Lord Taverne
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their assessment of the analysis made of the health benefits of organic food recently published in the British Journal of Nutrition.
Lord Taverne (LD)
My Lords, health and agriculture are areas in which it is vital that we base policy on evidence. I regret to say that the Department of Health has not always been very good at this. Several times I have been told that the department is neutral between evidence-based medicine and complementary medicine. Against the advice of the Chief Medical Officer, Sally Davies, it does not stop the National Health Service funding homeopathy. As the noble Lord, Lord Rees, has pointed out, if homeopathy worked other than as a placebo, many of the laws of science would have to be repealed. But the health department says it believes in patients’ choice, which suggests that if the patient chooses witchcraft, which also works as a placebo, the National Health Service should pay for witchcraft. Defra’s policy, on the other hand, has recently, on most issues, become more evidence-based. It is now firmly pro-GM and seems sceptical about the merits of organic farming—progress at last. I hope that Mr Paterson’s successor does not put the clock back.
Turning to the evidence about organic food and health, from its foundation the organic movement owed more to myth than evidence. Rudolf Steiner, one of its founding fathers, had crazy ideas such as planting according to phases of the moon, and Hitler, who declared the end of the age of reason, was completely sold on organic farming. That may be a bit of ancient history, and certainly the movement has evolved and promotes good practices because of its care about the quality of the soil. But not long ago, Mr Patrick Holden, the previous director of the Soil Association, told a House of Lords Select Committee that science was not yet sufficiently developed to appreciate the virtues of the organic approach—which could presumably be better detected by some sort of magic.
For some, the organic movement is still a kind of religion that is impervious to scientific evidence; for example, it perpetually proclaims the health benefits because organic food is “free of pesticides”. That is the main reason, according to polls, why the public are persuaded to buy it. The Soil Association still makes that claim but it has clearly never heard of Paracelsus, who taught long ago that,
“it all depends on the dose”.
The safety threshold for the use of artificial pesticides is so cautiously set that there is virtually no possibility of harm from their residues when we eat conventionally grown food. As the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and others have pointed out, one cup of coffee contains more carcinogens than you would ingest from a whole year’s consumption of pesticide residues in fruit and vegetables. Of course, that should not stop you drinking coffee.
The organic movement has ignored the most elaborate and careful scientific study conducted so far on the nutrient content of organic foods. That was a study by Dr Alan Dangour for the Food Standards Agency. It found no extra health benefits from organically grown crops compared with those grown conventionally. Incidentally, he was violently abused for his report and even received death threats. Then in 2012 a detailed study done for the American College of Physicians came to the same conclusion.
However, the study published in the British Journal of Nutrition is the first serious study commissioned by the organic movement itself, and that has to be applauded. It was financed by the Sheepdrove Trust, which promotes organic farming, though of course that in itself does not invalidate its findings. Whether research is financed by Greenpeace or Monsanto is irrelevant if experiments can be reproduced and findings confirmed by independent expert scientists. The source of finance must always lead to careful scrutiny but in the end what matters is whether the results stand up.
The article in question is based on a large number of peer-reviewed papers. The trouble is that scrutiny by expert opinion has found that its conclusions are flawed. There are several serious defects. I will try to summarise the main ones as briefly as I can. First, it suffers from publication bias, placing greater reliance on results that support the authors’ thesis than those that contradict it. Several commentators have expressed regret that the authors of the study have mixed good-quality data with poor-quality data.
Secondly, the article refers to antioxidants in organically grown plants as if they are essential nutrients, which they are not, and it cites them as evidence of health benefits from organic crops, particularly for cancer protection. But the World Cancer Research Fund concluded in its systematic reviews that there is insufficient evidence to make these claims for antioxidants, although there is a clear relationship between the consumption of fruit and vegetables and a lower risk of cancer. Other highly rated studies have reached the same conclusion.
Thirdly, the article claims that organic vegetables are good for health because they contain lower levels of nitrates and nitrites. According to Professor Tom Sanders, head of nutritional sciences at King’s College, that is the opposite of the findings of more recent research, which show that nitrates in vegetables lower blood pressure because in the body they are converted to the vasodilator nitric oxide.
