State of Science :: Food Safety Italian Scientists Develop Novel
Approach to Compare the Safety of Organic and Conventional Foods
According to a team of Italian scientists, the pesticides
applied to conventional foods "can be seriously dangerous for
human health and the environment" whereas some studies suggest
organic food is more frequently contaminated with natural
toxins. The team developed a new method to rigorously test which
set of potential hazards - the chemical toxins in conventional
foods or the natural ones in organic food - pose the greater
risk. The method works by comparing the impact of conventional
and organic diets fed to rats on highly sensitive markers of
cell responses to toxins consumed through food, in this case a
diet composed of eight varieties of conventional and organic
wheat. Two markers were studied. One involves the degree of
proliferation in lymphocytes found in the intestine and in the
spleen. The second is based on the short-term response of the
liver to the presence of toxins