to
at the top remind you of all those places where
you can tell us what you think about organic food
and what you think about our take on it. So

(02:48):
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also try to curate all the bizarre audity science stuff

(03:11):
that comes across our path as we're doing research throughout
the week. So that's a great place to follow us
and see all the kind of like neat, weird stuff
that we come up with in our travels, and of
course there's always stuff to blow your mind. Dot com
is the mothership. That's where we'll find all the podcast episodes, videos,
blog post links out to those social media accounts, and hey,
expect a facelift for that website in the months ahead.

(03:35):
Everything's getting redone, spruced up, the little more user friendly. Um,
we're looking forward to that. We had a very exciting
talk the other day about a potential news stuff to
blow your mind logo, which I think I'm very excited about.
Looks very cool. Okay, so organic food, I feel like
the best place for us to start is just sort
of an introduction into not what it is, but the

(03:58):
trajectory of how it became a part of our culture.
And a lot of this episode will be US centric
because we're both Americans. We live in America, and a
lot of the science seems to be done here, even
though a lot of the food is grown internationally. So
let's go back traditional farming before the Industrial Revolution in

(04:21):
the twentieth century. Think The Witch the movie The Witch Right,
and they're they're growing their pathetic little farm in Massachusetts
and they're trying to survive. Right. That's organic farming. Uh,
that's and that's basically what we're talking about going back
to here because Uh, in the nineteen thirties there were
two British scientists named Lady Eve Balfour and Albert Howard,

(04:45):
and they started looking at the role of agricultural production
in healthy food, and in particular, Howard recommended recycling all
of our waste, you know, including animal waste and human
waste basically sewage, so that we could fee the soil
on our farms. Around the mid twentieth century, incomes the
influx of chemical pesticides and fertilizers, they started to become

(05:10):
widespread and organic farming actually took on this weird kind
of cultish aspect. Like other farmers sort of looked at
it like why why are you still bothering with that? Like,
and when they would say things like well, you know,
I'm worried about these pesticides and the health effects or whatever. Uh,
they were looked at as proponents of doom and gloom. Well,

(05:30):
you know, I think it's one thing it's important keep
in mind about agriculture in general, is just to remind
everyone that agriculture itself is essentially unnatural, and it's it's
taking these plants that grow, you know, in a natural balance,
in a natural situation with other plants, taking and then
growing them exclusively in a you know, a plot of land. Yeah, totally,

(05:50):
Like just think of like and we'll talk about these later,
but like even organic practices like rotating crops in a
particular way or using predatory animals to pick off the
pests rather than using pesticides, like you're affecting the ecosystem
one way or the other. Yeah, you're still manipulating the environment.
And so what we're talking about with agriculture in channel,

(06:12):
it's just like to what degree or manipulating the environment,
what tools are using to manipulate the environment, and on
what scale. Absolutely so in the sixties and seventies, this
movement really picks up the organic farming movement. And the
reason why is because this book comes out by Rachel
Carson called Silent Spring. It sounds like a horror movie.
But no, maybe it is. Maybe it's written as a

(06:34):
horror movie. Organic food produce organic Yeah, maybe wow, that
that's write that one down. Put a copyright next to it.
Uh So, Basically, this book emphasized all the problems with pesticides.
At the same time, the United States was facing two problems,
water pollution from farming and the energy crisis in the seventies.

(06:55):
So farmers were like, well, maybe we will start using
fewer michals just because of these things going on. Now,
I'm gonna burn through history real quick here. Okay, nineteen
eighty the U. S Department of Agriculture starts actually getting
interested in organic farming, and they publish a report on it.
A year later, in nineteen eighty one, the American Society
for Agronomy argued that organic farming contributed more to sustainable agriculture. However,

(07:21):
they had clashes with the Reagan administration and so some
of that stuff didn't necessarily make it to the public
as quickly as they wanted it to. By the time
we get to the late eighties and the nineties, and
I remember these these times, well, this was really when
I started first hearing a lot about organic farming, and
I was a teenager. Um, the environmental movement really started

(07:42):
to gain sway. There were practices and emphasis on maintaining
bio diversity, animal welfare, and fair trade practices. That gets
us to two thousand two. This is when the U.
S d A created what are known as the National
Organic Standards, and those overrite any state regulations and create

(08:04):
the labeling system that we use now. So when you
go to the grocery store and you look at a
label on produce or meat or whatever about what it's
organic content, that's because of these National Organic Standards. And
I'm gonna buzz through them real quick, but they're important
to think about when you, like, I'm glad I read
this stuff next time in the grocery store, I'm definitely
gonna consider it. Okay, if it says a hundred percent organic,