Fourthly, the article ignores the fact that pesticides are naturally present in plants. Many are toxic and carcinogenic. The production of natural pesticides is stimulated in response to attack by a pest or disease. The amounts of natural, possibly toxic, pesticides will thus be greater in unprotected crops that have been attacked—a situation that potentially applies to all organic crops. So if you are concerned about the pesticide content of your food, you should avoid organic products, especially fresh produce that is blemished or misshapen, which is likely to contain more potentially harmful natural pesticides than crops that have been protected by synthetic pesticides.
However, most concerns about pesticide residues are unjustified. As the National Farmers’ Union has pointed out, there is no reason to choose between organic and conventionally grown food on health grounds. But I would add one qualification. Organic food costs more, so that those with modest means who feel they ought to buy it for health reasons may spend less on fruit and vegetables. Why does organic food cost more? It is not because organic farmers exploit the public, but because the yield of organic crops is lower; it is a less efficient use of land. The last thing the world needs is the less efficient use of good agricultural land. As the noted environmentalist James Lovelock has observed, if the whole world converted to organic farming, we would feed around one-third of the world’s population.
Defra should make one important change of policy. It should stop spending more than £20 million a year on subsidising farmers to change to organic farming. Instead, the money should be spent on public research in plant science at our world-class institutes—the John Innes Centre, Rothamsted and the Scottish Crop Research Institute—for which £20 million would make a huge difference. It would be a far more beneficial use of public funds.
Viscount Ridley (Con)
My Lords, when I came here today I expected to agree with the noble Lord, Lord Taverne, on his speech, although I had no foresight of it, but I did not expect to find that I had chosen to wear exactly the same suit and tie. I can assure noble Lords that it is pure coincidence. I declare an interest as the owner of a farm which is not organic but is part of the Linking Environment And Farming organisation, and I am a fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences.
Many people buy organic food because they think it is healthier, and it is very important to find out whether that is true so as to be able to inform people whether they are right in that or they are being deceived. Study after study has failed to find a significant benefit from organic foods. This latest study, although admirably diligent and a perfectly respectable meta-analysis, is no exception, as the noble Lord, Lord Taverne, has said. It finds very little difference in any of the macronutrients that are of most importance; if anything, it finds slightly lower protein in organic food. It finds little difference in minerals, essential amino acids or all the other things we normally think of as nutrients. The only difference to be found was a tiny bit more of certain antioxidants in some samples, the bioavailability of which and their effect on health are presently unknown. It also finds a tiny bit less cadmium, a metal that is in any case vanishingly rare in the diet of most people and never reaches levels that are dangerous—unless you eat an awful lot of shellfish. It also finds slightly less in the way of synthetic pesticides, but of course as the noble Lord, Lord Taverne, has said, no fewer natural pesticides. In any case, as we know:
“Our typical exposure to pesticide residues is at levels 10,000 to 10,000,000 times lower than doses that cause no observable effect in laboratory animals who are fed pesticides daily throughout their entire lifetimes”.
That quote is from Carl Winter of the University of California, Davis, who has commented on the study in question.
We have known for 24 years, since a key paper by Bruce Ames and Lois Gold was published in Science, that 99.99% of all the pesticides we ingest are natural, and that if you subject them to the typical tests to see whether they are carcinogenic, they prove to be just as likely to be carcinogenic as synthetic pesticides at very high doses and just as safe at low doses. The health benefits of organic food, if they exist at all, are immeasurably small. The science is therefore becoming very clear that many people who buy organic food because they think it is healthier for them must be wasting their money. It would be good if they were informed of that. In any case, it is worth adding that no one is quite sure that antioxidants at any dose are necessarily all good for us. After all, oxygen radicals are used by the body to make cancer cells kill themselves. We just do not know what the optimal dose of antioxidants is in the diet.
I think it is worth stressing the health benefits of non-organic food in this debate. We must not forget that there are a number of disadvantages to organic food in terms of health. Some 53 people died and 3,950 were affected in the 2011 E-coli outbreak in Germany, which was caused by organic bean sprouts. It is highly relevant that they were organically grown bean sprouts because the conditions in which they were being incubated were exactly right to encourage the growth of these bacteria. By contrast, genetic modification has killed no one.
