Organic farming is environmentally sustainable because it maintains biodiversity, uses no chemical inputs and no GMOs throughout the supply chain, maintains and increases soil fertility, and cares for animal welfare.
As you would only choose the best CDB products from JustBob’s hemp strains online, you should also choose your food carefully.
QUALITY OF ORGANIC PRODUCTS AND QUALITATIVE DIFFERENCES WITH CONVENTIONAL ONES
The term quality can have several meanings. The quality of organic products can be described from the point of view of:
nutritional quality
organoleptic quality
health quality
environmental quality
social quality
Comparison between organic and conventional food can be done in two ways:
- Analysing products on the market is cheaper but unreliable because more variables must be considered, such as different soil, harvest and storage time, production and ripening or storage conditions, etc.
- Analysing foods obtained from ad hoc experimental crops with the same soil and climate and ripening and harvesting is more expensive but more reliable in its results.
Nutritional Quality
This refers to higher or lower nutrient content. There are now some studies comparing conventional and organic foods. These studies compare parameters on products obtained from different cultivation systems, But these parameters respond to multifactorial criteria and require many repetitions and long-term trials. So many resources.
In summary, the reports of these studies showed better parameters in organic food for:
- higher dry matter content
- higher mineral content in general (the difference was studied in foods grown under the same physicochemical soil conditions)
- higher content in antioxidants (including Vit C), possibly due to the protective function of these molecules in the plant itself
- lower fat content in beef
- lower nitrate content in vegetables, especially leaf vegetables (these compounds are considered anti-nutrients)
- total absence of pesticide residues
- lower protein content in organic cereals, but of much higher quality.
In 2004, the magazine New Scientist published an article,
‘Organic food reduces heart attack and cancer risk’ because the results of a British research study proved that organic soups contain almost six times more salicylic acid, which fights the hardening of the arteries and bowel cancer. According to recent research by the UK’s Institute of Forage Crops and Environmental Research (IGER), organic milk contains more Omega-3 fatty acids, essential for the human body, than conventional milk. Dr. Richard Dewhurst, the research coordinator, found that the tested organic milk samples contained at least 64% more omega-3 fatty acids than traditional milk samples. The higher concentration of these fatty acids in milk is attributable to the increased use of clover in the feed of organic cattle, a common practice in organic farming to compensate for the use of concentrates and synthetic nitrogen fertilizers.
The second ‘State of Science Review’ report by The Organic Center for Education and Promotion (United States) shows how the organic farming system allows agricultural products to possess higher levels of antioxidants than those derived from conventional methods. The report considers a series of studies comparing organic and conventional products’ antioxidant content under the same agronomic and climatic conditions. Among the data presented, one reads that organic products possess antioxidant levels that are, on average, 30 percent higher than conventional analogs in 13 out of 15 cases. Other studies report the presence of up to three times more vitamins and flavonoids in organic products than in conventional ones. The main reasons would lie in the plant’s enhanced immune response in the absence of pesticides. The plant’s active substances would be precisely the antioxidants present in the fresh product, which are essential for their beneficial effect on the consumer.
These studies confirm that organic produce is nutritionally superior to conventional produce at harvest time.
Technological Quality
It was also evaluated. Various degradation tests on cut or grated carrots, potatoes or red beets show that organic products blacken and degrade more slowly than their conventional equivalents under the same environmental conditions. The same result is accurate on cooked potatoes: conventional ones darken about half the time compared to organic ones.
Organoleptic Quality
Other research has addressed quality differences in sensory, i.e. consumer preference based on taste. These factors give variable results due to methodological problems. In general, however, it emerges that the factors influencing taste are:
- Cultivar
- Soil
- Climate
- Cultivation system
- Seasonality
- Preservation methods
Health Quality
However, the point at which organic farming has been most challenged is food safety, i.e., health quality (presence of harmful substances).
Nitrate and pesticide residues in food
Most of these molecules have a long half-life, i.e. they are not degradable, remaining in animal tissue and the environment for decades and acting as ‘endocrine-disruptors’. They are believed to be responsible for various hormonal alterations such as hormone-dependent cancers (breast, prostate, uterus), infertility, early puberty or menopause, fetal malformations, and hermaphroditism in both humans and animals. They are neurotoxic and teratogenic and cause allergies. Their potent carcinogenic action has been demonstrated, although the synergistic (i.e. enhanced) effect of combining the various molecules we commonly find on our plates has never been studied. It has been calculated that we consume up to 2kg per year of pesticides by eating conventional food.
Furthermore, the ‘biological magnification’ phenomenon must be considered: as we move up the food chain (plant, animal, human), these molecules become increasingly concentrated. Therefore, man, who is at the top of this pyramid, will concentrate in his tissues the greatest amount of pesticides found in the environment. It should not be forgotten that those most at risk are children (and older people) as they have a greater need for nutrients, absorb much more from food, but tolerate pollutants less, both based on body weight and due to immature defence and detoxification mechanisms. Psychiatric Times reports that one million children in the US would have levels above 10mcg/dl of pesticide residues and other toxic substances, potentially damaging to the central nervous system.