Thread: love the spin
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Old 06-09-2012, 02:07 AM posted to rec.gardens.edible
Billy[_12_] Billy[_12_] is offline
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Default love the spin

In article , "Farm1"
wrote:

"Billy" wrote in message
...
In article , "Farm1"
wrote:

"Billy" wrote in message
...
In article ,
songbird wrote:

---from a google news headline in passing...---

The Guardian - 1 hour ago

Organic produce and meat typically is no better for you than
conventional food when it comes to vitamin and nutrient content,
although it does generally reduce exposure to pesticides and
antibiotic-resistant bacteria, according to a US study.

---

ok, so tell me, how does "reduce exposure to pesticides and
antibiotic-resistant bacteria" equate with "typically no better
for you" ?


songbird

And who sets the levels that are considered safe? The EPA that sent
first responders into "ground zero" while it was still toxic, and
reassured residents that it was safe to return home?

I was listening to a most interesting report on the radio the other day
and
the person being interviewed seemed to be incredibly pragmatic and said
that
she made decisons about buying organic or not based on the chance of the
'thing' having been heavily sprayed or not.

She also made the point that although, in the western world,
pesticide/chemical residues were not considered a problem by our
respective
governments as individual chemicals were many times lower than the
legally
permitted levels. she said that the real danger may arise from the
conbination of these chemicals eg 'B' might be OK on its own but combine
it
with residue 'C' and it was realy not good in the human body. She
believed
govts needed to look closer at these combinations - can't remember now
what
she called it but it had a technical name.


Basically, the environment that our bodies live in has changed. The
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in the U.S., says,"Number of
Americans with Diabetes Projected to Double or Triple by 2050".
Something is happening, but we don't know what it is.


I'm darned sure that for diabetes the cause is indeed very well known - bad
diet and too little exercise.

And it's nto too much of a leap to also look at other changes and realise
that since we've moved so far away from how we traditonally lived that the
causes for other health issues arise there. I'm darned sure that the 3
major cnacers I've had that commonly kill people came from standing under
Agent Orange spray as a child.

We know that contemporary farming uses nitrates as fertilizer, and as a
result, those plants contain more nitrates, which is just another
reactant to add to the pesticides on the food. Contemporary
agriculture's produce is lower in flavonoids (polyphenols). Flavonoids
include antioxidants, and some can lower blood pressure. Flavonoids
weren't included in Stanford's megastudy on organic vs conventional
produce.
http://www.organic-center.org/scienc...w&report_id=12
6

In Northern California, on some fields west of Davis, Kaffka and his
colleagues have been comparing organic and conventional tomatoes grown
in neighboring plots. It's part of a UC Davis study dubbed the
"Long-Term Research on Farming Systems Project," which was begun in 1991
and is slated to last 100 years.

So far, the researchers have found that the organic tomatoes have almost
double the concentration of two types of flavonoids ‹ quercetin and
kaempferol ‹ which are considered to be healthful plant compounds with
potent antioxidant activity. The 10-year mean levels of quercetin were
79 percent higher than those in conventional tomatoes, and levels of
kaempferol were 97 percent higher.

The Answer in the Dirt

The increased flavonoid levels, Kaffka suspects, could stem from the
difference in how organic and conventional tomatoes are fertilized.

On Kaffka's plot, the conventionally grown tomatoes get commercial
fertilizer made with soluble inorganic nitrogen, a form of nitrogen the
plants can take up very quickly. The organic tomatoes get nitrogen from
manure and composted cover crops. These organic materials have to be
broken down by the microbes in the soil before the nitrogen is released
to the plants.

"It takes time," Kaffka says, and the nitrogen is "not instantaneously
available."

With limited nitrogen, the organic plants may grow slower, says Alyson
Mitchell, a food chemist at UC Davis. When this happens, she says, the
plant "has more time to allocate its resources toward making secondary
plant metabolites" such as flavonoids.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90914182

The above is classic organic gardening: take care of the soil, and the
soil will take care of the plant, and the plant will take better care of
you.

Its is quite curious that with studies like these, how the Stanford
report could come to the conclusion that organic, in general, has the
most nutrients.


Basically the Stanford report was only a literature review.


Yup, they concluded that the studies that they studied were
inconclusive. We have seen however, other studies doing the testing
found "organic" produce had more nutrients. I get the feeling that these
studies weren't included in Stanford's review.

As I mentioned in my earlier post, it is an election year (in the U.S.
A.), and if pigs should suddenly learn to fly, don't be surprised.


I suspect there won't even be any preloved pig flying suits that come up for
sale post election.


Be the first one on your block to fly a pig. You'll have to be prepared.

--
Welcome to the New America.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hA736oK9FPg
or
E Pluribus Unum
Green Party Nominee Jill Stein & Running Mate, Cheri Honkala
http://www.democracynow.org/2012/7/13/green_party_nominee_jill_stein_running