Do organic beat conventional vegetables for immune system support?
This article was released way back in 2012. In it, the author Stephen Daniels explains that most research on organic food was focused on antioxidant content (that research concluded organic food contains about 60% more antioxidants), but there was very little research that focused on the effects of organic food on the immune system.
He goes on to introduce a paper in which Danish and French scientists fed mice a diet of carrots. Over the course of the study they exposed the rats to immune challenges, and it was found that the rats that consumed the organic carrots resulted in better gut immunity and higher levels of lymphocytes.
While it has already been shown the gut bacteria is aided by organic produce, this is the first time that diet had been shown to have a direct effect on Lymphocytes, including T Cells. Regulatory T Cells in particular were present in much higher levels in the rats that were fed an organic diet.
Editor’s Note
Lymphocytes or White Blood Cells are important parts of your immune system, especially the adaptive part. They are the cells that react to protect you from specific threats that they are alerted to. Specific immune reaction includes the production of Killer T cells, which hunt down identified viruses. Lymphocytes (B cells to be more precise) also work at creating antibodies which give you long term protection from specific threats.
Regulatory T Cells are a type of Helper T Cells that play a very important role in our immune system. They make sure that our immune responses do not go overboard and threaten the body. This is why they are highly important in regulating severe viral symptoms such as inflammation and fever.
If you want to learn more about the immune system, check our our article, The Basics Of The Immune System here.
While this study was only done on mice, it is still significant. Unfortunately I have yet to find any follow up to this research.