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Parents Turn to Organic Food
The above headline comes from
a November 8, 2005 CNN online story that features the increase of organic
foods for children and babies. The story notes that according to the
marketing information company ACNielsen, since last year, sales of organic
baby food have jumped nearly 18 percent, double the overall growth of
organic food sales. A large reason for the change is the concern over the
amount of pesticides that appear in non-organic baby food.
Dr.
Alan Greene, a pediatrician in northern California notes that the concern
about children is that they are more vulnerable to toxins in their diets.
He states, " As children grow rapidly, their brains and organs are forming
and they eat more for their size than do grown-ups." Dr. Greene went
on to say, "Pound for pound, they get higher concentrations of pesticides
than adults do."
New government-funded
research showed that children whose diets were switched from regular to
organic food found their pesticide levels plunged almost immediately. The
study then showed that the amount of pesticide detected in the children
remained imperceptible until their diets were switched back to conventional
food.
Emory University's Chensheng
Lu, who led the Environmental Protection Agency-funded research was
surprised at the dramatic decrease in toxins in the study after the switch
to organic food. He commented, "We didn't expect that to drop in such
dramatic fashion."
The article notes that in
non-organic foods, the highest pesticide levels, are found in apples, bell
peppers, celery, cherries, imported grapes, nectarines, peaches, pears,
potatoes, red raspberries, spinach and strawberries
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