That’s the argument I’ve seen, and it’s a heuristic I find plausible. It may even be that food is so complex that there’s nothing better than heuristics. Still, I’m shocked that so little effort has gone into testing the health claims.
It’s not easy to test the effects, because effects are usually long-term, things like cancer can take decades to be noticed, and “organic food” is quite recent. Remember how long it took to be sure smoking tobacco was really toxic. If I look at France (where I live), the “AB” label for organic food was created in 1985, and it’s only recently (maybe a decade, even less) that AB food is available in normal supermarkets. So it’s hard to have strong data yet on long-term effects. But I hope they’ll come in the next decade.
That’s the argument I’ve seen, and it’s a heuristic I find plausible. It may even be that food is so complex that there’s nothing better than heuristics. Still, I’m shocked that so little effort has gone into testing the health claims.
It’s not easy to test the effects, because effects are usually long-term, things like cancer can take decades to be noticed, and “organic food” is quite recent. Remember how long it took to be sure smoking tobacco was really toxic. If I look at France (where I live), the “AB” label for organic food was created in 1985, and it’s only recently (maybe a decade, even less) that AB food is available in normal supermarkets. So it’s hard to have strong data yet on long-term effects. But I hope they’ll come in the next decade.