What is organic food?
Organic food is produced to strict, legally backed internationally recognised standards. Organic growing and farming puts a strong emphasis on environmentally friendly and sustainable farming practices It avoids the use of synthetic fertilisers, chemicals and/or additives. Organic fruit and veg are more expensive because they require more labour to tend to them. Because there is not sufficient evidence to support a nutritional benefit, many people are happy to buy conventional produce.
A review of 162 scientific papers, published over the last 50 years, found there was no significant difference between the nutritional value of organic produce versus conventionally grown produce. ”A small number of differences in nutrient content were found to exist between organically and conventionally produced foodstuffs, but these are unlikely to be of any public health relevance,” said Alan Dangour, one of the report’s authors.
“Our review indicates that there is currently no evidence to support the selection of organically over conventionally produced foods on the basis of nutritional superiority.” The results of research, which was commissioned by the British government’s Food Standards Agency, were published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.