Why Eating Organic Foods Matters
One of the easiest suggestions on how to improve your diet is simple: “buy organic foods.”
But it’s one of those suggestions that doesn’t immediately make sense— if you’re changing your diet, isn’t it enough to simply switch to more fresh produce and proteins instead of processed and preserved foods?
While it’s definitely an improvement to switch to wholefoods, there’s still room for improvement. The bottom line is that the quality of your food, and the farming processes used to produce that food, have direct impacts on your health. To put it simply, organic foods are grown with much higher standards and levels of quality control, which adds nutrients and prevents harmful contaminants from ending up on your plate.
Organic foods are always made without GMOs, hormones, or antibiotics. They also require crops be grown without harmful pesticides, and without ionizing radiation or sewage sludge. Organic livestock are fed organic foods, allowed to graze, and given access to outdoor areas. All of these practices contribute to making safer, healthier foods.
Organic Foods Reduce Your Risk of Pesticide Exposure
Pesticides have been proven time and time again to have serious, long-term health consequences. Despite this knowledge, pesticides still continue to be found on fruits and vegetables. A study conducted by Consumer Reports examined 20 years of USDA data and found that 20% of fruits and vegetables present a major risk of exposure to dangerous pesticides. This includes some incredibly popular items like potatoes, strawberries, blueberries, and bell peppers. If you’ve seen lists of the “Dirty Dozen” before, some of these shouldn’t come as surprise.
One reason why so many foods fall into the high-risk category is that USDA guidelines governing “traditional” industrial farming are not in line with the latest health studies. So while the food at the store may pass by the threshold for what is legally considered a “safe” amount of pesticide residue, that threshold is sometimes far above what experts would recommend. But even with these admittedly lax guidelines in place, the study still found pesticides that have been banned from use in the United States for over a decade on a sample of green beans.
This excerpt from a graph by Consumer Reports shows the risk of pesticide exposure in various fruits and vegetables
While you aren’t likely to have adverse reactions to one pesticide residue exposure, the risk goes up during vulnerable times like pregnancy, or due to long-term, consistent consumption of a chemical pesticide. So it’s best to avoid foods that have high risk of exposure rather than taking the chance.
The flipside to this is almost none of the organic produce examined in the study was put into the high-risk category. Almost all of the organic, U.S.-grown fruits and vegetables surveyed fell into the “Low Risk” or “Very Low Risk” categories, which means you can safely eat 10 or more servings of those foods a day without risking exposure to harmful pesticides. While there are some outliers—potatoes and spinach presented moderate risk, and imported green beans presented very high risk— there are always alternatives you can put on your plate with a reasonable expectation of safety, such as snap peas and sweet potatoes.
Switching to Organic Produce Makes a Difference, Fast
The reason organic foods reduce pesticide risk is simple: organic farmers operate under strict guidelines of what they can and cannot use on their farms, and must obtain certification to put “organic” labels on their packaging. These guidelines favor natural remedies like crop rotation over pesticides, and only allow the use of natural, mineral or biological pesticides that have been approved by the USDA for organic use.
Switching from conventional to organic produce can have an immediate effect on the levels of pesticides you consume. Four clinical trials were conducted to test pesticide excretion in urine during a complete diet switch from conventional to organic foods, and the results were the same in each trial— a huge drop in pesticide metabolites once people switched to organic produce. In fact, one study showed a 90% reduction once the switch was made. This effect is nearly instantaneous, too— each study showed the reduction happening in less than a week.
Organic Produce Has More Vital Nutrients
In addition to avoiding the pesticide exposure risk, organic produce has benefits of its own. A study from the British Journal of Nutrition shows that organic crops measure 60% higher in antioxidant levels, while also being lower in concentration of cadmium, a toxic metal. Another study showed that organic produce is higher in flavonoids and carotenoids like quercetin than their conventional counterparts.
Flavonoids and carotenoids are essential nutrients found only in plants that have a wide-ranging set of positive effects. The most important being that they are natural anti-inflammatories. This is important because many negative health conditions have inflammation as their root cause.
Eat Organic Meat for Healthy Fats
It’s not just fruits and vegetables that are better organic. A comprehensive study from Newcastle University reviewed 67 papers from around the world, and concluded that there are substantial differences in the fat makeup between organic and conventionally farmed beef. The study showed that organic meat is lower in saturated fat, and around 50% higher in omega-3 fatty acids. The Western diet is generally too low in omega-3 fatty acids and too high in saturated fats, so this is great news.
Omega-3 fatty acids have a number of great health benefits: they support immune function, neurological development, and have been shown to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease. At the same time, saturated fats— especially lauric, myristic, and palmitic— are prevalent in meat and widely seen to have a negative effect on health, including increased risk of cardiovascular disease. Organic meat also is shown to have lower levels of these unwanted fats than in conventionally farmed meat.
The reason for this change in fat composition between organic and conventional meat? It all comes down to diet and living conditions. Organic standards require that a majority of an animal’s diet come from grazing. This means cattle are eating what their bodies are meant to process, generally in a larger pasture where they can move about more freely. Contrast this with conventional farming, which often utilizes year-round indoor housing, and allows for feeds based on maize, cereals, and other food processing byproducts that aren’t typically found in a cow’s diet.
Spend Money on Organics Now, Save Money (And Your Health) Down the Road
One thing that rings true across all of medicine: preventative care is much cheaper, and much more comfortable to deal with, than corrective care. All of the regulation and expensive farming protocols of organic foods are passed onto the consumer, resulting in a higher grocery bill, there’s no denying that. However, there’s also no denying that a healthy diet will make you less likely to develop costly chronic conditions that will cost a significant amount of money to treat down the road.
Longitudinal studies on organic vs. conventional diets associate organic diets with a number of positive health effects. One study showed that people with an organic diet had a 37% reduction in their risk of obesity. Other studies showed links to “reduced incidence of infertility, birth defects, allergic sensitisation, otitis media, pre-eclampsia, metabolic syndrome, high BMI, and non-Hodgkin lymphoma.”
One of the likely reasons for so many positive effects is switching to organic foods often comes with a shift in the foods you buy. Many of the ultra-processed foods that contribute to negative health consequences simply aren’t available in organic form. A change to an organic diet often also means more plant-based eating, a new focus on wholefoods, and reduction in additives and preservatives. These are all fantastic diet changes on their own, and the positive effects are only amplified when you consider organic foods are giving you more vital nutrients with each bite.
While we realize making a 100% organic change isn’t possible for everyone due to financial constraints, there is always the option to strategically buy organic foods where they’re demonstrably safer than the non-organic option. Maybe opt for non-organic onion, but pick up the organic, locally grown strawberries. Studies show that even an 80% shift to organics can make a demonstrable difference in areas like pesticide consumption.
Switching to an organic diet is a great way to take your health into your own hands, and step one in creating a mindful lifestyle. When a great diet is partnered with a regular exercise routine, mental and spiritual stimulation, and a fulfilling set of hobbies and social sphere, you’re on your way to a long, happy, healthy life.
SOURCES:
https://www.ams.usda.gov/grades-standards/organic-standards
https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-contaminants/produce-without-pesticides-a5260230325/
https://www.ukorganic.org/blog/articles/benefits-of-organic-meat#
https://www.ncl.ac.uk/press/articles/archive/2016/02/organicandnon-organicmilkandmeat/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7019963/