What would happen if you only eat organic food during 10 days?
A study carried out by Greenpeace Japan shows that if we exclusively eat organic food during 10 days, the chemical substances resulting from pesticides present in our organism would drop significantly.
The use of pesticides in food production is becoming a seriously concerning matter. Several studies have proven an existing relationship between health problems such as neurological problems, lateness in cognitive development, cancer… and the ingestion of chemical substances that are integrated in food.
Today is about a study developed by Greenpeace Japan aiming to demonstrate the effects of nutritional change on the consumer exposure towards insecticides. The study is simple and finds out what would happen if we only eat organic food during 10 days and the consequences of the nutritional change from a traditional feeding to an 100% organic feeding in the long run.
Two Japanese families participated to this study: family A composed by a woman and 2 little girls and family B, composed by a man, a woman and 2 children. They all maintained a traditional diet during 5 days and then followed a totally organic-based diet during the next 10 days. Urine samples had been collected during the whole period to make analyses in order to determine the levels of chemical substances from pesticides in their organism.
The experts noted that the differences in the values had been highly meaningful: they noticed that the quantity of chemical substances in the organism during the 5 first days (traditional feeding) was similar to the ones of general Japanese population. After 10 days of exclusive organic feeding, there has been a significant fall in chemical substances coming from the organophosphates, pyrethroid and glyphosate pesticides. That is a good news, however the experts noted that despite of this exclusively organic diet, there is still a noteworthy presence of chemical substances coming from other pesticides, which shows the difficulty to fully protect oneself against pesticide contamination.
The study demonstrates that consuming organic food is an efficient way to reduce the amount of pesticides in the organism. This is even more beneficial for children as they are more sensitive towards toxic chemical products due to their still developing organism. In addition, compared with an adult, the pesticide amount present in a child organism is higher. The child eats the same food, drinks the same water and breathes the same air as adults but there are smaller, that is why the quantity according to the bodyweight is greater.
Greenpeace Japan considers that the biggest barriers for the families to feed only with organic products are their availability and accessibility, which is a recurrent problem in many other countries as well. To help with this issue, the consumers are recommended the consumers to ask their regular food shop to sell more organic food as a way to reach a higher availability.
Source : gastronomiaycia.republica.com