(08:26):
that means the product was made only with organic products.
Products that say they are just organic, but they don't
say a hundred percent organic, they have to have ent
organic ingredients. And then if they quote contain organic products,
then they have to have at least seventy percent organic

(08:49):
ingredients in them. If there's under seventy, you don't get
a label, no label for you. You You don't you don't
get to advertise this. Now. One thing that's important to
remember that I read here is that the U. S
A does not regulate farmers who are producing. I believe
it's under five thousand units. So you know, if you're
just like if you have a small farm and you
go to a farmer's market and you're selling your wares,

(09:12):
I suppose you could make your own stickers that say organic,
even if you're you know, spraying chemicals all over them.
That seems unlikely right now. And on the chemical note,
it is worth noting here, I think it's important that
when we're talking about organic farming and conventional farming, because
because you know, it comes back to the whole thing
like like what is organic often feels like a weird

(09:35):
label because it's not like the alternative is inorganic, so
you're eating metal. But anyway, so, conventional farmers they can
apply any pesticide approved for use in the United States. Uh,
it doesn't mean they can just apply anything. There's oldest Okay,
organic farmers they can't use all of the same chemicals.
Now that doesn't mean organic farmers, um, you know, allow

(09:56):
insect pests and weeds to just run rampant. Uh. And
and they can also use pesticides and weed killers, but
they have a smaller list of approved substances to use.
Right So when you're buying organic, it doesn't necessarily mean
pesticide free. It just means different pesticides. And there's something
to be said about that too, that will will delve

(10:17):
into a little bit more later in the episode as well,
and that like, you can be growing crops organically in
soil that maybe used to have pesticides, and those pesticides
can stick around for a couple of years. Indeed, so
here we are. It's twice sixteen, and food safety is
still a concern, right, We're all worried about it. Especially.
I thought of you quite a bit during this episode

(10:38):
because you have a young child, and I would imagine that, uh,
you know, if I were a parent, I would be
thinking what should I put in this little person's body? Right? Yeah,
I mean that that is always that has been on
our minds since that I came into a lot of
terrible way to go about talking about feeding a child.
But yes, yeah, I mean, well, you're you have all this,
all all of this emotion and energy and time and

(11:00):
money invested in this child, and you want, you absolutely
want everything to be best for the child, and then
you find yourself in the situation where you're like a dude,
he wants he wants these susages. Well, maybe maybe soysagees
in a good example, because I feel like most of
the soysage options are probably organic. But al right, so
let's see, you're buying fruit because the kid eats the

(11:21):
colossal amount of fruit, and you're like, do I get
them the organic bananas and the normal bananas? I want
him to have the best, But doesn't make that much
of a difference, And then you end up, yeah, you
gotta you gotta think about how this colossal amount of
fruit he's eating costs money, and then you if you
if I get the organic? Sometimes I feel like I

(11:41):
doubt myself. Am I engaging in his magical thinking? Here?
Am I sort of curbing my bets like someone who
just goes ahead and prays to a few different gods
in case they're there, you know, like, in case it
makes the difference, I'll go ahead and spend the money
on the organic. But is there any is there any
science backing me up on this? So if you're like
Robber and are out there and maybe you're thinking about

(12:01):
that for yourself, or maybe you're thinking about it for
your children or or jeesus, I don't know, Like I
imagine some people even think about this with their pets.
To write like organic food and pet food is probably
a big deal. UH, because as well discussed too, it's
like gets, they're they're sort of different sides to want
you buy organic. They're sort of the there the user
uh ended the version of it like houses affecting me,

(12:23):
houses affecting the child or the pet. But then there's
also the production level of it. You want to you're
buying a product that is the end result of one
version of the agricultural industry, and you are buying a
product in theory that reflects your ideals for that industry.
It's actually a perfect segue into paper that I looked

(12:44):
into for this episode. UH. It in particular looked at
the advertising of organic food and uh specifically how it
highlighted both personal and environmental concerns in tandem. UH. And
now that way is the most influential way to get
consumers to buy organic food, especially when the promotional messages

(13:07):
align with the core values of consumers culture. Right so
here in America, UH, where we align with what in
the article is referred to as egoism. UH. And we
like to think that we align with altruism as well. Right,
And those are the two ways sure fire ways to
get somebody to buy organic food is to make them
think about themselves and what's good for them, and then

