Is organic better for your health? A look at milk, meat, eggs, produce and fish.

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Is organic better for your health? A look at milk, meat, eggs, prod...

Organic or conventional? It’s a choice many grocery shoppers are fa...

Leave aside for the moment whether organic agriculture is better fo...

Because the risks and the benefits vary by product — meat is differ...

Here’s a rundown of the evidence on nutrition and contamination lev...

Milk

Nutrition: Compared with conventional milk, organic milk has higher...

Contamination: Neither organic nor conventional milk contains antib...

The U.S. Department of Agriculture tests for pesticide levels and h...

DDT was banned years ago, but the USDA said it “is very persisten[t...

Pasteurization fails some of the time, allowing milk contaminated w...

Hormones: The issue with milk is that many conventionally raised da...

Both organic and conventional cows have IGF-I in their milk, but co...

Some research has linked IGF-I to cancer. The American Cancer Socie...

The use of rBGH has fueled concerns among some parents about giving...

Bottom line: Organic milk has higher omega-3 fat levels, but probab...

Produce

Nutrition: Many studies have compared the vitamins, minerals, macro...

Contamination: There are two issues for foods that grow in the grou...

Carl Winter, a toxicologist at the University of California at Davi...

Dana Barr, a research professor at Emory University’s Rollins Schoo...

But another review last year by a different group of scientists fou...

An American Academy of Pediatrics 2012 report noted the correlation...

The EPA expects to have a new assessment of organophosphates in 201...

As for pathogens, the 2012 Stanford review found that E. coli conta...

The best strategy to reduce risk from produce isn’t to buy either o...

Bottom line: While there may be no significant nutritional differen...

Meat

Nutrition: As with milk, the main issue here is omega-3 fats. Some ...

Although measurements of omega-3 fats in beef vary, the numbers are...

Contaminants: The USDA randomly tests carcasses for residues of pes...

It found a few with residue violations and a similar small number w...

The bigger concern is pathogens. Studies of bacterial contamination...

Bottom line: There doesn’t seem to be much difference, health-wise,...

Eggs

Nutrition: As with milk and meat, the omega-3 levels of eggs are af...

Contaminants: There’s very little research on contaminants in eggs....

Bottom line: There are no significant differences affecting health ...

Fish

The USDA has not issued any organic standards for farmed fish or sh...