My brother Terry, who evidently likes to wind me up from time to time, sent me an email recently in which he said “At my weekly Monday golf game, 2 of the guys were talking about how all of our food is contaminated by agricultural chemicals, and none of it is safe to eat! One guy says that he and his wife ONLY buy ORGANIC produce. And then they went on to talk about all the toxins in our bodies and how we should (on some Doctor’s advice in a book) do a “detox” a couple of times a year. I think this is all BS and I was quite surprised to hear it from these rational (I thought) educated and experienced people.”
He knew of course that if he chummed the waters I would rise like a trout to the lure and start looking at this topic. Lazy bastard – getting me to do his research for him! My research into the topic is likely to be clouded by my own bias, because I think Terry is right and it’s all BS. But I’ve looked in a few places for information about organic foods and about detoxification diets, and the results are, I think, strongly aligned with my pre-research biases.
I turned first to “Our World in Data”. Organic agriculture is defined as “the farming of crops or livestock without the use of synthetic inputs, including synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, plant growth regulators, nanomaterials and genetically-modified organisms (GMOs).” Hannah Ritchie, in an article written in 2017, evaluated the environmental impacts of organic farming processes against those of conventional modern agriculture processes. They evaluated farming impacts on:
- greenhouse gas emissions,
- land use efficiency,
- The pollution of water with nutrients leading to algae growth and the like
- The pollution of water with chemicals causing acidification
- Energy consumption
They broke those impacts down by the type of agricultural product being produced – dairy and egg products, cereals, fruit, vegetables, meats and pulses. That generated thirty different cases in which one might evaluate environmental impact. (I now know that pulses are things like beans, peas and lentils. Who knew?) In only about twenty percent of cases were organic methods assessed to be environmentally superior to industrial farming.
Lesson number 1 – Don’t let people tell you that organic farming is better for the environment. It isn’t.
The reason I turned to Our World in Data wasn’t to find that evaluation, but it was the first article I read, and I thought it worthy.
The real reason I went to this source was to try to get a correlation between life expectancy and agricultural chemical use. Around 1770, some 250 years ago, life expectancy for the world as a whole was around 27 years, with rich countries (Europe and the Americas) enjoying an average longevity of about 35 years. By 1900, it had improved slightly, to about 32 years for the world, with rich countries having an average life expectancy of about 45 years. By 2021, the world at large had a life expectancy of 71 years, with the richer regions achieving longevity between 77 and 79 years.
Clearly, we are doing better now than a couple of hundred years ago. How does that correlate with agricultural chemical use? I found limited data on pesticide use and certainly none going back as far as 1770, because pesticides are a modern invention. A University of California publication says “The use of synthetic pesticides in the US began in the 1930s and became widespread after World War II. By 1950, pesticide was found to increase farm yield far beyond pre-World War II levels. Pesticides, of course, need to be used with care. I was surprised to find this statement in the UCLA article: “Although DDT is banned in the US and many other countries, DDT continues to be manufactured and applied in underdeveloped nations where some of the US food supply is grown.” Pesticide use exploded after WW2. A review of pesticide use said “Total pesticide production was below 100 million pounds in 1945. It jumped to about 300 million pounds by 1950. It jumped again by 1960 to over 600 million pounds.” I think those are USA numbers only. Our World in Data shows that large industrial agricultural countries (UK, US, Canada, China) have now stabilized their pesticide application at about 2 to 2.5 kg of pesticide per hectare of cropland.
What about fertilizers? Another “Our World in Data” article follows the development of synthetic fertilizers. It says “For millennia, agricultural crop had to rely on the limited quantity of reactive nitrogen which was naturally occurring in soils and ecosystems.
This remained the case until 1908 when the German chemist Fritz Haber developed a process by which atmospheric N2 could be converted into ammonia (NH3) – a form of reactive nitrogen which plants can use.
