Tag: SMU Department of Biological Sciences

Dallas Observer: SMU Researchers Prove that Eating Organic Makes You Live Longer — If You’re a Fly

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date March 28, 2013

Dallas Observer journalist Eric Nicholson has covered research carried out in the fruit fly lab of SMU biologist Johannes H. Bauer by Plano, Texas, high school student Ria Chhabra in its March 27, 2013, article “SMU Researchers Prove that Eating Organic Makes You Live Longer — If You’re a Fly.”

Bauer, an assistant professor in SMU’s Department of Biological Sciences, mentored Chhabra in her research to examine whether there would be health differences to fruit flies fed an organic diet or a nonorganic diet. Chhabra’s study found that flies fed an organic diet fared better on important health tests, particularly fertility and longevity.

Read the Observer article.

EXCERPT:

Eric Nicholson
Dallas Observer
There was a minor furor in the media last year when a study conducted by a researcher at Standford’s medical school concluded that organic fruits and vegetables are no healthier than their conventionally raised counterparts. This wasn’t quite as newsworthy as the headlines made it sound, since the study was looking mainly at vitamin content of produce, not at the chemicals that were or were not sprayed on it. Precious few people buy organic carrots expecting through-the-roof levels of beta carotene.

Then again, maybe they should. A new study by researchers at SMU, which is clearly more definitive than the Stanford one because it’s newer, suggests that eating organic food may cause you to live longer. If you’re a fruit fly.

They chose fruit flies essentially because they’re easier to keep on an all-organic diet, since they can’t sneak off and binge on Twinkies and they don’t object to consuming a single type of liquified produce from Whole Foods (either potatoes, raisins, bananas, or soybeans, depending on the fly) for their entire lives. They also live for about a month, making it easier to parse out the effect of diet on lifespan.

The Atlantic reported this morning on the study’s results:

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SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.

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Tags Dedman College, Johannes H. Bauer, Ria Chhabra, Santharam Kolli, SMU Department of Biological Sciences

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The Atlantic: Eating Organic Food Associated With Longer Lives (in Flies)

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date March 28, 2013

The Atlantic has covered research carried out in the fruit fly lab of SMU biologist Johannes H. Bauer by Plano, Texas, high school student Ria Chhabra in its March 27, 2013, article “Eating Organic Food Associated With Longer Lives (in Flies).”

Read The Atlantic article.

EXCERPT:

Lindsay Abrams
The Atlantic
Fruit flies fed organic produce from Whole Foods lived longer and laid more eggs than those fed the store’s conventionally grown offerings.

PROBLEM: Last September when Stanford researchers came out with findings that organic food doesn’t confer any additional nutritional value, the world countered: Of course not. While organic fruits and vegetables can claim health benefits in that they lack any number of additives that come included with traditionally farmed foods, calling produce organic doesn’t make it any healthier than it already, by virtue of being a fruit or vegetable, is supposed to be.

Still, that doesn’t mean researchers can’t turn it around and ask if produce containing chemicals, preservatives, and hormones are, comparatively, a little bit less healthy. While we know organic food serves the interests of the environment, public health, and human rights, there’s a lot we still don’t know about its benefits for the individual supermarket shopper deciding between the banana with the “organic” sticker and the one that’s heaped in with the other, conventional foods.

METHODS: At Southern Methodist University, researchers raised fruit flies on extracts of typical grocery store produce. Different groups of flies received either organic or conventional versions of potatoes, soybeans, raisins, or bananas, all purchased from the same Texas Whole Foods.

RESULTS: Despite the relatively poor health exhibited by all — as happens when one lives its entire life consuming only one type of food — the flies who ate organic generally performed better on a number of health measures.

Specifically, diets of organic potatoes, raisins, and soy were all associated with significantly longer lifespans, with no difference seen between organic and conventional bananas. Flies raised on organic versions of all four foods were more fertile.

Read The Atlantic article.

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CBS News: Organic foods linked to better fertility, longevity in fruit flies

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date March 27, 2013

CBS News has covered research carried out in the fruit fly lab of SMU biologist Johannes H. Bauer by Plano, Texas, high school student Ria Chhabra in its March 27, 2013, article “Organic foods linked to better fertility, longevity in fruit flies.”

Read the CBS News article.

EXCERPT:

Ryan Jaslow
CBS News
New research shows eating lots of organic food can lead to a healthier life — if you happen to be a fruit fly.

Scientists fed fruit flies extracts from either organic foods or non-organic, conventionally-grown foods, and found the organic group was healthier and lived longer than their counterparts.

“We don’t know why the flies on the organic diet did better. That will require further research. But this is a start toward understanding potential health benefits,” study leader Ria Chhabra, a student at Clark High School in Plano, Texas, said in a written statement.

That’s right, the study was led by a Texas high school student who got the idea from hearing her parents discuss whether or not it was worth it to buy organic foods for health reasons.

So, Chhabra teamed up with her mentor, Dr. Johannes H. Bauer, an assistant professor of biology at Southern Methodist University in Texas.

“It’s rare for a high school student to have such a prominent position in the lab. But Ria has tremendous energy and curiosity, and that convinced me to give this research project a try,” Bauer said.

