Could Organic Food Do What Ritalin Can’t?

Two new stud­ies add more doc­u­men­ta­tion to the weight of lit­er­a­ture show­ing the great health ben­e­fits of organic food. One study showed the supe­ri­or­ity, in all ways, of organic straw­ber­ries over their con­ven­tion­ally raised coun­ter­parts. The sec­ond study showed that the pes­ti­cide residues in chil­dren (most of which come from our fruits and veg­eta­bles) are cer­tainly asso­ci­ated with ADHD.

First, let’s talk about strawberries…

As I reviewed in the arti­cle in Alternative Medicine Review and in the Huffington Post blogs, most organic foods have higher lev­els of antiox­i­dant com­pounds than con­ven­tion­ally raised foods. The new arti­cle on straw­ber­ries from researchers at Washington State University in Pullman, Washington, has revealed that organic straw­ber­ries are rated higher than con­ven­tional straw­ber­ries in sev­eral areas. Would you like a straw­berry that tastes bet­ter, lasts in stor­age longer, is sweeter, has more health-promoting antiox­i­dant lev­els and fewer pes­ti­cides? If so, choose organic straw­ber­ries the next time you go to the mar­ket! That’s right … in all of those areas, organic straw­ber­ries where shown to be superior.

In addi­tion, the organic berries are much eas­ier on the envi­ron­ment, as no pes­ti­cides were used. And, as men­tioned in a pre­vi­ous blog, since less than 1 per­cent of all pes­ti­cides actu­ally make it to the tar­get pest, this is a very good thing for our world.

This is also won­der­ful news because pre­vi­ous stud­ies have shown that straw­ber­ries pro­vided one of the high­est lev­els of antiox­i­dant com­pounds that we need to stay healthy.

Unfortunately, straw­ber­ries have been at the top of the “most toxic fruit and veg­etable” lists for many years (www.foodnews.org). So, for years I have been avoid­ing straw­ber­ries through­out the por­tions of the year when fresh organic berries were not avail­able. When fresh straw­ber­ries were not avail­able, I was using frozen blue­ber­ries or a berry extract (Liquid Life) to get my fruit-antioxidant daily dosage.

Click here to read the rest of this arti­cle on HuffingtonPost.com.