Organic food not better ?
The recent article from the British FSA (Food Standards Agency) claims that organically raised foods are no better than conventionally raised foods based on a meta-analysis. This has been widely reported on with few details given.
Well, meta-analysis is a tricky business. We take all the published data, throw out the "low quality" work. Then we do an analysis of the remaining data. There is room for quite a bit of manipulation. The FSA's analysis rejected over two thirds of the published peer reviewed data that was available. Also it's useful to note that the FSA has worked very hard to convince the European Union to allow genetically modified plants for import.
Even with this manipulated data set, the FSA's findings are pretty interesting:
organic vegetables contain 54 per cent more betacarotene
11 per cent more zinc
38 per cent more flavonoids
13 per cent more proteins.
These are statistically significant results but the FSA concludes that it is unlikely that these differences are of any significance to human health. Really?
Well, meta-analysis is a tricky business. We take all the published data, throw out the "low quality" work. Then we do an analysis of the remaining data. There is room for quite a bit of manipulation. The FSA's analysis rejected over two thirds of the published peer reviewed data that was available. Also it's useful to note that the FSA has worked very hard to convince the European Union to allow genetically modified plants for import.
Even with this manipulated data set, the FSA's findings are pretty interesting:
organic vegetables contain 54 per cent more betacarotene
11 per cent more zinc
38 per cent more flavonoids
13 per cent more proteins.
These are statistically significant results but the FSA concludes that it is unlikely that these differences are of any significance to human health. Really?