Organic Oranges Study

?A Stanford study has drawn criticism for suggesting that that organic oranges and other fruits and vegetables are no more nutritious than less expensive “non-organic” items.

A recent Stanford study has stirred up a bit of controversy by concluding that organic labeled fruits like oranges and organic vegetables are no more nutritious than less expensive conventional, or “non-organic” fruits and vegetables. The Stanford report has generated some criticism because some critics have said the Stanford analysis failed to find that organic foods are “healthier” without any scientific indications of how the researchers and other sources defined “healthier” in the study.

The Stanford report has been criticized for failing to show how the researchers measured nutrients, bacteria levels and pesticide residue and the report also lacked any long-term distinctions about the effects of pesticides on the general environment and on farm workers. The report also lacked any discussion of whether the routine use of antibiotics on crops increased the risk of bacteria developing resistance to them. Given these concerns, many critics felt concluding that there’s no greater value between organic or inorganic produce was fundamentally flawed.

In contrast to the Stanford report, a report from the Behind the Headlines project on the National Health Services (NHS) Choices website drew an entirely different conclusion about the value of organic fruits like oranges, and found that “Looking beyond health effects, there are plenty of other reasons to buy organic instead of conventional.” The NHS report maintains no conclusions about the long-term health benefits of organic foods can be drawn from the Stanford research, and added that the study should be “interpreted with some caution”

The NHS maintained that here was too much variation between the studies in terms of the methods used, and the results of the review were unreliable because it only looked at relevant long term health effects for less than two years. Additional limitations to the Stanford review were though to be the fact that the field studies do not reflect real-world organic practices and the possible differences due to soil types, storage practices and wide variation within organic practices. In the end the NHS suggested a more effective method of assessing the relative benefits of “organic verses conventional food” is needed.