Thursday, June 5: Here’s something that’ll interest you: The Journal of Applied Nutrition, over a two-year period, purchased both organically and conventionally grown apples, potatoes, pears, wheat, and sweet corn in the western suburbs of Chicago and analyzed these foods for their mineral contents. Four to fifteen samples were taken for each food group.
On a per-weight basis, average levels of essential minerals were much higher in organically grown versus conventionally grown food. The organically grown food averaged 63 percent higher in calcium, 78 percent higher in chromium, 118 percent higher in magnesium, 178 percent higher in molybdenum, 91 percent higher in phosphorus, 125 percent higher in potassium, and 60 percent higher in zinc. And one more thing: organically raised food averaged 29 percent lower in mercury—a toxin—than the conventionally raised food.
“Organic foods” means much more than plump red tomatoes fresh from the vine versus the half-green kind grown under hothouse conditions and picked long before they’re ripe. When I talk about organic foods, I’m referring to grains, dairy products, and meats, the latter coming from livestock that chew fresh grass in open fields or on organic feed that isn’t laced with antibiotics and growth hormones to fatten them up for the slaughterhouse. Organic crops come from fields that haven’t been doused with chemical pesticides, herbicides, and synthetic fertilizers, while conventionally grown crops are grown in tired soils that have lost much of their nutrient potency over the last hundred years because of rampant mineral depletion. The nutritive value of today’s conventionally grown foods doesn’t hold a candle to what our forebears ate.
In 2002, the U.S. Department of Agriculture set standards that producers and handlers must follow in order to be certified by the USDA as organic. To receive a “100% Organic” seal, the product must be all-organic, which means the fruit or vegetable was grown without the use of most synthetic and petroleum-derived pesticides and fertilizers, antibiotics, genetic engineering, irradiation, and sewer sludge, for three consecutive years.
Organic meats must come from animals that eat 100 percent organic feed, without animal by-products, and for dairy cows, the whole herd must have eaten organic feed for the past one-year period. USDA seal reading “Organic” means that the product is at least 95 percent organic, and “Made with Organic Ingredients” means at least 70 percent of the ingredients are organic.
So look for the green seals reading “Organic,” which is the preferred way to eat. The next best approach is the “Made with Organic Ingredients” seal, which is still going to be far better for you than most conventionally grown foods.