Nitrogen bomb

The obvious advantage of organic food over conventional 16

veggiesA bit of nitrogen with those veggies? A recent literature review [PDF] by the U.K. Food Standards Agency concluded that organic foods offer no nutritional advantages to ones grown with conventional chemical agriculture.

The report quickly bounced around the media and the internets and has congealed into received wisdom. For example, in a recent chat with readers, Washington Post food politics columnist (and general policy writer) Ezra Klein engaged in the following exchange:

Santa Fe, N.M.: I saw a report today on a study finding that organic food isn’t any healthier than conventional food. Is buying organic a waste of money, in your opinion?

Ezra Klein: Honestly? Yes. It’s definitely not healthier, at least not according to any study I’ve seen. There’s some argument that it’s more environmentally friendly. But it’s not something that I’m convinced is worth a premium. I’d rather buy from a local farm that uses some pesticides than a major producers who has gone organic.

Whoa—lots going on there. Let’s stick to the “definitely not healthier” bit for now. (As for the idea that there’s just “some argument” for the environmental benefits of not dousing fields of food with synthetic poisons and greenhouse-gas-spewing fertilizer, I’m not sure what to say.)

Well, Ezra, here is a study, released last year by the U.S.-based Organic Center, that comes to a conclusion quite different from the U.K. agency’s findings. It’s called “New Evidence Confirms the Nutritional Superiority of Plant-Based Organic Foods.” The Organic Center recently released a cogent rebuttal to the U.K. findings as well.

True, the Organic Center is funded by Big Organic companies like Dean Foods (owner of Horizon Dairy) and Whole Foods, which have an interest in promoting organics as healthier. But I’ve never seen the Center’s scholarship successfully challenged.

Moreover, as Paula Crossfield’s excellent recent post on Civil Eats shows, the U.K. Food Standards Agency itself, despite its governmental status, can hardly be seen as a neutral adjudicator. Like our own FDA, the FSA is shot through with once and future food-industry execs and flacks. (Paula also points us to another study finding nutritional advantages to organic food—this one commissioned by the European Union.)

The Organic Center claims that the FAS study neglected to consider total antioxidant content—which seems a pretty gaping oversight, giving that antioxidants are emerging as a key micronutrient for fighting cancer and other maladies. (The Center’s own study found significantly more total antioxidants in organic food than conventional.) The Center also makes a convincing case that the FAS researchers botched the measurement of another key micronutrient, polyphenols.

But what I find most immediately significant is this: Both studies found that conventionally grown produce has substantially higher levels of nitrates than organic—most likely from widespread use of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer on conventional farms.

This consensus around a nitrogen gap suggests a non-trivial advantage for organic food: A growing body of literature indicts heightened levels of nitrates in the U.S. diet as a significant health menace. For a while, we’ve known that nitrates are a powerful carcinogen.

The latest: a rather stunning recent report from the Journal of Alzheimer Disease (press release here) linking nitrates in food to “increased deaths from diseases, including Alzheimer’s, diabetes mellitus and Parkinson’s.”

The study’s lead author, Suzanne de la Monte of Rhode Island Hospital and Brown University, declares that we have become a “nitrosamine generation,”  exposed to increasing levels of nitrogen-derived compounds that pose a threat at even in low doses. She indicts nitrate-preserved foods like bacon—but also conventional agriculture.

According to de la Monte, “We receive increased exposure through the abundant use of nitrate-containing fertilizers for agriculture,” which are both taken up in food crops and also seep into drinking water.

De la Monte reports that incidence of the diseases in question—Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and type 2 diabetes—have “all increased radically over the past several decades and show no sign of plateau.” According to de la Monte:

Because there has been a relatively short time interval associated with the dramatic shift in disease incidence and prevalence rates, we believe this is due to exposure-related rather than genetic etiologies.

The press release adds:

The findings indicate that while nitrogen-containing fertilizer consumption increased by 230 percent between 1955 and 2005, its usage doubled between 1960 and 1980, which just precedes the insulin-resistant epidemics the researchers found. They also found that sales from the fast food chain and the meat processing [industry] increased more than 8-fold from 1970 to 2005, and grain consumption increased 5-fold.

To me, the study stands as a pretty damning indictment of industrial agriculture—and in particular efforts to extend its alleged benefits to the global South. Hey, grow more food with our agrichemicals—and melt your brains and become dependent on pharmaceutical insulin in the process!

It bears remembering, too, that industrial agriculture’s reliance on synthetic fertilizer contributes significantly to climate change [PDF] and coastal dead zones.

Organic agriculture, meanwhile, relies on slow-release fertilizers that don’t get taken up as readily by plants, leaving lower residue levels in food. And because organic ag builds carbon in soil, it also tends to hold nitrogen better, not letting it leach into soil or air nearly as much.

