"Ooo no, none of that organic stuff for me, ta..."

[Lizzer]

Ok, I'm a little in shock at this comment I heard the other week and I wondered what your views were?
I consider myself to having been educated on nutrition, environment etc just through what I pick up on the tv, newspapers, through friends etc. Through this I have come to the conclusion that I would love to buy and eat organic produce ALL the time, due to the fact there are no added chemicals to the fruit and veg, that the animals are fed without additives and no anti-biotics are included in their diet and generally it is how ALL FOOD was not THAT long ago...

However, at the moment it is more pricey, budgeting is a daily part of my life but I am aware that the more people who buy the produce the cheaper it will become, so I buy what I can afford...

What scares me is the ignorance about it all is staggering. Take one woman, mid-twenties, 2 young children, well educated. When she spotted an organic milk carton at a mutual friends' house that was about to be poured into our cups of tea she quickly said, "Oh is it organic? Oh I don't like that stuff, I'll just have mine black!"
Anyone else had similar encounters?

The main point is really that ALL of us maintain a good healthy diet, a proper balanced diet, which is the problem with a lot of people nowadays. for example, if you make a pot of soup and whizz it up then the kids DON'T know that they are eating all the veggies that they normally go green at the thought of! Good healthy wholesome food good chunky stews, with or without meat, mince and tatties, stew and tatties, roasts, these things are good for you. Shame a lot of people laugh and the likes of us on here because we do make as some would say real food.

Lambing in November and Spring, well we normally lmab at Xmas but we only have 6 this year as they were all to fat (bloaters) when they went to the tup in July. Then the rest of the ewes (800) lamb in March and April. Early lambing can be to intensive and if the ewes are in the shed at night and on a wet day their feet can become sore and then you can get problems with Twin-Lamb disease (low blood sugar) and the ewe can't get about, then I have to dose her with Glucose and Molasses (mixed in one bottle ready made!)and in some instances they can go blind and don't get better until they have lambed, usually with silly lambs that need to be fed on the bottle and then I become attached and have a crying fit when they are going back to mum or twinned onto another ewe! Spring is a grand time for lambing, usually good weather and grass is starting to come as well, so the ewes and their lambs get the best food of all good old green grass.

Aloha, thank you

Sofieames, do you know what has caused the large increase in asthma in children, in autism, in eczma?

no, well nor do I, except the answer certainly doesn't lie with organic food. Pesticides...??

that's a good point, Lil. There is certainly some evidence to suggest the increase in asthma is due to kids not being subjected to enough bacteria at an early age(and are therefore not having the chance to build up their immune systems naturally) - pesticides and anti-biotics in farm animals could also add to that. Or it ould be something else...

Problem is Lils, there are so many factors you can't really link to any one thing. Increase in all those illnesses you've described might be linked to increased formula use, increased and faster diagnosis (this is certainly true for asthma or autism - doctors even 20 years ago were quite reluctant to diagnose asthma), air pollution, increased central heating (certainly for asthma this is probably a factor), mutated illnesses, genetic weakness, etc. Yes pesticides and other pollutants are probably an issue but I doubt it's as black and white as all that.

Sorry Lil, don't know how the 's' crept in while typing your name!

I think there are so many ways in which we've "messed up" our health that it's impossible to say whether pesticides, pollution etc ar responsible for or ills. EG Better cleanliness cuts infections but it's suggested that too much cleanliness contributes to poorer immune systems. Antibiotics save lives yet they are also claimed to lead to drug resistant "super bugs". How do you win?

I go for mostly organic when buying fruit & vegetables, usually get organic milk (tastes no different to me!) and I get organic free range eggs. I don't beat myself up about it though and if there is no organinc version available, I have no qualms about buying non-organic. The only thing I won't buy is non-free range eggs.

Aloha, I just don't accept that argument on the cost of organic food. Fresh fuit and vegetables, even organic, form a relatively small part of the average weekly food budget. We have a good few years of evidence in the UK to show that it isn't the case as organic f&V has actually stimulated interest of fresh food generally.

Croppy, I agree, when it comes to the extra cost of organics its nothing compared to the amount of money we are willing to pay for other less important foodstuffs like a pint of lager, or aglass of wine in a pub. I don't think organic food is expensive, its just that mass-produced food is cheap, and we've forgotten what food should cost and should taste like, come to that!

Agree tho' that pesticides are not the answer to all our ills, but blind faith in mass produciton isn't either.

My dh, himself a farmer, says that the trouble with organic food is the manure. The soil does have very strict restrictions on it (has got to be free from pesticides for 4 years, etc), but so long as the manure is also labelled 'organic' that is not so strict. But there is no such thing as organic manure, as pesticides and antibiotics have been in our food for years now, any animal dung or waste products will be full of contamination, and the farmers are not allowed to use the chemicals that kill certain bacteria, therefore organic growing lays open more possibilities of harmful bacteria growing in the soil.

