food

Is Organic Food Better for You? Article by Mattern from University of Saskatchewan’s “The Sheaf”

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Is Organic Food Better for You? A Critical Look at Organic Claims

 

– Ashleigh Mattern, The Sheaf: Univ. of Saskatchewan Student Newspaper, July 13, 2010.
Full text at http://thesheaf.com/2010/07/is-organic-food-better-for-you/

 

The average North American grocery shopper has only a vague idea of how their food is grown, processed and transported to the supermarket.

 

The agriculture-to-grocery-store process is a complex machine that seems almost like magic: row upon row of shiny fruits and vegetables appear in the store every day in seemingly unending amounts. But it’s not magic, and many consumers are aware of this, and becoming wary of the great agriculture machine.

 

For some, organic foods seem to be the answer. Producers tout organics as the answer to the toxic, mutant fruits and vegetables that crowd the grocery store. They encourage consumers to pay a little more for peace of mind, painting organics as the safer alternative.

 

Organic producers say their food tastes better, is more nutritious, and is better for the environment. But in an effort to be wary of salespeople’s pitches, I decided to get to the roots of claims about organic foods.

 

Price
Initially, one of the biggest barriers for me when considering buying organic foods was the price. To compare what I might spend on an average grocery trip, I took my regular grocery list to an organic market.

 

The biggest surprise for me was the price of milk. My boyfriend and I drink a lot of milk, and so I buy four litres a week. A four-litre jug of organic milk cost a whopping $12.19, compared to the Co-op brand four-litre I usually buy at $3.99.

 

I would have spent about $60 on organics, compared to about $30 on conventional foods. That’s a pretty big price difference, and no small difference for a student, but most people don’t buy all their food organic. Organic fruits and vegetables have the most competitive prices, and the organic lemons were actually 10 cents cheaper.

 

As more organic producers get into the market, the prices will continue to drop, as well. For a fairly well-off family, paying an extra dollar for organic ground beef may seem worth the perceived added benefits. Unfortunately, I had only started my journey into the world of organic food. Soon enough, price was the least of my worries.

 

Nutritious and delicious?
Proponents of organic food say it has more vitamins and nutrients and it tastes better. The taste factor may never be scientifically settled as it is completely subjective, but at least one study has determined the nutritious value of organic foods: they’re no more nutritious than non-organics.

 

A study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition surveyed over 50,000 published articles about organic food, focusing on 55 studies that met their scientific standards.

 

They found more nitrogen in conventional crops and more phosphorus in organic crops, but concluded that “there is no evidence of a difference in nutrient quality between organically and conventionally produced foodstuffs.” There were fewer published studies on livestock, but of the studies they did have, they found no nutritional difference between organics and non-organics.

 

Pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers, oh my!
There are strict regulations on what foods can be labelled organic. When talking to the owner of an organic market recently, he said “no pesticides, herbicides or fertilizers” can be used, but this simply isn’t true. Organic farmers can’t use synthetic products on their crops, only “natural” products. The seemingly logical conclusion is that any natural pesticide or fertilizers is safer than a synthetic one, but again, this isn’t true.

 

One fertilizer some organic farmers use is manure. What the person selling you organic food won’t tell you is that food grown in a manure-based fertilizer has a higher chance of containing E. coli because the virus thrives in the bellies of cows.

 

The bottom line is that nearly all pesticides are bad for humans, whether they’re natural or synthetic. Luckily, the amount of harm they can do has a direct relation to the amount of pesticide you’re exposed to. The Extension Toxicology Network explains that pesticides decline over time. Residues left on the food after washing and processing break down eventually, and the levels of pesticides and herbicides on the food is “well below legal limits” by the time the food reaches the grocery store. Organic food proponents say there have been no studies showing low levels of pesticides and herbicides do no harm, but this is also not entirely true.

 

Pesticides are anything used to defend against fungi, insects and predators. A little known fact is that most fruits and vegetables produce their own pesticides. A paper written by Bruce Ames, who invented the Ames test to determine whether a compound is carcinogenic, says the average American ingests 1,500 mg of natural pesticides per day, compared to 0.09 mg of synthetic pesticide residues.

 

“The amounts of synthetic pesticide residues in plant foods are insignificant compared to the amount of natural pesticides produced by plants themselves,” the paper says.