(13:29):
to make them think that they're thinking about the welfare
of others around them. Uh. And so if you get
that's the one two punch that will sell organic every
time apparently, and selling organic, I mean that's that's a
key point here as well, because it's not just you know,
a bunch of roadside farmers, you know, maybe putting a
sticker on something. We're talking about an industry that in

(13:50):
two thousand twelve was a reported twenty nine billion dollar
industry and according to Euromonitor International, just one source. Uh,
they claim that by two thousand seventeen, this could be
a trillion dollar global industry. We need to get some
organic food sponsors. You need to get on it. Yeah,

(14:11):
there's a lot of there's a lot of mon today.
I don't think our food oriented, but I'm going to
have a talk with them. Well, we have some coming
up coming along. I think we do have some food
sponsors coming up. But you know, the key here is
that when someone is selling you organic. Yeah, there are
marketing firms involved here, There are graphic designers involved here.
All the energy and manipulation that goes into selling you
absolutely anything is in play here. If you've got the

(14:33):
government involved, it's a big enough industry for them to
be paying attention. And uh, you know, call me liberal,
but I am glad when the government is regulating what
goes into my food, like, I'll take it. Uh. There
may be some farmers out there that don't like that,
but but it gives me a little bit of peace
of mind. So backing that up, poll showed that forty

(14:57):
five percent of Americans are actively see can to incorporate
organic food into their diet. This isn't just like I'm
going to the grocery store and I see the organic
avocados next to the regular avocados and I grab organic.
They're going to the grocery store with a list that
says organic avocados on it, right, like they want to
put it in their diet. In it was projected that

(15:18):
the organic food industry would see a sixteen percent growth
rate going into So that's leading us to that one
trillion dollar number. Man, put that into perspective, the average
American household spends four thousand dollars more a year on
organic food than unconventional food. That probably matches up with

(15:38):
our fruit badget I think for this for this kid, Wow, yeah,
he's just a he's just all made of fruit. That's
that's well. From what I know about your kid, he
really likes bananas and giraffes. So yeah, yeah, bananas and drafts.
He only eats bananas. Were not actively buying a black
market if you but yeah, but if you did, if
you organic giraffe meat, alright, only the best. So what

(16:03):
we we talked a little bit about the whole U.
S d A thing, But what exactly is organic food?
You know? Like, what's the difference here? Yeah? I mean
that's the question we all end up asking ourselves when
we're we're in the line, you know it is it
what is the difference? Or am I just paying extra
so I don't have to think about what the difference is. Well,

(16:24):
So a lot of the like history and basic breakdown
stuff that we're giving you here comes from the Salem
Press Encyclopedia entry on organic food and the debate in particular,
But we also looked at I would say another god
like twelve twenty studies of what's going on with organic
food in science in particular, organic food is any crop

(16:46):
or animal product that's produced without pesticides, man made fertilizers, additives,
or growth regulators. So we're talking about fruits, vegetables, grains, dairy,
and meat. Now, So me being the vegetarian on the show,
I was like, oh right, meat, Like I didn't even
realize that you could buy organic meat, but that makes sense.

(17:06):
Oh yeah, I mean, I mean the whole meat. The
whole meat issue is a kind of a subject unto itself, right,
because you you get into issues of not only like
like the organic aspects of the food, but also the
you know, how are the animals treated, what were they fed? Yeah,
so that's that's almost a whole podcast onto itself. Yeah.
So the idea here originally was to encourage soil and

(17:30):
water conservation, go back to that seventies thing with water crisis, uh,
and reduce pollution. So they started using natural fertilizers to
feed soil and plants. Also included, sorry, also excluded from
the organic food category would be genetically engineered feuds. That's
another episode. Genetically engineered foods, human sewage and their radiation

(17:57):
that kills germs and bacteria. So you you know, if
it's just a swamp things situation waiting to happen, right,
toxic avengers, I think. But but seriously, yeah, so like
those uh, I think of those like weird foods that
had started popping up in grocery stores that are like
giant versions of the fruit that like we used to buy,

(18:17):
you know, the apples that are like twice the size
and globe bright red and it's like, oh, they look
super pretty well that's because they're genetically modified and I radiated,
or yeah, they're the kind of apples that I remember
hearing they would they would have them on set for
mad Men, and they would have their their their historical
accuracy department would come in and say no, no big,
Yeah they're too big, Like no, no, apple um would

