Matthew Michaelis I asked a local expert how much evidence there really was that naturally grown food is better for you. I know it is, and you probably do too… but how can we tell that what we’re buying really is really good for us, apart from the fact that it looks ‘grown’, green and crunchy?

Alasdair Smithson was well placed to answer my questions, as he’s a local organic farmer and owner of Munch Crunch Organics, an online organic fruit and vegetable delivery service.

At last count, I have five children and I certainly wouldn’t feed any of them a spoonful of phosphate, or pretend to be a crazed airline pilot landing a mouthful of ‘Mortein’ or ‘Round-up’ on their tongues (well, providing they’d been well behaved that is…) So, is ‘organic’ food really better for you or do we need a complex study to convince us?

Here Alasdair Smithson explains the latest science to hit the streets on ‘organics’.

Alasdair Smithson

New research published in the British Journal of Nutrition on July 15, which was peer reviewed by more than 300 scientists, has found that organic crops such as fruit and vegetables are up to 60 per cent higher in a number of key antioxidants than non-organic crops.

This extensive study and analysis is the largest ever of its kind to measure organic versus conventionally grown foods and was carried out by an international team of experts led by the University of Newcastle in the UK.

The key findings of the study were that organics, compared with their non-organic counterparts, have: More antioxidants: Organic crops have significantly higher concentrations of antioxidants/(poly)phenolics.

Fewer pesticides: The frequency of occurrence of detectable pesticide residues is four times higher in non-organic crops Less cadmium: The analysis detected 48 per cent lower concentrations of the toxic heavy metal cadmium in organic crops. Less nitrogen: nitrogen concentrations are linked, in some studies, to an increased risk of certain cancers such as stomach cancer.

In my opinion a report of this nature provides a solid argument for all farmers and consumers to convert to organic foods and farming methods. Choices in organic foods not only help to protect our health but also help to protect the environment that we live in. Next time someone asks you why organic food is more expensive than non-organic, the answer, should be – it’s not.

It’s actually cheaper if you use this logic: you can eat less of it to get the same nutritional content as from eating a higher quantity of non-organic food.

There are also no associated ongoing costs with choosing organic food as there are with non-organic. Such as: paying taxes to clean up pesticides from waterways; paying doctors to treat health problems that are associated with non-organic foods; ruining the soil of the very earth we live on through the over-use of chemicals and dealing with the fact that non-organic farming methods are destroying not only the pollinators in our food chain, the bees, but also the birds.

In some ways it’s a shame that we have to rely on science to come to conclusions about the benefits of organic food and farming, as really they should just be everyday common sense choices that we make.

Alasdair Smithson is an organic farmer and the founder of Munch Crunch Organics, an online local organic fruit and vegetable home delivery business: www.­munchcrunchorganics.com.au.