Carl Bosch, another German chemist and engineer, was able to take Fritz Haber’s laboratory-scale process and develop it at an industrial scale. The combined “Haber-Bosch process” remains the primary industrial method for the production of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer.” The article goes on to evaluate the fraction of the world population that relies on synthetic fertilizers. In 1960, about 400 million people were fed by foods relying on synthetic fertilizers, with some 2.6 billion people living of old-fashioned manure fed fields. By 2015, 48% of global population relied on synthetic fertilizers for their food. The article asserts that “This means that in 2015, nitrogen fertilizers supported 3.5 billion people that otherwise would have died.” The article on fertilizer use acknowledges that is difficult to ascribe all of the increased food supply to fertilizers. “it’s important to note that these estimates are understandably difficult to derive with a high degree of certainty. This difficulty arises for several reasons. Notably there have been a number of additional contributors to productivity gains in agriculture throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, including crop breeding, irrigation, mechanization, and farm management techniques — untangling the individual role of nitrogen fertilizers alone is challenging.” Nevertheless, it is easy to see a strong correlation (if not causation) between life expectancy/world population vs agricultural chemical (pesticide and fertilizer) use.
Do these chemicals have risks? Undeniably. Do the risks outweigh the benefits? For the 3.5 billion people alive today because they have enough food to eat, the answer would seem to be yes.
Lesson number 2 – don’t let people tell you that pesticides and fertilizers are evil. They are not. They are keeping billions of people alive.
By the way, I don’t mean to ignore the impact that improvements in medical science have made on life expectancy. It’s not all about food availability. Life expectancy started to increase sharply about 30 or 40 years before the invention of synthetic fertilizers. But for some large parts of the world, the significant up-turn in life expectancy correlates with the increased use of agricultural chemicals.
What about GMO’s – genetically modified organisms? Do we need to be wary of them? Yes, we do, but wary and paranoid are two different things. I found an article from University of Connecticut (UCONN) which discussed GMO’s and food safety. It said “57% of adults believe that eating GMO foods is unsafe, while 37% say they believe it is generally safe.
Yet, science continues to suggest that there is no substantiated evidence that GMO foods are less safe than non-GMO derived food products. A 2016 report from the National Academies of Science, Genetically Engineered Crops: Experiences and Prospects,discusses effects on human health. Claims regarding human health and safety of GMO foods included increased risks from cancers, kidney disease, obesity, celiac disease, diabetes and allergies. When comparing rates of these conditions in the United States, where GMOs are ubiquitous in the food supply to the United Kingdom, where essentially no GMOs are consumed, there were no significant differences.”
That sort of evidence – the lack of any positive correlation – is somewhat weak. There are about a million other variables that might affect disease prevalence, so the lack of correlation isn’t as convincing as a controlled study.
We don’t do controlled studies on humans, but we do carry out controlled studies on lab rats. We’ll leave the ethical considerations of rat studies to the PETA types for now, and move on to review what those studies have shown us. For this, I’ve relied on a 2015 article from the Harvard University Graduate School of Art and Sciences. First, it debunked a claim made by an anti-GMO group called the Institute for Responsible Technology (IRT) which claimed rapid organ damage in lab rats fed a diet of genetically modified potatoes. Their conclusions? “Histopathological examinations of the reproductive organs, liver, kidneys, and spleen showed no differences between GMO-eating and non-GMO-eating animals.” Scientists then expanded the studies to include other types of GMO vegetables such as tomato and sweet peppers. “Despite massive ingestion of GMO potato, tomato, or sweet pepper, these studies demonstrated no differences in the vitality or health of the animals, even at the microscopic level.”
But what about fertility and/or mutation risk? They fed GMOs to rats for several rat generations. “The researchers tracked testicular development in fetal, postnatal, pubertal, and adult rats for all four generations. The group found no change in testicular health or litter sizes in any generation.” So that handles fertility issues. Mutations? “They repeated their analysis using two additional methods for analyzing mutagenicity in mice and got the same result, allowing them to conclude that genetically modified DNA did not cause increased mutations in consumers”.
