Is Organic Food Better for Your Health?

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Many of my friends and family will only touch organic food. That’s their right, and I don’t try to fight with them. I sometimes get uncomfortable, though, when they make claims about organic food that just aren’t supported by data and evidence. Moreover, I think arguing with anyone who is attempting to eat more fruits and vegetables that theirs are in some way “not good enough” is counter-productive. Watch the video and argue with me in the comments below.

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Here are references for all the studies I talk about: http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/?p=53086

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Stan Muller — Director, Producer
Aaron Carroll — Writer
Mark Olsen – Graphics

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Ali Partovi serves on the board of FoodCorps, a non-profit that deploys volunteers to improve food sourcing & education in schools. He is a passionate advocate of sustainable food systems, and has invested in ventures like BrightFarms and Farmigo, as well as real estate fund Farmland LP to scale more resource-efficient farming techniques.

Ali Partovi has been described by the San Jose Mercury News as one of “Silicon Valley’s top angel investors,” having been on the ground floor of both Facebook and Dropbox. Shortly after graduating from Harvard, he co-founded LinkExchange (acquired by Microsoft for 5mm). Partovi later co-founded iLike (acquired by MySpace). Partovi’s investments have also included: Zappos, OPOWER, Thumbtack, and Airbnb. Ali co-founded non-profit Code.org, which promotes Computer Science education and hosts the worldwide “Hour of Code.”

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx
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40 thoughts on “Is Organic Food Better for Your Health?”

  1. Rodale Press's book, "Composting" published beginning about 1957, reported that vegetables grown in compost had significantly more vitamin and mineral content than those grown using chemical fertilizer.  Compost also provides compounds beneficial to plants beside nutrients.  Small Farm had an article years back reporting how hybrid varieties of corn apparently had the ability to assimilate trace minerals from the soil, accidentally bred out of the varieties.  Even when the hybrid corn was grown in greenhouse trials with soils deliberately fertilized with cobalt, the hybrids didn't take up cobalt from the soil.  I personally was told by a former Agricultural Research Service employee that there was a very long list of subjects which were forbidden to research, and that ARS employees would not only be fired, but their careers would be ended because they would never be able to publish again.  It is common sense that food grown without pesticides is safer than food grown with them.  When Roundup first came out, my Weed Control course professor said it only had the toxicity of aspirin.  Now we know that was chemical industry lies.  If research comes out of a university or the government saying there is no difference between organic versus chemical, it doesn't necessarily mean anything.

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  2. Yes, we can feed everyone organically. Growing foods underground! Then no pesticides are needed since there aren't any pests or weeds, forests are not ravaged to grow foods, and yields are high since weather and soil nutrition is perfectly controlled.

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  3. Organic food enthusiasts need to suck it up now. He based it all on evidence. Either you produce the counter-evidence or simply just accept the fact that you've been fooling yourself.

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  4. The reason you get a flood of hate mail is because organic enthusiasts are all up their own arses, they don't listen to science and they just get in your face about it all. I personally think "organic" food is disgusting. Organic food made me ill. I used to go to an organic college and their food was SO bad, I once went for 5 whole days living of only tap water. There is PLENTY of research to prove conventional food is better or at least no different. There is also no real evidence that a GMO's is harmful. I trust Monsanto, and NOT the soil association. The reason I am so fanatically anti organic is because of my un happy experiences at the glass house college and how stuck in their ways organic enthusiasts are online, even to the point of being abusive towards me simply for telling the truth.

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  5. The argument that biotech is saving the world from hunger is an absolute lie. There is enough food in the world to feed everyone; it's just very poorly distributed. The problem is made worse when GMO seeds are sold to farmers in poor and rural areas at a gobsmacking price and renders the soil completely infertile after a year because of the unbelievable amount of pesticide being used. Not to mention how much of this gets into the groundwater, which poisons the people who drink it.
    Organic isn't about the nutritional value – it's about the farming methods. It's about sustainability.

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  6. It is also funny that Norman Borlaug who is being referred to many times in this video was working for DuPont, a similar monster like Monsanto!

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  7. Food is about quality, not quantity. The chemical environment within which a given nutrient enters the body is paramount to downstream effects. This video is misinformation.

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  8. sorry. regardless of the "studies" you are referring to, your data is skewed , and your studies are always going to be done by government agencies. sort of like the gov study in to 9-11 . they appoint their own people to do an investigation on the so called 9-11 commision .any real third party investigations done have yielded much damning information, and shows them being at the least complicit , without going into the many details that show it was an orchestrated event. so these studies will not yield any information that could possibly present damning evidence against the gov. that is not an investigation that is a cover up.

    organic food is absoulutely better for your health. you can tell by the freshness in taste and brightness in the health and vitality of the organic food. . nature gave us intuition, and when consuming organic food you absolutely taste the difference.