(18:39):
have been this size. That's funny or like, uh, you know,
I I shouldn't say this. And also I'll just throw
out there that I don't know whether these are genetically
modified or not, or if it's just a hybrid fruit.
But grapples. Have you ever had one of those before?
It's like a grape apple combination. Yeah? Are they the
size of a grape, so like an apple the size
of a grape or more like a smaller apple, if

(19:02):
remember correctly. Yeah, I don't think I don't remember trying
that one. Yeah. Well, you know, I don't know necessarily
that that would be considered organic, but I'm sure that
there is a organic way to produce such a thing
if you're I don't know, holistically growing them together anyway.
So for pest control, these organic farmers they say what
they follow that guy's advice, like I Howard, and they

(19:24):
use biological means crop rotation and animal maneuver uh. And
like I mentioned before, the U. S d A has
strict governmental standards about what qualifies was organic. You don't
get that seal without meeting with the U. S d A.
Now here's the thing. It's voluntary, but many producers use it.
Why because of the marketing value right like wild It's

(19:47):
like if you're a farmer and you say, you know what,
I'm gonna like change this whole production method that we're doing,
uh to organic. You're doing it because you recognize that
there's value in the market. Yeah, and you're creating a
premium product that you can then they can then sell
at a premium price. One last thing keep in mind
throughout this podcast, the words natural and organic are not

(20:10):
interchangeable terms. Okay, so when we're talking about organic, that
doesn't necessarily mean natural. Right, And to go back to
my earlier point, if you want to get serious about agriculture,
and uh, just about anything in agriculture is not natural
unless you're walking, you know, unless it's like hunter gathering level. Yeah. Yeah.

(20:31):
We actually did an episode of brain Stuff that was
sort of about like, uh, you know, if the world ends,
like how do I go about foraging for food? And
I did all the research and for the outline for it.
It's pretty fascinating, but like, yeah, it's hard to find. Like,
dandelions are one of the few things that you can
just eat, but you can't eat them if they're like
within something like fifty meters of any road or or

(20:54):
human environment, like like even a farm, because of the
potential chemicals that could uh travel on the air and
get on them. So go dandelions. All right, We're gonna
take a quick break, and when we come back, we're
going to look at some of the science behind the
pros and the cons for organic foods. Essentially, the scientific

(21:15):
argument that is still going on at the end of
this episode. You're still gonna have to make up your
own mind. So so don't worry. We're not we won't
do it for We're not going to do an attempt
to do it for you. But yeah, quick break, and
then we're right back in it. All right, we're back.
So yeah, let's talk about some of the pros and

(21:36):
cons here. Let's start with Now, let's let's be positive,
and let's start with the pros. What the science telling
us about the advantages of organic food Well, proponents say
that organic farming reduces the environmental impact and protects the soil. However,

(21:56):
experiments show over a number of years there is a
nine seven percent reduction in pesticides and organic fields. So okay,
so that's good, right, a majority. And this is this
gets back to people with children. A majority of pesticides
that are found in infants and kids originate from their diet,

(22:18):
so it does seem to make sense for them to
eat organic at these vulnerable ages, right as their bodies
are processing and growing. Another plus about organic foods is
that they can counteract pesticide exposure to their Studies that
show that children who eat organic foods that have eaten

(22:39):
foods that have pesticides in them, it will reduce the
pesticides in their body by fift So it's like a
you know, cure late wounds spell for pesticides. So we're
basically looking at a goal here of uh, reducing the
amount of pesticide residue that's on the produce. Right. It's
not like, let's let's not let's be clear here, like

(22:59):
convey National Foods is not like they spray the pesticides
on them and then they just put them in the
grocery side, right, But there's a residue that's left over. However,
there are residues on both organic and non organic slash
conventional foods. They almost never, however, exceed government safety thresholds.
So the U. S d A is just as strict

(23:20):
with conventional grown foods as they are with organic foods.
So that's important to keep in mind. Yeah, Now, the
certainly the the issue of kids is a big thing,
and we're probably gonna keep going back to that. The
In two thousand and twelve, the American Academy of Pediatrics
advised parents to limit a child's exposure to pesticides, but
they also they didn't make a statement about whether organic

(23:43):
foods are ultimately a better choice for children than conventionally
grown foods. They they they admitted that more research was
needed to nail it down, but they went a had
made this this advisory, um and and a lot of
research has come in the wake of that. One study
that is often mentioned, and this is ultimately a small study,
but a two thousand fifty study publishing Environmental Health Perspectives,