What I try to do is to grow vegetables in our garden every year, then at least I know what it has been grown in and it's much cheaper than buying at the supermarket.

There was something in the paper this weekend about how we have messed up our diets. Essentially we are hunter-gatherers and evolution has been able to keep up with the way we have learned to process our food over the past 50 years, hence many of the problems we see today re obesity.

I agree with Soupdragon that there are so many diferent factors it must almost impossible to sort it out. Also, I wonder if even the perception that we are less healthy is actually true?

As a nation we are living longer and in better health than ever before, and the mortality rate of our babies and children is at its lowest ever. We may have rising rates of asthma (don't I know it, all four of mine are asthmatic!), eczema, and other diseases but are we seeing more of these because other scourges such as Scarlet Fever and Measles no longer wipe out our children? Cancer, too, is predominantly (but sadly not exclusively) a disease of old age and used to be relativly uncommon because most people died before they were old enough to develop it. So maybe we're not as unhealthy as we think? Ive no idea whether that's the case, it's a theory that popped into my head just now!!

The thing which I really do worry about is HIV/Aids. No one seems to be able to stop it spreading, esp in Africa, and the thought of all that lost potential makes me want to weep.

Aloha (or anyone) -- why is it that fresh fruit & veg have more pesticide residues? I mean, what is it about processing a potato into crisps or chips that reduces the pesticide residue? Or making a tomato into tomato sauce, or sugar beet into sugar? How does food processing remove pesticide residues for plants we normally eat without the skin, anyway? I don't get it....

(genuinely baffled, here)

There is quite a lot of evidence that a diet rich in fruit and veg helps with asthma, so once again we see more pesticides (on fruit & veg) = less disease. It's a hard one to ignore IMO. & pesticides have been used over more than 20 years, and not only that, but big epidemiological studies over five or ten years all show that people who eat more fruit & veg develop LESS cancer not more so those pesticides certainly don't seem to cause cancer. Fruit & veg, with pesticides or not are wonder foods! It seems too that peeling or washing does seem to remove the residue very effectively. Cleanliness seems to be linked with asthma & eczema - ie too much washing, too much double glazing and not enough exposure to dirt, animals, fresh air and germs! It's a trade-off in some ways, I suppose. No Scarlet Fever etc but more asthma. Also, poor diet (low in fruit & veg) and car fumes. I'm not attacking organic foods, just think the evidence is very strong that pesticides do not cause cancer. Cancer is overwhelmingly a disease of old age, and as more of us get to be old, more of us will get cancer, I suppose - as SueDonim says.

"more pesticides (on fruit & veg) = less disease"

I'm sorry, but pesticides don't create less disease in people!

I'm not a pesticide rep either! And not crazy about the idea of eating them... but the evidence seems so clear that they are not a cause of cancer that I felt I had to accept it.

PS Tigger 2, it was one of your posts that sent me off the farmer's market to get some non-organic but properly sourced meat! So thanks.

Not directly = less disease, yes, but the fact is the more pesticides people ingested, provided it was on fruit and veg, the less cancer they had. The people who ate the least fruit and veg so had least exposure to pesticides, had worse health.

I agree with SoupDragon. All that evidence proves is that the good of the vitamins/minerals of eating lots of fruit and veg outweighs any potential damage the pesticides might have (perhaps by making the body more resilient to the pesticides?). This does not necessarily mean the pesticides are a good thing

Incidentally, there's studies showing that there are lower cancer rates in people who drink more water in a day - I wouldn't equate that to saying that more fluoride means less cancer which seems to be a similar argument.

That's not fact at all, it's an example of how statistics can be twisted. It's the work of the fruit & veg, nothing to do with the pesticides. If there was a proper study of only-organic- eaters and only-non-organic-eaters who both ate the right amount of fruit n veg we may well see that organic eaters have even less cancer than non-organic eaters.

You could say that people who eat lots of fresh fruit and veg and blow up a balloon every day have less cancer but it won't be the balloon that's doing it

and we all know that you work for "Pesticides R Us", Aloha , don't try and hide it.

Pesticides may not directly cause cancer but I'm not sure I see the relevance to the debate on non-organic fruit and veg versus organic.

I think the argument was that if pesticides don't cause cancer etc, why pay out for organic veg?