There is no evidence that GMO foods are dangerous. And by the way, you’re probably eating some on a regular basis. Genetically modified canola, corn, potatoes, soybeans, sugar beets and alfalfa are currently grown in Canada. If you’re not eating them directly, you’re likely consuming meats from animals that have been fed alfalfa or corn, and you’re likely frying that meat in corn oil or canola oil.
Lesson Number 3. Fear of GMO’s is simply an example of fear of the unknown. Most people don’t have a good understanding of genetic modification technology (I know I don’t), and there are lots of groups out there like IRT who are willing to try to exploit that fear, even to the extent of publishing false claims that increase the fears.
My conclusion is that the push for “organic products” is a fad pushed by environmentally conscious “granola” people and by a growing organic farming and marketing industry. It’s a fashionable yuppie kind of thing for affluent people to brag about. “we eat only organic”. I can tell you that I can find many articles that push the health benefits of organic foods. But even many of the articles that are in favour of organic foods admit that the evidence for their benefit is weak. Most articles suggest that you may eat more pesticides from non-organic foods, but the extent of increased pesticide consumption and the health risks associated with that aren’t clear. I think the summary from a blog page from an Illinois health group says it best. “At this time, there is no conclusive evidence that suggests that organically farmed foods will provide more health benefits than conventional foods.”
What about the other claim made by Terry’s health conscious friends – that you need to “detox” a couple of times a year? I read three articles. An April 2023 article by Adda Bjarnadottir, a registered nutritionist in Iceland (Master’s degree in human nutrition) on the website Healthline.com has the following comments:
- human research on detox diets is lacking, and the handful of studies that exist are significantly flawed
- In fact, there is little to no evidence that detox diets remove any toxins from your body.
- Several detox diets recommend fasting or severe calorie restriction. Short-term fasting and limited calorie intake can result in fatigue, irritability, and bad breath.
- Long-term fasting can result in energy, vitamin, and mineral deficiencies, as well as electrolyte imbalance and even death.
- Furthermore, colon cleansing methods, which are sometimes recommended during detoxes, can cause dehydration, cramping, bloating, nausea, and vomiting
An article on Medicalnewstoday.com added these interesting little gems:
- Detox programs can also encourage the use of potentially dangerous practices, such as coffee enemas in which a person administers coffee through the rectum. (Apparently these people aren’t too smart because some of them try to do it with hot coffee and burn their assholes.)
- Even though diets that can supposedly help detoxify the body are popular, the scientific evidence supporting their effectiveness is lacking.
- According to currently available research, detox diets are unnecessary and unlikely to benefit health in any significant way. They may even be harmful in some cases.
An article on Harvard Health Publishing web-site addresses several specific detox approaches:
- Master Cleanse Diet. Much of the weight loss achieved through this diet results from fluid loss related to extremely low carbohydrate intake and frequent bowel movements or diarrhea produced by salt water and laxative tea.
- Intestinal Cleansing – the rationale for intestinal cleansing — to dislodge material adhering to the colon walls — is fundamentally mistaken. When fecal matter accumulates, it compacts into firm masses in the open interior of the colon; it does not adhere to the intestinal walls as the “sludge” depicted in the advertisements
- Foot Detox – However, there is no scientific evidence that ionic changes in the environment can stimulate a discharge of toxins through pores in the feet — or any other part of the body, for that matter.
- If you experience fatigue, pallor, unexplained weight gain or loss, changes in bowel function, or breathing difficulties that persist for days or weeks, visit your doctor instead of a detox spa.
Terry, you are right, and your friends are full of crap. I doubt that you’ll convince them that they are wrong, but at least you might try to ensure that if they go for the coffee enema, they allow the coffee to cool first!
10 responses to “Organic Foods and Other Nonsense”
Coffee enemas – who knew?
Not me for sure. And would that be black, or double-double? Maybe Timmie’s should be exploiting this as a new business opportunity. Hmmmm
What a business opportunity – a little clinic at the back operated by high school Timmies employees. At least the attendants would be smarter than the clients! Question: would they use the 20 minute expired coffee or fresh brewed (and cooled!)?
