186 the rice diet renewal
Organic Foods, the Best Investment
We Can MakeMost people are unaware that organic foods have consistently and
signifi cantly shown greater nutritional content than their conven-
tional counterparts, from a few percent to more than 20 percent
for certain minerals and, on average, about 30 percent in the case
of antioxidants. These fi gures are not hopeful wild guesses but
were reported by Dr. Charles Benbrook, the chief scientist for the
Organic Center, whose January 2008 PowerPoint presentation
for the Oregon Tenth ’ s Annual Meeting synthesized eighty - eight
peer - reviewed studies that have compared the nutrient content
of organic and conventionally grown foods. Dr. Alan Greene, the
former chairman of the board for the Organic Center, as well as a
teacher at Stanford University School of Medicine, invites you to
read the report they sponsored for the American Association for the
Advancement of Science, “ Still No Free Lunch: Nutrient Levels
in U.S. Food Supply Eroded by Pursuit of High Yields ” by Brian
Halweil. I will share a few highlights here:
Two British nutritionists, R. A. McCance and E. M. Widdowson,
in the middle of the twentieth century suggested that the
future of their nation was being threatened by food process-
ing, neglect of manure, and the disappearance of the practice
of crop rotation. When these data were reanalyzed, “ marked
reductions ” of seven minerals in twenty fruits and twenty veg-
etables from the 1930s to the 1980s were found, and the study
concluded that “ in every sub group of foods investigated there
has been a substantial loss in their mineral content. ”
Another British analysis found that the potassium content in
spinach dropped 53 percent, its iron 60 percent, its phospho-
rus 70 percent, and its copper 96 percent, and the iron content
of meat products declined by an average of 54 percent.
Another sobering confi rmation of these nutritionally inferior
changes was published by Donald Davis and his colleagues
at the Biochemical Institute at the University of Texas in