 

Grist food editor Tom Philpott farms and cooks at Maverick Farms, a sustainable-agriculture nonprofit and small farm in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Follow my Twitter feed; contact me at tphilpott[at]grist[dot]org.

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  1. PenelopeW Posted 3:48 pm
    11 Aug 2009

    Thanks for the great piece. Here in California's ag hotspots, nitrogen runoff from industrial dairy operations and farms has led to levels of nitrates in groundwater that exceed the state's safe drinking standards. It's so bad that some low-income communities in eastern Tulare county, in the state's Central Valley, can't even drink the water in their own homes, and have to buy bottled water.  Community Water Center is one Tulare Co. organization that helps fight for safe drinking water. Check out their colorful stories here http://www.communitywatercenter.org/index.php

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  2. spaceshaper's avatar

    spaceshaper Posted 8:13 pm
    11 Aug 2009

    It seems the FSA review is only concerned with reductionist analyses of macro and micro nutrients up to the limits of our knowledge of these factors. This is obviously easier than conducting actual outcome-based studies of the consumption of organic vs. conventional foods, but isn't it like the drunk looking for his keys under the lamp post because the light is better there than where he lost them?

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  3. jja Posted 12:44 am
    12 Aug 2009

    From what I remember of college chemistry, Nitrogen (N) is not the same as Nitrate (NO3-).  Is the nitrogen in fertilizer converted automatically to nitrate?

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    1. atreyger Posted 10:15 am
      12 Aug 2009

      Most of the N in any fertilizer that is taken up by plants is in the nitrate-ammonium form (NO3-NH4) either in pellets or otherwise, there is probably some nitrite that is also taken up, but in small amounts. This is usually added to the point of saturation within conventional agriculture in order to provide the most of this limiting compound. The difference in organic versus conventional is that there is less overall N in organic, and it is tied up with organic compounds allowing for slower release. While I fully agree that organic is better in most ways, it is difficult for me to buy this posting for several reasons: citing a partisan (lobbying?) Big Organic group; and while I'm sure that the increase in cancers, etc. in the past few years is somewhat tied to our diet (i.e. nitrates in meat have an effect), this may be confounded by many other factors: increase in detection, increase in population and decrease in 'natural selection', such as wars and diseases, increase in radioactive carbon due to atomic testing, etc. etc. etc. While I am fully on board with organic, I feel like the jury in the scientific case is still out based on the evidence provided in this article. One of the more compelling arguments that I have seen outside of this article is the increase in cancer rates in Hispanic population compared to the country of their origin, which is still confounded by other factors: drinking, smoking, and eating unhealthy food (which is a different issue from the general conventional vs. organic ag).

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  4. rtl88 Posted 5:46 am
    12 Aug 2009

    With or without scientific studies to support organic or conventional, go visit these farms.  It doesn't take a scientist to feel what is healthier, not only for humans, but the environment.  See the birds, bees & other insects at an organic farm..  the diversity of crops.  Intuition leads me to small scale organic, without a doubt. 

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  5. roncastle Posted 10:03 am
    12 Aug 2009

    Based on my experience of dining in the UK perhaps 120 days since the early 1980s, Brits would be among the last folks I would ask about the nutritional value of food.  Pass the kidney pie and bangers and mash, please.Perhaps the UK Food Standards Agency is askew because of political or chemical ag industry influence.  I have no clue.But what I do know is that 60 plus years of chemical laden agriculture has severly surpressed the natural systems in soil to improve mineralization. A 1997 USDA report showed an 80% decline in calcium, magnesium and iron in cabbage, lettuce, tomatoes and spinach since 1917.Loss of minerals is so prominent in most soils that the use of natural ag mineral supplements like Eco-Min causes plants to react like they have received a boost of fertilizer.The final point is that we are using 11 calories of fossil fuel to product 1 calorie of food.  Even using new math that seems unsustainable.The folks in the UK should come over to the USA and try our antibiotic resistant salmonella burgers.  We can show them a thing or two about the nutritional value of food.

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  6. rharris50 Posted 11:08 am
    12 Aug 2009

    I appreciate the useful information, and I appreciate the constructive comments.  Forgive me for being a curmudgeon, but could we please get away from referring to food incorrectly as "healthy?"  Clearly, organic food is not healthy--it's dead!  Unless you are eating your food while it is still alive (and thriving), it cannot be healthy.  In fact, food could be healthy (alive) and still full of chemicals that are toxic to us, so it can be healthy without being healthful to those who eat it.  We want food that will make US healthy.  The proper word is "healthful!"

