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  • From: yarrow@sfo.com
  • To: Healthy soil and sustainable growing <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] As giant crops flourish, vitamins, minerals and taste
  • Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2007 21:52:52 -0700

At 9:50 PM -0500 9/14/07, <activism98201@verizon.net> wrote:
To answer my own question/challenge... What this article (http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/331421_bigfood13.html) noted that I found extremely hard to believe (so much so that I didn't believe it) was that no one foresaw the nutrient decline in our foods:


But that's not what the article (or the report it's based on) says. It's not saying no one foresaw, it's saying no one measured it, and now that we have, it's a clear trend. But I also suspect the Organic Center's spokesperson is being disingenuous in the quotes used in the article, because it has been the mission of the Organic Center to find this kind of information. Look in the mainstream press, though, and you'll still find lots of people pooh-poohing organics, seeing only a higher price and perceiving no benefits -- that's his audience. He's not talking to the people who already know that organics offer better nutrition, he's addressing all the skeptics who think labeling something "organic" is just another marketing scam or luxury label.

On another level, I think he's also saying that the hybridizers and industrial-scale farms have been short-sighted, in being focused only on yields and paying no attention to nutritional quality or taste. Yet they're the ones who own the market. (An aside: "everyone" seems to know that those tasteless tomatoes sold in the winter are not worth eating. So who buys them? Is it institutional/restaurant buyers, mostly? Or are they the test case for anyone who wants to prove that people will eat anything if it "looks" like something that once had some flavor?)

I think most organic growers have for a long time **suspected** that organically grown produce has more nutrients, but that's not the same thing as doing the measurements. Now the science has been done, so we have something to point to when challenged about the "supposed benefits" of organics.

Dr. Alan Greene, a pediatrician who wrote the foreword to the report, has been speaking at a range of conferences in the past year about the nutritional benefits of organics and the hazards of pesticides to children.





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