The row over the nutritional benefits of organic foods has flared again after the French food agency, the AFSSA, challenged the Food Standards Agency’s recent report.
The FSA claimed that organic products have little or no nutritional edge over conventional produce.
The new review, published in the journal Agronomy for Sustainable Development on the basis of data compiled for the French food agency AFSSA, is based on a previous study published in 2003 as well as on the findings of further studies published in recent years.
Author Denis Lairon of the University of Aix-Marseille carried out an "exhaustive and critical evaluation of the nutritional and sanitary quality of organic food".
Lairon said the key to the study lay in the fact dry matter minerals such as iron and magnesium were more prevalent in organic plant products, thus providing more antioxidants than conventionally grown products.
Moreover, he questioned the data on carbohydrate, protein and vitamin levels, which he said are insufficiently documented.
Lairon also pointed out that the FSA study mainly looked at studies published in English and said there were some other studies it had not taken into account from detailed research centres on certified organic practices.
The French research also took into account food safety and pesticide residues, concluding that between 94 and 100 per cent of organic food does not contain any pesticide residues, and organic vegetables have about 50 per cent less nitrates.
Organic food website Greenplanet.net said: “Now it would be interesting to see whether the same newspapers that in early August have stressed the results of the British research will give as much space to the French one. We doubt that. It seems that there is a general tendency in the food industry to try to minimise organic production’s best virtues in terms of product quality and the work of people who are committed to that.”
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