We must remember that organic farming is all about the use of nitrogen fertiliser. That is how it got started: it was a technique for eschewing the use of synthetic nitrogen fertiliser. But if we look at what nitrogen fertiliser has done for people’s health, it is really very remarkable. I am sorry to get personal, but every noble Lord sitting in the Chamber should understand that 50% of the atoms in their body came through an ammonium factory—through being fixed from the air by the Haber-Bosch process; in other words, through synthetic fertiliser. The invention of synthetic fertiliser had a huge impact on the availability and price of food in the world and is what has enabled us to meet the first of the millennium development goals, which was to halve hunger by 2015, ahead of target. That is a huge health benefit which has come from non-organic food.
Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)
My Lords, I should remind the House of my interests as set out in the register. They include a farm and vineyard which are not run on organic lines but are run on agro-ecological lines. I welcome this chance to debate these important issues. However, I think that the way in which my noble friend has posed the Question rather extrapolates the research beyond what it claimed. The way the Question is posed suggests that health benefits have been claimed by this research, and I think that that is incorrect. What it claims is that there are higher levels of antioxidants in organic vegetables and that there are somewhat lower levels of pesticide residues. Others, including my noble friend, have extrapolated conclusions which go beyond this piece of research.
Here in the UK, I think that we have become quite complacent about the use of pesticides because we have a well regulated system and our farmers are very responsible in their use. But as someone who grew up in the shadow of the DDT crisis, I remain very aware of the dangers they can pose to our entire ecosystem. Nowadays we have endocrine disrupters which scientists agree are likely to pose a similar threat through inhibiting many species from breeding. That is the nub of the problem. The overuse of any of these manufactured pesticides can have effects that are so long term that it is hard for us to measure them in five, 10 or even 20 years. I can give a couple of examples from bananas, and of course they are from abroad where the use of pesticides is less regulated. Last year I was in Martinique, which is still suffering from the effects of the use of chlordécone, a pesticide that was used to control banana weevils. It remains in the environment for 700 years and it has now ruined the spiny lobster fishing grounds. Research published in 2012 in the Journal of Environmental Science revealed that psychomotor impairment is a result of contamination with that particular pesticide. Pesticides threaten beneficial insects too. I know that Defra is now involved in looking at neonicotinoids and the EU has chosen to impose a partial ban because of a link with the decline in our bee population. I think that there is a lot to worry about.
I agree with my noble friend that it is hard to prove what the benefits of antioxidants are. In fact, in 2004 the American Chemical Society, which is the world’s largest scientific society, undertook an enormous piece of research whose results were published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. The lead author of that 2004 study,
“cautions that total antioxidant capacity of … foods does not necessarily reflect their potential health benefit, which depends on how they are absorbed and utilized in the body. Researchers are still trying to better understand this process”.
That is still true 10 years on.
I am sure that my noble friend will remember that some years ago he wrote that,
“studies show that environmental effects depend on the style of management, not the system of farming. In general, integrated farm management achieves the best results”.
In that case he was quite right, but in this particular case he is wrong to shoot both the messenger and the message. We need an approach that recognises that every food and farming production method comes with a price. It may be, as the noble Viscount, Lord Ridley, said, that artificial fertilisers have enabled us to feed ourselves adequately. However—I am sorry this debate is not included in the debate of the noble Lord, Lord Plumb, because this issue has a big bearing on its subject—some methods of farming, including artificial fertilisers, are leaving a very heavy price to be paid by future generations. I point to soil quality in this instance. The lack of organic matter in the soil is now a significant concern to farmers throughout the world and certainly here in the UK.
I welcomed the NFU’s measured tone when it addressed the subject of my noble friend’s debate. It said:
“The NFU would welcome further research into any nutritional differences between organic and conventionally farmed food. If future research could prove that organic food does provide additional nutritional benefits to conventionally farmed food it would help strengthen the organic point of difference to consumers”.
