Nowhere do we see relationship of soil fertility, farming techniques, and the resulting health consequences of the food consumed more pronounced than in the United States. This is partly because there is so much data available to give us a picture of the results of this 70-year experiment. Each year since World War II, intensive agrochemical-based farming practices have produced agro-chemical-laden food of lower nutrient density at a significant cost. The U.S. Department of Agriculture periodically publishes data on the nutritional content of food. Historically, since the 1940s, each publication of this data shows a decline in the average nutritional content of food. Wheat, for example, used to average a protein content of 19% in the 1940s, but today it averages about 12%. A prime example that this type of poor food production is not working is the very expensive U.S. health crisis in nation of overfed, undernourished people.
In 2007, the United States will spend $2.2 Trillion on health care, yet ranks near the bottom in terms of overall health among industrialized nations. According to the National Institutes of Health, 1 out of 3 children born in the U.S. will develop diabetes, over ½ of all Americans will experience cancer, and 65% are overweight or obese, the most striking example being in the young population, who are now developing what was called “adult onset diabetes” as young as 16, with overweight among those 6-19 rising to nearly 15 percent from just 4% in the 1970s. The U.S., with the highest percentage of processed conventionally-grown foods (95% of food production is non-Organic) we see the most egregious preventable health issues in the world today. It is a crisis which we can trace back to conventional mechanized farming practices, the impact on the relative “strip mining” of the soil, agrochemicals in our diets (including in our newborns), and the nutrient-poor, genetically modified and irradiated foodstuffs produced and consumed over time.
Organically Grown Foods Have More Nutrients
In her research at Johns Hopkins University, Dr. Virginia Worthington investigated the nutrient and toxic (heavy metal and nitrate) constituents of food in the U.S. She combined the research from all available studies that give numerical figures for organic content of specific nutrients and toxins in various foods, using 37 papers and 1,240 comparisons. (Worthington, Virginia, MS, ScD, CNS, The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 7(2): 161-73, 1991. "This paper is an extension of work performed as part of doctoral dissertation at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland.")
For the five most frequently studied vegetables, lettuce, spinach, carrot, potato, and cabbage, she gives average percent differences for four nutrients. In no case was there sufficient data for her to calculate statistical significance. However, the figures are interesting: "For example, vitamin C is 17% more abundant in organic lettuce (conventional 100%, organic 117%)." In the case of spinach, average vitamin C content is 52% higher. We must remember that in actual practice, much variability occurs, not just from the cultivation methods and soil care by organic farmers versus conventional but also from "uncontrollable factors such as rainfall and sunlight, which also influence nutrient content."
Most nutrients were measured in very few studies, so, even with well over a thousand individual comparisons, there were only twelve nutrients with sufficient data for a statistical comparison. They were calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, sodium, zinc, beta-carotene, vitamin C, and nitrates. Of these only five, vitamin C, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, and nitrates, showed statistically significant differences. "For each of the significant nutrients, the organic crops had a higher nutrient content in more than half of the comparisons. For the one toxic compound, nitrates, the organic crop had a lower content the majority of the time." ( http://www.nutrition4health.org/nohanews/NNSp02NutQualOrganicVsConv.htm NOHA NEWS, Vol. XXVII, No. 2, Spring 2002, pages 1-3.)
In order to heal our health challenges, our aims are to prevent further toxicity from foreign chemicals, and to transform our bodily nutrient deficiencies to nutrient abundance. As a caveat, it just so happens that eating Organic food also creates cleaner water, supports struggling farmers, cleans the air, and even ensures greater national security through a healthier populace and greater soil fertility to ensure the growth of nutrient dense food for generations to come!