I have no fixed opinion about your general argument, but one should include a few more caveats about increased life expectancy since the 1800s. First, life expectancy was abysmally low because infant mortality was appallingly high. Reliable food supply is perhaps less a factor in lowering infant mortality than improved sanitation and, as you note, advances in medical science in terms of vaccination, treatment, and disease prevention. The 10 billion dollar question, of course, is whether organic food production could ever produce high enough yields to feed the world’s population. The probable answer is no. And that has to be weighed against the undoubted negative impacts of excessive deployment of nitrogen-based fertilizers and pesticides.
Thanks for the comment Ed. The answer to the 10 billion dollar question isn’t absolutely established by the “ our world in data” information, but I think it’s fairly clear that the answer is no. The data shows ratio of organic to non-organic farming for a number of environmental measures. For land use, cereal, grains, and pulses sit at about 1.25. That is, it takes about 25% more land to produce cereal grains and beans organically, than with industrial farming methods. For fruits and vegetables, that ratio runs between 1.50 and 1.75. For meats, dairy, and eggs, it is about 1.9. On balance, one might estimate that it takes about 50% more land to produce food of all kinds organically. And our world in data estimates that 46% of habitable land is already used for agriculture. Turning another 23% of the worlds surface into agricultural production, would mean a drastic reduction in forests, and we might not be able to sustain that. Furthermore, with the worlds population predicted to expand by about 20% more, I think there’s a little hope that organic farming methods could meet the needs.
The key to your final sentence about undoubted negative impacts of excessive deployment of nitrogen-based fertilizers and pesticides lies in the word “excessive”. I was going to take you to task to demonstrate the undoubted negative impacts. What’s the data show? Food testing data doesn’t typically show a lot of negative impact. Contaminants are rarely found to be above the safe allowable limits. Longevity data would indicate that the negative impacts of pesticides and fertilize are more than offset by the nutritional benefits. However, one can’t argue that excessive deployment is wrong. The history of DDT would likely convince anyone of that.
I read an article recently that discussed improvements in targeting fertilizer use better to decrease costs and excessive run-off. Farmers are using technology to deployed just the right amount of fertilizer rather than spraying it on indiscriminately. (Unfortunately, I cannot provide a reference for that but I suspect it could have been in The Economist.)
I received the following comment by email from my sister Dorothy:
While I agree that we should not be irrationally opposed to industrial farming, there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical about its safety track record. The “dark money” club seems to have no qualms about poisoning people and the environment. And I’d have no trouble to believe that they use their influence to “arrange ” safety standards ( atated without a shred of evidence, I know). “Detox” is, of course, stupid but I find it hard to dismiss all claims of harm as BS. I am shocked, for example, that DDT is still in use. The environmental effects alone should have stopped its use decades ago.
This Healthline article: https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/pesticides-and-health#childrens-exposure
mentions studies showing increased risk of breast cancer in women whose spouses are farmers, via exposure to organophosphates. There are also the billions paid to settle claims related to glyphosate (roundup) exposure. There are also, of course, concerning studies related to organic pesticides.
But, the thing I find most concerning in this article are the claims that 1) experts disagree on what constitutes “safe” levels of ingestion and 2) food safety regulators rely on research sponsored by the makers of the poisons (let’s be clear, that’s what they are).
So, I think the jury is still out…and we should not be complacent bystanders.
I think there is room for dialectics. A thing can be – or have effects that are -good and bad at the same time.
That’s with the 30 minutes of attention I can devote at the moment.
My (lengthy) reply to Dorothy:
Dorothy, thanks for the comments. I won’t bother to address your suspicion, “stated without a shred of evidence” that the Dark Money club would use their influence to arrange safety standards except to say this – that in the book Dark Money, Jane Meyer was at pains to point out that the Dark Money people were strongly targeting the EPA because they were a strong and inconvenient barrier to the kinds of changes that the irresponsible right wing were trying to achieve. In other words, while I agree that they might try, I don’t think there’s a lot of evidence that they’ve been successful.
