Charles Benbrook, Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources, Washington State University Blog Post, September 2012 A comprehensive paper on the nutritional quality and safety of conventional versus organic food was published in the September 4, 2012 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine (Smith-Spangler et al., Vol. 157, Number 5: pages 349–369). The Stanford University Medical […]
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Fresh off the printer is a new paper featured in Nature: Scientific Reports that describes important new research by an international consortium of scientists led by Robin Mesnage from the Gene Expression and Therapy Group at King’s College of London. It appears that for the first time, clear evidence has been published of subtle metabolic […]
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A wide body of research, involving work with dozens of organisms spread all over the tree of life, has shown that restricting caloric intake tends to promote longevity. But it can also reduce energy levels and impair reproductive performance. Scientists have shown that the plant secondary metabolite and antioxidant resveratrol mimics the impacts of caloric […]
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Tamar Haspel is a talented food writer for the Washington Post. She often delves into food quality and health issues. In this “Unearthed” piece she uses dollars per calorie as the basic metric of the cost of “healthy” food, and compares basics like flour and vegetable oils to processed foods like Doritos and hot dogs. […]
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Undercurrent News, a fish-industry journal, recently reported that Cargill, in partnership with the German chemical company BASF, is developing GE canola that expresses much higher levels of two long-chain omega 3 fatty acids –EPA and DPA (but not DHA). Omega-3s are found naturally only in fish, some fungi, and microalgae. This new biotech would transcribe […]
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Cudos to the BBC and Nature magazine for highlighting the critical role of poor food choices in driving poor health and sustainability of our food systems. This BBC piece summarizes the chilling statements in a commentary in Nature, the #1 general science journal in the world. In the commentary, leading scientists make the point that […]
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A team based at the University of Washington in Seattle has published an important study showing that in school-age children, a diet composed of predominantly organic food “…provides a dramatic and immediate protective effect against exposures to organophosphorous (OP) pesticides.” Twenty-three children were enrolled in the study, which included three phases of testing for OP […]
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According to a team of Italian scientists, the pesticides applied to conventional foods “can be seriously dangerous for human health and the environment” whereas some studies suggest organic food is more frequently contaminated with natural toxins. The team developed a new method to rigorously test which set of potential hazards – the chemical toxins in […]
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Oxidative damage to human brain cells is an inevitable part of getting older. This is because the body’s natural antioxidant defense mechanisms become steadily less efficient as we age. For this reason, the consumption of foods high in antioxidant content is increasingly important among the elderly, see Antioxidants for more information. Scientists at Cornell University […]
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Scientists at the Danish Research Center for Organic Farming have been developing methods to test whether and to what extent a diet composed of organic food and/or animal feed improves animal health. Three groups of rats were fed diets composed of potatoes, carrots, peas, green kale, and rapeseed oil. One group received a diet from […]
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