Should the Organic Center Admit Organic is Not More Nutritious?

"The Organic Center is described as a not for profit advocacy group by their supporters in the popular press, which makes them appear to be a bunch of good guys who are interested in promoting good health through organic food. The Organic Center, however, is supported by tax-deductible contributions mainly from organic food companies and their officers, and the main interest of those companies is shareholder profits (as it has to be in our capitalist society), not improved consumer health.

One of the prime messages from The Organic Center in recent years is that organic food is more nutritious, a claim not supported by scientific fact nor by the FDA, USDA, or the UK's Food Standards Agency. Last March, The Organic Center published a fifty-two-page report claiming that organic fruits and vegetables contained 25% more nutrients than conventionally-grown crops. This conclusion was based on their "rigorous methodology" which examined 236 paired comparisons between organic and conventional foods under identical or similar growing conditions. Although this number sounds impressive, Harold McGee of the New York Times wrote that because the report ranged across eleven nutrients and more than a dozen crops, it "hardly seems to justify" the report's conclusions.

I examined the report a bit more carefully and found numerous errors throughout. Correcting for these errors, I calculated in an ACSH report published in July that the 25% figure had no basis in fact and that there were essentially no differences in nutritional content between organically and conventionally grown crops (actually, conventional came out slightly better).

My report generated a response from The Organic Center's chief chemist, Charles Benbrook, and his colleagues (Preston Andrews, Neal Davies, Jaime Yanez, and Xin Zhao), critical of my analysis."

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