Working Knowledge

There is a cell phone case where someone posted on Youtube showing 4 cell phones on a table facing the center and they put popcorn in the middle. The popcorn pops from the radiation supposedly and the researcher finds out more and more about it. Does the radiation have effects? Is there credible research?
She goes on to find that there are controversial views about whether there are effects and how they effect.
She wondered about who had done research and how effective it was.
So I am off to deepen my ideas about organics. Most of the questions here have been covered. I think that anything on the net will have pro and con information and much about organics is opinion. I found information that the Mayo clinic had which actually had tested for nutrient density versus conventionally grown and they found that it was a tie basically.
I found opinions from all sorts of sources from the Mayo clinic to Organic Facts, which is cool and I found them to be unbiased which is impressive since they are pro-organics. I loved the comment from Organic Facts that the benefits of organics are "more perceived than actual" which is why there has been 30% growth in the past few years.
The cell phone researcher went to several different sources to research. She read a lot of information from sources she felt were viable and then made her own decision. I think that it is similar to what I found. She could have chosen to limit use until she found more information and felt it was conclusively safe.
My scenario was similar. I found conflicting information but the more credible information to me was the Mayo Clinic that organics are good but so are conventional. I think they are both more effective if you make good choices and eat five a day. Here are some additional links:
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/organic-food/NU00255
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/0,28757,2011756,00.html
There are specific things growers do to have foods certified organic:
http://www.ehow.com/list_6305856_health-benefits-organic-foods.html
Dr. Oz and Time magazine point out that foods are much safer now than they ever were and fewer people get sick from eating them than ever before. He also points out that tips like buying in season, peeling fruits to get rid of pesticides and buying food that is as natural as possible are helpful and make the conventional and local food on par with organics. http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2011756_2011732,00.html
Many of the pro-organic sites were trying to make money and seemed to have motivations beyond health so I credited them with less pure motives. I do see benefits to farms where food is grown inexpensively by composting and limiting impact on the planet. However, conventionally food is cheaper pound for pound. So if consumers can influence growers to minimize impact and sell locally, everyone wins.
I was surprised that this same argument is being waged in Britain and other places as well and a large independent study done there shows that there are no unique benefits, indeed none at all. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8174482.stm
There will always be more to learn about health and nutrition but on this subject I feel confident that local, conventional or organic, food is food and healthier if it is in its basic forms. I feel like I understand the information and it took several hours to sift through. In an aside, I used Metacrawler to do some of the searching and came up with very similar results to Google. When I had searched other topics the results were different. My original hypothesis was that I would find organics much healthier and I would spend more on produce. Now I am fairly certain that I will continue to buy on the cheap and incorporate fruits and veggies into more of my meals. It wasn’t hard for me to decide but there is a lot of information so I will continue to be curious and learn more as I go along.