(24:05):
looked at twenty Oakland, California kids and twenty kids from
the agricultural region of Salina's hundred miles away. So they
ate a conventional diet for four days, in an organic
diet for seven days, and then they returned to conventional
foods for five days. Then, of course we took some
urine samples. Uh was why wouldn't you and us, I mean,

(24:26):
their kids. There's gonna be urine. Oh yeah, it's it's
gonna be everywhere. Seventy of their urine samples collected daily
contained evidence of pesticides, but of the six most frequently
detected pesticides, two of them decreased by nearly fifty percent
when children were on organic diets, and the levels of
a common herbicide felled by twenty So the advantages there

(24:48):
are pretty obvious, right, so we'll take that in the
column four organic foods that if in particular for children, right, uh,
pesticides don't seem to be a great thing in their bodies,
and if we want to reduce them, then organic foods
is a good way to do that, either by just
feeding them exclusively organic food or giving them organic food
occasionally to reduce the pesticides in their bodies. And of

(25:10):
course this is all uh, this is all important to
me too as not always a parent, but as an
adoptive parent, because you know, you you enter into the
scenario with so many unknowns about the child's past nutrition
was yeah, I mean you know, I know, you know,
we knew basically, but when it comes down to like
was this organic that they were eating, you know, what

(25:30):
was pesticide level, etcetera? What what other kind of you know,
uh agents were they exposed to? Like you, it's it's
easy to do than just say, well, let's go as
organic as possible, let's limit as much as possible any
any new uh you know, but pollutants, any new pesticides
thrown into the mix. That makes sense and as far
as pesticides go, we're learning more and more about how

(25:52):
these substances travel and how they affect organisms. In two thousand,
two thousand fourteen study publishing in Environmental Toxology and kim
As Tree recorded pesticide compounds including fungicides in Pacific chorus
frogs living in national parks, forests, and other locations high
in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Now in some cases we're

(26:13):
talking UH sixty two miles a hundred kilometers from the
nearest farms that had used those chemicals. We're seeing those
chemicals pop up in the frogs, and UH the pesticides
have such as this have been found to harm frogs
immune systems, impact development, and even trigger sex changes. Granted
we're talking about sex changes and frogs. Sex changes in
amphibians far different UH situation than any kind of conceivable

(26:35):
sex change in a human, but still we're seeing we're
seeing an impact on how their bodies work. We're saying
we've also seen connections to colony collapse in bees. So
the take over here seems to be that that pesticides,
first of all, when you introduce them to an environment,
they're not gonna just stay on that farm there that

(26:57):
they have a way of getting out. Yeah, and we
see them harming vulnerable creatures such as amphabians such as frogs.
Uh So the underlying message here is, yeah, this seems
like something we should reduce as much as possible, as
much as is sustainable from a feed the world standpoint,
And if you have the ability to limit the amount

(27:17):
of these things going into your child, then then I
feel like I should do it. Yeah. And from the
you know, also keep in mind, from the perspective of
like being pro organic, there's still like, as we're talking
about how much it can travel, these pesticides can still
get on organic fields because of how much they travel.
Or for instance, if three years ago a farmer was

(27:40):
spring pesticides, then they cleared the crop, then they started
growing organic on that soil, there's still some pesticides in
the ground there as well. So you know, it's complicated. Yeah,
and there's uh I don't want to go into too
much detail. And there's a two thousand fourteen study that
was oubolished in environmental health perspectives and they looked at

(28:00):
pregnant women living near fields treated with pesticides, and they
observed a correlation between proximity to pesticide fields and autism
in the in the children. So this study, just to
give you grounding, here n seventy pregnant women, one third
left than one third of them lived less than a

(28:21):
mile from a site where pesticides have been applied, and
the women had a sixty percent higher risk of having
a child with an autism spectrum disorder if they lived
closest to those sites. But again, this is just one study,
and like pretty much, this is the kind of caveat
we can throw out in any of these where we
have a lot of individual studies looking at little corners,

(28:44):
limited testing populations, and of course limited frames of time.
We don't have those big, you know, centuries spanning studies
involve lots of people. Yeah, So this whole like podcast
search was done during the same week that John Oliver

(29:05):
released the scathing commentary on how science is reported in
the news, and if you haven't seen it, I really
recommend it. We actually did a piece on how stuff
works now about it. But uh, I had that in
the back of my mind as we were working on this.
Every every study I saw, I was like, well, that's
twenty people in California. I know, like what do we
actually gather from that? And and as Oliver points out

(29:27):
in his piece, it's like what what we need to
be doing is replicating the studies so we can we
can determine whether or not they're valid, and then also
doing a review of all of the studies. Right, there's
not often a lot of money to be made in
those things, so they're not done luckily. In organic In
the organic food debate, there have been a lot of

(29:49):
reviews done, so that's a good thing, and in particular, um,
there's so there was one that looked at thirty four
studies from just the seventies in hill around now and
it found that organic vegetables have the same and maybe
sometimes higher nutrient contents than non organic conventionally grown food. Uh.

