Measuring Risk Is Risky Business

By Jim Prevor, Editor-in-Chief, Produce Business

The issue of pesticides and produce consumption is a long-running one. Before the great Spinach Crisis of 2006 brought the issue of pathogen contamination to the forefront, this columnist spent many a year traveling around the country cautioning trade and consumer groups that concerns over pesticide residues were overblown and that the real problem would be pathogens. This position was vindicated by the pathogen-related episodes of recent years.

Now the pendulum of concern is swinging back to pesticides. It certainly doesn’t help to have groups, such as the Environmental Working Group, coming out annually with its “Dirty Dozen,” and clearly this is scaremongering and fundraising more than science. After all, the very concept of a “Dirty Dozen” is inherently something the industry can never be rid of. Even if the industry reduced pesticide residues by 99 percent tomorrow on all items, there would still be a dozen items that would make this list as the most “dirty” — obviously, such calculations bear no reference to risk.

Yet we doubt that these groups and their activities explain consumer attitudes toward pesticides. These attitudes are better explained by the way human beings process risk. People who think nothing of hopping in their cars and zooming off to the nearest farmers market fear the risks of flying in commercial airplanes, which are statistically much safer. Similar dynamics are expressed regarding irradiation of food, GMOs, the proximity of nuclear power plants, cell phone towers and much more.

Most humans are just not very good at doing probabilities, so they enter the lottery and worry about being killed during a shark attack.

The gist of this study is it provides research support for the standard public health message, which is: All the research done shows a health benefit to consumption of produce, and all that research was done with conventional produce. Therefore, when calculating any negative effects from pesticides (or anything else), there is a net positive benefit, and a substantial one, to consuming more fruits and vegetables.

One question is whether the risk of exposure to pesticides is properly calculated here. Organic produce is not grown without pesticides; it just uses only approved pesticides. To properly compare organic to conventional, one needs to compare the risks of each mode of production.

Another question is whether we actually need to worry about the fact that there are scaremongering groups out there. It is annoying to the industry, but is it actually causing a decline in consumption? This research does not address this question.

The authors point out that there is negative messaging and then say “…the result may be that food safety fears have created an inappropriate barrier to increasing the consumption of these healthy foods.”

This “may” be true, but it “may not.” It may push some people into buying organic, and since organic is more expensive, they may buy less. Yet they may also be happy with their choice and buy more.

We have no legitimate studies showing a statistically significant percentage of people who have been exposed to this negative messaging deciding to eat less produce and replace fruits and vegetables with candy bars or meat. Many alternative products have negative perceptions of their own, so it is not clear that consumers will process a belief that there are risks, even disproportionate risks, to mean that they are better off eating other products.

Perhaps the industry should focus on clarifying its own health message.

The assertion is that eating “more produce” is healthier. Yet, once again, we have actually never seen a study that says exactly that.

Imagine a person is at weight stasis consuming 2,600 calories a day. Now, upon hearing he should “eat more produce,” he decides to force himself to have six additional pieces of fruit before he goes to bed, say 500 calories total. Standard tables showing a pound of fat equals 3,500 calories indicates this person will gain 52 pounds a year. Is anyone really claiming that this will enhance health?

In truth, the studies that do exist do not just say eat more produce. They say eat less of other things and replace the caloric content with produce — which is a very different message.

It is also true that many of our outreach efforts focus solely on sweet fruit, which is easy to love. Turning children and others onto more bitter vegetables may wind up being an important challenge for the industry to address if we really want to use produce to boost public health efforts.