A recent systematic literature review published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition has researchers exploring the health impacts and reduced pesticide exposure associated with eating organic foods versus conventional alternatives.
Drawing from PubMed, Embase, Web of Science and Google Scholar, researchers narrowed their focus down to 21 primary research articles that studied adults (over 18 years of age) consuming organic foods for six months or more, which provided comparative results between conventional and organic nutrition regarding health indices. Outcomes related to chronic disease prevalence, biomarker effects and pesticide exposure were evaluated. All articles were published between 2006 and 2022, and written in English.
While the study findings indicate potential health benefits of organic food and lowered pesticide exposure, researchers called for “long-term studies to establish whether an organic diet is superior to a conventional one in terms of overall health benefits.”
[See more: Ultra-processed food is even worse for you than you think]
Consuming organic foods correlated with reduced risk for type 2 diabetes with one study finding that frequent consumption made people 35 percent less likely to develop the disease. Other studies showed an association between eating organic food and reduced rates of obesity, hypertension, high cholesterol and cardiovascular disease, as well as lower risk of pre-eclampsia, gestational diabetes and obesity in pregnant women. One large-scale study showed a 25 percent decrease in cancer risk while another could find no significant association except for reduced risk of non-Hodgkin lymphomas.
News Medical warns that the appearance of reduced overall risk of type 2 diabetes, obesity and cancer in this review, while encouraging, should be interpreted cautiously. They point to differences in study design and methodologies across the 21 articles, the exclusion of non-English language research, as well as the tendency for people who primarily eat organic foods to have healthier lifestyles, as confounding factors.
Findings on pesticide exposure proved more robust as clinical trials consistently indicated that an organic diet significantly reduced exposure to pesticides. Individuals who primarily consumed organic foods exhibited 89 percent lower pesticide metabolites in their urine compared to those on a conventional diet. Reducing use of pesticides, which are linked to diseases like cancer and neurological disorders, has clear benefits but may also decrease crop yields and increase risk of microbial contamination.
