Nutritional quality of organic foods: a systemic review

Abstract

Background

Despite growing consumer demand for organically produced foods, information based on a systematic review of their nutritional quality is lacking.

Objective

We sought to quantitatively assess the differences in reported nutrient content between organically and conventionally produced foodstuffs.

Design

We systematically searched PubMed, Web of Science, and CAB Abstracts for a Period of 50 y from 1 January 1958 to 29 February 2008, contacted subjects experts, and hand-searched bibliographies. We included peer-reviewed articles with English abstracts in the analysis if they reported nutrient content comparisons between organic and conventional foodstuffs. Two reviewers extracted study characteristics, quality, and data. The analysis were restricted to the most commonly reported nutrients.

Results

From a total of 52471 articles, we identified 162 studies (137 crops and 25 livestock products); 55 were of satisfactory quality. In an analysis that included only satisfactory quality studies, conventionally produced crops had a significantly higher content of nitrogen, and organically produced crops had a significantly higher content of phosphorus and titratable acidity. No evidence of a difference was detected for the remaining 8 of 11 crop nutrient categories analyzed. Analysis of the more limited database on livestock products found no evidence of a difference in nutrient content between organically and conventionally produced livestock products.

Conclusions

On the basis of a systematic review of studies of satisfactory quality, there is no evidence of a difference in nutrient quality between organically and conventionally produced foodstuffs. The small differences in nutrient content detected are biologically plausible and mostly relate to differences in production methods.