Important reasons to buy organic foods ONLY....

Tuesday, 11-4-2014

We start with the most important reason to buy organic produce and other foods in this post.

But there are two more that we now know of --

      that are almost or even more important that I just discovered myself about a month ago!  The last part of this post has both of them

1.  As regular readers of this blog know, eating 6 or more servings of vegetables each day cuts the risk of dying of any cause, particularly heart attacks, strokes, and cancer by 43%.

And, eating the 9 servings of the more nutritious vegetables a day as Dr Terry Wahls has researched, can even cause you to grow younger and turn off MS and maybe other autoimmune diseases and cut the other risks of dying and degenerative diseases even more.

Eating one or more pieces of whole fresh fruit a day is by itself nearly that protective against dying from any cause AND about twice as effective at preventing both kinds of stroke!

Even better, if you combine this with completely stopping the foods and drinks that are heart attack starters and completely avoid tobacco smoke, you can do even better!

Best of all, if you do this and add some regular, vigorous exercise most of the fat and sometimes all of it you gained before will come off with no further effort and it will stay off after you make these lifestyle upgrades.

But, notice, that’s 42 to over 70 servings of produce a week or in the 2,000 to 3500 range per year.

A small amount of pesticide or herbicide once or twice a year on your produce may be harmless, true.

But times thousands of pieces every year for decades, in my view this is probably not the case.

So, I’ve advocated buying organic produce and avoiding animal protein foods where the animals were fed grains heavily sprayed with pesticides and herbicides.

And, over 90% of the time and more than that for what we eat at home, I’ve only bought organic produce and used beans and nuts and wild caught fish and animal proteins from animals not fed grains.

2.  I found a recent article I read written by a Danish pig farmer who switched away from using GMO grains to feed them to be extremely persuasive.

His pigs’ overall health was so much better so fast that the farmer's manager asked what had been changed in the food.  They got sick far less and seemed healthier.

But their reproductive health was so dramatically better, it was sharply reducing the work his manager had to do to deal with reproductive issues from a lot to almost none.

The best two ways to avoid GMO foods are to:

a) Stop eating the harmful foods they go into, grains -- particularly wheat, corn, and soy; and all cheap vegetable oils high in pro-inflammatory omega 6 oils.  That's because those crops are well over 90 % GMO.  (Those oils include corn oil, soy oil, and sorry to say almost all canola oil!)

So if you never eat them, not only do you avoid the harms of the food, you avoid the most harmful GMO foods!

b) Organic foods are not allowed to be GMO.  So if you only buy organic produce you get no or far less GMO foods.

c)  The same is true of animal protein foods from animals fed these grains. 

Farmed fish have tons of pollutants and are fed these grains. 

Any beef not 100% fed on grass and organic sprouts are fed these grains and their fat is both very high in omega 6 and GMO foods. 

Pasture fed eggs and poultry escape this; and truly organic fed poultry at least avoids eating GMO grains. 

The same is true for butter, cream, milk, cheese, and whey. Go with the organic, grass fed versions only.

Wild caught fish, protein from naturally fed animals, beans and nuts, and vegetables all avoid GMOs too in addition to the herbicides and pesticides and excessive omega 6 oils!

3.   Smokers get several kinds of harms on top of everything else because tobacco and its smoke are high in Cadmium -- and that includes getting far more Alzheimer's disease!

Guess what?  

Organic produce also has far less cadmium than produce that is not organic.

AND to be organic, the produce cannot be GMO foods.

So organic produce IS far safer to eat than produce that is not!

Not only does it have far less pesticide and herbicide residue, it is not GMO AND it has far less cadmium.

And excess cadmium is so harmful, that, by itself, shows that it pays to ONLY buy organic produce!

Medical News Today had this:

“Organically grown foods may offer greater health and safety than foods conventionally grown    

30 September 2014 

Scientists have long recognized the dangers of cadmium (Cd) exposure to the human body.

This heavy metal is emerging as a major cause of vascular disorders, common cancers, osteoporosis, and kidney disease, and can also cause damage to the body's reproductive and neurological systems.

While tobacco smoke can be a significant source of exposure for smokers, the primary source of cadmium exposure for nonsmokers is through consumption of contaminated plant-based foods.

A survey of all previous pertinent research (meta-analysis), appearing recently in the British Journal of Nutrition, concluded that organically grown foods are on average 48 percent lower in Cd than conventionally grown foods.

Now, in an invited commentary appearing in the same journal, Saint Luke's Mid America Heart Institute cardiovascular research scientist James J. DiNicolantonio, Pharm.D., and Mark F. McCarty, B.A., place this finding in the context of the growing epidemiology linking Cd exposure to adverse health outcomes, and conclude that consistent consumption of organic foods over a lifetime could be expected to favorably influence health and mortality risk. [I added this bolding.]

"For years, nutritionists and consumers have struggled with the question, 'is organic really better?'" said Dr. DiNicolantonio. "What analysis of this research reveals is that, due to the serious health impacts of cadmium exposure and the markedly lower levels of Cd in organically grown foods, the long-term consumption of such foods is likely to be notably protective with respect to a wide range of common pathologies."

Citing previous studies, DiNicolantonio and McCarty suggest that Cd contamination of chemical fertilizers may be primarily responsible for the higher Cd content of conventionally grown foods.

Dietary Cd is found primarily in grains, green vegetables, root vegetables, tubers, organ meat, and shellfish; hence, in nonsmokers, most Cd exposure derives from plant foods usually thought to be healthful. Although tiny amounts of Cd are excreted in the urine, the human body has no physiological mechanism for regulating its Cd levels, so levels tend to accumulate over time, with a half-life of 10-30 years. Clinically available chelation therapies are not helpful for coping with chronic Cd exposure, as most Cd accumulates in the interior of cells where chelating drugs cannot reach. Fortunately, research has shown that dietary zinc functions to counteract Cd toxicity. Cd is an important inducer of oxidative stress, and rodent studies suggest that the antioxidant activity of spirulina may also lessen the adverse health impact of Cd already in the body.

Nonsmokers who consistently choose organic foods throughout life, as compared to nonsmokers who rely on conventional agriculture, could be expected to experience about half the Cd exposure. By surveying recent epidemiological findings correlating body Cd levels with mortality risk, DiNicolantonio and McCarty estimate that consistent use of organic foods could result in a 20 percent reduction in total mortality.

"Choosing organic foods, avoiding tobacco smoke, and preventing or correcting iron deficiency, are three smart strategies for keeping your body burden of Cd relatively low," DiNicolantonio notes. "Iron deficiency increases the intestines' absorption of dietary Cd, and this probably explains why women tend to have higher body levels of Cd than men."

The recent meta-analysis of organic foods also found that such foods tend to be about 30 percent higher in antioxidant phytochemicals, likely because many of these phytochemicals function to protect plants from pests; crops treated with pesticides may have less need for this protection. DiNicolantonio and McCarty point to research suggesting that higher dietary intake of polyphenolic antioxidants such as flavonoids may provide some protection to the vascular system.”

Here’s the original link:

Organically grown foods may offer greater health and safety than foods 

conventionally grown

http://mnt.to/l/4qWW

Scientists have long recognized the dangers of cadmium (Cd) exposure to the 

human body.