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  7. PurpleOzone Posted 11:35 am
    12 Aug 2009

    The obvious advantage of organic is TASTE! More flavor! Compare an organic carrot with a usual. Get fresh chicken or organic eggs. Or try grass-fed beef. Although I sometimes despair that the current generation likes flavor. They prefer cardboard crackers to real food. Eat misnamed Delicious apples, the mealiest on the market. Don't like dark meat chicken, prefer frozen and refrozen chicken breast. Had been brainwashed into eating Idaho potatoes instead of the uglier Maine potatoes.

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    1. mtvyfan's avatar

      mtvyfan Posted 9:46 am
      13 Aug 2009

      Couldn't agree with you more! I find more flavor from my home-grown, just picked, cherry tomatoes from my greenhouse than anything else. The only thing that comes even close are organic heirloom tomatoes. We need to enliven our taste buds again. They have been fed a steady diet of crap foods for far too long. Grow a garden if you can, or plant your own container tomatoes. I have a friend who covets my garden in Montana and she lives in Sacramento, CA in an apartment, so she can't have a garden, but she says I have inspired here to go containering and she loves it. If the desire is there, you can make it happen!

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  8. Craig Allen's avatar

    Craig Allen Posted 12:35 am
    13 Aug 2009

    Hang about! The review does not even mention nitrates. It concludes that conventional foods have a higher nitrogen content. Nitrogen is a component of many classes of organic molecules, including DNA and proteins. You've gone of on a tangent with the nitrates that is not related to the content of the report.

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  9. ucgreen Posted 8:10 am
    13 Aug 2009

    I recently read Michael Pollan's Omnivore Dilemma, which included a rather hefty indictment of Big Organic.  It's entirely possible that Klein's statement is supported by what Pollan wrote.  As I recall, Pollan visited three organic farms -- two large scale farms and one small scale farm.  The first two farmed huge monocultures that depended on chemical inputs (namely composts, manures, fishmeal, etc).  They also depended on intensive plowing regimes (which greatly disrupts soil biology) to control weeds in lieu of pesticides.  The crops were sold all over the US at places like Whole Foods.  The addition of extensive transportation shrunk the saving of fossil fuels to nearly nothing.  Essentially, it was just conventional farming with substitutions -- only a marginal improvement.  The third farm was a humongous polyculture that only sold locally.  It was indeed organic, but it was done with almost no inputs.  In fact, the farm had restored the formerly depleted soil (due to overfarming in the past) over the course of three generations.  My point?  Big Organic is just a different flavor of conventional -- a marketing scheme.  I would take Big Organic's report with a grain of salt for sure.
    I guess what I mean to get at is that the way things look, local does sound better than organic (if a choice even needs to be made -- beware a false dichotomy).  A small, local farm is going to have a much more attentive farmer.  Any spraying will more likely be spot spraying, which is a far cry from the dousings seen on convention farms.  And for what it's worth, Big Organic is just asking a premium for a label.  Big Organic has sacrificed so much of the original organic movement's intentions, one of which is to get your food locally and season permitting.  You cannot truly have organic if it is not local.  But best of all is to buy local organic, which shouldn't be much of a problem nowadays with all the farmer's markets popping up.
    (Oh yeah, and there are arguments to be made for the value of keeping money in a local economy rather than sending your region's wealth to some wholesaler based a thousand miles away.) Peace and carrots, Chris

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  10. mtvyfan's avatar

    mtvyfan Posted 9:26 am
    13 Aug 2009

    Unfortunately this misinformation has been broadcasted far and wide by all media, even my local newspaper in Helena, MT. It really shows how threatened "chemical" agriculture is by organics. They spread misinformation rather than see if their product is healthy at all.The tactics they are using smack true of GMOs hazards of being in our food system by Monsanto. I heard that some of the information used was so old like back in 1950 before science had even identified antioxidants, or knew what they did or how important they are to health.And don't get me started on the school chose to conduct such an important test. Whoever has heard of the London School Hygiene and Tropical Medicine anyway. Does anything in their name say agriculture to you? I am picturing a school with Turkish baths and witch doctors. No offense to Turks or witch doctors intended. 

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    1. spaceshaper's avatar

      spaceshaper Posted 10:29 am
      13 Aug 2009

      This is not an agricultural study but, for what it's worth, a nutritional one, and not to support its conclusions but FYI - the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine is one of the oldest and most highly respected public health research bodies in the world: http://tinyurl.com/kmda6mSo, don't 'get started' until you know what you're talking about. Is there an institutional equivalent of 'ad hominem'?

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  11. Kiara Posted 10:27 pm
    13 Aug 2009

    In his 1987 book, The Politics of Food, Geoffrey Cannon has a thing or two to say about the UK Food Standard Agency.  Apparently not much has changed since.

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  12. Storm Dragon Posted 11:49 am
    18 Aug 2009

    Even if you buy into the argument that organic food has no special health advantage for the consumer,  you've got to admit that organic agriculture can hardly help being healthier for the farm workers, (and the farm's neighbors).

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