I posted this on another forum... copied here for this conversation...

>>"Organics are not allways "way better", but for sure they are sometimes better, and the less pesticides we use the better for everything [as you said allready].

The food industry is only just a little behind the medical industry in lobbying government. They will say anything that helps their profits."<<

When a plant must sequester and neutralize a "poison" - read agrichemical or other pollution source - it, like us and all other animals, must bind and use up a mineral in order to render the poison, for the most part, neutral and keep it from killing said plant or animal.

So while the "conventional" or Genetically-Modified-Organisms plant "may" have the same "nutritional" value in quantity, the nutrition is rendered unavailable to the consumer due to the binding of the nutritional value by the "pollutants".

This is why "processed" food is so much worse for us than whole foods...

A couple of verifiable analogies...

calcium availability from conventional pasteurized and homogenized milk compared to "raw" milk... be sure to use same breed milk cows in your comparison...

Same thing with any processed food and the whole food ingredients of the processed foods...

BTW - processed food chemicals further reduce bioavailability so that even if a food states calcium 20% RDA... you would be lucky to absorb 1% of RDA from it.

This is extremely important!

Another thing to consider is that there have been a few studies that have shown the approximate value of 5.7 mg of vitamin C eaten in a whole organic apple is equal to taking 1500 mg of Ascorbic Acid. This is because the apple already contains all the necessary phyto, glyco, and other cofactor nutrients needed to utilize the C properly.

The Ascorbic Acid, while it can be used to some extent, must sequester necessary cofactors from your nutritional stores, depleting other things as you boost vitamin C.

This BTW is true for any single nutrient... not to mention the antagonistic and synergistic relationships with ALL nutritional factors.

When it comes down to it, properly grown and/or raised WHOLE foods in a balanced diet that follows the regional seasons (foods in season and local only) along with herbs and spices (big trade opportunity here) are the "magic" pill that has been so elusive to everyone.

Another way to look at this is in detoxing heavy metals... silica is needed to eliminate or neutralize aluminum, calcium for lead, selenium for mercury, boron for fluoride, etc. etc. etc.

Other minerals and nutritional cofactors can be used to "mobilize" a specific "toxin", however it takes the mineral to bind and eliminate... magnesium and sulfur among others comes to mind for mobilization purposes.

One cannot metabolize proteins without magnesium and sulfur among other minerals (nor will their elimination channels function properly)... in order to form mineral based proteins such as selenoproteins, 25 known of which are required for proper brain function, manganese based proteins, etc.

grz-