hello paddy,
>Basically
>trying to prove that organic food is better than the other stuff.
>To my mind, none of it amounted to much. A scientist from
>Denmark has been working with images of plant tinctures,
>dissolved in a salt (copper sulphate maybe) solution and
>precipitated in petri dishes. A crystal pattern is formed, much
>like a tree with many branches and the same pattern remains
>consistent with the same precipitate. He's found that
>organically grown compounds form finer, more delicate images than
>non-organic and makes a leap of faith by calling this difference,
>'vitality'. Nothing has been done to prove that finer images
>mean the food is better for you and he admits this but still
>infers a lot with the term, vitality. BD people from Germany
>have taken this further (as is their way) and formed a vitality
>index with the images proving (lo and behold) that BD crops
>produce the finest images, organic next and conventional dead
>last. They seem convinced that these fine images indicate quality
>and do make this assumption but I saw nothing to convince me this
>was the case.
up to now these tests could convince noone except some people from
the organic movement. THESE are the wrong people, because these ARE
already convinced, that organic food is healthier. the OTHER side
need to be convinced... (i doubt, that it will be possible)
"vitality index" is just a word, which refers to no commonly
agreed meaning.
>That conventional and organic crops produce consistently
>different images was interesting if I believed their research
now THIS is the REAL hot question. the results could be
reproduced with each sample (also at swiss labs), but they did not
correlate with the METHOD of production. WHAT causes these
differences in the images?. according to modern phycics this MIGHT
be explained by differences in the physical structure and photon
emission. so probably no mystical magic involved. but what does it
really mean to quality ???.
maybe it's just the same as in wine production: you have a
certain amount of available nutrients per area. so if you double
your yields by "modern" production systems, it's just logical,
that the nutrients per gallon must be half of those from a yard
with half the yield. that's, why here in europe most of the
wine-producing countries do restrict the yield per ha by volunteer
restrictions. it's the taste, not the cheap price !!
>my feeling is that this is likely to backfire on us because of
>background pollution among other things.
as long as it can be proven, that the residues are still lower
than in conventional food and the amounts found do indicate, that
the residues are REAL background pollution, people here DO
believe, that the organic system is working well enough to prefer
it. and the lower residues ARE proven by governmental controls!
regarding the levels of vitamins and minerals there ARE
contradictions in literature. example:
mike miller posted some interesting data on vegetables and the
nutrient changes over 25 years:
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2000 20:29:13 -0600
Subject: Food Minerals
Peas, green, raw Publication or Revision Date
100 gm edible 1963 1989
1989 NDB No. 11304 1963-1989
Amount Mean Std. Error % Change
Water (%) 78 78.860 0.508 1.10
[..]
Iron (mg) 1.9 1.470 0.050 -22.63
Sodium (mg) 2 5.000 1.287 150.00
^^^^^^^
Potassium (mg) 316 244.000 16.659 -22.78
Tomatoes, ripe, raw Publication or Revision Date
100 gm edible 1963 1989
1989 NDB No. 11529 1963-1989
Amount Mean Std. Error % Change
Water (%) 93.5 93.760 0.062 0.28
[..]
Iron (mg) 0.5 0.450 0.016 -10.00
Sodium (mg) 3 9.000 0.525 200.00
^^^^^^^
Potassium (mg) 244 222.000 4.456 -9.02
----the results show a strong rise in sodium. now the contrary from another mail:
---- In England, Anne Marie-Mayer compared food composition over a 50- year period using data from the UK Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF). Her study, "Historical Changes in the Mineral Content of Fruits and Vegetables" was presented at the Agricultural Production and Nutrition conference held at Tufts University School of Nutrition Science and Policy on March 19-21, 1997.
Table 2, adapted from Marie-Mayer's paper, summarizes the average ratio of nutrient content and dry matter of 20 vegetables and 20 fruits. A ratio of 0.81 for Ca, for example, means that over an approximately 50-year period the average content of calcium in vegetables has declined to 81% of the original level.
Table 2. Average ratio of mineral content and dry matter (new/old) for vegetables and 20 fruits*
Ca Mg Fe Cu Na K P D.M. ^^^^ Vegetable ratio 0.81* 0.65* 0.78 0.19* 0.57* 0.86 0.94 0.97
Fruit ratio 1.00 0.89* 0.68* 0.64* 0.90 0.80* 0.99 0.91
The symbol * indicates a statistical difference
------
in this studye sodium declined (although not significantly except in fruit, tomatoes are a fruit, right?), but the difference to a 150 or 200% rise in the data from usda (in these two vegetables) should have an impact on the overall trend or at least indicate such a trend.
again: if i were an organic farmer, i wouldn't argue with vitamins and minerals ! BUT: these two ingredients CERTAINLY are not the ONLY ones (and mybe not the real essential ones) being responsable for the quality of food. in fact, i believe, they are MINOR important components in food and they just got their actual importance, because they are so easy to analyse..... what about phytohormones, acids, bitter components, phytoalexines, terpenes, terpinaleols, binaleols, terpene alcohols, etherical oils, limolens, ocimens, caryophylens, bisabolens, cymens, kind of proteins and fatty acids and their relation among each other, chromo-components and inhibitors ??? what about the plants, which in the middle ages are known as the "antibiotics for the poor"?
best example are most of the medical herbs, whose positive effects on health you can by NO way just describe by their contents of vitamins and minerals and often not even by their KNOWN ingredients. just ask a pharmacologist on their interactions of KNOWN ingredients and you will be overwhelmed by the things still unknown. you extract the assumed active components and still these don't behave like the plant extract as a whole. or did you ever see the positive influence of a simple grass like anthoxanthum (in germany it's known as "smelling grass") on the feed uptake of cows - or on the negative side of that of cow's uptake of certain plants. cows are by far NOT these perfect chemicists as some people here described them. they can be really dumb, when it comes to the decision, if something is good or bad or even toxic for them (Thlaspi, Indian mustard, rape, Ranunculus, common horse tail, Colchicum). they'll simply eat it in any amount they find in the meadow and die of intoxication! but there certainly are a lot of components in food, which have a major positive impact on health of animals and humans. there's still a lot of research to be done and there still are more things unknown than known!
i repeat my question asked several times before: what is food quality ????? how to proceed??
btw: we just analysed about 500 samples of organic and conventional grains each on bacteria and several phytotoxins. the data clearly show (contrary to literature!) MUCH lower levels of bacteria and lower levels of phytotoxins like aflas and fusarium toxins (only exception: the "yellow germs", which are per se no indication of higher overall field levels).
to mike miller: i would be HIGHLY interested in the differences between older and newer mineral contents in potatoes, because i personally believe, that the results in this fruit would be more significant than in most other fruits. reason: except from rice and vine there is hardly any other fruit, which absorbs soil components so aggressively as potatoes and in which taste depends so much on the soil it grows in (which is the reason why there are so large differences in yields between organic fields and these fertilized with mineral fertilizer). could you do me the favor to retrieve these data ? i expect them to show large differences.
klaus
To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg". If you receive the digest format, use the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg-digest". To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "subscribe sanet-mg-digest".
All messages to sanet-mg are archived at: http://www.sare.org/htdocs/hypermail
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Feb 06 2000 - 12:00:22 EST