Clearing the Air: Organic vs. Conventional

More recently there have been several articles here on T-muscle that have been emasculating the nutritional benefits of Organic foods.

I get that we are intelligent lifters who are trying to strike a balance between what’s cost effective and what is the absolute best. But, SINCE WHEN have we not considered the blatant and obvious?

My goal here is to get a list of what we feel are choice organic products, and hopefully we can get some specific comparisons vs. some generalized article or clusterfudge of citations claiming that the most mundane ordinary version is every bit as nutritious or statistically insignificantly inferior to the choicest organic products we have run across.

The initial one that first comes to mind is Organic Pasture butter vs. ordinary full fat butter.

Another one I really would like to see are comparisons in specific eggs. This is the one that initially got my attention after thinking about an article posted last week, and this morning when I cracked open a couple of small banyan chicken egg, no shit the yolks on these bad boys are a rich orange color vs. a cloudy yellow that I see when I crack open a mundane factory farmed egg. I get these bad boy eggs from an older couple that own a ranch, not sure they are completely organic in terms of feed but they are definitely free range animals scratching up the ground outside looking for bugs and whatever other crazy things they eat.

Just saying there are certain foods out there, taste, appearance wise it’s just hard to accept that they are on par with run of the mill store bought stuff.

If we could get a list of specific foods, we have a hunch are better than statistically insignificant, I’d like to get a list going if you folks don’t mind adding your two cents.

People like to try to use science for this topic when they need to use common sense.

organic food yes, organic oreos no…

and before someone brings it up the recent organic study was found that one of the authors has/had ties to big tobaccoo and standford gets large funding/grants from Cargill.

also, I pose this to people. if both were the same price, what would you buy?

I think ideally one would buy organic everything, but if you had to pick and choose I’d try to start with meats and dairy. Most of the antibiotics and hormones reside in fats.

That being said, the term “organic” means about as much as “natural” does now days. As far as I know, the organic stamp only means that the produce you bought has been grown in soil that has been pesticide/herbicide free for at least 5 years I believe. Organic produce can still be sprayed with pesticides in processing(packaging) and transport. Or at the grocery store.

[quote]i_am_ketosis wrote:
I think ideally one would buy organic everything, but if you had to pick and choose I’d try to start with meats and dairy. Most of the antibiotics and hormones reside in fats.

That being said, the term “organic” means about as much as “natural” does now days. As far as I know, the organic stamp only means that the produce you bought has been grown in soil that has been pesticide/herbicide free for at least 5 years I believe. Organic produce can still be sprayed with pesticides in processing(packaging) and transport. Or at the grocery store.
[/quote]

Absolutely agree with this - meat, dairy, eggs is the best place to start. It’s always nice to buy from local farmers too. The farm my family buys from encourages you to come visit and tour the farm so you know exactly what you’re getting. Best. Eggs. Ever.

[quote]jehovasfitness wrote:

organic food yes, organic oreos no…

[/quote]

Funny a friend of mine brought these to work. I asked him how is it possible, other then tasting like fake cardboard oreos how are they organic?

There was a study recently that said there’s no nutritional difference between organic and regular foods so everybody should eat regular foods. The crazy part, is that in the same study it says the only difference was in the amount of pesticides and hormones in the food…HELLO??? isn’t that the fuckin point healthnuts were trying to make. While I’m glad conventional food is nutritious I’d prefer not to have ingredients that come with instructions on what to do if ingested on my mangoes.

[quote]Airtruth wrote:

[quote]jehovasfitness wrote:

organic food yes, organic oreos no…

[/quote]

Funny a friend of mine brought these to work. I asked him how is it possible, other then tasting like fake cardboard oreos how are they organic?

There was a study recently that said there’s no nutritional difference between organic and regular foods so everybody should eat regular foods. The crazy part, is that in the same study it says the only difference was in the amount of pesticides and hormones in the food…HELLO??? isn’t that the fuckin point healthnuts were trying to make. While I’m glad conventional food is nutritious I’d prefer not to have ingredients that come with instructions on what to do if ingested on my mangoes.[/quote]

They seriously have organic oreos? I am unaware.

http://med.stanford.edu/ism/2012/september/organic.html

Interesting study that was published this month.

What is organic?

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
What is organic?[/quote]

Any compound that includes a carbon atom.

