There has always been a lot of arguing over “organic” and
“natural” foods. Recently, the brunt of this arguing came after
a Stanford study that questioned the advantages of organic meat
and produce. The study brought up a number of points, concluding
that although organic foods are no more nutritious, they have
less contamination from pesticides and antibiotic-resistant
bacteria. This critique of organic foods was compounded by
another study that concluded, “Organic farms were less polluting
for a given area of land, but were often more polluting per unit
of food produced.” Of course, these findings were met with heavy
resistance. A counterpoint, and a worthy one, is that
“conventional” food was found to have more pesticide residue.
However, as Steven Novella notes on Science-Based Medicine, this
finding is largely a red herring: Even if we take the most pro-
organic assumption – that there are more pesticides on
conventional produce and that those pesticides have greater
negative health effects than organic p