Is Organic Food Better for You?

Is Organic Food Better for You?

Wondering if organic food is better for you? There’s a lot of press regarding the Environmental Working Group’s dirty dozen produce to avoid and fear mongering when it comes to synthetic pesticides and pesticide residues, synthetic fertilizers, and gmo’s to name a few. But, with the rising cost of food prices, is there a legitimate benefit to paying the extra cost for foods with organic certification and organic labels versus non-organic foods? Let’s tackle this common question from a few perspectives including whether or not organic products are actually better for our health and whether or not produce from organic farming is more nutrient-dense.

Is Organic Healthier?

Does eating organic foods make you healthier? Are organic foods safer for us? What are the benefits of organic food? We finally have some really large systematic reviews and meta-analyses that answer this question.

A 2019 systematic review, the largest performed to date with its inclusion of 35 studies, evaluated the health impacts of organic vs conventional foods (non-organic) and concluded that no definitive statement could be made on whether organic foods improve human health. Specifically, this review looked at scientific studies that showed that organic food consumption could reduce the risk of infertility, birth defects, allergies, ear infections, preeclampsia, metabolic syndrome, overweight and obesity, and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The findings from the review were extremely critical of those conclusions, and their analysis showed that those results are well within the range that can be easily explained by healthy user bias.

What is healthy user bias? It means that that people who regularly consume organic foods tend to be more health-conscious people. Specifically, they’re more likely to be female, physically active, eat a higher ratio of plant to animal foods, and eat more whole foods and fewer ultra-processed foods. They’re also more likely to be in a higher income bracket and have achieved a higher level of education, which are two very important social determinants of health. All of those advantages stack, and when there are so many different health-promoting behaviors, as well as beneficial social determinants of health, it’s really tough to completely remove the effect of all of those behaviors even with advanced statistical analysis. Basically, these people aren’t healthier because they eat organic foods; they’re healthier, and they eat organic foods.

Another big criticism made by this systematic review is that many of the individual studies that they analyzed did not account for the types of foods that people were eating; they just looked at whether or not they were organic. So, for example, the studies show that people eating organic foods have a higher antioxidant capacity, but this can easily be explained by the fact that they’re eating more fruits and vegetables in general. Again, saying the benefits of eating organic food is a higher quality diet, not the fact that the diet was organic. This review is not the only one that has concluded that there is no health benefit to eating organic foods.

Overall, the studies that have been done comparing organic versus conventional foods have not been very well designed, and right now the preponderance of evidence shows that organic and conventional foods are equal in their health effects. Basically, it matters more what you eat than the quality of each individual food you eat.

If you want to hear my thoughts on whether or not organic foods are healthier, check out my video.

Is Organic Food More Nutrient-Dense?

It’s actually a myth that organic fruits and veggies have more nutrients than conventional produce. Although there are no complete nutrient datasets for organic fruits and vegetables, this has been studied in a variety of scientific papers that have compared the amount of different nutrients in organic crops versus produce from conventional farming. Overall, the concentrations of some nutrients go up, some nutrients go down, and it varies between different fruits and vegetables. So, the net effect on nutrient density is pretty small. To demonstrate, the following is a comparison of the overall nutrient density of seven foods that had quite a lot of comparison data available:

• Organic carrots are 10% more nutrient-dense than conventional.
• Organic tomatoes are 20% less nutrient-dense than conventional.
• Organic lettuce is 4% more nutrient-dense than conventional.
• Organic spinach is 3% more nutrient-dense than conventional.
• Organic potatoes are 5% less nutrient-dense than conventional.
• Organic cabbage is 7% more nutrient-dense than conventional.
• Organic strawberries are 2% less nutrient-dense than conventional.

These are very small differences, especially given the difference in cost. So why aren’t organic fruits and veggies more nutrient-dense than conventional? It turns out that factors like soil quality, what fertilizer is used (if any), growing conditions, and the luck of the draw with weather all have a bigger impact on the nutrient density of a crop than whether or not any type of synthetic or natural pesticide is used. And all of these factors vary farm to farm, region to region, and season to season. You’re likely to be getting a more nutrient-dense version of that food when you shop from small local farms or at your local farmer’s market for in-season produce. But the most important takeaway message from this analysis is that if farm-fresh organic produce is not accessible to you, you’re getting about the same nutrition and sometimes more when you buy the conventional options at the grocery store. Overall, it matters much more what you eat than the quality of each individual food you’re eating.

If you want to hear my thoughts on the nutrient-density of organic foods, check out my video.

Food Quality Is a Preference!

Bottom line, food quality is a preference, not a gate we have to cross in order to be healthy. There’s no meaningful difference in nutritional value between organic and conventional fruits and vegetables. There is a small increase in nutrient density in grass-fed beef compared to conventional and wild-caught fish compared to farmed. There’s a little bit more vitamin E and polyphenols in extra virgin olive oil compared to refined, but these differences have a minuscule health impact compared to the impact of just the types of foods you’re choosing to eat. Basically, it matters far more what foods you eat rather than the quality of any individual food on your plate.

One of the challenges of all the food quality myths prevalent online is that it makes us feel like if we can’t afford the highest quality version of a food, then there’s no point in eating it. But the health benefits of a diet abundant in vegetables are absolutely clear in the scientific literature and it does not matter if those vegetables are the conventional ones you get at your local grocery store or from local growers, from a certified organic farm, and in season. If you prefer those higher quality foods, that’s awesome too. I love the flavor of extra virgin olive oil, and I find growing my own vegetables so satisfying. And I love being able to go to my local farmers market; the vegetables there are so fresh, and I just think the flavors are enhanced. Of course, there are lots of environmental reasons to support local farmers, as well as regenerative farming practices and sustainable seafood practices.

So if you love growing your own vegetables organically like I do, or you love shopping at your local farmers market, or you prefer to buy the organic vegetables at your local grocery store, or directly from organic farmers, then that’s awesome. However, it’s important to keep in mind that it’s a preference, and the difference in terms of impact on your health is negligible. If you would also prefer to just buy what is cheap and easy at your local grocery store, don’t feel guilty about that either. The dietary patterns that are known to improve health are eating a lot of vegetables and fruit, legumes, nuts and seeds, whole grains, and seafood, eating mostly whole foods, and eating a varied diet, meaning there’s a variety of different foods in your overall diet. If the higher quality food is either hard for you to find or forbiddingly expensive, don’t worry about it. It matters far more the types of foods that are on your plate than the quality of them.

If you want to hear my overall thoughts on organic foods, check out my video.

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