●Introduction

My wife had surgery to remove fibroids recently. That surgery incident made me and my wife strongly want to avoid any health related issues in the future. We would like avoid surgery or disease in the future so one thing we did was to try and eat more organic foods. As well as eating organic food, we have also tried to avoid junk food or things that contain harmful chemicals.

Organic food seems more expensive. That expensive price made me wonder if there would be enough benefit to our health if we keep eating organic food. The reason why we started to choose organic food over non-organic is that I thought organic food was pesticide-free.

As I was searching whether organic food is healthier than conventional food (non-organic food), I found some surprising facts about organic food. I wrote a brief synopsis on what I found from scientific papers as well as providing some statistics.

How much more expensive is organic food than conventional food ?

The graph above illustrates how much more organic foods cost than the conventional foods. I pulled the data for fruits from USDA website and those data are for 2013. The data for the products other than fruits are from Consumer Reports published in 2015.

You can see that organic foods are more expensive than conventional foods. The average premiums of organic foods over the conventional foods are 65% for the products that I checked. Organic food is really expensive! Surprisingly, organic Fuji apples are almost twice as expensive as the non-organic.

Is organic food actually healthier ?

Organic foods are more expensive than non-organic foods, but is it worth spending the premiums for organic foods ?

In my case, I started to eat organic food because I thought organic food was grown without any pesticide and the food should have less detrimental effects on your body. But, when I was doing this research, I was very surprised to find out that organic foods were grown with pesticides. I thought organic foods are grown with absolutely no pesticides, but I was wrong.

When we compare the pesticides for organic food and non-organic food, there are two types of pesticides; natural pesticides and synthetic pesticides. Natural pesticides are products that are derived strictly from sources in nature with little to no chemical alternation. Synthetic pesticides are the pesticides that are produced from chemical alternation. Natural pesticides can be used to grow organic food.

It was a little bit of a bummer for me when I found out that organic foods are grown with pesticides even with “natural” ones. If organic foods are proven to be healthier for me than eating non-organic foods, it would be a better choice for me even if the price is 65% higher.

Here is what science says on whether organic food is healthier or not:

“In conclusion, we were able to demonstrate that an organic diet provides a dramatic and immediate protective effect against exposures to organophosphorus pesticides that are commonly used in agricultural production.” (Source: Organic diets significantly lower children’s dietary exposure to organophosphorus pesticides.)

“The most recent systematic literature reviews and meta-analyses have indicated significant and nutritionally-relevant composition differences between organic and conventional foods. This included higher antioxidant, but lower cadmium and pesticide levels in organic crops, and higher omega-3 fatty acids concentrations in organic meat and dairy products. Also, results from a small number of human cohort studies indicate that there are positive associations between organic food consumption and reduced risk/incidence of certain acute diseases (e.g. pre-eclampsia, hypospadias) and obesity…. However, there is virtually no published data from (1) long-term cohort studies focusing on chronic diseases (e.g. cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer, and neurodegenerative conditions) and (2) controlled human dietary intervention studies comparing effects of organic and conventional diets. It is therefore currently not possible to quantify to what extent organic food consumption may affect human health.” (Source: Effects of organic food consumption on human health; the jury is still out!. )

“In organic agriculture, the use of pesticides is restricted, while residues in conventional fruits and vegetables constitute the main source of human pesticide exposures. Epidemiological studies have reported adverse effects of certain pesticides on children’s cognitive development at current levels of exposure, but these data have so far not been applied in formal risk assessments of individual pesticides.” (Source: Human health implications of organic food and organic agriculture: a comprehensive review.)

“An organic diet was associated with significant reductions in urinary excretion of several pesticide metabolites and parent compounds. This study adds to a growing body of literature indicating that an organic diet may reduce exposure to a range of pesticides in children and adults.” and “We observed significant reductions in urinary levels of thirteen pesticide metabolites and parent compounds representing OP, neonicotinoid, and pyrethroid insecticides and the herbicide 2,4-D following the introduction of an organic diet.” (Source: Organic diet intervention significantly reduces urinary pesticide levels in U.S. children and adults)

In short, there does not seem to be enough scientific evidence to support a significant health benefit to eating organic food with the current scientific data that is available. A lot of indications about the positive effects of organic food consumption can be seen in previous scientific literatures. Currently, it is unknown to what extent organic food consumption may affect human health. But, eating organic food can reduce the amount of organophosphate, pyrethroid, and neonicotinoid insecticides entering your body, compared with eating conventional food. Organophosphate, pyrethroid, and neonicotinoid are the commonly used as pesticides in the US and globally.

The YouTube footage below compares organic foods and conventional foods and can give you a good sense of overall comparison.

Summary

It’s too early to conclude that organic food is better in terms of your health than conventional food. The long term influence from non-organic food on our body is still unknown as of today. However, eating organic food can reduce the exposure to organophosphate, pyrethroid and neonicotinoid, which are commonly used as pesticides in the world.

So, finally what should I and my wife eat ?

I will go with my instinct as well as with the current information I have and I will continue to try and buy as much organic food as possible, until I find information to the contrary. It’s possible to decrease some possible negative effects to our bodies from organophosphate, pyrethroid and neonicotinoid insecticides by eating organic food.

References

・Barański M, Rempelos L, Iversen PO, Leifert C. Effects of organic food consumption on human health; the jury is still out!. Food Nutr Res. 2017;61(1):1287333. Published 2017 Mar 6. doi:10.1080/16546628.2017.1287333. Available from: https://foodandnutritionresearch.net/index.php/fnr/article/view/1154

・Mie A, Andersen HR, Gunnarsson S, et al. Human health implications of organic food and organic agriculture: a comprehensive review. Environ Health. 2017;16(1):111. Published 2017 Oct 27. doi:10.1186/s12940-017-0315-4. Available from: https://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12940-017-0315-4

・Lu C, Toepel K, Irish R, Fenske RA, Barr DB, Bravo R. Organic diets significantly lower children’s dietary exposure to organophosphorus pesticides. Environ Health Perspect. 2006;114(2):260–263. doi:10.1289/ehp.8418. Available from: https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/10.1289/ehp.8418

・Carly Hyland, Asa Bradman, Roy Gerona, Sharyle Patton, Igor Zakharevich, Robert B. Gunier, Kendra Klein.Organic diet intervention significantly reduces urinary pesticide levels in U.S. children and adults. Environmental Research,Volume 171,2019,Pages 568-575, ISSN 0013-9351. Available from: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0013935119300246

・U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, <https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/organic-prices/organic-prices/#Current%20Tables>, Retrieved on June 13th 2019.

・Consumer Reports, The Cost of Organic Foods, <https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2015/03/cost-of-organic-food/index.htm>, Retrieved on June 13th 2019.