[quote]El Dingo wrote:
http://med.stanford.edu/ism/2012/september/organic.html

Interesting study that was published this month.[/quote]

Yup, and one of the study authors has/had ties to tobacco industry and Stanford gets donations from large food corp Cargill

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
What is organic?[/quote]

the USDA has organic label laws, you can look it up

[quote]i_am_ketosis wrote:
I think ideally one would buy organic everything, but if you had to pick and choose I’d try to start with meats and dairy. Most of the antibiotics and hormones reside in fats.

That being said, the term “organic” means about as much as “natural” does now days. As far as I know, the organic stamp only means that the produce you bought has been grown in soil that has been pesticide/herbicide free for at least 5 years I believe. Organic produce can still be sprayed with pesticides in processing(packaging) and transport. Or at the grocery store.
[/quote]

Organic is not as important to me as where my food comes from. Locally grown is probably healthier just because it requires less additives to keep it fresh.

Mono-culture is a bigger health hazard because it depletes soil nutrients and makes the food grown in it less nutritious.

Chemical products are largely unnecessary when crops and livestock are rotated regularly.

To me it’s not just what I am eating it is what I am eating ate…if that makes sense.

[quote]i_am_ketosis wrote:

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
What is organic?[/quote]

Any compound that includes a carbon atom. [/quote]

So pretty much all food is organic. :slight_smile:

The organic fad is no different than the antioxidant or hand sanitizer fad. Reducing exposures isn’t necessarily a good thing.
Sure antioxidants are good (they increase Natural Killer cells and fight off high concentrations of Free Oxygen Radicals) but they are bad in that they limit the number of transcription factors used in creation of proteins.

Hand sanitizers are good because they kill 99.988898989% of germs, however, how are we supposed to be exposed to antigens to develop antibodies if we are never exposed to anything.
There is nothing wrong with eating organic but it shouldnt be made out to be anything its not. Its not going to prevent cancer. There are a million other reasons that we will get it.

Basically it comes down to who is more easily convinced by fear. Personally, I think we are exposed to enough on a daily basis to negate the benefits of eating “organic” or “natural.”

Organic vs conventional has always been a question of mine. Im more concerned with the safety aspect rather than nutrional content. I keep reading conflicting studies but my common sense tells me organic might be healthier.
As previouslty stated being that most of the harmful material is contained in the fat does that mean eating low fat versions of meat and dairy negate a lot of it?

I also read an article from Keifer who stated that the amount of chemicals used is so minor that it’s inconsequential and he also stated that the growth hormone is rendered inabsorbable so that shouldn’t be an issue either.
He also went on to state that the these foods would pose more of a health risk had they not been treated in the first place.
Anyone have any insight to any of this?

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:

[quote]i_am_ketosis wrote:

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
What is organic?[/quote]

Any compound that includes a carbon atom. [/quote]

So pretty much all food is organic. :)[/quote]

In the true definition, yep.

[quote]i_am_ketosis wrote:

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:

[quote]i_am_ketosis wrote:

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
What is organic?[/quote]

Any compound that includes a carbon atom. [/quote]

So pretty much all food is organic. :)[/quote]

In the true definition, yep. [/quote]

and what are we arguing then? this angle makes no sense. No one is arguing about organic as a broad term, but rather how organic defines how food is grown/produced.

[quote]jehovasfitness wrote:

[quote]i_am_ketosis wrote:

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:

[quote]i_am_ketosis wrote:

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
What is organic?[/quote]

Any compound that includes a carbon atom. [/quote]

So pretty much all food is organic. :)[/quote]

In the true definition, yep. [/quote]

and what are we arguing then? this angle makes no sense. No one is arguing about organic as a broad term, but rather how organic defines how food is grown/produced.
[/quote]

I’m just being a bit of a shit head. My shit headedness does have a point though. Organic doesn’t really mean what most people think it means. I tend to believe that this is done on purpose, just like putting “natural” on all kinds of shit so people think it’s not bad for them.

[quote]jehovasfitness wrote:

[quote]i_am_ketosis wrote:

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:

[quote]i_am_ketosis wrote:

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
What is organic?[/quote]

Any compound that includes a carbon atom. [/quote]

So pretty much all food is organic. :)[/quote]

In the true definition, yep. [/quote]

and what are we arguing then? this angle makes no sense. No one is arguing about organic as a broad term, but rather how organic defines how food is grown/produced.
[/quote]

http://www.nal.usda.gov/afsic/pubs/ofp/ofp.shtml

USDA definitions of organic food production.