Food Politics

Well, the organic industry shouldn’t be as confusing as this next item.
State of Ilinois will now tax some items recognised as candy based on what’s in the,-all are junk foods/ Anything with FLOUR in it is not subject to the same candy tax. That means Twix and Twizzlers are not ‘candy’. What fun-

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-flour-power-candy-food-html,0,3043869.htmlpage

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-090802candy-food-taxes,0,7082646.story

Dear Dr. Nestle,
You do not mention that the ‘study’ of 162 papers spans 50 years. If that factor has been dropped, that is interesting in itself.
I am European but lived in London for almost 9 years, until 1956. During those years ‘natural’ foods were a non-entity, known perhpas among some of my –granted very small–circle of friends, and those who had thought about the matter were almost exclusively also Europeans.
I remember a small Polish shop in a basement in the Notting Hill section, where they made bread that deserved that name, rather than the white ‘cotton pap’ akin to US ‘Wonderbread’. When I came to England, I had never seen so many people with false teeth before. I did have a friend, a former scientist from Cambridge who connected the ‘bread’ to the teeth, and stomach problems, et al.
A Hungarian doctor at the Roy. Homeopathic Hosp. in London, when I told him all the fruit, like bananas, tomatos–which I had not seen in years– seemed to be somehow tasteless, confirmed to me it was so and said it had to do with fertilizers and other ‘new’ argi. methods now used.
On Baker St. was a small health food store in a basement, to which, as to the Polish little store certain people went–most seemed Europeans–and that owner did her best to get ‘real’ victuals, knew a lot, encouraged and explained why real flour, unpeeled rice, etc. mattered. Talk about lonely voices in the wilderness!
When I came to the US in 62, I had never heard of so much breast cancer in my life till then. The food tasted strange–cottage cheese was some mess, and that was before rBGH! In my up-state rural NY area there was one grist mill whose owner tried survival for years until slowly the tide turned. Herbal teas? I smuggled them in from Europe. Jams where the sugar did not stuff you? Make them. and on and on. People who are younger do not know. The really old locals are gone. It is really old ones like I who came with natural knowledge–part of daily life and home medicine–who came, found little or nothing, and slowly have seen the tide turn.
Americans go to look at old gardens as sight-seeing spots, but few questions seem to be asked such as: this was our heritage? The German, Polish, Czech, etc immigrants brought a heritage that is not part of life. I do not know when it was lost, ousted with the same frivolity with which so much else is treated.
So, I am glad to read that the research teams evaluating the papers were very good. Good in what? What is their ability to connect historical data–manifold data? How many are gardeners at least to the extent that they know a little how plants behave under xyz conditions.
162 papers: were they examined (is it even possible) for age groups, male, female, urban, rural, local growth, shipped from the other end of the States? Were seed quality, growing conditions, soil types and goodness knows how many other variables considered in these papers and did the evaluators consider them?
My problem is that in todays set-up of scarce money, but ‘publish or perish’, and the tendency towards ‘range’ evaluation and values, a really careful piece of work on 162 papers seems a bit unreal.
I also wonder whose money is behind the whole process.
I may sound and may be mean, but the labor intensive work with organic products and produce are under such heavy attack from the corn lobby, beef lobby, pharma, Monsanto, etc. that there seems a great need for clear questions and demanding clear answers.
Thank you,
Johanna Sayre
jsayre1841@aol.com

Pro or con, it is surprising how little analysis this study itself got.

The review tracked down 162 studies. Of which it excluded 2/3 (!) mostly because they “failed to specify the organic certifying body” or “failed to specify the plant cultivar or livestock breed”. The full report on the FSA’s website actually does document all the nutrients for “all studies” as well as for “satisfactory quality studies”. However, the published paper – which is the fodder for all the media distortion – is only based on the “satisfactory quality studies”. I don’t think the report ever establishes whether there is an important (statistical or otherwise) difference between “satisfactory” and “unsatisfactory” studies. Regardless, it should be clear: when you reduce your dataset by 2/3, you lose much of your statistical power to find an effect.

Now, I don’t know just what the difference was between included studies that cite a certifying body and ones that don’t. (There also seem to be some nutrient distinctions between basket, field, and other studies.) But here’s the interesting part — if we take a look at the statistically significant nutrient comparisons among “all studies”, we find:

-The only nutrient higher in conventional crops is nitrogen (7% higher).
-Organic crops have higher levels of dry matter (10% higher), sugars (24%), zinc (11%), magnesium (7%), phenolic compounds (13%), and flavonoids (38%).
-Organic livestock products have higher levels of overall fatty acids (38%), trans fatty acids (52%), and overall polyunsaturated fatty acids (10%).

And I do believe most of the recent claims about organic having more nutrients are precisely about things like phenolic compounds and flavonoids.

For those interested, the Food Standards Agency press release and links to both studies are here: http://www.food.gov.uk/news/newsarchive/2009/jul/organic