No evidence organic foods benefit health: study

No news here for Fitness Watch readers. (And see the article below)

Consumers who opt for organic foods often believe they are improving their health, but there is currently no strong evidence that organics bring nutrition-related health benefits, a new research review finds.

A "disappointingly small" number of well-designed studies have looked at whether organic foods may have health benefits beyond their conventional counterparts', according to the review, by researchers with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Health in the UK.

Moreover, they found, what studies have been done have largely focused on short-term effects of organic eating -- mainly antioxidant activity in the body -- rather than longer-term health outcomes. And most of the antioxidant studies failed to find differences between organic and conventional diets.

The review, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, adds to findings reported last year by the same research team.

In that study, the researchers combed through 162 articles published in the scientific literature over the last 50 years, and found no evidence that organic and conventional foods differ significantly in their nutrient content.

For the current review, the researchers were able to find only 12 published studies that met their criteria for evaluating the health effects of organic foods.

"A surprising and important finding of this review is the extremely limited nature of the evidence base on this subject, both in terms of the number and quality of studies," write Dr. Alan D. Dangour and his colleagues.

The reason is that, based on good current knowledge, to eat healthily, i.e., to lower one's risk of developing certain bad illnesses, one merely has to eat so that his/her BMI is between 18.5 and 24.9.

There are no good data to suggest that if one gets there eating boneless, skinless, free-range organic chicken breasts he or she is healthier than someone who eats red meat and achieves the same BMI.

If you really want to learn how to eat healthily, which is different from eating healthy foods since there are none of which we are aware, go here.