To me, however, the organic movement is not primarily about my own health benefits. It is about the health benefits to the entire ecosystem and to future generations.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to wind up for the Opposition on this very interesting debate. I am conscious that many noble Lords in the next debate have great experience of the land and farming, and I wonder that they have not found the need to intervene. I always welcome debates in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Taverne. He is a rationalist—he has argued for many years in your Lordships’ House about the need for evidence-based policy—and a debunker of myths. I have to confess to him that at my home we have a fortnightly visit from an organic farmer in Herefordshire, delivering boxes of organic food to the urban dwellers of Birmingham. It is quite expensive but I feel quite good about it. I do not think that it is particularly to do with health; it is to do with the fact that it is rather nice to meet the farmer who has actually produced the food. I say to the noble Viscount that although Northumberland is rather a long way away, if he were to deliver boxes in Birmingham he would be sure of an equally warm welcome.
The noble Lord started with a view of the Department of Health that I took to be a mite critical. His perception was that the department is neutral on evidence-based medicine as opposed to alternative medicine. I am interested in the response of the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, to that. My experience is that the Chief Medical Officer at the Department of Health works very hard to ensure that there is evidence, so I was quite surprised to hear what the noble Lord said. Surely the problem for the Department of Health is that alternative medicine is a fact of life. Many people want to receive it. As long as there is some regulation, I cannot see the problem with it. My question for the noble Baroness is whether the department has a policy on clinical commissioning groups commissioning alternative medicine for NHS patients. That is a relevant point on which to respond to the noble Lord.
As this is a Department of Health issue, the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, may recall that when the National Institute for Clinical Excellence was formed by the previous Government, in addition to being asked for pronouncements on which medicines or treatments were clinically and cost effective, NICE was also asked to look at treatments that had been found not to be cost effective and clinically effective. One has to face up to the fact that many treatments in health globally have not been proven to be effective. It would be good to know why NICE has made such little progress on advising the health service on which treatments it should phase out.
It is also interesting to debate pesticides. To a certain extent there is a parallel with the debate on the contribution of medicines. I am always struck that in the health service medicine is seen as a budget that always has to be contained and held back. There is a perception that increasing staffing and buying new medical equipment are good things, but that the drugs budget is always a matter of concern. If noble Lords look back 50 to 100 years, they will find that major advances in health outcomes have come from medicines. We need to be careful before we demonise the pharma industry and what it seeks to do.
The noble Lord, Lord Taverne, says that organic food and the claims for it should be seen as a kind of religion, impervious to scientific evidence. On the use of pesticides, he says that there is very little evidence of harm if they are used in small doses—although I think that the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, challenged him on that to a certain extent. We are not able to debate this as such because the noble Lord does not have a right to reply. However, while I fully accept his point that there is little or no evidence that the quality of food is improved if it is organic, he did not mention the environment. I would have put a question to him on that; perhaps I can tempt an intervention.
Lord Taverne
My final point was very much concerned with the environment: the last thing we want is a less efficient form of farming that makes inefficient use of good agricultural land, which is vital to the environment.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
That is a very fair point, although I hesitate to debate those issues, given such an expert audience. However, he would surely also accept that there is some evidence that some of the farming methods that have been used have been damaging to the environment. In that sense, those who would argue in favour of organic food surely have a point in saying that it can have a positive contribution. I suspect, whatever we say today, that those who like to have organic food will continue to want to enjoy it. We should not get in the way of consumer choice in that sense.
Lord Hunt of Chesterton (Lab)
The word “environment” covers a lot of ground, but the specific issue that has been raised by critics of factory farming in the United States is the significant loss of biodiversity. I understand the point about the use of land made by the noble Lord, Lord Taverne, but the fact is that progressive loss of biodiversity is a serious matter. It is being contributed to by farming. I hope the Minister can confirm whether biodiversity is part of the Defra programme. In Britain, where there is a lot of organic farming or no farming, there is much greater biodiversity. I see that in Devon, where I often go.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, my noble friend makes an important point. I realise that the noble Baroness is principally speaking for the Department of Health, but I hope, in her winding-up speech, she will cover some of the environmental impacts as well, because we have to look at the evidence in the round. I welcome the debate, and I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Taverne, will continue to come to your Lordships’ House with such entertaining issues in the future.
Baroness Jolly (LD)
My Lords, this has been an interesting debate and I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Taverne for prompting it. I am grateful also to the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, and the noble Viscount, Lord Ridley, for their informed and expert contributions, as well as for challenges from the noble Lord, Lord Hunt.
