“”Organic Food Not Healthier”, says FSA”, screamed yesterday’s paper.  Anyone scanning the headline, and reading no further, might have been left with the wrong idea - much to the delight, no doubt, of the big guns in agribusiness, who make a point of dissing the organic food industry whenever they can. Dr Alan Dangour, who led this review by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said:  ”Looking at all of the studies published in the last 50 years, we have concluded that there’s no good evidence that consumption of organic food is beneficial to health based on the nutrient content.”

And it’s that last bit you need read again. The researchers looked at the Nutrient Content Of Foods Only. They chose to overlook effects that chemicals and processes used in the production of non-organic foods might have on your body. Now, the main reason I try to eat a mostly organic diet is to minimise the potential risk to my health from those chemicals and processes. The fact that organic food tastes infinitely better is a bonus - as is the fact that by buying organic, I’m doing my bit for animal welfare and the environment. Unlike conventional farming, the farming of organic food is governed by strict regulations that mean crops are not treated with artificial chemical fertilisers or pesticides, and antibiotics and drugs are not used routinely on livestock. Intense agriculture and other modern food production is introducing food and chemicals into the human food chain that were not present for 99% of mankind’s existence.  We have absolutely no history to draw on to understand their effects. What we know for certain though, is that cancer rates are on the increase.

Organic food campaigners are understandably outraged by this latest attack, calling the research “limited”. and “selective in the extreme”.

Peter Melchett, policy director at the Soil Association, said: “We are disappointed in the conclusions the researchers have reached. It doesn’t say organic food is not healthier, just that, according to the criteria they have adopted, there’s no proof that it is.”

Carlo Leifert, a professor of ecological agriculture at Newcastle University and the co-ordinator of a major EU-funded study which recently found nutrient levels WERE higher in organic foods, also criticised the researchers’ selective style: “I’m worried about the conclusions”, he said “The ballpark figures they have come up with are similar to ours. I don’t understand why the FSA are not going away and saying, ‘Right, there’s something you can do on a farm to improve food.’ But they are so blocked by not wanting to say positive things about organic farming.”

The small print of the FSA report shows that some nutrients, such as beta-carotene, are as much as 53% higher in organic food, but such differences are not reflected in its conclusions.  Why not?  Surely a 53% difference in nutrient level is significant?

The EU study, which completed in May of this year,  involved 31 research and university institutes. It found that levels of nutritionally desirable compounds, such as antioxidants and vitamins, were higher in organic crops, while levels of nutritionally undesirable compounds such as toxic chemicals, mycotoxins and metals such as cadmium and nickel, were lower in organic crops.

That’s good enough for me.  I’ll be sticking with organics for as long as I can afford them (and if more of us chose organic, the price would come down).

The truth is, no amount of scientific research, dodgy or otherwise, will ever over-rule what my instinct already tells me:   I’d rather eat an apple that has not been sprayed with artificial chemical pesticide than one that has.