Sanet Post, David Leonard,
Re: Quality of Organic Food
December 11, 1996

Patricia and sanetters in general,

I think that organic agriculture may miss an ideal opportunity to maximize its potential impact on Americans' health and sustainable wellness unless it broadens its mission beyond environmental friendliness and the production of nutritious food (whether or not that food is actually nutritionally superior). The agriculture-nutrition-wellness connection involves more than farming, especially these days when nutritious food leaving the farm gate is less likely than ever to translate into healthy eating. Some reasons:

1. Modern food processing adds fat (usually unhealthy hydrogenated oils), sugar, and salt to many products and often markedly reduces the fiber content and vitamin/mineral content of cereal grains (fortification with 3 B vitamins and iron doesn't come close to redressing these losses).
2. It's harder than ever to know how to select healthy foods, given the mind-boggling array of supermarket food choices and the proliferation of low-fat, fake-fat, artifically sweetened, or vitamin-fortified (usually beyond any rational need) "techno-foods". Sugar-laden, fiber-depleted breakfats cereals, cookies, snacks, and juice drinks are often labelled "nutritious" after adding a penny's worth of vitamins and/or minerals.
3. The public is understandably confused about nutrition. Just try looking at any bookstore's collection of diet books to get a consensus opinion on how to eat well.
4. We've become a food-obsessed society and now eat over 200 calories a day more than in 1978. Food is everywhere, and both adults and kids are comnstantly bombarded by a media blitz urging us to stuff ourselves, usually with the wrong foods. About 45% of the typical U.S. family's food budget is now spent at restaurants (usually fast food) vs. 25% in 1950.
5. America's major nutritional legacy (and, indeed our federal dietary guidelines until the '92 introduction of the USDA Food Guide Pyramid) stems from traditional Anglo-Germanic eating patterns favoring a high-fat, low-fiber diet where meat and dairy products play a central role. Numerous diet/disease studies worldwide (e.g. Cornell/Oxford/China Study, Seven Countries Study, etc.) have correlated this eating style with a much higher rate of chronic degenerative diseases (heart disease, cancer, osteoporosis, diabetes, etc.) than in the case of plant-centered diets.

Organic agriculture might do well to realize that pesticide contamination (though a much more valid issue in other regards) and inferior nutritional quality of non-organic foods (if true) have less to do with America's dietary inadequacy and lamentably high rate of chronic degenerative diseases than the negative aspects of our modern food supply and eating habits mentioned above.

There exists a real void in nutrition education in America today, and it seems that many nutritionists have sold out (or given up) to the food industry's warped version of sound eating through techno-foods or convenience foods. The USDA did an admirable job of winning approval of the plant-centered Food Guide Pyramid over stiff opposition from food industry/commodity groups, but the visual depiction on food packages isn't enough to get the message across (the vital details lie hidden in 2 USDA Home and Garden bulletins, and current nutrition extension programs are inadequate to get the message across.)

The organic agriculture movement could foster a much needed sustainable agriculture-sustainable health connection by becoming more involved in nutrition education efforts that explain not only the health advantages of using minimally-processed, "whole" foods like grains, legumes, fruits, veggies, but also how to transform them into tasty, low-hassle, quickly prepared recipes that can better compete with packaged, often highly processed, convenience foods. It's also an ideal time to launch school-based nutrition education activities, since school lunch programs will have to abide by the new plant-centered Dietary Guideines by early'97.

Aside from the USDA Food Pyramid, other plant-centered pyramids based on healthy (but flavorful), traditional ethnic eating patterns (e.g. Asian, Mediterranean, Mexican) provide an ideal vehicle for learning about healthy eating and putting it into practice.

Regards

David Leonard, Agro-nutritionist
Tucson, AZ

P.S. No flames please over comments on the Anglo-Germanic eating legacy. I'm not suggesting it be trashed, just that, for health reasons, it should be used in moderation.