Dive Brief:
- An international team of researchers has completed a massive review of data related to organic food -- analyzing some 343 peer-reviewed studies from around the world -- and announced that organic food has substantially more antioxidants and substantially less pesticide residue than conventional crops.
- The study stops short of making any health claims about the data, sticking instead to simple statistical facts tied to the food itself and noting that there are "statistically significant, meaningful" differences in the levels of chemicals.
- The study compares organic and conventional versions of fruit, vegetables, and grains.
Dive Insight:
The Internet is abuzz with reactions to the study. And those reactions, predictably, tend to fall along the usual fault lines in the food debate. There are folks eager to note that the study doesn't say that organic food is healthier than conventional. And there are folks eager to note that the study does say organic food provides much higher levels of antioxidants per calorie.
But the part of the study that seems most likely to generate a whole new series of debates involves cadmium, a poisonous metal. The study found that organic crops, particularly organic grains, had significantly lower levels of cadmium than conventional crops. That's not all that surprising, given that cadmium does sometimes contaminate conventional fertilizers. But the same is true of other metals like mercury and lead. And the study found no significant difference in the levels of those metals in organic and conventional crops.