The Organic Food Hoax

Notice the amount of space devoted to organic foods in your favorite grocery store is growing? Thinking about getting on the organic foods bandwagon, but don’t like the higher prices?

U.S. sales of organic food and beverages are growing 20 percent annually, and the increasing shelf space in area grocery stores devoted to organic foods, which cost anywhere from 10 to100 percent more than conventional foods, reflects this trend. Are they worth the higher price?

You should know that while the U.S. Department of Agriculture determines whether or not a food can be sold as officially “organic”, the USDA, does not claim that organic foods are more nutritious than conventional foods because the evidence is conflicting. Nor does the USDA make any claims that organic foods lead to better health, such as preventing certain diseases, since there is no conclusive supporting evidence [1].

One important reason consumers pay premium prices for organic foods is they assume they are pesticide free. This ignores that Sir Richard Doll, the foremost epidemiologist of the 20th century, along with epidemiologist Sir Richard Peto, concluded that “the occurrence of pesticides as a dietary pollutant seems unimportant (as a cause of cancer)”. Their conclusion was corroborated by the US National Research Council, the American Institute of Cancer Research, the World Cancer Research Fund and others. Moreover, Americans consume far more natural pesticides (99.99 percent of dietary intake) than synthetic ones (0.01 percent). Natural pesticides (there are 10,000) make up 5-10 percent of a typical plant’s dry weight [2].

Perhaps you’ve heard that modern high-yield agriculture (employing fertilizers and pesticides) rapes the land and contributes to global warming, so that even if produce from high-yield farms is just as nutritious and is safe to eat, buying it contributes to the destruction of the planet. The truth is the opposite - a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences titled “Greenhouse gas mitigation by agricultural intensification” argues convincingly that high-yield agriculture is good for the environment. The study shows that if pesticides and fertilizers had not been used since 1961, an additional 6.8 million square miles of land - area larger than Russia – would have to have been cleared from forests (including tropical forests), and developed for agriculture to keep the world fed. Moreover, the study shows that high yield agriculture avoided 161 gigatons of carbon emissions, an amount equal to 34 percent of the total 478 gigatons of carbon emitted by humanity from 1850 to 2005 [3].

In short there’s no reason to spend more money on organic foods to preserve your health or the planet. Let the guy or gal next to you spend more for no good reason. You go and enjoy affordable, abundant conventional foods and do so free of guilt and worry.


[1] "Nutrition Made Clear", Course No. 1950 @ The Teaching Company, Roberta H. Anding, Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children's Hospital; M.S., Louisiana State University

[2] The Skeptical Environmentalist, Bjorn Lomberg

[3] "Greenhouse gas mitigation by agricultural intensification", Jennifer A. Burneya,b,1, Steven J. Davisc, and David B. Lobella (http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/06/14/0914216107.abstract)