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Stanford’s Report on Organic Food Should Serve as a Serious Wake-Up Call

Late Monday night, I read about the Stanford University report on organic food, which said that organic and conventionally-grown food offered similar nutritional benefits, and have spent the last few days processing this news.

Here are my key takeaways.

INTELLECTUAL HONESTY MUST REIGN SUPREME

Based on the parameters that the Stanford professors used, it was obvious that organic was going to be the clear loser before they even got started.

Why?

The Stanford professors compiled other people’s research, much of which was presumably biased, influenced and/or funded by industry.

And when it came time to studies that favored organic and a person’s health, these appeared to be easily overlooked or not taken seriously, including the real problems suffered by fetuses (autism and ADHD) whose pregnant mothers were exposed to pesticides and the compelling research from Dr. Alex Lu, now at Harvard School of Public Health, which links a reduction in organophosphate insecticide exposure in young children to a switch to organic food.

When it comes to toxic pesticide exposure in this country, as long as it is under EPA levels, most “experts” don’t think it causes any harm nor significantly impacts health or nutrition levels. It is mind-boggling.

How can soil that is not bio-diverse, that has been ravaged by toxic pesticides, and that is not the recipient of crop rotation produce food with the same nutritional content as organic food?

I don’t believe that it can.

How can genetically-modified food (much of which has toxins genetically-inserted inside of it) or food produced with synthetic growth hormones have the same nutritional content as organic food?

I don’t believe that it can.

A person doesn’t need to be a MD or PhD to come to a similar conclusion.

A person just needs to be intellectually honest.

A WAKE-UP CALL

With this Stanford report, there is a bigger message that we all must understand.

There is a massive and incredibly well-funded campaign at work to discredit organic.

Why is this?

Educated consumers know that toxic pesticides, synthetic growth hormones and genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) have absolutely no business being on our dinner plates.

Educated consumers are also putting up increasing resistance to our water supply being ruined by poisonous chemicals and are filing lawsuit after lawsuit to prevent the USDA from force-feeding us a slew of new GMOs.

And the number of educated consumers is growing by the day, which presents a serious problem for Big Ag’s plans to control every aspect of the world’s food supply while making billions in the process.

Even though industrial agriculture has proven that it can “buy” food policy on the federal level, by spending $572 million on lobbying and campaign contributions from 1999-2010, it is facing its largest threat yet – the upcoming California ballot initiative to label GMOs.

Because California citizens will be voting on this measure and California citizens cannot be “bought” via lobbyists, industrial agriculture will be pulling out all the stops to damage the organic brand.

By discrediting organic, it is creating doubt and confusion in the minds of those people who do not fully understand why they should be eating organic and avoiding genetically-modified food.

It is also creating doubt and confusion in the minds of California voters, who will associate GMO-labeling with organic.

Is it any coincidence that this research report came out of Stanford, a world-class institution which just happens to be based in California?

Is it any coincidence that this research report has come out just a few months before the GMO-labeling ballot initiative takes place in November?

For me, the answer is a resounding “no” to both of these questions.

Any educated consumer who understands the true value of organic knows that this Stanford report has zero merit.

However, the problem is that there are far too many people out there who don’t know the truth about organic and are ripe to be influenced by misleading propaganda. As such, they are susceptible to making dietary and voting choices that will be detrimental to their own health and that of future generations.

That is precisely why this Stanford report, which spread like absolute wildfire across the national media landscape, should serve as a serious wake-up call to all of us who understand that high-quality, organic food is essential to our well-being.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

We need every American citizen actively engaged in this fight to protect our food supply. Here’s what you can do:

– Continue to purchase organic. As Joel Salatin, star of the movie Food, Inc., told me, “there is nothing more powerful than voting with your dollars.”

– Inform your friends and family. It is imperative that we are all educating our friends and family about the importance of eating organic food – food that is free from toxic pesticides, synthetic growth hormones and very risky genetically-modified ingredients.

– Get involved and support the upcoming California ballot initiative to label GMOs (Proposition 37). Even if you don’t live in that state, a victory will have a monumental impact on food policy throughout the nation and will affect every single one of us.

To learn more about this ballot initiative, click HERE.

To learn which conventional, organic and natural food companies are trying to defeat the mandatory labeling of GMOs, click HERE.

Thank you so much for supporting organic food.

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