 

Touting the claim that the effects of exposure to low levels of pesticides has not been studied, one organic-supporting website suggests that “In the absence of this information, the safest course is not to expose yourself to chemicals designed and proven to kill other forms of life.” Sticking with this strain of logic, should we stop eating all fruits and vegetables? Natural pesticides may not be synthetically designed, but they certainly have been proven to kill other forms of life.

 

Genetically modified foods
As with irradiation, the rejection of genetically modified foods seems to stem from fear and misunderstanding. “People have to understand that all the foods we have right now—have all undergone genetic modification; that’s where you take one cultivar and cross it with another cultivar,” said Dr. Nicholas Low, a professor with the U of S’s College of Agriculture and Bioresources. “We want them to grow fast; we want the tomatoes to grow big- When people talk to me about GM, I don’t think they understand that everything we eat has been modified.”

 

He says the difference between the old fashioned way of crossing cultivars and genetically modifying it by moving genes from one plant to another is that a very specific modification is made. In fact, Low says “These genetically modified foods are safer because we know the genome of these plants.” Basically, no changes happen by accident.

 

Since GM foods can gain genetic materials from other plant species, some consumers and anti-GM groups worry this means allergens might end up in non-allergenic foods, for example, genes from a nut used in grains. In fact, this has been tried: in 1996, the seed company Pioneer Hi-Bred International attempted to use genes from the Brazil nut to make their soybeans hardier.

 

Pioneer dropped the project when the testers pointed out the folly of using a known allergen to enhance other foods.

 

GM foods aren’t developed over night. They go through years of trials and testing guided by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. If it’s not fit to be consumed, it won’t be approved.

 

That’s not to say there aren’t risks involved in the use of GM foods. Critics have legitimate concerns about the possibility of GM foods having an impact on biodiversity or the potential effects of horizontal gene transfer, where genes from the modified crops would transfer into wild crops. So far, GM foods aren’t in wide enough use to know if horizontal gene transfer can happen or to say if they have an effect on biodiversity (in fact, at least one scientist believes GM crops might promote biodiversity). But we have to ask ourselves if the potential risks outweigh the known benefits.

 

A complete rejection of genetically modified foods might be a mistake. “GM foods have the potential to solve world hunger and maltnutrition problems and protect the environment,” said Low. “We could use our foods to help to prevent disease rather than having medicine as a the middle man.”

 

Flat-out rejecting GM foods might mean rejecting better nutrition and feeding the world’s growing population. Perhaps the better path is to continue investigating this relatively new science, but tread carefully.
—–
Fresher is better
The Dieticians of Canada and Canada’s Food Guide have no official stance on organics, simply suggesting to eat a wide variety of fresh fruits and vegetables.

 

But organic foods are also not all the proponents make them out to be. It’s not healthier or safer, and if used improperly, natural pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers are just as dangerous for the environment and humans as synthetic products.

 

The process of bringing organic food to your table is every bit as complicated as it is for conventional foods. The best way to feel better about your food choices is to learn about agriculture and how the food gets from the farm to your local grocery store, not by simply assuming organic food as the better choice.

 

“If you say, ‘I choose to eat organic foods,’ that’s fine,” said Dr. Nicholas Low, “but if you say, ‘I eat organic foods because it’s better for me,’ I have a problem with that.”

 

Next time you’re trying to decide between an organic or conventional food item, you might want to consider your reasons behind the choice a little more carefully.

What’s wrong with GM food?

/ Cami Ryan, PhD / Leave a comment

Fussy Eaters – What’s Wrong With GM Food?
– Jonathan Jones. BBC, July 6, 2010

With the world’s food security facing a looming “perfect storm”, GM food crops need to be part of the solution, argues Professor Jonathan Jones. In this week’s Green Room, he wonders why there is such a fuss about biotechnology when it can help deliver a sustainable global food system. (In the US, where many processed foods contain ingredients derived from GM maize or soy, in the most litigious society in history, nobody has sued for a GM health problem)

A billion humans do not have enough to eat. Water resources are limited, energy costs are rising, the cultivatable land is already mostly cultivated, and climate change could hit productive areas hard. We need a sustainable intensification of agriculture to increase production by 50% by 2030 – but how?

Food security requires solutions to many diverse problems. In the US or Europe, improved seeds could increase yields by 10% or more, reduce pesticide use and give “more crop per drop”.

However, improved seeds can only help impoverished African farmers if they also have reliable water supply, roads to take crops to market, and (probably most important) fertiliser. Better farming methods are also part of the solution; these require investment in technology and people. Fortunately, after 25 years of “food complacency”, policymakers are taking the issue seriously again.

