Nutritional quality of organic vs conventional products

Are organic products really better than conventional foods? Are they better for the environment and more nutritious or purely products made 'better' through higher pricing and media hype?

In a posting last month on Barfblog - Musings about food safety and things that make you barf, Doug Powell says, "Organic food is not safer than conventional food. Organic food is not more sustainable than regular food. Organic food is not more nutritious than other food."


Doug's posting contains a link to the results published by the UK Food Standards Authority which found, in summary, "no important differences in the nutrition content, or any additional health benefits, of organic food when compared with conventionally produced food."


The topic of organic products and their merits is here to stay. Organic products will continue to have a home in glossy foodie magazines and on our supermarket shelves. Where a market with spending power exists, there will be products to satisfy.


Image: From a Time Magazine cover (12 March 2007). The article questions the relative benefits of food labeled organic vs. food grown locally. Read the article Eating better than organic by John Cloud.