We need to set this debate in a wider context. Noble Lords will be well aware of the benefits of a healthy balanced diet and the general principles we should be following, such as eating plenty of fruit and vegetables and limiting our consumption of foods high in salt, fat and sugar. Overall, 30% of adults—less than a third—meet the recommendation to consume five or more portions of fruit and vegetables a day, with average consumption only 4.1 portions a day. Intakes of salt, sugar and saturated fat all exceed maximum recommended levels.
We know that lower-income groups consume less fruit and vegetables than higher-income groups. Results from the latest report of the National Diet and Nutrition Survey show that only 24% of adults in the lowest-income group met the five-portions-a-day recommendation, compared to 38% in the highest group.
Increasing our overall consumption of fruit and vegetables, regardless of their production method, and reducing the health inequalities associated with poor diets remain key challenges for public health nutrition. All fruit and vegetables count toward this, whether fresh or frozen, dried or canned, organic or not. There is no evidence to suggest that there is a nutritional premium in some forms above others. Frozen vegetables, for example, are as valuable as fresh in meeting our “five a day”—many of us will be aware from adverts that many of our vegetables, and certainly peas, are frozen much more quickly, so retain much more value and have lost their sugar when they reach the supermarket shelf.
It can be difficult balancing a family budget, but in providing a varied, balanced diet nobody need feel they have given their family a nutritionally inferior diet by choosing lower-priced, conventional products. The support provided to mothers and children in low-income households through the Healthy Start scheme includes, among other things, vouchers for fruit and vegetables of all types. We encourage families to get the best value for their vouchers, but we would not expect them to prioritise organic products. They are free to buy them if they wish and, as for all consumers, organic products provide a useful extension of consumer choice, but it is worth emphasising that, nutritionally, they are no better and no worse than conventional products—but the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, might feel happier after a conversation with his farmer.
As my noble friend Lord Taverne has emphasised, good-quality evidence is as essential in public health as in other areas of government, and we remain committed to an evidence-based approach using the best available science to help us plan and deliver effective public health measures. Systematic reviews can be valuable tools in helping us to resolve areas of confusion by drawing together all the available evidence and assessing it in an ordered and defined way. This approach relies on a critical assessment of the quality of evidence available, so that each source can be given due weight and reliable conclusions drawn from the data.
The recent analysis of organic foods that my noble friend referred to looks at differences in the nutritional composition of organic and conventional crops and draws conclusions on the potential health benefits of these compounds. Like him, I welcome the review as a further contribution to the discussion around organic foods. The study cast a wide net and brought together a large number of data sources. This active search for data is an essential first step if a systematic review is to be effective, but it is not immediately apparent in this case how differences in data quality from different sources have been taken into account. It has never been the case that any data are good data and I agree with my noble friend’s first point that the inclusion of all studies in this analysis, regardless of quality, must reduce confidence in its conclusions.
In considering the health impacts of food and framing our public health messages, it is essential to look at diets as a whole rather than individual nutrients or components of food. Looked at in this context, even if taken at face value, the relatively small differences in the composition of organic and conventional foods suggested by the review would be unlikely to make a meaningful difference to nutrient intake and so would be expected to have little impact on health outcomes. It must be emphasised, as my noble friend Lord Taverne said in his second point, that none of these compounds is classified as a nutrient, nor seen as essential by the independent experts responsible for advising government on nutrition, the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition—or SACN.
Perhaps I may respond to two points, one from the noble Viscount, Lord Ridley, and the other from the noble Baroness, Lady Miller. On antioxidants, Public Health England does not advise taking antioxidant supplements, but recommends eating nutrients and potentially beneficial compounds by way of a healthy, balanced diet. The noble Baroness, Lady Miller, inquired about researchers claiming health benefits. Researchers have claimed health benefits from eating foods higher in the nutrients that they claim are found at higher levels in organic food. Public Health England can see no good-quality evidence to support this.
My noble friend Lord Taverne also referred to evidence that nitrates in vegetables may help to reduce blood pressure. This shows clearly that it is the totality of good-quality evidence that must be considered rather than any individual study, and this remains our approach to public health.