I want to reduce the environmental impact of agriculture while maintaining food supply. The best thing we can do is cultivate less land, leaving more for wildlife, but if we are still to produce enough food, yields must go up. There are many contributors to yield; water, fertiliser, farming practice, and choice of seed.

‘Simple method’
We can improve crop variety performance by both plant breeding (which gets better every year with new genetic methods), and by genetic modification (GM).
Ouch; yuck – GM. Did you recoil from those letters? Why? I started making GM plants (petunias, as it happens) in 1983, working at a long defunct agbiotech company in California called Advanced Genetic Sciences.

In the early 80s, we did wonder about – in Rumfeldspeak – “unknown unknowns; the unknowns we didn’t know we didn’t know about”, but 27 years later, nothing alarming has been seen. The method (GM is a method not a thing) is simple.

We take a plant, which typically carries about 30,000 genes, and add a few additional genes that confer insect resistance, or herbicide resistance, or disease resistance, or more efficient water use, or improved human nutrition, or less polluting effluent from animals that eat the grain, or more efficient fertiliser uptake, or increased yield. We could even (heck, why not?) do all of the above to the same plant.

The result is increased yield, decreased agrochemical use and reduced environmental impact of agriculture. In commercial GM, many hundreds of independent introductions of the desired new gene (the “transgene”) are made, each in a different individual plant that is selected and tested. Most lines are discarded. To be commercialised, a line must carry a simple, stable and well-defined gene insertion, and show heritable and effective transgene function, with no deleterious effects on the plant.

Growing demand
GM is the most rapidly adopted, benign, effective new technology for agriculture in my lifetime. Fourteen million farmers grow GM crops on 135 million hectares; these numbers increased by about 10% per year over the past decade, and this rate of growth continues. More than 200,000 tonnes of insecticide have not been applied, thanks to built-in insect resistance in Bt crops; how could anyone think that’s a bad thing?

Bt maize is safer to eat because of lower levels of mycotoxins from fungi that enter the plant’s grains via the holes made by corn-borer feeding; no insects, no holes, no fungal entry, no toxins in our food. There are not enough fish in the sea to provide us all with enough omega 3 fatty acids in our diet, but we can now modify oilseeds to make this nutrient in crops on land.

Protection from rootworm means maize crops capture more water and fertiliser, so less is wasted. Farmers must always control weeds; herbicide tolerant (HT) soy makes this easier, and has enabled replacement of water-polluting persistent herbicides with the more benign and rapidly inactivated glyphosate. HT soy has enabled wider low-till agriculture, reducing CO2 emissions.

And yet in Europe, we seem stuck in a time warp. Worldwide, 135 million hectares of GM crops have been planted; yet in Norfolk, I needed to spend £30,000 of taxpayers’ money to provide security for a field experiment with 192 potato plants, carrying one or another of a disease resistance gene from a wild relative of potato. It boggles the mind. What are people afraid of?

‘Wishful thinking’
Some fear the domination of the seed industry by multinationals, particularly Monsanto.
We need smart, sustainable, sensitive science and technology, and we need to use every tool in our toolbox, including GM Monsanto is certainly the most determined and successful agbiotech company. In their view, they had to be; they bet the company on agbiotech because unlike their rivals (who also sell nylon or agrichemicals) they had nothing else to fall back on.

But monopoly is bad for everyone. Here’s a part solution; deregulate GM. If it costs more than $20m (£13m) to get regulatory approval for one transgene, lots of little GM-based solutions to lots of problems will be too expensive and therefore not deployed, and the public sector and small start-up companies will not make the contribution they could. Never before has such excessive regulation been created in response to (still) purely hypothetical risks.

The cost of this regulation – demanded by green campaigners – has bolstered the monopoly of the multinationals. This is a massive own-goal and has postponed the benefits to the environment and to us all.

Some fear GM food is bad for health. There are no data that support this view. In the US, where many processed foods contain ingredients derived from GM maize or soy, in the most litigious society in history, nobody has sued for a GM health problem.

Some fear GM is bad for the environment. But in agriculture, idealism does not solve problems. Farmers need “least bad” solutions; they do not have the luxury of insisting on utopian solutions.

It is less bad to control weeds with a rapidly inactivated herbicide after the crop germinates, than to apply more persistent chemicals beforehand. It is less bad to have the plant make its own insecticidal protein, than to spray insecticides. It is better to maximise the productivity of arable land via all kinds of sustainable intensification, than to require more land under the plough because of reduced yields.