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  9. It comes down to pollution.
    How does it effects the earth, and the people that work with it. Pesticides don't just hurt bad bugs. They hurt bees too. you may ask why should I care? Well the answer to that I'd simple most food you eat is pollinated by bees. No bees no apples or many of the other foods that make up your diet. And while studies may say it doesn't effect the food you eat. The effect it was on the soil and workers can't be ignored.

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  10. Lmao I can't help but laugh. Organic food DOES is more nutritious. This guy is looking at old studies which has been criticized for its not so great research and it's funny those studies were funded by the corporation's that made this food. A newer study has been done using more research and there's a huge difference in nutrition between organic and non organic. You people are ridiculous. Organic food is better for animals, us and the planet. I never liked this channel and this is the top reason why. Stop using out of date studies and the crappy food is non organic and is more nutritious so please get these facts straight and stop lying to people.

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  11. Good speech- but he didn't address the high certification and labeling FEES that organic farmers pay. That's a main reason why organic prices are higher.
    But, even if organic is more expensive initially, its still less costly when ALL factors are considered, like disease linked to diet and the resulting time spent in doctor offices for meds and treatment plus personal pain/suffering. Organic is how all food used to be before conventional farming started in the 1940's. Joel Salatin does a great job outlining the history of farming in, "Folks, This Ain't Normal!".

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  12. no doubt vegan life is healthy… but vegan life is also expensive as fuck ;_; .. body and brains need too much of proteins, iron, zinc, omega 3 fatty acid.

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  13. its a lot more simple.. only 10 % of farms are organic and not all of them are true organic because the way the usda sets up the rules… if 90% of farms were organic then prices would fall.. its not going to happen if the public dont demand it.. by the way most of the organic in stores is not organic because the usda dont want to stop the factory farms…

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  14. How is organic food for the one percent? There's organic food in every grocery store…there's this weird habit of referring to rich people as the one percent. The one percent wouldn't even be shopping in your grocery store.

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  15. But still, because of demand "they" price gouge the consumers, taking advantage of us, then pricing us out of affordability.
    There was a time when the USA produced mega tons of non-gmo healthy wheat and was still able to feed the North America, Western Asia(former USSR), and other countries.

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  16. I feel like the wrong question is being asked. Why is junk food so cheap? Look at a bottle of Coca Cola. They sell a 1.25L bottled water for more than they sell a 1.25L bottle of Coke. Even though the coke contains the same water, Has chemicals that are delivered from big food science companies. Has sugar that has been refined from sugar cane and shipped to the factory… Why is is much cheaper? The economics is rigged and stacked in the corporation's favour.

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  17. It so #$^%#% expensive because it's (at)#(at)% expensive to make, and #$(at)#$ difficult to separate it out.

    One thing that makes it so #$(at)$ to make is that the very Organic process can't use any of the chemical or pharmaceuticals that are the very thing industrialised farmers have been using to get much high productivity. Using old methods yields were modest, land had to be rested or it would lose available nutrients. Modern fertilisers put back those macro nutrients and some micronutrients (but damages the local biosphere ) … the only way to stop the "nutrient loss" …. otherwise known as "food", is to produce less. But producing less, means that the overheads don't stretch as far, and the margin per item must go up to provide wages and return of investment (currently about (-5%) – 5%)).

    Maybe if he was farming not venturing or educating he would be able to realise that simple equation.

    You want food that has less production per hectare, with higher human effort, and without medication (and with extra certification) …. its going to cost more than bulk manufactured cheap stuff.

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  18. Expensive? Maybe, but blame the middle classes who will pay over the odds in the belief that they are doing the healthy thing by rejecting mass market foodstuffs. The vast majority can't afford those kind of prices and are pretty much locked in by economics.

    On the other hand we have producers who have higher overheads based on economy of scale that come from operating on a very small scale. Then, when some are willing to pay prices that are stupidly high, are happy to price their goods accordingly and profiteer on the stupidity of others.

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  19. Great presentation, introduced by one of our team members, many of us watched it together.
    It was educational and motivational for our team, as a member of a small Bay area organic food company I recommend this video to everyone who cares about sustainability of our planet, people…
    Any small organic food businesses can use this video as an educational literature !
    Cheers!!!

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  20. Everything in nature was created perfectly for its intended function. There will be many on these videos who come along to disagree, either because they work for a certain corporation, or simply to fuel their egos.. But the fact remains – nature does not lie.

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  21. why would one dogmatically ban the cheapest most abundant plant nutrient sources available…. bad crack habit and your a delusional retard or what?

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  22. We have too much production in agriculture. That is why the farmers share of food is so cheap. If we had more organic it would help the price go up but who would farm because people do not work in ways like in developing countries and we would have shortages. and it would not be as sustainable as modern US farming. Ali Partovi is just misinformed by his agenda.

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