(30:11):
The gist of this is it's probably not more nutritious
to eat organic food, all right. So when this we're
getting into that big study that came out in those
posting the Annals of Internal Medicine and start everyone up
quite a bit with the with these key findings and
this also we're we're definitely getting into the potential cons

(30:32):
the downside or the just sort of the the the
even kill nature of organic foods. And this is outside
of cost, right, Like you go to the grocery store
and the first thing you think of as a con
is like, well, that's a dollar more per thing, right, whatever. Yeah,
obviously that that's a problem. You know, if they were
the same price, maybe it would be a lot easier

(30:52):
to say, Yeah, but I can only pay three dollars extra,
you know, so many times just for a you know,
a vague feeling of of of betternests. Right, we'll keep
in mind that four grand number that the average family
is spending on to keep organic food in their home. Yeah,
so this study is interesting. They collected two hundred peer
reviewed studies. This is the crazy part to me. The

(31:15):
way they started was they searched fifty thousand papers that
so there's been that many papers written over fifty years
about organic food, so clearly there's a lot of interest
in this. Then from fifty thousand they whittled that down
to a hundred and sixty two that were relevant to
the question of the nutrient content. This required them to

(31:35):
compare the nutrient content in organic and conventionally grown food stuffs.
Then they assess the quality of each one of those articles,
and of those, only fifty five of those articles were
identified as being of satisfactory quality. So this says something
about sort of like the the um I guess rigor
of the scientific studies on organic foods alone, like how

(31:57):
much quality was put into them and sort of like
how much scrutiny was put into them for this particular
Annals of Internal Medicine. Uh, Look, they ultimately came down
and said, uh, we're gonna identify the satisfactory quality and
look at thirteen of the most commonly reported nutrient categories

(32:18):
across the board here. Yes, so a lot of this
is coming down to nutrients, Like is organic a more
nutritious choice than conventional? And the studies indicated this is
not the case. And but one of the primary reasons
is that organic and conventional veggies they vary tremendously in
terms of their nutritional payload. So you have so many
different factors, genetic makeup of different varieties, the rightness, the weather,

(32:42):
when is this food coming in, where is it coming from,
how long is it take to get there? It all
factors in and or the organic conventional divide is not
the best divide between higher and lower nutritional quality, and
we don't have a good system to measure these things yet. Yeah.
One of the really interesting sort of like anecto oats
that put this into perspective for me is like you

(33:02):
can go to the grocery store and you've got the
carrots in front of you, and one carrot can be
sitting next to another carrot and it can have three
times the amount of beta caroteen as its neighbor that's
on the same shelf. And that's not even whether they're
organic or conventionally grown, right, it's just based on all
of these different factors that go into growing a thing

(33:22):
in the world. Now, I also want to point out
and this this kind of dips back into our potential
pros category here, but a I do like two British
journal nutrition study they argued that you see seventeen percent
more anti oxidants in many forms of organic produce. Um,
So for some nutrients, organics might be better. For other nutrients,

(33:45):
conventional might be higher. Again, it doesn't give us a
clear indication, but it may be uh, you know, pushes
a few more points back in the in the pro category.
And then of course another we're focusing here on on
a nutritional value on anti oxidants, but that's hardly the
only factor. Who we've already talked about pesticides. But then
also there is the distance that the food is traveling

(34:06):
to reach you. Yeah, So the way that this is
measured is in something called food miles, and there was
a study that looked in particular at the greenhouse gases
that were emitted when produces transported long distance and how
that mitigated the benefits of growing them organically. And by
food miles, what we're talking about here is the distance

(34:26):
that the food travels from the field to the store. Ultimately,
buying organic food is comparable to its environmental impact, uh
tow conventional food grown the bought at the market based
on the miles. And the example here goes like this. Essentially,
so you've got mangoes and green peppers. Let's look at those. Okay,

(34:49):
mangoes travel from Ecuador or Peru to the United States
rather than from Mexico to the United States, so they've
got longer to travel, which means that they're you know,
burning more fuel. Green peppers, if they're growing organically, they're
grown in Mexico instead of in the United States. So
again a further food mile from as they say, from

(35:12):
the farm to the market. Uh, and so ultimately that
ends up adding to the environmental impact. So the take
I'm here is if the recipe calls from mango, go
ahead and substitute green pepper, and you can feel a
little better about your pepper. Yeah, exactly. Well, what they
actually recommend is they just say, you know, if if
it's that big of a concern to you, switch to
locally produced food or go to your local farmers market. Yeah.

