Weekly Topic #2: Organic Food

In these weekly posts, I'll be choosing different topics related to nutrition. This is one of the topics I'm most interested in, and never really digged in it, so, I'm taking this opportunity.

Questions

1. When is food "organic"?

2. Which are the benefits of consuming organic products?

3. Where can I find these?

- Origin

- Differences between organic and conventional products

- Health and Safety

- Economics

Origin

Organic products are produced using methods of farming without the need of pesticides (only non-chemical ones, such as Bt toxin) and chemical fertilizers. They also aren't processed by the industry.

This movement began in the early 1940s and later was known as the Green Revolution.

Diferences between organic and convencional products

Studies have shown differences in nutrients, anti nutrients and pesticide residues between organic products and conventional products. These studies can't prove anything concrete because of the variability in the methods of studying the products. However, a 2012 survey didn't find any significant differences in vitamin content of organic and conventional products. Such as, vitamin A, vitamin C, beta-caroten and Vitamin E. This same study revealed that there's approximately a 7% of pesticide residues in some of the conventional food.

Health and Safety

There's still no scientific evidence of benefit or harm to human health from consuming organic food, and doing this sort of study is really difficult, because of many factors, like metabolism, allergies, age, disease, socioeconomics, etc. A 2009 analysis showed that in 83% of the studied people there was a antioxidant activity change.

Economics

Organic food is primarily demanded by people who are concerned about their personal health and the environment. Global sales went really high since 2002. Organic products cost 10 - 40% more than the conventional ones.

Organic food accounts for 1-2% of total food production worldwide. Apparently this market is growing really fast, especially in the United States and Europe.