Here's today's post from "Sham vs. Wham: The Health Insider", at
http://shamvswham.blogspot.com/

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Headline: Validation of the Value of Organic Produce?

Perhaps you've chosen organic produce, as my family has, and yet you
really don't know if the extra expense is worthwhile. Well, you can
relax, because research is starting to come in about the nutritional
content of that organic produce. The benefits may, if this research
continues to bear fruit (sorry, couldn't help it), go further than
just reducing the amount of pesticides in your body.

Take the tomato, for example, which is a relatively "hot" organic,
selling at a 19% increase annually. According to new research,
organically grown tomatoes contain higher levels of beneficial
flavonoids. The science, published in the Journal of Agricultural and
Food Chemistry, reports that tomatoes grown organically contained
higher levels of the nutrients quercetin and kaempferol aglycones than
their conventionally grown counterparts.

Alyson Mitchell from the University of California-Davis, and
researchers from University of Minnesota studied the levels of these
important nutritional ingredients in dried tomato samples over a
period of ten years. The tomatoes were grown and processed
conventionally or organically.

The organic tomatoes contained on average 79 and 97 per cent more of
the nutrients than conventionally grown tomatoes.

The authors propose that "over-fertilization" is behind of the loss of
these chemicals in conventionally grown plants. Flavonoids are
produced as a defence mechanism of the plant in response to nutrient
deficiency. In the organically grown plants, no fertilization occurred
which was mirrored in increasing levels of the flavonoids over time as
the soil fertility decreased.

To me, it sounds like organic farming provides produce with the
ingredients intended by nature. That ought to be considered a good
idea at most tables.

D.

On Sat, 21 Jul 2007 07:58:29 -0700, "D." wrote:

Here's today's post from "Sham vs. Wham: The Health Insider", at
http://shamvswham.blogspot.com/

detail snipped
To me, it sounds like organic farming provides produce with the
ingredients intended by nature. That ought to be considered a good
idea at most tables.

D.


Commenting independently on the research, Lord Krebs, former chairman
of the UK's Food Standards Agency (FSA) and now an academic at Oxford,
told The Times that higher flavonoid levels do not necessarily mean
that organic food is healthier.

"This depends on the relevance of the differences to the human body.
Tomato ketchup has higher levels of lycopene [a strong antioxidant]
than either organic or conventional tomatoes. So if you wanted lots of
lycopene you should eat tomato ketchup," he said.