The Truth About Organics: naturalsolutionshealthstore/the-truth-about-organics-4.aspx?langID=EN Is your family eating pesticides? It’s true – organic foods contain fewer pesticides, and that’s important for your family’s health. Growing evidence suggests that pesticide exposure is linked to neurological problems and some forms of cancer. Even large organizations are talking about it –a report by the National Cancer Institute’s President’s Cancer Panel urged the public to eat foods grown without chemical pesticides, fertilizers, hormones and antibiotics. Exposed Family According to the National Cancer Institute, a child’s greatest exposure to pesticides is through dietary intake. Is your family eating pesticides? Making the switch to organic foods can help reduce your exposure – the Environmental Health Perspective reported that when researchers switched conventional foods with organic foods in the diet of a group of children, the level of pesticides in their urine decreased within one to two days. Growing Organic Organic farming uses other methods to ward off pests, weeds and plant disease including: biological and mechanical pest controls, crop rotation, intercropping and polyculture (growing more than one type of crop in a field), pest-tolerant crops, and natural pesticides. Organic animal farming involves organic feed, access to outdoors and preventative measures to ward of disease. The Strawberry Test However, some still wonder if organic is real. To cull their own curiosity, the Health First Network sent two unmarked pints of strawberries to a university-based food laboratory. One of the unmarked pints was organic strawberries bought at a Health First Network store, and the other was conventional strawberries from the grocery store. The results showed a clear difference: the conventional strawberries contained high levels of a number of pesticides, including 3.5 ppm of fenhexamid (3.0ppm is the upper limit set by the Canada Food and Drug Act); meanwhile the organic strawberries only contained trace amounts of two pesticides. LAB REPORT RESULTS: Click here for full laboratory results. Identifying Organics Organic products carry varying organic logos. The “Canada Organic” logo indicates that the product bearing it has met the Canadian government’s regulatory requirements for organic products. Other organic logos including USA, British Colombia, Quebec, Ontario and others may appear on products on organic products sold in Canada. The Dirty Dozen & The Clean 15 The amount of pesticides required in conventional farming varies from plant to plant. To help consumers learn which produce items are most important to buy organic, and when it is unnecessary, researchers created a list of the foods most contaminated with pesticides, dubbed “The Dirty Dozen”, and those found to have little to no traces of pesticides, “The Clean 15”. Keep these lists handy to help reduce your family’s intake of pesticides, and minimize your grocery bills. Impact Earth The use of organic farming methods offers benefits to the earth including reduced water pollution by agrochemicals, improved soil conditions from crop rotation, and improves the carbon dioxide return to the soil. References: Agricultural Health Study - aghealth.nih.gov/ Canadian Cancer Society – Cancer Environmental Risk Factors cancer.ca/en/cancer-information/cancer-101/what-is-a-risk-factor/environmental-risks/pesticides/?region=on#ixzz2XFiFMGuj Chensheng, Lu et al. Organic diets significantly lowers children’s dietary exposure to organophosphorus pesticides. Environ Health Perspect, 2006 Feb 114(2) ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1367841/ Kamel F and JA Hoppin. Association of pesticide exposure with neurological dysfunction and disease. Environ Health Perspect. 2004 June;112(9):950-958. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1247187/ Aronson KJ, et al. Breast adipose tissue concentrations of polychlorinated biphenyls and Other organochlorines and breast cancer risk. Can Epi Biom Prev. 2000. cebp.aacrjournals.org/content/9/1/55.short Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations – Organic Agriculture fao.org/organicag/oa-faq/oa-faq6/en/
Posted on: Wed, 25 Sep 2013 16:53:30 +0000
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