(35:36):
I think that's always so good. I mean, that's why
I enjoy going to the local farmers market, you know.
And and I say that with the caveat that there, Yeah,
you end up engaging in a lot of a lot
of judgment calls that are more based in Oh well,
this hearkens back to some idealistic idea about what agriculture is.
This feels more you know, granola and and comfortable. But

(35:58):
but yeah, some of the some of the science indicates
that it's a good choice. Some of the science indicates, uh, well,
maybe you're just paying extra for the feeling and the
experience of going to the farmers markets opposed to the
nutritional take up. I suppose that's like always keep in
the back of your mind, like, uh, let's go back
to that marketing study, like is how much of your
egos involved in there? And how much of your altruisms
involved there? And sort of way the two against one another. Um,

(36:23):
so there's we said, like, there haven't been a lot
of long term studies done here except one. There's one
really long term st being done and it's out of
you see Davis. And it's called the Long Term Research
on Farming Systems Project. It started in and the goal
is for it to go a hundred years so they
can see what the benefits and cons of organic farming are.

(36:50):
So it's been twelve it started in nineteen any one,
so it's been a little over twenty years at this point.
After ten years, they found one thing, well at least
one thing that was worth report. Okay, uh, tomatoes raised
inorganic plots contain significantly higher levels of certain antioxidant compounds,
and that gets us back to the antioxidant thing. But

(37:10):
for the most part, most studies about organic food are
conducted over like a two two and a half year
span if that, so we're not really looking at longitudinal
effects on how this affects a human being throughout the
course of their lifetime. But hey, when that study finishes up,
individuals who are alive then will have the benefit of
the study and maybe they'll get to go see that

(37:32):
Robert Roderiguez film that went in the vault and listen
to that Secret Utang album. All Right, we're gonna take
a quick break and when we come back, we're gonna
jump right into it. Hey, everybody in this day and age,
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(37:52):
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build that website. All right, there's a couple other cons

(38:35):
uh to organic farming that we should hit here. So
they may, like we said, they may or may not
actually be healthier or less contaminated than conventional food. They're
obviously more expensive. The reason why they're more expensive is
because of intensive labor that's involved with handweeding, as well
as the cost of feeding organic food to livestock. Right,

(38:55):
so that you know grows over time. And like I said,
even though organic farmers don't use pesticides, chemicals can still
blowing into their farms, and in particular, the soils can
be polluted with something called polychlorinated biphennels uh and the
soil there can be contaminated for up to three years.

(39:16):
So that's why I've been saying three years over and
over again throughout the episode, is because I had that
research on the brain. Also, in the two thousands, there
were actually salmonilla and E. Coal i outbreaks on organic
foods like spinach. Oh. Yeah, this has been in the
news very much so of late concerning certain restaurants as well. Yeah,

(39:36):
and it's worth mentioning too, right. So the reason why
is food contamination can increase when farmers use manure instead
of synthetic fertilizers. Why, Well, because bacteria exists in manure. Right,
it's more of a culprit for food borne illnesses, and
this bacteria can get into the soil, increasing that risk
even further. But keep in mind this is not not

(40:00):
isolated just to organic farming. Right, we use maneuver for everything,
and it's in conventional food too, right, I'm using it
right now. Um. And then you've got the chemical and
anti microbial washes that I mentioned earlier as well. So
they're allowed in conventional farming, not allowed in organic farming.

(40:21):
Uh so, but it leads to recalls of the foods
that have the bacterial contamination in them, which is usually
the organics that aren't sprayed with these washes. Uh. But
you know that depends on how like again, like what
do you want your food to be washed with water
or anti microbial chemical baths? Um? This accounted for and

(40:44):
by this I'm referring to specifically organic foods with bacterial contamination.
It accounted for five to seven percent of all of
the food recalls during the first half of so our
numbers are basically from Uh, you know, we're in mid
sixteen here and there hasn't been a while. There have
been recalls, we haven't accounted for all of them yet.

