The benefits of a diet with organic foods are measurable, and incontrovertible, in terms of pesticide exposure. This is shown by Greenpeace Japan’s study, which found that a diet of organically grown foods results in the drastic reduction (often to the limits of detectability) of residues of chemical compounds instead found in products derived from conventional agriculture.
Greenpeace conducted the research on two Japanese families with children who were fed conventionally grown produce for five days and then switched to a strictly organic diet over the next 10 days.
During the observation period, urine samples were collected from volunteers at three stages-at the beginning of the program, after the conventional diet and following the organic diet-in order to measure levels of six types of pesticides (organophosphates, pyrethroids, carbamates, neonicotinoids, phenoxy herbicides and glyphosate).
The result of the analysis, conducted in a laboratory at Friedrich-Alexander University in Erlangen and Nuremberg, leaves no doubt: switching from a conventional to an organic diet reduces the presence of pesticide residues in the body. The effect-as shown in the table available at this link-is most pronounced for organophosphates, pyrethroids and glyphosate, less striking for other substances that are more widespread in the environment and inadequately circumvented by producers of the organic foods used for research.
The study confirmed a known fact: exposure to agrotoxics affects children to a greater extent. In fact, the same dose of pesticides has a more pronounced impact on younger children because of their lower body weight. It is worth mentioning in this regard that the harmful effects of chemicals (neurotoxicity first and foremost, but not only) are amplified because of the increased vulnerability of developing organs and vital functions.
Greenpeace Japan published the results in a mini-documentary, available at https://youtu.be/Jf0lqy8rQPY.