Organic Farmers ARE allowed to use fertilisers, just not the normal 20-10-10 or Nitrogen that many farmers use. One more point, if it wasn't for the invention of many antibiotics then many cattle, sheep etc would not be here, because disease would have eradicated them. On the Organic Fruit and Veg, much of this stuff is imported from abroad and has travelled many miles in cold storage to get here. Many farmers who went Organic did so for the money not for any better way of farming the money that some receive is bloody obscene! just so that they don't put on fertiliser or routinely worm their cattle or sheep. Many of them have to half their stock because they don't have any grass and a lot of the animals I have seen on SOME Organic Farms need a bloody good dose because they riddled with worms or have chronic pnuemonia. This is what is ssooooooo wrong today, many of the public think that unless we are all Organic, even the fruit and veg farmers then we are all BAD farmers, this is not the case and the media has a lot ot answer for, this is a subject that really gets up my nose. If anyone wants to come and see both of my farms then please do, you would be very welcome, see how we do it, see my calves, see my cows, my heifers that are coming to the calving. See how they are looked after, DH is out now feeding the cows because they have just finished their silage and he doesn't want them standing hungry until the morning. Yes, there are cowboys out there, in all businesses there are the idiots, we try to do our best, but in some peoples eyes that is simply not enough.

The present Agriculture Minister the Haggard Beckett, would have all farmers on their knees within the next 4 years, if it hadn't been the joint forces of France and Germany she would have abolished all Quotas, milk, cattle, sheep. Which would have led to an open Free World Market, do you want milk from cows that are milked in the field by hand?, no hygiene at all, no tracebility of you meat? to assurance that treatment for warbles hasn't been used, no assurance with what antibiotics have been used, no assusrance what age the cattle are?, at present in GB the present age that cattle can be killed for human consumption is 30 months. There are measures in place in this country carried out by various bodies that they can go to our vet and ask what anitbiotics have been used over the past year, as we have batch numbers on the bottle that we put into our medicine book (computer). Sorry I've gone off on one, but, I don't want people to think that we are all cowboys, that go about us willy nilly using pesticides and antibiotics, to give you and example, yesterday we jagged 25of our calves for pnuemonia, we used 200 mls at a cost of £109.00 + VAT per bottle which is 100 mls per bottle, so it cost us £218 + VAT within 20 minutes yesterday morning. I am not complaining, just an example of what the costs can be, in theory we have just spent the price of one animal when it is sold on keeping them alive.

sorry i've taken so long...too busy searching for xmas presents for my 10 million (step)children...
Aloha has got it mostly right. The important bit is eating the fruits and veg (5 servings a day reduces your chances of getting cancer in half). This is no where near outweighed by the small amounts of residues of pesticides that remain on the fruits and veg. In fact, there are more carcinogens from the roasting of the beans in a cup of coffee than you'll get in a year of pesticide residues on fruit and veg. Also, there are some studies that show that organicaly grown fruits and veg have significantly higher levels of naturally occuring carcinogens (this is how nature kills off the bugs that eat the leaves) as the plants have been bred (without the help of gm of course) to be more naturally resistant to insects. Also, organic does NOT mean that no pesticides are used. It only means that certain rather old fashioned pesticides are allowed (i've mentioned on other threads that this includes sulfites that many asthmatics like me are very allergic to). And even this varies from country to country. However, please note that this entire explanation is only in reference to the nutritional value of pesticides and fruit and veg. It does not take into account the effect on farm workers and the surrounding lands. Though most modern pesticides (unlike the older ones used by some organic farmers) "biodegrade" into harmless compounds relatively quickly. It's really a matter of setting priorities that make sense. If you don't smoke and don't ride motorcycles (2 most dangerous things you can do to yourself) you are really doing pretty well. If you then eat your 5 servings a day and excercise a bit and aren't overweight you are doing better than 90% of the population.
Cancer is a disease of the old as it usually takes 20 years to develop. This has to do with accumulating dna damage (caused by lots of free radicals created by breathing) that your body eventually can't repair fast enough. The anti-oxidants help bind up these free radicals. Sorry if this is a bit garbled (i'm sure i'll have all my nomenclature corrected by the scientists out there), but my last science course was 20 years ago at uni.
Hey tigger2. You shouldn't throw out invites like that. Lucky for you your are far away...I can think of nothing I'd rather have right now than some NON-organic fresh lamb! Or do you only have cows...in which case i'll happily settle for a lovely calves liver. OOOh I'm making myself hungry...dh cooked us kippers and rice for dinner since he forgot to cook the kippers for breakfast. (I had veg and fruit for lunch).
And by the way Lil, there were a few communities on the west coast in the 60's that had some serious cancers/illnesses that were traced to the organic veg that they had been eating which was full of some sort of naturally occurring carcinogen. It caused birth defects in all their goats (who had been eating it too) and some of their children. When tests are done for carcinogenicity man-made and natural chemicals and compounds come out pretty much even. Just because it was man-made does mean it's bad. ok enough. Time to go kill a few brain cells with some very (un)natural alcohol.

Sofiames where would we be without you?
Thanks for this