Organic foods is a heavily marketed area and has almost frightened people into shopping organic in the fear that the very foods they’ve eaten for years is suddenly killing them. Now aside from making local farmers all over the world filthy stinking rich, there is evidence that tells us there are less pesticide residue on organic foods than non-organic, a study by Dangour et al. (2010) showed there to be 30% less pesticide residue (when measured via urine) in organic foods as apposed to non-organic. However despite non-organic food having 30% more pesticide residue on them they were still very much within the allowable safe limits, they were hundreds if not thousands of times lower than the dose that would be needed to cause any damage to anyone. With most things in life it is dose dependant, a tiny minuscule amount of pesticides consumed on your food will more than likely do no real harm at all but if you suddenly started having much more then it would. Just like aspirin, take 1 and it can deliver instant health benefits and pain relief, take a whole packet and you’ll die! Interestingly in the study mentioned above, although the pesticide levels were different, the levels of bacteria that causes food poisoning found in organic vs non-organic chicken and pork were the SAME.

So whether or not you eat organic or not is down to personal preference, if you feel more comfortable eating organic and that gives you piece of mind (and you can afford it) then that is absolutely fine Iwould never advise a client not to eat organic foods, the choice is theirs. All Iam doing is highlighting using the latest research that the health dangers associated with non-organic foods simply don’t exist. Think about it, if food was truly ‘organic’ and was not treated in any way whatsoever, all the fruit and vegetables you would buy from shops would be half eaten from little bugs in the soil. Also where is the line? If the water used to spray the crops has been treated or purified in any way would that make the food non-organic?

The bottom line is, and this is what people get wrong all the time, is that whether the food is organic or not does not guarantee nutrient content or nutrient density. An organic chicken breast vs a non-organic chicken breast doesn’t have more protein, or is absorbed better, or will help you build muscle faster, or lose weight quicker it just refers to the treatments used whilst growing/raising the produce. The truth is there isn’t as much research in this area as we would like, maybe in 50 years time we would be able to advise people better on this than we can right now in which case Iwould happily change my views and advice Igive to people, but for now the benefits of organic foods are just exaggerated by the marketers to be able to increase the price of the food!

You make the choice 🙂