In mid-July, the American Council for Science and Health (ACSH), an industry-funded organization that works on behalf of the pesticide, biotechnology and drug industries, issued a critique of the Center’s March 2008 report “New Evidence Confirms the Nutritional Superiority of Plant-Based Organic Foods.“ The ACSH report was written by Dr. Joseph Rosen of Rutgers University.
On July 23, Barry Estabrook of Gourmet Magazine posted a story on the critique, which provides a concise summary of Rosen’s comments. His piece is entitled “Politics of the Plate — Fighting Words”.
The response by the five co-authors of the Center’s report covers the major points of the ACSH critique, and has been posted on the Center’s website. Excerpts appear below.
“The American Council for Science and Health (ACSH) report by Dr. Joseph Rosen seems to accept, and does not argue with the factors we identified to screen published nutrient content studies for scientific validity. “
“But as he goes through the various sections of our report, he criticizes us for ‘cherry-picking’ results, excluding matched pairs where the results favor conventional food. That is not what we did. He misrepresents our methodology and offers inconsistent and illogical suggestions to correct what he perceives as ‘bias’ in our selection of the matched pairs of foods that were then used to compare nutrient concentrations. ”
“We applied the screening method and selection criteria consistently, and in fact eliminated more results favoring the organic food in a matched pair than the conventional food. Without our screening methods and criteria, the nutritional advantage of organic food would have been greater.”
Filed under: Commentary
In mid-July, the American Council for Science and Health (ACSH), an industry-funded organization that works on behalf of the pesticide, biotechnology and drug industries, issued a critique of the Center’s March 2008 report “New Evidence Confirms the Nutritional Superiority of Plant-Based Organic Foods.“ The ACSH report was written by Dr. Joseph Rosen of Rutgers University.
On July 23, Barry Estabrook of Gourmet Magazine posted a story on the critique, which provides a concise summary of Rosen’s comments. His piece is entitled “Politics of the Plate — Fighting Words”.
The response by the five co-authors of the Center’s report covers the major points of the ACSH critique, and has been posted on the Center’s website. Excerpts appear below.
“The American Council for Science and Health (ACSH) report by Dr. Joseph Rosen seems to accept, and does not argue with the factors we identified to screen published nutrient content studies for scientific validity. “
“But as he goes through the various sections of our report, he criticizes us for ‘cherry-picking’ results, excluding matched pairs where the results favor conventional food. That is not what we did. He misrepresents our methodology and offers inconsistent and illogical suggestions to correct what he perceives as ‘bias’ in our selection of the matched pairs of foods that were then used to compare nutrient concentrations. ”
“We applied the screening method and selection criteria consistently, and in fact eliminated more results favoring the organic food in a matched pair than the conventional food. Without our screening methods and criteria, the nutritional advantage of organic food would have been greater.”
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