Misleading reporting on organic benefits

A report on the BBC website caught my attention and had me fuming about one-sided reporting again. The article titled 'Organic has no health benefits' claims that there are no additional nutritional benefits to people who eat organic food instead on non-organic food. The title, however, is misleading.

The clues lie in the small apparently unimportant statements that come later in the article.

This sentence irritated me immensely: "The Food Standards Agency who commissioned the report said the findings would help people make an 'informed choice'." It irritated me because it assumed that this single faceted and myopic view of what the issues are is the only view that really counts. It implies that a narrow view is sufficient for people to be able to make "informed" decisions.

The following quote is the one that conveniently stepped over the real issue as if it was negligible: "She added that the FSA was neither pro nor anti organic food and recognised there were many reasons why people choose to eat organic, including animal welfare or environmental concerns." Actually, the environmental concerns are the important ones. Face it food is food and you're going to get the same nutrition from it regardless of how it was grown. The really important thing is how much good or damage are you doing in the process?

My view is that organic practices are there to ensure the health of the entire system involved in producing that food. Things do not exist in isolation they are surrounded by ecosystems which rely on interdependencies. Similarly our health depends on a complex web of interdependencies with nature that even we do not fully understand.

I take a holistic systems thinking view of things. There is never just one issue. Most things have knock-on effects on other things because that's just the nature of the world we live in. As much as I welcome the work of specialists I detest the laziness of those who report on their work without putting all the issues into context. This makes me wonder whether there is something wrong with the ethics of journalism. Maybe the problem lies with society where not enough of us question the content deeply enough?

There is also this little disclaimer.
"Also, there is not sufficient research on the long-term effects of pesticides on human health,"

For those who have seen "Thank you for smoking" will understand this because it has the same context of the punch line at the end of the film, where the now-independent-consulting activist says to his concerned clients: "Repeat after me: There is no conclusive evidence linking brain tumours to mobile phone use."

There are serious problems out there and there are essentially three types of people:
1. Those who are negligent, or who are exploiting things,
2. Those who are ignorant, and
3. Those who have insight and are trying to do something about those problems.

I sincerely hope you are in category three.