A report clearly designed to attempt to derail the organic food industry was recently published by a division of the University of London. The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine researchers didn’t even conduct any new studies to come up with their affirmation that organic food is the nutritional equivalent of non-organic food. Instead, they reviewed 162 studies from the past 50 years, which is to say that they read a lot of very boring magazine articles. They then concluded, somehow, that organic food is the nutritional equivalent of non-organic food.

This study won’t convince the hardcore organic consumer, who knows to dig a little before buying into anything. This study will, however, sway the more mainstream consumer who had previously been thinking about buying the odd household organic item, due to its prominent placement today on the front page of msnbc.com and other news sites.

Lets leave the dubious nature of the findings alone for a moment and look at the criteria of the study itself. Most people buy organics because of their lack of preservatives, chemicals and hormones. They don’t buy them because they believe that they have extra vitamins. The only way to “enhance nutritional value” is to fortify the food with vitamins, something that is needless in the case of vitamin-rich fruits and vegetables.

Tags: organic food nutritional value, organic food study, organic university london, university of london organic food

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