DDT – I skimmed an article on UN.org. DDT is still used in some countries as an anti-malarial control measure. It is managed under the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants. The article says “The good news is that the global use of DDT for disease vector control declined from 10 countries using it for Indoor Residual Spraying (IRS) in 2010 to five countries in 2019.” So, as you can imagine, there is a real debate about balancing the environmental impacts of DDT against the health benefits of malaria control.
So now, on to the Healthline article you cited. I have to confess I wasn’t all that impressed by the article nor by the conclusions you appear to have drawn from it. The Thorpe/Ajmera article (hereinafter to be referred to as the Thorpe article) doesn’t really dispute the central thesis of my article which is that organically grown foods are over-hyped and not demonstrably safer or healthier than their industrial counterparts. I will return to the central thesis issues later. But first I want to address some other concerning aspects of the Thorpe article.
I have to admit that I haven’t read through all of their cited articles, and one would really have to do that to pass a final judgement on the quality of their article. But my suspicion is that they really don’t like the pesticide industry and are trying to raise concerns, although they are forced, in the end, to conclude that things aren’t all that bad.
The Thorpe article in Healthline talks about the development of Lowest Observed Adverse Effect Levels, and the use of those levels to establish safe exposure threshold limits. They note that exposure limits are commonly set at 1% or even 0.1% of the LOAEL. They then go on and report that a flawed analysis resulted in a LOAEL for chlorpyrifos being reduced by 50%, from 0.03 mg/kg to 0.014 mg/kg. That’s the reason why safe exposure limits are set at a tiny fraction of the LOAEL – because there are uncertainties in data and statistics to allow for the development of an unknown and as yet unsuspected effect. The error that someone found was an error, and that’s not good. But it was trivial in its impact on consumer safety, and the authors have played it up like it was a big deal.
They then go on to state that regulatory authorities rely on data supplied from industry funded studies. Well, there’s a good reason for that, and it’s identified in the cited article. (I did read that one). Regulatory agencies require pesticide producers to produce risk assessment data. Otherwise, the taxpayer would have to fund the assessment programs to the benefit of the chemical companies. It is not a perfect process, and obviously vulnerable to unscrupulous manufacturers of poisons. But the implied criticism that all such manufacturers are unscrupulous is not supported by facts in the article.
Thorpe et al then go on to say that these industry funded studies are “often misleading” and they cite an article by Axel Mie and others. But that article deals with only two chemicals in the same family which had approval processes that were 17 years apart. The claim that the data is “often misleading” based on just two cited occurrences in 17 years is pretty weak.
The article contains a number of assessments of the possible health risks of pesticides. Thorpe and company discuss possible health related effects of pesticides but, in most cases, they use phrases like “may be” or “could be” indicating that the research isn’t clear yet. In only a very few cases do they state that A is definitely linked to B. Here’s where it would be necessary to read all the cited articles to discover whether the links to pesticide exposure were a result of food consumption, and how strong were the cited correlations. But the net impact of all these “might be” statements is that pesticides are unsafe at some level, and that should surprise no-one.
At one point they say “that some of the more subtle, chronic health effects of pesticides may not be detectable by the types of studies used to establish safe limits.” That’s just scare-mongering. Woe is me. In every risk analysis you wind up trying to consider the risk of the things you don’t know yet. That’s the reason why the regulatory agencies insist on 100 to 1000 fold reduction in safe limit below the LOAEL.
With reference to my central thesis about the comparison of organic food products to industrially farmed food products, it’s important to distinguish between safety in the consumption of food and safety in the handling of dangerous chemicals. The increased risk of breast cancer in women whose husbands are pesticide applicators is relevant because it draws a correlation between the chemical and the cancer. But it doesn’t speak at all to the safe level of that chemical in food. The fact that these women were the wives of pesticide applicators implies that they likely were exposed to high levels of the chemical through non-food related sources (doing laundry, breathing in pesticide mists on the farm etc).