The fruit fly, or Drosophila melanogaster, is used in Bauer’s lab and other research facilities to study human diseases including diabetes, heart disease and even Alzheimer’s. Fruit flies are widely used in research because they’re cheaper and have a shorter life cycle than other lab animal models.

Read the CBS News article.

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UPI: Some organic food may be healthier

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date March 27, 2013

The international news wire service UPI has covered research carried out in the fruit fly lab of SMU biologist Johannes H. Bauer by Plano, Texas, high school student Ria Chhabra in its March 27, 2013, article “Some organic food may be healthier.”

Read the UPI article.

EXCERPT:

UPI
Fruit flies fed an organic diet did better on tests of general health and two significant measures of health — fertility and longevity, U.S. researchers say.

Ria Chhabra a student at Clark High School in Plano, Texas; biologist Johannes H. Bauer of the Southern Methodist University in Dallas; and Santharam Kolli, a research associate at SMU, said the data demonstrated fruit flies raised on organic food extracts performed better on the majority of health tests.

“We don’t know why the flies on the organic diet did better. That will require further research. But this is a start toward understanding potential health benefits,” Chhabra said in a statement.

Chhabra said the study was inspired by a conversation her parents had on the merits of buying organic food.

Bauer said his laboratory utilized one of the most widely used model systems, the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, often used to study human diseases such as diabetes, heart function and Alzheimer’s disease because of the fruit fly’s short life cycle and low cost.

The study, published in PLoS One, also found some negative or neutral results using diets prepared from organic raisins, which might suggest the beneficial health effects of organic diets might be dependent on specific food items, Bauer said.

Read the UPI article.

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Fruit flies fed organic diets are healthier than flies fed nonorganic diets, study finds

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date March 25, 2013

Fruit flies raised on diets based on organic foods performed better on a variety of health tests, including fertility and longevity

A new study looking at the potential health benefits of organic versus non-organic food found that fruit flies fed an organic diet recorded better health outcomes than flies fed a nonorganic diet.

The study from the lab of SMU biologist Johannes H. Bauer, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, found that fruit flies raised on diets of organic foods performed better on several tests for general health.

“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, principal investigator for the study.

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Fruit flies on organic diets showed improvements on the most significant measures of health, namely fertility and longevity, said high school student researcher Ria Chhabra.

“We don’t know why the flies on the organic diet did better. That will require further research. But this is a start toward understanding potential health benefits,” said Chhabra, a student at Clark High School in Plano, Texas, who led the experiment.

Chhabra sought to conduct the experiments after hearing her parents discuss whether it’s worth it to buy organic foods to achieve possible health benefits.

Bauer, an assistant professor in SMU’s Department of Biological Sciences, mentored Chhabra by helping guide and design her research experiments. The research focus of Bauer’s fruit fly lab is nutrition and its relationship to longevity, health and diabetes.

“It’s rare for a high school student to have such a prominent position in the lab. But Ria has tremendous energy and curiosity, and that convinced me to give this research project a try,” Bauer said.

The findings, “Organically grown food provides health benefits to Drosophila melanogaster,” have been published in the open access journal PLOS One. Buaer and Chhabra 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.

Flies on organic food performed better on some health tests
“The data demonstrated that flies raised on organic food extracts by-and-large performed better on the majority of health tests,” reported the researchers.

It remains unclear why organic diets delivered better health, the researchers said.

The Bauer lab results come at a time when the health effects of organic food are widely debated.

Prior studies by other researchers have found conflicting results when reviewing the scientific literature for data. While several studies have shown elevated nutrient content and lower pesticide contamination levels in organic food, a recent publication reporting a large-scale analysis of all available studies concluded no clear trend was apparent.

Fruit flies were fed extracts from produce purchased at a grocery store
In order to investigate whether organic foods are healthier for consumers, the lab utilized one of the most widely used model systems, the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. Because of the low costs associated with fly research and the fly’s short life cycle, researchers use fruit flies to study human diseases, from diabetes to heart function to Alzheimer’s disease.

The Bauer lab fruit flies were fed organic and nonorganic produce purchased from a leading national grocery retailer of organic and conventional foods. 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.

The health tests measured longevity, fertility, stress and starvation resistance.

Findings suggest beneficial health effects dependent on specific foods
Some negative or neutral results were obtained using diets prepared from organic raisins, which suggests the beneficial health effects of organic diets are dependent on the specific food item, Bauer said. That might explain some of the inconsistent results in the published studies in the scientific literature, he said, noting some studies suggest there is a nutritional benefit from organic food, while others suggest there is not.

“To our surprise, in the majority of our tests of flies on organic foods, the flies fed organic diets did much better on our health tests than the flies fed conventional food,” Bauer said. “Longevity and fertility are the two most important aspects of fly life. On both of these tests, flies fed organic diets performed much better than flies fed conventional diets. They lived longer, had higher fertility, and had a much higher lifetime reproductive output.”

Factors such as soil condition and latitude where the produce was grown weren’t considered, mimicking a typical grocery store shopping experience. — Margaret Allen

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For more information, www.smuresearch.com.

SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.

Tags Dedman College, Johannes H. Bauer, Ria Chhabra, Santharam Kolli, SMU Department of Biological Sciences

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Fruit flies raised on diets based on organic foods performed better on a variety of health tests, including fertility and longevity

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