A new study out of Dallas shows that fruit flies fed organic diets are healthier than those fed nonorganic diets.
The two primary measurements of health where fertility and longevity.
The study came from the lab in Southern Methodist University. Where SMU biologist Johannes Bauer said that “While these findings are certainly intriguing, what we now need to determine is why the flies on the organic diets did better, especially since not all the organic diets we tested provided the same positive health outcomes,” said Bauer.
They don’t know why the flies on the organic diet did better – that will involve more research.
The findings, “Organically grown food provides health benefits to Drosophila melanogaster,” have now been published in the open access journal PLOS One. Buaer and Ria Chhabra, a high school student, co-authored the paper with Santharam Kolli, a research associate at SMU. The article is available from PLOS One online at http://bit.ly/RGB8LJ.
Because of the low costs associated with fly research and the fly’s short life cycle, researchers use fruit flies to study human diseases such as diabetes to heart function to Alzheimer’s disease.
The flies were fed extracts made from organic and conventional potatoes, soybeans, raisins and bananas. They were not fed any additional nutritional supplements. The researchers tested the effects of each food type independently and avoided any confounding effects of a mixed diet.
Source: Here’s the link to the source article.
