Health: Organic Food

Baroness Jolly Excerpts

Thursday 24th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[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.