Update:  There's been an image malfunction and we've had to pull this post off of the front page.  Please bare with us as we try to sort it out - Richard 

from the guardian :

Parents who want their children to eat healthily should focus more on serving them extra fruit and vegetables and less on giving them expensive organic produce, according to one of the country's leading nutrition experts.

Lord Krebs, former head of the Food Standards Agency, said families were becoming 'deeply confused' by conflicting messages about healthy eating.

The market for organic food reached more than £2bn last year, with most consumers from households with children under the age of 15. An average of £37m is spent each week on organic produce, mostly in south-east England.

The agency is reviewing all the evidence on nutritional differences between organic and non-organic food to see if it needs to alter its recommendations to consumers; at present, these are that there is no safety or health reason for switching to organic. Two recent studies suggesting that there may be benefits to eating organic tomatoes and drinking organic milk have prompted a fresh look at the evidence.

However, according to Krebs, an eminent scientist and principal of Jesus College, Oxford, there is still no reliable, peer-reviewed evidence to show that there is any clear health benefit to eating this 'green' produce.

'The organic message can sometimes be a distortion from the more important messages,' said Krebs. 'If a parent is asking, "how can I improve the health of my children?" they may think, "Oh, I can give them organic food". But that is far less important than the decision to feed them more fruit and vegetables, or the decision to give them less salt.' His concerns about the claims made for organic produce were that 'they add to the mix of confusion in people's minds about what it means to eat healthily'.

When Krebs chaired the agency, he came under pressure to validate claims that organic food was better for people - but refused to endorse the produce.

Note to self:  If folks like the one pictured below are doing something, it's probably the wrong thing to do and you should do the opposite.

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