The organic and the flawed
In today’s Washington Post, Jennifer LaRue Huget’s weekly column, “Eat, Drink and Be Healthy,” is devoted to Julia Child’s famous book on which she is somewhat less enthusiastic than Peggy Steinfels in her thread of a day or two ago. In the same issue of the Post, she has a little note “The Checkup,” which begins with this paragraph:
A paper in the September issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition reviewed all the scientific studies of organic and conventional foods published between 1958 and 2008. Culling flawed studies left a team of researchers with 162 out of an initial 152,000. Examining those 162 studies’ findings, the researchers found that organically produced foods offered no nutritional advantages over conventionally produced foods.
I am less interested in the results of this study than in that off-hand remark that “culling flawed studies left a team of researchers with 162 out of an initial 152,000.” Now does this mean that, as my trusty calculator leads me to believe, that only .00108% of all those studies can be considered not to be flawed? That only one in a thousand of them is not flawed?
By the way, our hens have begun producing eggs. Organic, and nutritionally far superior to any others produced anywhere on the planet.
Can you define “nutritionally far superior”?
Can you provide some kind of credible evidence that your eggs are nutritionally far superior?
Whatever the outcome of that, I (perhaps mistakenly) always thought that the “organic” issue was about chemicals, hormones, etc., not calories or nutrition.
Studies are notoriously unreliable – look at who is paying for them. Usually it is big insurance or big pharma companies; not exactly objective.
Think back to the huge lawsuits over BIG TOBACCO and all of their studies – until a whistleblower finally released an internal study that was very, very valid.
Issue in the US today – obesity. Basically, organic vs. non-organic will do little to address this issue – it takes behavioral changes to nutrition, diet, exercise, etc. Not easy.
Can you define “nutritionally far superior”?
Can you provide some kind of credible evidence that your eggs are nutritionally far superior?
Bob,
Not merely nutritionally far superior, but “nutritionally far superior to any others produced anywhere on the planet.” Now, why would anyone say something like that if it weren’t true???
Our hens are also the humblest on the planet.
Of course, I’d love to know who did the review cited in the note, but, really, only one study in a thousand was not flawed?!
Janet LaRue Huget: “Julia Child Brought Us Both the Art and the Soul of French Cooking
Much as I love food, I’ve never had much interest in exploring the iconic cookbook “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” by Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle and Simone Beck. Just the thought of it hardened my arteries.”
So she never tried the book, and with a name like LaRue Huget she didn’t come from a family that used butter as its basic food oil? Hard to believe. Though it is absolutely true that JC is a big butter fan in the great work, even for things that didn’t need it. Tant pis!
The eggs sound great; do you have a stand in front of your ‘umble chicket coop? We’ll stopy by and buy.
Research studies can be funny things at times. Literally. When I was in graduate school, the hot research journal was not the “American Journal of [fill in the blank with a research subject of your choice].” The must-read publication was the “Journal of Irreproducible Results,” which was part serious research and part satire. If nothing else, JIR reminded researchers that scientific inquiry has both strengths and limitations, and that it can be enjoyable.
One never knew what topic would ignite a firestorm of comments and opposing research papers, and that was the fun of reading the journal. I recall an especially contentious battle on an exceedingly important topic, i.e., whether a person gets wetter by walking 100 meters (or some set distance) in a rainstorm or by running the same distance through the storm. Numerous papers came in on that topic over the course of a year or two, complete with equations, graphs, hypotheses, and all the other scientific doodads and verbiage found in more traditional scientific papers.
I’m glad to see the JIR is still around and that it has maintained a serious focus: “JIR targets hypocrisy, arrogance, and ostentatious sesquipedalian circumlocution.”
Precisely. ;)
http://www.jir.com/
This recent news about organic is something I have no opinion (out of ignorance) but have followed with interest. Below is one dissenting piece on the news.
Fr. Komochak: I’m curious if any of the factors below apply to your hens and their environment.
–
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/159551.php
Why do people choose organic?
Putting the health issue to one side, there are many other reasons people wish to buy organic – two of them are listed below:
1. The environment
The effect on life forms within the soil – if you look at video footage of tractors ploughing fields forty years ago you will notice there used to be a sizeable number of birds gobbling up worms and bugs. Today there are very few of them, and sometimes none at all.
There are significantly more birds, butterflies, beetles, bats and wild flowers on organic farms than conventional farms.
Protection of endangered species – intensive farming is known to have a negative impact on the future of many endangered species. “A staggering 5 million skylarks are estimated to have vanished in the past 30 years as a result of agricultural intensification,” (Speech given by Sir John Krebs, Chair of the Food Standards Agency at Queen’s University, Belfast, on 5 November 2003).