(41:07):
So probably because of organic foods expanding through the market share,
that's why that food recall bacteria contamination has risen. It's
not like because there's like a particular breakout necessarily. It's
more along the lines of like we talked about earlier,
people are buying a lot of organic food now and
one last thing that they can of produce. And this

(41:29):
is definitely I would I would say falls under the
egoism uh clause here is that they spoil faster because
they don't have the preservatives and pesticides and all that,
all the chemical stuff that makes them look great for
a long time. Uh, they go bad quicker. Yeah, that's
the like because I remember as a remember as a kid,
we would get these, you know, the giant red apples

(41:51):
that all may kind of have kind of tasteless in
a way, kind of waxy, but those things will last
forever um and nowadays, especially if I'm at a certain
store and we obtain a prepackaged container of organic produce,
you get that home and you find, oh well, all
the ones at the bottom are already starting to go bad,

(42:12):
so I'm left with with half of what I paid
um a premium price for Yes, it's true, it's true,
and I have to eat those immediately or they're gonna go.
But I get that, especially like when I buy spinach
or when I buy strawberries, there's inevitably stuff that's already
gone bad at the bottom, even after I just first
brought it home from the grocery store. But hey, that's

(42:32):
the way of life, all right. Well, you know so
so so far, I feel like all that any of
us can do is you sort of take all the
information and figure out to what extent you're going to
utilize it in your food choices, and then how you're
gonna roll that out. So for me, it sounds like
what I would want to do is I I like
the tomato fact, and hey, I like fresh tomatoes. I

(42:53):
like fresh local tomatus when they're in season. I should
I should go that route, maybe get the antioxidant boost.
But what can I do about the pesticide issue? Yeah, well,
you know, in terms of cutting pesticides out of your food,
and maybe you also want to watch your budget. Here
are the most pesticide Latin foods in particular. So let's
say you you're like, all right, I want to buy

(43:15):
organic just to like focus on the pesticides and and
keep them out of my kid's body, right, Okay, The
most pesticide Latin foods are apples, celery, sweet bell peppers, peaches, strawberries,
imported nectarines, grapes, spinach, lettuce, cucumbers, blueberries, and potatoes. Okay, However,

(43:37):
the least pesticide residue is found on cabbage, onions, avocados,
sweet corn, sweet peas, pineapples, mangoes, asparagus, kiwi, and grapefruit.
So those are the ones that you can worry less about, right,
Maybe you know, if you're weighing the scales of justice
between your pocketbook and the pesticide factor, you know, maybe

(44:00):
it's okay to go ahead and buy an avocado that's
not organic. All right. So there you have it, organic food.
Some of the pros, some of the cons, what the
science is saying, what our hearts are saying. And we
would love to hear from everyone, Like, like I said,
we're not trying to make up anybody's mind here. I
would like to hear what a what your take on
organic foods is And then if you take any of

(44:21):
the science to heart, if you take any of the
the the arguments to heart, how do you roll that
out in your own life? Like what choices are you making?
What what is your line in the sand for organic
and conventional. Another thing that we were not able to
determine just by like doing the research that I have
concerns about because I'm paranoid, is how these UH studies

(44:43):
were funded to write, Like what kind of relationships the
university has had with local farmers, whether they're organic farmers
or conventional farmers, or just an industry in general. How
are they funded? Who were they partners with, who are
they friendly with? That kind of thing? You know. So
maybe some of you are out there, you work in academia,
and you go, oh hey, I remember that study. The

(45:04):
reason why it said that though, was this you know
the secret history behind it. I mean I worked in
academia long enough to know that things like that happen. Yeah,
I mean. And it also comes back to the fact
that there are major players involved here. This is totally
this is this is how we eat, So that the
government is involved, UH, major organic food companies, major major
conventional food companies, and often those are the same companies

(45:25):
with their their hands in both pots. Yeah, and let's
remember that one trillion dollar number, right, everybody's going to
be fighting for a part of that pie, whether it's
an organic pie or not. Indeed, indeed, all right, So, hey,
you want to get in touch with us, you want
to reach out to us again, go to stuff to
Blow your Mind dot com. That's the mothership, that's we'll
find all the podcast videos, blog post links out to
social media accounts like Facebook and Twitter. We are blow

(45:48):
the Mind on both of those. We are also on
Tumbler and Instagram. And if you want to write us directly,
the old fashioned way to talk to us about organic food,
you can hit us up at blow the Mind at
how stuff works dot com for more on this and

(46:11):
thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works? Doot
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