The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, inquired whether more research is needed on organic or conventional food. A large number of studies have already been done and these do not show clear nutrient differences. It is not clear that more research would find differences; indeed, the evidence as it stands suggests not.
The noble Baroness, Lady Miller, inquired about chemical contaminants in food and pesticides. EU organic food regulations allow a very limited range of pesticides in organic food production on particular crop types. It is therefore not surprising that synthetic pesticides are detected less frequently on organic foods than on conventionally farmed foods.
In his final point, my noble friend Lord Taverne raised the matter of residues of natural pesticides in organic produce, especially when blemished or misshapen. It is worth bearing in mind that blemishes are not always due to natural pesticides. Fresh produce sold in the UK has to be fit for consumption, so people should use their normal discretion in buying food that looks unfit due to blemishes. Consumers cannot expect anything sold in their local supermarket or shop to be unfit for consumption. That it is from organic or other sources should have little effect on its safety in relation to pesticides.
There is also a wide natural variation in nutrient content of crops arising from, for example, differences in growing conditions, storage or food preparation, all of which make distinctions between production methods less clear. Taken together, these factors mean that any relative health impact of conventional and organic products will be far outweighed by simply increasing overall fruit and vegetable consumption as part of the diet. This study does not change our current advice that organic fruit and vegetables do not offer meaningful nutritional benefits over and above conventionally produced crops.
My noble friend Lord Taverne also commented on the policy of Ministers at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in respect of GM and organic farming. In both these areas, the Government’s policy takes due account of the relevant scientific evidence.
I say in response to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, that organic farming is one recognised approach to delivering sustainable food production. It is based on balanced systems which provide proven environmental outcomes, especially in terms of increased biodiversity, improved water quality and enhanced soil management. Specifically, organic farming creates a farmed environment that is beneficial to a range of birds, insects, mammals, plants and fungi. It also ensures high animal welfare standards, lower pesticide levels and greater consumer choice. For these reasons, the Government have chosen as part of ongoing common agricultural policy reform to continue to support organic conversion and maintenance under its new environmental land management scheme. The scheme will be open to applications in 2015, with new agreements starting from 1 January 2016.
On homeopathy and alternative medicines, the Department of Health does not maintain a position on any particular complementary or alternative medicine treatments, including homeopathy. The majority of independent scientists consider the evidence for the efficacy of homeopathy to be weak or absent and they take the view that there is no plausible scientific mechanism for homeopathy.
The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, also pressed me on comments about the Chief Medical Officer and NICE. Certainly, NICE—as the noble Lord will know as he was in government when it was founded—was founded as an evidence-based approach to healthcare. The Chief Medical Officer has taken every opportunity to talk about an evidence base, in particular now in connection with antibiotics.
However, it is important in this context and this debate today to look at the totality of evidence around diet. That is important when we frame our public health nutrition messages. It would be a mistake to take a few individual constituents of food and consider these in isolation and in relation only to individual foods or food groups. The key consideration is the impact that changes in food consumption make at the level of the diet as a whole. In this respect, the evidence is clear. The beneficial health effects associated with fruit and vegetable consumption come from eating fruit and vegetables as a whole, not from an individual nutrient.
Viscount Ridley
I wonder if I can press my noble friend a little further on the point raised by my noble friend Lord Taverne about the money going for conversion to organic farming. Given that organic sales have fallen in recent years and therefore demand is clearly down, and given that rates of conversion to organic farming are also down, would this not be an opportunity to save some public money?
Baroness Jolly
My noble friend asks a good question to which I regret I do not have either the status or the information to give him an answer that would satisfy either him or the House.
Lord Reid of Cardowan (Lab)
I confess immediately that I am not a scientist, chemist, agricultural expert or farmer. However, as I understand it, the burden of what the Minister has said is that there is no evidential benefit from organic food as far as human beings and health are concerned. Can we work on the assumption that, whatever the details of it, the money spent by Defra is for environmental and sustainable agricultural reasons, rather than for reasons of health?
Baroness Jolly
That is absolutely right. I spoke earlier about the environmental pluses of organic farming. It is up to the consumer to decide how they spend their money on their fruit and veg. There are many reasons why an individual might wish to choose organic products but nutritional benefit should not be one of them.