Some say GM is high risk, but they cannot tell you what the risk is. Some say GM is causing deforestation in Brazil, even though if yields were less, more deforestation would be required to meet Chinese and European demand for animal feed.

Some say we do not need GM blight resistant potatoes to solve the £3.5bn per year problem of potato blight, because blight resistant varieties have been bred. But if these varieties are so wonderful, how come farmers spend £500 per hectare on spraying to protect blight sensitive varieties? The answer is the market demands varieties such as Maris Piper, so we need to make them blight resistant.

I used to be a member of a green campaign group. They still have campaigns I support (sustainable fishing, save the rainforests, fight climate change), but on GM, they are simply wrong.

Even activists of impeccable green credentials, such as Stewart Brand, see the benefits of GM. Wishful thinking will not feed the planet without destroying it. Instead, we need smart, sustainable, sensitive science and technology, and we need to use every tool in our toolbox, including GM.

—-
Professor Jonathan Jones is senior scientist for The Sainsbury Laboratory, based at the John Innes Centre, a research centre in plant and microbial science

Full article and readers comments at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8789279.stm

Europe’s New Approach to Biotech Food

/ Cami Ryan, PhD / Leave a comment

– Jameds Kanter, The New York Times, July 7, 2010 http://www.nytimes.com

After decades of pushing nations to surrender more power to Brussels, the European Union is about to throw in the towel on one highly contentious issue: genetically modified foods. On Tuesday, the European Commission will formally propose giving back to national and local governments the freedom to decide whether to grow crops that many Europeans still call Frankenfoods.

The new policy is aimed at overcoming a stalemate that has severely curtailed the market for biotech seeds in Europe for years. Only two crops, produced by Monsanto and B.A.S.F., are sold for cultivation here.

The new flexibility is supposed to open up markets in countries like the Netherlands, where governments are broadly favorable toward growing and trading biotech products, while countries like Austria, where the products are unpopular, can maintain a ban.

But far from celebrating, the growing global industry, as well as some farmers themselves, is extremely wary of the new approach. “So many different authorities suddenly doing so many different things risks sending a message to successful growers in Africa and Asia that authorities are unsure how to deal with biotech”, said Nathalie Moll, the secretary general of EuropaBio, an industry group. She said it also remained to be seen whether the proposals would conform with World Trade Organization rules.

The United States and the Union are still trying to resolve a dispute over genetically modified organisms, or G.M.O.’s, and related issues after the W.T.O. ruled, in 2006, against Europe’s de facto ban. Washington could still retaliate in that case.

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative declined to comment on the new approach but said it would be on the agenda at a meeting with E.U. officials this month.

Despite ‘some progress’ in recent months, the United States still has a number of concerns,” said Nefeterius Akeli McPherson, a spokeswoman for the U.S. trade representative. They include “a substantial backlog of pending biotech applications, and bans adopted by individual E.U. member states on biotech products approved at the E.U. level.”

The reality remains that the European Union still produces few genetically modified crops. The United States, Brazil, Argentina, India and Canada are the top five producers in terms of land under cultivation. The European Union, with 27 member nations, is the 14th largest, just after Burkina Faso.

A key factor behind the proposed change in Europe is a growing frustration in Brussels with the current system, under which meetings between government officials and ministers routinely end in deadlock. That forces unelected officials at the European Commission to make the final decision on authorizing biotech products and to take the heat.

The commission has found itself repeatedly pressured on one side by the United States and the W.T.O. to follow the recommendations of its own scientific authorities and enforce the use of approved products and on the other by countries like Austria and environmental groups that believe the E.U. authorities are too eager to promote newfangled technologies.

Under the new proposals, the commission would continue to make the approvals itself but leave it to members and local and regional authorities to decide what they want to grow at home. But whether the new rules will win the necessary approval from E.U. governments and the European Parliament still is unclear.

In an unlikely alliance, the Austrian and Dutch governments first made the proposal back in 2008. The Dutch were eager to ease tensions over biotech crops with the United States and other trading partners, and to ensure continuing imports of animal feeds that contain biotech products. Animal farming is a big part of the economy in the Netherlands, which, in turn, is a major exporter of meat and dairy products. Dutch researchers also are involved in developing biotech products.

