I’m a big proponent of eating real, whole foods, consisting mainly of organically grown fresh fruits and vegetables, wild fish, and grass-fed lamb, chicken, and beef. In fact, chapter five of my book, Healthy Body Connection: Unlocking Your Body’s Natural Connection to Sustainable Weight Loss and Optimal Health, talks mainly about which foods to include, and which ones to avoid, on a healthy eating plan. In it, I speak extensively about the pros and cons of eating organically grown foods.

For myself personally, I would never intentionally add pesticides and chemicals to my food, so why would I buy food that I knew was already was coated in the stuff? It would seem intuitive that eating chemicals that are meant to kill pests might not be the best of ideas, but now a new study which, was published in JAMA on Oct. 22, 2018, seems to back me up.

In it, researchers conducted a population-based cohort study of 68, 946 French adults, and found that there was a significant reduction in the risk of developing cancer in high consumers of organic foods. They saw not only an overall cancer risk reduction, but also specifically a risk reduction for breast cancer and Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma. Interestingly, adults with the highest intake of organic foods had a 24% lower risk for cancer.

They surmised that these findings were probably due to the reduced consumption of, you guessed it, harmful pesticides. They concluded by stating, “Our results indicate that higher organic food consumption is associated with a reduction in the risk of overall cancer. We observed reduced risks for specific cancer sites (postmenopausal breast cancer, NHL, and all lymphomas) among individuals with a higher frequency of organic food consumption.”

Researchers then went on to express their belief that organic food consumption could be a promising preventive strategy against cancer.

References:

Baudry J, Assmann KE, Touvier M, et al. Association of Frequency of Organic Food Consumption With Cancer RiskFindings From the NutriNet-Santé Prospective Cohort Study. JAMA Intern Med. Published online October 22, 2018. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2018.4357