Coastal waters – there is much less run-off of nutrients from organic farms, compared to other farms, which cause algae blooms in coastal waters.
Organic farming encourages practices which are more in line with measures to combat climate change. An example is the use of solar powered fertility through crops like red clover that fix nitrogen into the soil for subsequent crops.
2. Animal welfare (farm animals)
As organically farmed animals are encouraged to pursue natural behavior, which usually includes plenty of space, more natural feeding habits, as well as receiving fewer drugs and antibiotics, their quality of life is generally better compared to animals in other farms. In the vast majority of cases, organic farms with livestock have free-range animals. In every organic poultry farm in the UK, birds are kept in smaller flocks and spend much more of their time roaming outside on fresh grass – they also have considerably more indoor space, compared to non-organic poultry farms.
Re: Research journals:
Medical Papers by Ghostwriters Pushed Therapy
Newly unveiled court documents show that ghostwriters paid by a pharmaceutical company played a major role in producing 26 scientific papers backing the use of hormone replacement therapy in women, suggesting that the level of hidden industry influence on medical literature is broader than previously known.
Here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/05/health/research/05ghost.html?_r=1&hp
Historyman: Yes, both points apply in our case. Our chicken coop and run have nothing in common with the chicken-factories.
I buy eggs from free-range hens from the beauty shop, again one of the few perks of living here in Mayberry, as Kathy P. calls it. (Update: Though we have no KKK Klavern, some of the local boys are trying to get a permit for a Tea Party so they can wear funny headgear and talk into microphones about our president’s socialist agenda.)
ANYway, the beautician’s kids are in 4H, and she got stuck with some leftover chicken project, which she has turned into small but going concern in addition to hair styling.
She has a pair of silky bantam breeders she’s trying to get rid of. Probably just the right size for a NYC apartment. Let me know ….
While I agree that battery egg operations are cruel and should be outlawed, they do isolate the animals and reduces their exposure to wild birds that carry diseases that can be transmitted to humans. And perhaps Farmer Komonchak can attest to the fact that chickens are not particularly nice animals. Put a strange hen in the hen house, and you’re likely to find it pecked to death by morning.
Julia Child defended her use of butter (and eggs) many times by noting that the French eat smaller portions than Americans, and that the American diet also has less fiber and more sugar and salt.
Julia herself lived into her 90s. So take that LaRue Huget.
The story is misleading. The 152,000 figure is wrong by one order of magnitude. And not all of the initial studies were even relevant in the first place. The researchers identified only 162 studies that were relevant, out of which 55 were reliable. The abstract:
Well, not literally an order of magnitude. But there’s an extra digit in the Post’s number.
Also, the Post is wrong that the study examined the findings of 162 studies (the number is 55).
And thus this is yet another lesson in why I never trust journalists . . . whenever they write about some subject that I know well, or that I can easily check, there are invariably a lot of errors.
Last week, our branch of the Sate County Extension board talked about just getting fgolks to eat healthy, especially our children and seniors.
We felt an important dynamic was to get folks to se that eating well in this economy can be cost effective as well.
Which leads me to feeding the hungry -talking to an old friend back East involved in food pantry and feeding those who can’t help themselves.Hard to find tasty but healthful food from the gleanings we get from the State Food Bank, he told me.
Organic or not, what is found in what we eat is vital (e,g, salt) and there continues to be a broad need t oeducate folks about the values related to health.
In the meantime, good luck with your eggs,Fr.K!
Mr. Studebaker; Thanks for checking on this. It’s a comfort that the extent of ineptitude is not as great as reported.
I think that a major factor in healthy eating for seniors is to have someone else to prepare for and eat with. When I am by myself, my diet goes to hades in a handbasket. Whe He Who Must be Fed is with me, we eat the right things almost always, skipping most carbs and eating fish, fruit and veggies until we take on vague resemblances of The Jolly Green Giant.
Yes, good luck with those chickens! Looks like it’s a good specialty locally. The crazy weather we’ve been having in my part of the Hudson Valley has been very hard on anyone doing market gardening, though, organic or otherwise. The coldest, wettest June on record seems to have led to an epidemic of tomato and potato blight. Our condo has a communal garden that scheduled a harvest festival, but now will have little to celebrate. So diversification sounds like the way to go, even amongst the flowers. My petunias and impatiens look pathetic, but the tough little evening primrose and indestructible cleome are flourishing no matter what. Can’t beat wildflowers.