2nd News Article

NEW YORK - CONSUMERS who opt for organic foods often believe they are improving their health but there is currently no strong evidence that organics bring nutrition-related health benefits, a new research review finds.

A 'disappointingly small' number of well-designed studies have looked at whether organic foods may have health benefits beyond their conventional counterparts, according to the review by researchers with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Health in Britain. Moreover, they found, what studies have been done have largely focused on short-term effects of organic eating - mainly antioxidant activity in the body - rather than longer-term health outcomes.

Most of the antioxidant studies failed to find differences between organic and conventional diets. The review, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, adds to findings reported last year by the same research team.

In that study, the researchers combed through 162 articles published in the scientific literature over the last 50 years, and found no evidence that organic and conventional foods differ significantly in their nutrient content. For the current review, the researchers were able to find only 12 published studies that met their criteria for evaluating the health effects of organic foods.

'A surprising and important finding of this review is the extremely limited nature of the evidence base on this subject, both in terms of the number and quality of studies,' wrote Dr Alan Dangour and his colleagues. Of the 12 studies the researchers identified, 6 were short-term clinical trials that looked at whether specific organic foods changed markers of antioxidant activity in participants' blood.

While questions remain as to whether organic foods have any extra nutritional value, people buy organic for a number of other reasons as well. Organic foods are made without the use of conventional pesticides, synthetic fertilisers, antibiotics or hormones - which could potentially reap benefits for people's health and the environment. The current review, Dr Dangour and his colleagues point out, did not look for studies on the possible health benefits of reduced exposure to those substances nor did it address the environmental impact of organic food production.

Views:
As pointed out by the article, there have not been clear views on the specific health benefits of organic food. However, actually there are some research data that can be found out there, even from farmers' interviews. What our group would like to do is provide a clear view and resource for people to learn more about what specific health benefits each type of organic food can provide.

Since there are very few well-designed studies on organic food, we hope our resource would be of great help to promoting organic food and make a better living for all! Thank you.