When I’m in the fruit and veggie section of a grocery store, it makes me feel a little sad to know that all of that delicious and colourful looking food is likely to be nutritionally deficient and not as healthy as it looks.
Even some “organically” grown food – if I can get it – isn’t always what it’s chalked up to be either. So let’s take a look at what the food and farm industry people say about organic vs. conventionally-grown food plants.
“Healthy soils = healthy food = healthy people,” is a fundamental tenet of many ecological farming systems, yet the nutritional quality of food grown by organic and conventional methods is the subject of much controversy. The mainstream scientific community argues that nutritional differences do not exist and that plants don’t know the difference between organic and chemical fertilizers.
Organic advocates claim organically grown foods are nutritionally superior because such foods contain higher levels of vitamins, minerals and amino acids, and have a much greater level of vitality and are more disease and pest-resistant. In addition, the plants are more healthful due to lower levels of pesticide residue and nitrate-nitrogen and have greater density and better flavor.
In the article, Is Organic Food More Nutritious?, the author states that organic production provides other benefits, such as conserving natural resources, solving rather than creating environmental problems, and reducing the pollution of air, water, soil and food.
There are also environmental and cultural influences on the nutritional composition of produce and soil health.
These include the soil type (overall mineral composition), the level of organic matter (humus content), biological soil and microbial activity, soil moisture, climate and weather (temperature, rainfall, drought), geographical area, overall soil fertility, fertilizing practices and level of pollutants. Growing practices likely to affect food quality include humus management techniques and composting, variety, seed source, length of growing season, irrigation, fertilization, cultivation and time of picking and post-harvest handling.
A common thread in alternative agriculture and health literature is declining food quality in the industrialized food production system due to nutrient-depleted soils.
A U.S. Senate document from 1936 states: “The alarming fact is that foods – fruits and vegetables and grains – now being raised on million acres of land that no longer contains enough of certain needed minerals, are starving us, no matter how much of them we eat.” Leap ahead a few decades and we can read countless other articles and studies saying the same thing, such as the 1993 document titled, Exhausted Soil Produces Exhausted People.
Dr. Joel Wallach, author of Dead Doctors Don’t Lie, states, “All animals and humans get their food directly or indirectly from plants, and all plants get their food from the soil. Therefore, mineral-deficient soil may be one of the greatest original sources of disease in the world today.”
In the book Empty Harvest - Understanding the link between our food, our immunity and our planet, Dr. Bernard Jensen from Cornell University wrote, “There is only one major disease and that is malnutrition. All ailments and afflictions to which we may fall heir are directly traceable to this major disease. Food crops grown on depleted soil produce malnourished bodies, and disease preys on malnourished bodies.” To give an example, from 1963 to 1992, the average percentage of change in the mineral content of some fruits and vegetables looks like this: calcium – 30 per cent; iron – 30 per cent; magnesium – 21 per cent; phosphorus – 12 per cent.
The agriculture-nutrition-wellness connection involves more than farming, especially when nutritious food leaving the farm gate is less likely than ever to translate into healthy eating
To sum it up, organically grown produce from organic seed sources contributes to the long-term health of the soil and environment, and to the humans and animals that eat it. Throw in the fact that the organic farming industry supports wellness, sustainability and reproduction for future generations to come.
The more I learn about our food and what’s in it or on it, the more I’m motivated to grow more of my own in the best soil possible, and also support my local organic farms where I know where it’s coming from and how it’s grown.
-Margo Westaway is a holistic gardener based in Sicamous.