The Austrians supported the changes as a way to keep its national ban on growing any such crops without facing regular challenges from the E.U. authorities. Other countries, though, have expressed concern about setting a precedent that could undermine European integration. The crisis this year over how to supervise the finances of the 16 nations that use the euro already has highlighted the limits to European cooperation.

“If the agricultural policy is common, why wouldn’t the policy of cultivation of G.M.O.s be?” asked Elena Espinosa, the Spanish environment minister. Spain grew 80 percent of the biotech corn, designed to resist a pest called the corn borer, produced in Europe last year.

In addition, Belgium, which has just taken over the rotating E.U. presidency, is concerned that a ban by a single country could put the entire bloc in danger of facing retaliatory trade sanctions.

Even farmers that favor biotech crops are concerned that the commission is offloading a problem on them and that the issue could become even more politicized than it is now.

“The Welsh and the Scots are vehemently opposed to genetically modified crops,” said Philip Lodge, who would like to farm biotech sugar beets in Yorkshire, in northern England. “With these conflicts of interest so close to home, I just don’t see how I’ll be able to grow G.M. in practice.”

Other farmers warned that the Union risked stirring up new confrontations with activists, who in the past have destroyed crops planted in trial fields. “The prospect terrorizes me” said Jerome Hue, who farms in Carcans, France. “If every locality can ban G.M.O.s, I don’t see how we will be allowed to grow the crops anywhere in France anymore.”

Mr. Hue grew corn produced by Monsanto before the French government imposed a national ban in 2008. France has said it would consider lifting that ban once the European authorities have assessed new evidence about the effects of G.M. crops on the environment. Mr. Hue said anti-biotech activists could erect beehives at the edges of some farmers fields to put pressure on the authorities to impose new bans if the honey picked up traces of the modified genes.

But commission officials and some other member states like the Netherlands say the new policy points the way to managing an increasingly unwieldy group of 27 countries. Last week, in the latest example of the persistent differences, countries failed for a third time to break a deadlock over whether to allow imports of six varieties of bioengineered corn for food and feed made by Monsanto, Dow AgroSciences, Pioneer and Syngenta.

That leaves the decision up to the E.U. health commissioner, John Dalli, who is expected to approve the products in coming months. He caused a furor among environmentalists in March when he approved cultivation of a biotech potato by B.A.S.F. – the first such approval in more than a decade in Europe.

In the European Parliament, among those reviewing the proposed new rules will be Jose Bove, a French sheep farmer who captured worldwide attention a decade ago for ransacking a McDonald’s restaurant to protest the influence of multinational corporations. Since then he has served time in a French prison for damaging biotech crops. He is now a deputy chairman of the agriculture committee at the European Parliament, where he was elected as a member of the Green party.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/08/business/energy-environment/08biotech.html

Looking at food (and other every day things) in a whole new way…

/ Cami Ryan, PhD / Leave a comment

With incredible imagination, wacky artist, Terry Border, brings the inanimate to life… Hilarious! Here are a couple of my favorites.

His new book: “Bent Objects: The Secret Life of Everyday Things” is getting rave reviews!

You can view the gallery at:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturepicturegalleries/6407277/Bent-Objec…?

Busy-busy-busy_1507628i
Belated_1507629i

See the full gallery on Posterous

Just the Flax, ma’am, just the Flax…

/ Cami Ryan, PhD / Leave a comment

All is quiet on the flax front… a little too quiet, perhaps.

What could be next? Seven more notifications on the RASFF Portal (https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/rasff-window/portal/index.cfm?event=searchResultList&orderby=notif_date&orderDir=desc) posted by Germany and Sweden this past Thursday in the product category cereals and bakery products. It makes one wonder where the food inputs (and potentially outputs) are held in the companies that have apparently discovered the FP967 event in their products. Are they kept in storage? Incinerated perhaps?

In other (related?) news… 9.7 million children were reported to have died of malnutrition before their fifth birthday in 2006. (UNICEF – State of the World’s Children 2008 / http://www.unicef.org/health/files/The_State_of_the_Worlds_Children_2008.pdf).

“Poverty is when you hide your face and wish nobody could see you just because you feel less than a human being. Poverty is when you dream of bread and fish you never see in the day light…Poverty is when the hopes of your fathers and grandfathers just vanish within a blink of an eye. I know poverty and I know poverty just like I know my father’s name. Poverty never sleeps. Poverty works all day and night. Poverty never takes a holiday.” (one impoverished African quoted in http://cozay.com/)