Does Organic Food Really Make a Difference to your Health?
The debate continues to rage about whether organic foods are nutritionally better than conventional produce. In this video, David Getoff, Vice President of Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation, explains exactly why organic food is clearly better for your health.
Producing food cheaply has become a primary objective for many farmers. The more food you can produce on the same site, the greater the profits. Farmers using intensive farming methods will cram crops into their fields year in year out. This means soil nutrients are rapidly depleted as the soil doesn’t get a chance to rest and rejuvenate. The result is stunted growth of the crops. So what do they do to make crops grow? Cue synthetic fertilisers.
Synthetic fertilisers contain three main elements: potassium, nitrogen and phosphorous. These elements help the plant to grow, and more importantly make the plant look healthy. So the plants look good, and consumers are happy to buy them thinking they are the same as naturally produced (organic) crops. But they are not. Plants grown with heavy use of synthetic fertilisers will contain the elements provided by the fertiliser and very little else.
We, as humans, need many more trace elements and minerals in our foods than those three above. No-one knows exactly the full range of vitamins and minerals required for health. But what we know is this: if we don’t eat the full range of vitamins and minerals that we need, our bodies don’t thrive, and we can become ill. David mentions that a lack of boron can lead to osteoporosis (thinning of the bones). If selenium is lacking, the cancer rate rises. We don’t necessarily need a lot of these minerals in our diet, but we do need some in order for our bodies to function well.
One of the most important benefits of organic farming is that any fertiliser used will be natural (green manure, bone meal or compost). These natural fertilisers provide a very broad spectrum of soil nutrients which feed the soil. The result is fertile earth. In turn, crops flourish. They grow well and importantly for us, as consumers, contain the full range of vitamins and minerals generated by nutrient-rich soil.
There is nothing complex about organic food. It is simply food as nature intended. Nothing synthetic put in, nothing taken out. Replete with the vitamins and minerals that should be there and an essential ingredient of an organic lifestyle.
Filed under: Organic Lifestyle
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I didn’t rseilae that some veg is safer than others. Lol, perhaps I’ve had too much of the chemicals, my brain is addled!
Chemical residue is not something I would choose to have in my food. But the point is that conventionally produced foods won’t have as many nutrients in them simply because the soil in which they are grown is depleted of nutrients. Why don’t you give it a try- eat organically for a few weeks see if you feel any different. Also it depends what you eat in your diet – lots of processed food and high wheat content (pasta, cereals, bread etc) does result in ‘brain fog’. cut these out of your diet and you will definitely feel a difference.