Are Organic Foods Oversold?

Market Watch
January 16, 2006
Excerpt

A growing number of people are willing to pay a premium for food certified as organic -- produce generally barred from being grown with pesticides, synthetic materials or genetic modification, and livestock raised without antibiotics or growth hormones.

But many scientists say it's unlikely organic food gives consumers any extra health benefit, and they're better off eating more fruits, vegetables and whole grains of any kind.

That message of pursuing proven dietary benefits over speculative ones seems to be getting lost as fears about the traditional food-supply chain rattle consumers.

Consumer Reports' February cover story on organic food, for example, does a noble job of addressing what the myriad of agricultural and social-issue labels slapped on food products actually mean -- in the case of "organic" seafood and cosmetics the term means very little, for example, since standards don't yet exist.

The labels "natural" and "all natural" also are flimsy and don't equal organic, Consumer Reports said.

But the magazine also aims to help consumers prioritize their organic-food dollars by setting up a hierarchy of foods deemed to be more or less affected by things such as pesticide residues and antibiotics, based on studies from advocacy groups such as the Environmental Working Group.

The assumption is that organic food is somehow superior to conventionally grown food when it comes to long-term health, and there are those who contend there is no solid evidence of that.

"The science to date does not indicate a clear and substantial benefit from selecting organic as opposed to conventionally grown products," said Christine Bruhn, director of the Center for Consumer Research at the University of California at Davis, who said she doesn't receive funding from the food industry.

It's true that organic foods have low levels of pesticide residues -- but so do conventionally grown foods, she said. "There is no indication that people in the United States are becoming ill from pesticide residues in conventional food."

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