Interesting study

[OakLeaf]

Meanwhile, stories like this one never make the national news, and often don't even make the local news. The far more common incidences where the poisoning is cumulative and chronic, rather than an acute overexposure, get reported only in the rare event of a lawsuit.

Never mind that the referenced study - which I can't find online - appears to have examined only vitamins and minerals, not other components of food.

Edit: abstract online (full text is by subscription) - this is a meta-analysis examining other studies' findings concerning nitrogen, phosphorus, acidity, and eight other nutrients not identified in the abstract.

Parsons has a very good point, though (expanded on in much more detail by Michael Pollan in the opening chapter(s) of The Omnivore's Dilemma).

I've said it here before - as far as I'm concerned, consumers' personal health is the very last reason to choose organic. It may be a nice side benefit - I tend to believe that it usually is - but that's all.

[NoNo]

I agree with Parsons that local is the way to go, but let's face it, the vast majority of the population doesn't shop at farmer's markets. Yes, in that setting I'm less apt to care whether my tomato is organic or not, but in a supermarket, you'd better believe I'm searching out all the organic goods I can find.

[GLC1968]

I agree with Parsons that local is the way to go, but let's face it, the vast majority of the population doesn't shop at farmer's markets. Yes, in that setting I'm less apt to care whether my tomato is organic or not, but in a supermarket, you'd better believe I'm searching out all the organic goods I can find.

What she said. I don't buy organic because it's better for me, I buy it because it's better for the planet (or, at least most of it is). But as others have mentioned, it's important to know where your food is coming from, organic or not. We've been really shopping around lately to find organic sources for our animal feed needs. We don't care if it's 'certified' but we do want to know the people who produce it and what their methods are... I feel the same way about our people food (though, I'm more willing to eat something bad for me than I am to feed something bad to my animals ).

Contrary to the LA times article, I have found that organic almost always tastes better than conventional. It may not be as pretty, but looks are only skin deep!

[smilingcat]

There are those of us who are lucky enough to be growing much of what we need. Lisa in NY, GLC in Ore. and me here in California.

I for one am getting bit fed up with the term "organic", "free range..." For my partner and me, we are looking at number of incidents of mass posioning, E.coli, salmonella, chegella(sp)... vegetable wax coating on food, to melamine contamination of food, BPA.

We do not buy from Mexico nor from China. The ONLY REASON, WE AVOID it is because we have very low trust in our food safety inspection.

We support family farms. We support sustainability. We support humane way of doing business and this also means to pay a living wage. Conservation is also very important to us.

Lastly, we prefer heirloom variety because we like the BETTER TASTE!

One thing that is perplexing to me is that there have been numerous study which points to properly grown food (traditional sustainable organic) to be nutritionally more dense than the GM food with accelerated growth. I do not care to eat Bt-corn.

I may sound mad here but I really am not. I consider it to be of personal safety issue for one. There are many other reason for doing this but I don't want to be preaching here. so we'll just let it go for now.

BTW, looks like we are going to be buying a shredder/chipper so we can recycle yard waste within my property. Other items on our shopping list, rain barrels, emergency generator cause we lose power often, PV electric system, solar water heater. All of this in my very urban neighborhood.

GLC,

we found a reasonable priced chipper on Amazon of all places.

[OakLeaf]

we found a reasonable priced chipper on Amazon of all places.

But how much was shipping?

I just can't justify a standalone chipper/shredder. We have enough motorized gadgets. But I wish I had one that was hand-cranked, pedal operated (yeah I know it'd have to have a monster mechanical sequence to get enough leverage, but it could be done) or at least got its power from the tractor PTO.

[bmccasland]

Of yard tools to buy, a chipper/shredder rates higher on my list than a leaf blower (I sweep my walks, and rake the leaves). But I have sucker branches that I trim regularily and think a shredder would be a nifty thing to have.

I support my local farmer's market, and am addicted to the milk from the dairyman there. This week I bought peaches, blueberries (last of the season), tomatoes, cucumbers, and yellow squash. Ate a peach this evening the size of a baseball - it was wonderful!

[Trigress]

I know of a study of organic foods done here in Norway only a few years ago at a state university, thus neutrally funded. The research was done on strawberry plants and found no difference in measurable content whatsoever. Mind you, she tested only the plants/berries, not the environment around. This research doesn't support buying organic foods out of a belief that it's healthier, but I still buy organic foods with the environment in mind - no artificial fertilisers can't be all that bad.

[GLC1968]

Ah a chipper - something we haven't thought about yet. We live out in the middle of nowhere where it rains most of the year, so we can easily and safely burn our yard waste. After the goats get through with it and after we pull everything we can use to heat our home in the winter, we actually don't have much left over. We've only had to burn once in the last year and it wasn't a very big pile. Our property is so small and pretty much our only trees are fruit bearing ones that get pruned yearly (and the goats take care of the blackberries), so yard waste for us is minimal.

I don't have my book with me to look up the source, but if I remember correctly, in "In Defense of Food" didn't Michael Pollan cite some studies done about the nutritional difference between GMO conventionally farmed produce and OP organically grown items?