In fact the article emphasizes that the food industry is doing a credible job of keeping pesticides out of the food supply – 1.3% failure rate in one Canadian study, and 2.8% failure rate in a European study (>84000 samples). Of course, no-one is fully satisfied with a 2.8% failure rate, so the Europeans are pursuing recommendations to get a little better, but the “all our foods are poisoned” message of the ultra-cautious consumers of organic produce is not supported by these data.
In terms of comparative information, Thorpe points out that:
– some organic fertilizers contain heavy metals which can build up in the body
– organic products have higher levels of biopesticides
– biopesticides have negative environmental effects which are sometimes worse than synthetic alternatives
– some organic pesticides persist as long as or longer than the average synthetic pesticide.
– organic pesticides are less effective and are thus more heavily applied and
– “in one older study, while synthetic pesticides exceeded safety thresholds in 4% or less of produce, rotenone and copper levels (from organic pesticides) were consistently above their safety limits”
Thorpe and company talk about cooking and peeling produce as effective means to lower the pesticide levels in the food you serve. None of the above leads me to believe that organic farming shows any significant improvements over the industrial farmed products, nor does it lead me to believe that our foods are unsafe. Should we be careful? Sure. But I consider that the industry and the industry regulators are doing a pretty decent job of looking after us, and we don’t need to re-imagine the whole damn agriculture industry to feel safe.
And the Thorpe article conclusion? “fruits and vegetables are highly nutritious and offer many health benefits when enjoyed as part of a balanced diet, regardless of whether they are organic or conventionally grown.” I think that’s pretty much what I concluded, don’t you?
“by the makers of poisons”??? That’s a bit over the top, don’t you think? While the chemicals might fit the dictionary definition of “poison”, they are clearly not intended to poison people. In fact, Dennis’s evidence seems pretty clear that our intake of agricultural chemicals is negligible.
This is another example of excessive use of worst-case terminology to influence people. Worthy of some of the current world’s worst politicians who cannot speak without going to the far right worst-case scenario. This really has no place in this academic discussion.
I happened to be in a Walmart grocery section on Friday past and took the opportunity to do some quick research on prices. Regular strawberries were $2.44/lb while their “organic” cousins were $6.47/lb – more than twice the price. Bananas, which come wrapped in a thick skin as you all know which protects them from outside contamination, cost $0.68/lb while the equivalent organic product was $$1.27/lb, almost twice the price. The price alone is enough to put me off organic products. If they cost twice as much to produce and this leads to increased land use by agriculture, perhaps we should have an “organic tax” similar to our carbon taxes.
I was somewhat surprised to find that GMOs are included in the definition of “organic food”. People may not be aware what wheat and corn looked like back in pre-history; the seeds and kernels were small and much scarcer. Over many years of selective breeding, the modern varieties have evolved so that one ear of corn is enough for me (most days!). But nobody says that our wheat and corn are GMOs. Compare with rape/canola.
From a 2016 report in sciencedirect.com,
“Canola oil was first produced in Canada in 1974. Genetic modifications of rapeseed oil led to a reduction in the concentration of erucic acid and glucosinolate. The currently (sic) rapeseeds in use have erucic acid and glucosinolates less than 0.1% and 8.5 μM g− 1, respectively.” I think the authors have misused term “genetic modification” in this context. The “invention” of Canola was simply done by selective breeding, the same process that gives us massive corn on the cob and big, fat wheat kernels. Another report on the same website says “Canola oil is produced from rapeseed using plant breeding techniques. These techniques introduced in the early 1970s assured the production of canola oil safe for human consumption because it made it possible to reduce erucic acid to less than 5% from previously 50%, which is potentially harmful for health. The breeding techniques also meant that levels of glucosinolates were also reduced.” (NB: This was achieved by Canadian agriculture scientists (probably at Cdn Experimental farms).
I try to be cautious in condemming things outright, especially when a subject is as complicated as agriculture writ large and human physiology and nutrition. But, with Dennis’s excellent research, not to mention his well-crafted essay, I am now prepared to outright condemn organic foods and especially the irrational fear of GMOs.