Is organic food better for you? It may come certified as pesticide or herbicide-free, grown without a trace of any modified genes or reared on a free-range farm, but processed organic food is just as likely to contain excessive levels of fat, salt and sugar as its non-organic counterparts.
The organic food industry is worried this will give ammunition to its critics. So to head them off, the guardians of organic food standards in the UK, the processing standards committee of the Soil Association in London, last week proposed setting limits on how much fat, sugar and salt could be added.
鈥淚t would be a big policy decision, as basic organic standards are agricultural standards,鈥� says processing standards committee member Kath Dalmeny. 鈥淏ut to be ahead of the game on this, we need to start the discussion now.鈥�
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Francis Blake, head of standards at the Soil Association, is more cautious. 鈥淐onsumers expect organic food to be healthy, authentic and good quality, but to get into nutritional standards as such might be a bridge too far and much too complicated.鈥� No decision will be taken at least until June, when the Soil Association council next meets, Blake says.
A spokesman for the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements in Bonn, Germany, was equally circumspect. 鈥淲e don鈥檛 have a position on nutrition at all.鈥� He says that proposals for international nutrition standards would be welcome, but would take at least 10 years to become adopted, even if everyone backed them.
